Resurrection, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ. Stanley S. MacLean
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on the resurrection of Christ, but in his earliest sermons he construes the resurrection in terms that obviate the former, in ways that suit a timeless, realized eschatology. The resurrection is “the complete movement from God to God that passes through the lowest point of our humanity.” “It means the end of history, the ruthless triumph of unrighteousness. It means the end of time.” But when faced with a war-torn world, Torrance knew he had to qualify the triumphalism of the resurrection with the eschatological reserve implicit in the ascension. This meant applying the lesson from Auburn about “the MAN in heaven today” who, because our humanity and our time are real for him, is still graciously carrying out his redeeming work through the church and history. The ascension backs the promise to the distraught that Christ is the “shape of the future”; it backs the promise that he will come again in history to bring an end to all its conflicts. It even explains why the world, notwithstanding the resurrection, is gripped by suffering and spiritual darkness.
The importance of the ascension is attested in a sermon Torrance gives on the subject in the spring of 1942, a sermon that harks back to his Auburn lecture. Following John 16:7, he discusses the benefits of it. The ascension ensures that we have a “spiritual” relationship” with Christ, that he is real in our hearts. Second, it forces us to encounter him as “the crucified” one, instead of just the risen and transcendent one. “Jesus Christ refuses to be known, refuses to have any relations with man apart from the cross. He will be known, worshiped and adorned only as the one who went to Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary.”123
This is the case because the Holy Spirit makes the cross “contem-poraneous”—“now confronting us and demanding our faith, trust, and participation.”124 For Torrance, the “secret” of Jesus is “locked up in the experience of the Cross.”125 But if Jesus had not ascended, we would forget about the cross and never learn this secret.
The third benefit is that we might know him as the “very right hand of God.” The “right hand of God” is a biblical expression for God’s authority and power, which, according to Psalm 110, is shared with the Messiah. This is the greatest advantage of the ascension for Torrance. Through it, the divinity of Christ is attested to faith. At Auburn, he put it this way: “What Christ IS, God IS, because Christ IS God’s Right Hand.” That means there is “no work, no Word, no Will, no Judgement of God other than the act and word and will and judgement of the Lord Jesus Christ.”126 In his view these acts are all manifestations of the power of God (cf. Mark 14.62). “Christ himself IS the ‘omni-potence’ of God.”127
There must have been many Christians at Alyth parish in 1942 who longed for a baring of the right hand of God in Old Testament fashion (Pss 2:9; 110:5f.), for a triumphal display of Christ’s Lordship, of his wrath against evildoers (cf. Luke 9:54). Yet Torrance controverts this view of God’s “right hand.” He calls it a “false picture,” one that is about “almighty force” and rooted in a very un-Pauline definition of justice. God’s “sword of justice” has been wielded on the cross.128 Jesus ascended to the Father, so we could “learn that God’s right hand is revealed at Calvary” and to realize that the crucifixion is an “act of God . . . an act of Eternity.”129 God’s right hand is Jesus’ hand nailed to the cross. In spite of the evil enveloping in the world in 1942, Torrance assures his church that “God is reigning over the world.” But what sort of God? What sort of reign? It is the “Lamb of God on the throne,” he adds, “the Lamb that bears the sins of the world . . . that can be angry with the wicked,” yet whose “holy living will shall be done.”130 And it is precisely because he reigns over the world with a “cross in his heart” that we can be assured he is essentially love.131
The “right hand of God” is an anthropomorphism but, in Torrance’s view, the scarred hands of Jesus are not. The ascension, then, not only verifies the divinity of Christ; it verifies his humanity too. As Mark 14:62 tells us, it is the Son of Man who now sits at the right hand of God. “The Ruler and King of the Universe is none other than the Man who suffered on the Cross.”132
But all this, however, puts faith through a trial. Although faith is not sight, it still “sees.” In order to see more and better, it seeks understanding: fides quaerens intellectum. How, faith will inquire, does Christ from the throne of God rule over the world and redeem it? How, when this world is in shambles, when Christ is not present in the world? Is Christ the true Redeemer? Is God really as Christ is? Or is there a hidden right hand to God?
For Torrance, the revelation of Christ is proof there are “no dark spots” in God.133 However, if he cannot account for the great dark spots in the world (and in 1942 there were many), if he cannot show how all the evil in the world is working for good, and is evidence of Christ’s continuous rule and redemption, then Christians will begin to believe there is indeed a hidden hand to God—or worse, no hand and no God at all.
Torrance does meet this demand, and he does so without subordinating Christ to history, metaphysics, or ontology. There is no need to. Christology is based on the reality of Jesus Christ, as the incarnate, risen, and ascended God-Man, and on the illuminating work of his Spirit.134 Further, through the study of Christology we can “gain a clear understanding of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus, and all that he means for us in the Church and the world.”135
This brings us to Torrance’s sermons on Revelation.
C. The Apocalypse: Sermons on Revelation I
1. Christ and the Soul
Of all the sermons Torrance preached, the best known and most original are his published collection on Revelation, titled The Apocalypse Today. It appeared in 1959, but the sermons within were first delivered during the war and just after it while Torrance was a minister at Alyth parish. Needless to say, The Apocalypse Today gives us the best picture of his eschatology in the 1940s. Under sixteen thematic chapters, it covers the whole of Revelation.
Torrance apparently had no intention of ever publishing these sermons but did so “at the request” of many friends and students who longed for “a fresh and straightforward account of the meaning of the Apocalypse for today.”136 “For today” really stood for days that were a throwback to the first century of the church. The 1950s were not as bloody as the 1940s but they were still years of “world distress and conflict,” when people experienced the “plagues of war and the tyranny of oppression.”137 There was no shortage of literature on Revelation in this period, but it was not very good at relating the contents of this book to the present. Roughly, there were two kinds. First, there were the exegetical commentaries, notably R. H. Charles’s monumental two-volume work, which focused on the meaning of the Apocalypse for yesterday, for first-century Christians.138 There were the expository commentaries that tried to make the Apocalypse relevant, but this usually involved extracting the timeless, spiritual truths from the husk of historical and eschatological material.139 Apart from these, one was left with, in Torrance’s words, the “fantastic interpretations of the sects.”140 These interpretations tried to relate the Apocalypse to the modern world, but failed because they took the images and symbols of the book too literally.141
However, The Apocalypse Today does not contain the whole story of Torrance’s engagement with Revelation. Most of the sermons in it originate in 1946, though several originate in 1942.142 Some sermons underwent significant changes by the time they were published; some early sermons never made it into book form.
His first three sermons are not in The Apocalypse Today. This is not surprising, since they are not in line with the historical nature of its eschatology. In the first chapter Torrance defines Apocalypse this way. “[It] is the unveiling of history already invaded and conquered by the Lamb of God. Apocalypse means the tearing aside of the veil of sense and time to reveal the decisive conquest of organic evil by the incarnate Son of God.”143
Those first three sermons, by contrast, reflect Torrance’s early eschatology at Alyth; one that is personal, ahistorical, and rather existentialist. The first one was delivered in 1940 and is about the “Lion and the Lamb” in chapter 5:5ff. “What’s the meaning of this vision?” he asks. He finds three meanings in it. One, it refers to the “liberation of life . . . the sense of the absolute release.”144 Looking deeper, he understands it as an escape from “the bonds of some narrow obsession