The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers [Paperback]

Thomas F. Torrance (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 158 pages
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965351769
• ISBN-13: 978-0965351768
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,128,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent review of early writers and their views on grace, faith, and works, December 24, 2011

By 

E. Vaughn - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Paperback)

Torrance examines early Christian writings and how they view grace. Contrary to another reviewer, there is nothing narrow or Calvinist about this. The New Testament abounds with usage of the word grace, but most of these Church Fathers seem to avoid the term and rather emphasize works. Paul would not have approved, and in fact foresaw this coming, as he warned his readers multiple times to be on the lookout for those who would lose the Gospel of Grace. Evangelicals will be disconcerted by how far from the John's Gospel these writers had already drifted by the third and forth century.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very narrow application of the terms and concepts, September 3, 2011

By 

matt (the reading room) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Paperback)

This is one of Torranec's earliest works, and his claim that the apostolic fathers (those church leaders who succeeded the apostles) lost the core of the gospel has been challenged and refuted from the time of the book's publication. Nonetheless, it has been used again and again in Reformed circles to support their own claims, and for this reason it is worth challenging once again.

To understand the whole of this book all you need to do is read these few quotes. "In the Apostolic Fathers grace did not have [the] radical character [that it had in the New Testament]. The great presupposition of the Christian life, for them, was not a deed of decisive significance that cut across human life and set it on a wholly new basis grounded upon the self-giving of God. What took absolute precedence was God's call to a new life in obedience to revealed truth. Grace, as far as it was grasped, was subsidiary to that. And so religion was thought of primarily in terms of man's acts toward God, in the striving toward justification, much less in terms of God's acts for man which put him in the right with God once and for all." Torrance continues, "In the Apostolic Fathers grace lost its radical character. They developed a doctrine of salvation by works of righteousness... A Christian ethic was codified, and the charismatic life under the constraining love of Christ [was] reduced to rules and precepts. The centre of gravity was shifted from the mainspring of the Christian life in the person of Christ Himself to the periphery of outward conformity and daily behaviour." He continues, "In the Apostolic Fathers grace became related to the continuance of the Christian life, rather than to the decisive motion of God's love as the presupposition of the whole Christian life... Grace became an ad hoc matter, an aid to the main work of sanctification, a donum superadditum. In other words, grace was something given by God to those who worthily strive after righteousness to enable them to attain their end [heaven]... Grace was taken under the wing of the Church in an official way...as the depository of pneumatic grace, dispensed in sacramentalist fashion. The Church...possessed the means of grace." Lastly, "What facilitated the syncretism of Judaism and Hellenism was the idea, common in principle to both, of self-justification, but it was Christianity which provided the sphere in which the two could come together, for as opposed to Hellenism it brought the principle of revelation, and as opposed to Judaism it did away with the ceremonial law. As opposed to both, the Gospel of Christianity was so astounding just because it taught a doctrine of justification by grace alone. This was unpalatable to both sides. Judaism refused to accept it because of its revolutionary character and its attitude to the law. Hellenism simply failed to see the New Testament problems. Both of these attitudes to grace are found in the Apostolic Fathers. Their theology represents a corrosion of the faith both from the side of Judaism and from the side of Hellenism, because the basic significance of grace was not grasped."

Upon reading the book I was struck by the narrow, Reformed, definition of the concept of grace, salvation and free will employed by Torrance. His whole theological worldview is, as much as it may seem hard to believe for Reformed fans, unapostolic. It is really more of an Augustinian/Calvinist analysis of how the earliest church fathers understood grace and salvation, and why it is wrong because it isn't an Augustinian/Reformed approach; quite anachronistic but sadly popular among such studies. The Semitic mind, and how that was transforming the Hellenic mind among Christians, is almost entirely missing in this study. Had he started with the biblical/apostolic worldview, that mankind is created to be free in the grace of God, that grace makes nature what it is, that humanity is not a massa damnata, then he would not see deification as a Hellenic carry over or be shocked by the lack of forensic talk about justification. Although he paints the fathers as a bunch of semi-Pelagians at best, it turns out he was in this early days of his writing tone deaf to the whole of the gospel in its historical/cultural setting. Salvation defined as "saved" by faith alone is NOT to be found in any of the church fathers of this period, not the NT/OT. It is an Augustinian invention taken up by the Reformed camp. So based on this approach, it is all but impossible for Torrance not to misinterpret the fathers as believers in works righteousness and unChristocenric. But by his (narrowly Reformed) definition of Christocentrism he would be forced to jettison or downgrade the Epistle of St James as proto-Pelagian for the same reasons.

Another approach is to understand that from the beginning the Church has not posed grace and freedom against each other, that a sacramental system rooted in the liturgy was present, and that the transforming nature of grace was central, and all of this wrapped up in a solidly Christocentric understanding of everything, beginning with the incarnation and continuing with the life of Christ in the Spirit; with issues of (self) justification largely missing. St Paul is of this same tradition, which is abundantly clear if read according to his own words and not through the lens of Aquinas, Luther, Calvin or Augustine.

Readers would be better served to seek out Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford Early Christian Studies), Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. Volume One in the Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement. Christianity is a way of life, not an idea that God has about us based upon an idea that we have about God.