PARTICIPATING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD: AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE TRINITARIAN EPISTEMOLOGY OF T. F. TORRANCE

Abstract

The overall aim of this thesis is to assess the viability of a particular understanding of participation in the knowledge of God for the postmodern, scientific context in which it is now located. Through a critical engagement of the Trinitarian epistemology of T. F. Torrance, this thesis provides a more holistic, complex vision of participation in the knowledge of God that moves beyond the problems of reductionist accounts.

Part I of the thesis identifies and defines the modern problem of reductionist accounts of theological epistemology. To overcome these problems, this thesis proposes a complex vision of the knowledge of God through an engagement and expansion of Torrance’s Trinitarian epistemology.

Part II delineates and analyzes seven general dynamics which comprise the nature of the knowledge of God for Torrance. Before moving to the center of his theological epistemology, this section provides an introduction and assessment of the general dynamics at work throughout his discussions of the knowledge of God.

Part III goes to the heart of Torrance’s epistemology, the Triune God. This section begins by examining how the persons and relations of the ontological Trinity exercise a governing influence upon Torrance’s theological epistemology. From this Trinitarian framework, this section then turns to expand and appraise three epistemological dynamics which consequently become centrally important: knowledge of God as personal, relational, and participatory. This section contends that these forms of knowledge involve the whole person and a way of life. This vision of participation extends the Trinitarian epistemology of Torrance with priorities to which his theological writings clearly point but which he himself did not develop.

Part IV concludes the thesis by drawing together the assessments made along the way concerning knowledge of God in a postmodern, scientific age and proposing an epistemological model that moves beyond the problems of reductionism.