Iain R. Torrance

Between Kin and Cosmopolis

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“The debate about immigration has become the most toxic issue in politics. We have lacked a framework for considered discussion and populism has stepped in. In this well-researched and articulate hundred pages on national identity and independence, Nigel Biggar gives us just such a framework, demonstrating yet again the value of public theology. He makes an outstanding contribution.”

By Life or by Death

History & Biography

“This is a deeply moving biography, written from the family's perspective, of the young American missionaries John and Betty Stam and their death in China in 1934. It is an utterly tragic story, not least because they were so recently married and had so recently become parents. Providing a personal perspective through use of never-before published photographs and documents, Andrew Montonera tells of their training, exemplary courage, and committed faith.”

Dogmatic Ecclesiology

Theology

“Contemporary accounts of the church tend to describe a body either so indistinct from the world as to be indistinguishable from it or so separated as to be sectarian. Neither pattern has been persuasive. Earlier accounts have tended to take either a liturgical approach (the Eucharist makes the church) or one based on polity (personal episcopacy is of the bene esse of the church). These are equally self-favoring. Tom Greggs instead grounds his ecclesiology on the classically understood three offices of Christ--Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King--seeing the church's proclaiming, healing, and sacrificial aspects held together in a series of fractals rather than a set of deductive statements of dogma. It's a work of practice, belief, and passionate vision. Were my father, T. F. Torrance, still alive, I know how delighted he would be.”

God and the Art of Happiness

Theology

“A frequently voiced complaint today is that academic theology writes only for its own guilds and too often tumbles into an ugly and lazy jargon-ridden abstraction. In this subtle, nuanced book, born from both hope and personal anguish, Ellen Charry reconnects knowledge and healing, thereby responding to a deep need.”

Liturgical-Missional

Theology

“The 1980s saw vastly increased interest in the doctrine of the Trinity but their work remained largely academic. A generation later, the contributors to this volume . . . are using this Trinitarian material to redraw the classic Reformation marks of the Church. Proclamation of the Word, appropriate administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of discipline are no longer enough to identify Christ's body. Such a body must also be missional, as this volume so effectively shows.”

Raging with Compassion

Theology

“It takes a particular gift, persuasiveness, and credibility to challenge a paradigm so ingrained and so evaded by a generation of textbooks. Long experience as both a mental health nurse and a theologian has given John Swinton that credibility. The community of Christians, gathered around a suffering Lord, has unique resilience to respond to evil creatively. This hopeful book recovers a theodicy of action and faithfulness. It has immense pastoral value.”

The Best of The Reformed Journal

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“A distance of twenty years allows us to see the enormous influence and sheer integrity of The Reformed Journal. These landmark essays enabled Reformed Christians to navigate issues even more challenging and explosive than those we face today. What a gift this collection is!”

The Comical Doctrine

Theology

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

The Gospel of John

Theology

“Ford is possibly the most strictly creative theologian of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Though steeped in the range of classic theology, his most immediate dialogue partner is the Irish poet Micheal O'Siadhail. More than anyone, Ford has a sense that we love God for nothing--and thereby he sidesteps the contractualism systemic in Western theology. Correspondingly, he offers a sense of God's sheer abundance toward us and all created things. Those basic instincts epitomize the Fourth Gospel. That is why this full-length engagement with that Gospel is itself such a feast. I truly commend it as the product of a lifetime of reflection, practice, and love.”

The Touch of the Sacred

Preaching & Worship

“In the press to produce services that are innovative, expressive, entertaining, and blended, the cultural and theological roots of worship have become a forgotten and untraveled country. Gerrit Immink here delves deeply into the particular resources of the Reformed tradition to rediscover landmarks for worship, prayer and preaching that is godly rather than all about us. His volume will repay careful reading and does much to redress the balance.”

Thomas F. Torrance and the Orthodox-Reformed Theological Dialogue

Theology

“The dialogue between the (then) World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Church was one of the ecumenical successes of the late twentieth century. This was not only because they agreed that they would hold to the agenda set by the Nicene-Constantinopolotan Creed (unthinkable in today’s era of identity theologies) but because of the depth of friendship between Archbishop Methodios Fouyas and Thomas F. Torrance (my father). The distinguished Greek theologian George Dion Dragas shared that friendship and the volume is most appropriately dedicated to him. It is a perceptive volume, fully alive to the ways good human relationships, loyalty, and deep affection can thaw apparently intractable disagreement.”

Transformed in Christ

Theology

“Chrysostom is usually studied as a homiletician of remarkable rhetorical technique. This careful and probing monograph by Naidu considers him as a contributor to Christian ethics--one interested in the transformation of a human person from being a wolf to becoming a dove through coming into the ark of the church, an ark much superior to that of Noah, into which one entered as a wolf and left as a wolf.”

Unknowing God

Theology

“It is no secret that institutional and denominational Christianity is floundering today, not least from multiple authoritarianisms. These wise and incisive essays are to do with repositioning, with recovery of bearings. There is nothing didactic here, but many passages of great profundity and insight which invite reflection and conversation. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.”

Why Did Jesus Die and What Does That Have to Do with Me?

Theology

“There is any number of historical or constructive studies of atonement today. Fred Anderson’s study is different because it is from a pastor’s heart, but a book few pastors could have written. It is forged in forty-five years of learned ministry, avoiding nothing, never didactic, always hungering for the big picture. Unlike many strictly academic studies, it grew out of dialogue and is earthed in practical living. I thoroughly commend its clarity, profundity, and wisdom.”