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doi:10.1006/reli.2000.0263, available online athttp://www.idealibrary.com onA. E. McGrath, T. F. Torrance, AnIntellectual Biography. Edinburgh, T. &T. Clark, 1999, vii+300 pp., £24.95ISBN 0 567 98683 6.

The Very Revd Thomas F. Torrance iswithout doubt one of the most compellingand redoubtable figures to have gracedtwentieth-century British theology.Professor Torrance’s energy, zeal for truthas he understood it, and incisive insightsinto the totality of the Christian traditionremain unforgettable for those whostudied under his direction during hislonger period of service at New College,Edinburgh, from 1950 until retirementin 1979. Professor McGrath’s study ofTorrance’s life and thought is therefore inprinciple welcome, not least as a contribu-tion to the history of Christian thoughtin the second half of the twentiethcentury.

The book is divided into two sectionswith a short epilogue. In the first part(pp. 1–107), entitled ‘The Emergence of aScientific Theologian’, McGrath providesan outline of his subject’s life, whichbegins with his birth as the son of theRevd Thomas and Annie E. Torrance atChengdu, Sichuan, China, in 1913, andfollows his progress at Bellshill Academyand the Universities of Edinburgh, Baseland Oxford. Accounts of ProfessorTorrance’s war service, time at AuburnTheological Seminary in the UnitedStates, and ministries at Alyth andAberdeen all add to the narrative. In parttwo (pp. 108–236), ‘The Contours of aScientific Theology’, McGrath summa-rises Torrance’s theology under theheadings of ‘Torrance and British Barth-Reception’, ‘Revelation and Salvation:The Place of Jesus Christ in ChristianTheology’, ‘The Place and Purpose ofNatural Theology’, and ‘Theology and theNatural Sciences’ in succeeding chapters.Following this, there is a curriculum vitae,

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a list of unpublished sources and a fullbibliography.

As a biography, McGrath’s book offers anarrative that has the strength of beingwritten very much with the assistance ofthe subject himself, almost to the point ofbeing autobiography by proxy. In overallterms, the text is informed by a vision ofProfessor Torrance’s life and work that isintended to secure his place as a leadingtheologian of the twentieth century, andas the father of a dynastic succession ofScottish theologians. Life and work areintegrated in a seamless progression andexpression of that divine grace which, weare informed, always flows down. Eachlife decision turns out to be correct andleads to a maximisation of productiveinfluence in the realisation of a theologicalvocation directed, ab initio, towardsnothing less than a revival of Scottish (andby implication British) theology. ThusTorrance is accorded exclusive credit forthe founding of the Scottish ChurchTheological Society, the Scottish Journal ofTheology and the British-wide Society forthe Study of Theology (see p. 80). Appar-ent interruptions in this progression, likechurch ministry and war-service, allwork for good. Thus we learn that ‘everyBarth has a Safenwil’ and that thetheologian needs to join humanity for atime before returning to the heady reachesof theology. Similarly, the dying PrivatePhilips (who was, McGrath informs us, ‘inone sense, . . . merely another casualty ofwar’) also served in his death to move thetheologian and thus to become enrichedwith posthumous theological significance(p. 74).

Given the intimate but not whollyuncritical intellectual relationship betweenTorrance and Karl Barth, ProfessorMcGrath’s biography invites comparisonwith Eberhard Busch’s Life of Barth. Astriking similarity is the near completeabsence of psychological insight shownby these biographers into their subjects.Both theologians exploit an ontologically

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grounded theory of theological truth,which places potential critics outsidethe realm of obediential conformity tothe layered hierarchy of divine reality,entextualised, it so happens, in theologiesthat gradually penetrate from initialintuitive knowledge ever deeper into thetrinitarian economy. Thus both Barth andTorrance’s representations of Christianityas ‘God’s attack upon man and all hispride’ (p. 63) may all too easily becomepart of an all-embracing identificationwith a mode of divine presence thatexcludes and transvaluates every non-submissive ‘other’ into resistance to grace.This psycho-rhetorical strategy invitesexplanation rather than simple reiteration.

The reader of McGrath’s intellectualbiography is left with the impression thatthe scarlet thread of British theology runsthrough one hand alone. Whilst someepisodes of obstruction to theologicalprogress are outlined, as when John Bailliemade efforts to contain ProfessorTorrance’s influence at New Collegewhen, on the announcement of G. T.Thomson’s retirement in 1952, he wishedto move from the Chair in Church His-tory to the Chair of Christian Dogmatics,these accounts are usually one-sided.Curiously, this one-sidedness extends tothe immediate collegial environment inwhat became the renowned Departmentof Christian Dogmatics. Thus those of uswho were taught by ‘T.F.’ also gainedmuch from ‘J.B.’ (James Torrance,Thomas’ brother), besides Brother RolandWalls and John Zizioulas, who are all intheir own ways remarkable men and theo-logical teachers. Unfortunately, not oneof these fine colleagues is mentioned inMcGrath’s book. These deficiencies ofperception are most apparent in the twice-mentioned (but once indexed) figure ofDonald Mackenzie MacKinnon, describedin passing as ‘a noted philosopher’ (p. 82).Having as a student experienced bothTorrance and MacKinnon in their primeat both Cambridge and Edinburgh, it is a

disappointment that there is neither aproper account of their often tense inter-action or indeed any placement in contextof their immensely powerful, but notwholly problematic, personae. Both aregreat men, yet they ought rightly to beunderstood as outstanding examples of‘Caledonian antezyzygy’. Thus in histribute to MacKinnon delivered in thechapel of Corpus Christi College,Cambridge, in late 1995, George Steinerdid not shrink from a compassionate yetunsparing exploration of the ambiguityand even contradiction that afflicted him.Correspondingly, it is facile to representTom Torrance without reference tothe struggle with an undoubted shadowside of Reformed theology, that uneasyrelationship between the abysmal and therevealed God of Calvin, and the evendarker torments of the doctrine of pre-destination and limited atonement. At therisk of being described as one of hisDoktovater’s detractors, this writer can onlyput on record his belief that a one-sidedaccount of the life and work of a majortheologian does not sustain or developgenuine respect. This reviewer suspectsthat the ironies implicit in the allusionsmade to Edward Said’s account of theassertion and defence of a ‘ruling dis-course’ against rivals are wholly lost uponMcGrath (p. 118).

It is McGrath’s hope that the work ofT. F. Torrance will provide the foun-dation for the Christian theology of thenew millennium, not least as regards therelationship between theology and naturalscience. Writing as one doubtless con-demned as incapable of contributing to thedebate owing to a lack of experience at thelaboratory bench (p. xii), the presentwriter nonetheless has the gravest doubtsabout the future of a theology whichappears to treat the human and socialsciences (not least as embodied in Reli-gious Studies) with unconcealed contemptas ‘pseudo-psychology’ (p. 84). Moreover,any scientist or theologian who might

doi:10.1006/reli.2000.0264, available online athttp://www.idealibrary.com on

David Gordon White, The AlchemicalBody: Siddha Traditions In Medieval India.Chicago, University of Chicago Press,1997, xviii+596 pp., £39.95, $50.00(hardback) ISBN 0 226 89497 5, £15.50,$22.00 (paperback) ISBN 0 226 89499 1.

Some years ago I met a young yogin namedSwami Suddananda in Australia who hadjust come from the Kumbh Mela in India,

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endorse Francis Bacon’s account of thetwo books of God’s word and his works asmethodologically exemplary, without ref-erence to the feminist critique of Bacon inan era of gross and progressive environ-mental degradation of nature, could wellcompound the isolation of theological dis-course from the actuality of the humancondition (see p. 178).

On the occasion of the presentationat New College of a truly magnifi-cent portrait of Tom Torrance to theUniversity of Edinburgh, the then Dean,Professor Duncan Forrester, referred toProfessor Torrance as a ‘bonnie fechter’.This Scots phrase summed up with gener-osity the sometimes prickly ambiguity of agreat, but not flawless, Christian thinker.Despite the extensive list of honours citedin the curriculum vitae with which thereader is provided by Professor McGrath,it has to be acknowledged that ProfessorTorrance’s main influence has been withinthe ambit of the Scottish diaspora and itsPresbyterian colleges. For reasons that arenot made clear, the subject of this bookwas denied the Bampton, Gifford or theStanton Lectures. As with DonaldMacKinnon, so with Thomas ForsythTorrance, the voices of the crushed soulswho were stepped on in passing are silent.This book is, as it were, in some degree ‘indenial’, and if it is to remain unchallengedas a benchmark for the biography ofChristian theologians, then we are indanger of living in a docetic world ruledby discourses cut off from embodimentand from the solidarity represented to us inthe full manifold of the human and socialsciences. Should we, can we, divorce theperson of the Christian from his or herlife’s work? Tom Torrance surely deservesbetter than this naive biography: truth andcompassion are the handmaidens banishedfrom this unsubtle, partial and occasionallyimmature (cf. the unworthy commentupon Heinrich Ott [p. 103]) intellectualaccount of a very remarkable, but notunproblematic, man and theologian.

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This reviewer had the good fortune tocome under the direct influence of anumber of teachers to whom the word‘great’ could be ascribed. Thomas ForsythTorrance falls within this small group.Unfortunately, and in a deeply disappoint-ing way, McGrath’s biography has failedto comprehend the true dimensions of hissubject. In an era of Teaching QualityAssessment and the Quality AssuranceAgency, figures of the power and statureof T. F. Torrance and Donald MacKinnonare in effect ruled out of order of institu-tional existence: they would be too dis-ruptive. Precisely why such individuals ofpowerful independent spirit are nowlargely, if not wholly, extinct is a questionworth addressing. Both Torrance andMacKinnon are distinguished members ofa cohort that passed through the SecondWorld War. They responded to thedemands of truth seeking. For them,questions of life and death ranked higherthan obediential conformity to themaximisation of banal performativity. We,as readers, need to see such figures in thefullness of their great but flawed humanity,so that, not least, we can learn why andhow it is that some human beings con-tinue to engage with truth seeking whilstothers relapse into the scholastic pathosand repetitive tedium that passes for intel-lectual life in most British universities.

RICHARD ROBERTSLancaster University