A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Professor Torrance is a former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and a renowned theologian. Reprinted with permission. In this article Torrance refers to an article by the present moderator of the Church of Scotland.
Over the Christmas period prominent attention had been given in the press to people who deny that Jesus Christ is the son of God. It has also been reported that there are ministers in the Church of Scotland who reject belief in the deity of Christ, and claim to be exercising liberty of opinion in regard to their belief on the ground that it does not concern the “substance of the faith” which has been left undefined.
Once again it must be stated quite clearly that for the Church of Scotland the substance of the faith is identical with the supreme truth of the deity of Jesus Christ. That is the truth for which the church has had to struggle again and again in its long history. The Church of Scotland must take care today to retain this supreme truth, for apart from it no church can honestly claim to be Christian.
Ever since the gospel was first proclaimed in the ancient world this has always been the sharpest point of conflict between it and humanist thinking about religion. For the Greeks and Romans, God was regarded as so completely detached from the world that he does not interact with human beings in history. There is, they held, an impassable gulf between this world and the other world, between the earthly and heavenly realms, so that, as Plato held, no “Word” has come across from the other side. This means that human beings must try to bridge the gap between themselves and God through devising their own religious ideas and practices. That is how the pagan world tried to interpret the Christian gospel about the incarnation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ, and the Christian message that he is “the Word made flesh.” And so they rejected the message of the gospel that Jesus Christ as God and Man is the one Mediator between God and man, and did their best to turn it into a mythology of the “strange God.”
When Christian belief was challenged by humanist thinkers within the church, it became supremely important for Christians to clarify the relation between Jesus Christ and God, because everything hinges upon this as the supreme truth of the gospel. And so at the great Council of Nicaea in 325 AD the church confessed faith in Jesus Christ as “of one substance with the Father.” That is, what the Christian Church has always held to be the substance of the faith, the supreme truth from which there can be no divergence without rejection of the very essence of the gospel.
If there is no unity in life and action between Jesus Christ and God the Father, then the bottom drops out of the Christian message as proclaimed in the New Testament. If Jesus Christ is not God, he is not the Lord and Saviour of humankind. If he is not true God, then everything he says about divine forgiveness is merely the word of man. And if he is not God become man, everything Jesus taught about the love of God, and all he did through his death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, is empty of divine validity.
Furthermore, unless there is an unqualified relation between Jesus Christ and God the Father, then God remains ultimately unknown to us, some hidden deity behind the back of Jesus. In contrast, the supreme message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is God revealed, that he who sees the face of Jesus sees the face of God. For all authentic Christians the words of Jesus are the words of God, the tears of Jesus are the pity of God, and the wrath of Jesus is the judgment of God. Christian believers have always confessed with adoring praise in their worship and prayer that God and Christ are inseparably one.
For all authentic Christians the words of Jesus are the words of God, the tears of Jesus are the pity of God, and the wrath of Jesus is the judgment of God. Christian believers have always confessed with adoring praise in their worship and prayer that God and Christ are inseparably one.
The supreme truth that Jesus Christ and God are one, and that the Lord Jesus is of one substance with the Father, constitutes the substance of the faith, from which there can be no divergence without defection from the gospel. This is the cardinal truth expressed in the heart of the Nicene Creed, for it is the central point upon which the whole of the Christian faith depends. That is why we confess our Christian faith in the words of the Nicene Creed at our celebration of Holy Communion. It is this substance of the Christian faith which is enshrined in the “Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in Matters Spiritual.” Article one reads as follows:
The Church of Scotland is part of the Holy Catholic or Universal Church; worshipping one God, Almighty, all-wise and all-loving, in the Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; adoring the Father, infinite in Majesty, of whom are all things; confessing our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, made very man for our salvation; glorifying in His Cross and Resurrection, and owning obedience to Him as the Head over all things to His church; trusting in the promised renewal and guidance of the Holy Spirit; proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and acceptance with God through faith in Christ, and the gift of Eternal Life; and labouring for the advancement of the Kingdom of God throughout all the world. The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation; receives the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life; and avows the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic faith founded thereupon.
In respect of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the principal subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland, liberty of opinion is recognized on such points of doctrine as do not enter into the substance of the faith. But there is no appeal from accepting this first declaratory article, for it is held to express the substance of the faith. Hence every minister at his ordination is asked: “Do you believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and do you confess anew the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord?”
Any minister of the Kirk who does not accept Jesus Christ as the one mediator between God and man, and apart from whom we have no true knowledge of God cannot but do immense damage to the flock of Christ over which he has been appointed a shepherd. He cannot minister to people the truth that Jesus Christ is the unique self-revelation of God, the one Lord and Saviour of men and women.
One day on a battlefield in Italy in 1944, as I was ministering to a mortally wounded young soldier who had only a few minutes to live, he said to me: “Padre, is God really like Jesus?” I assured him that God is indeed like Jesus, perfectly like Jesus, for Jesus is God become man for our sakes. He who sees Jesus sees God.
I have learned through all my ministry that this is the deepest cry of the human heart: What is God really like? If we fail to answer that cry, if we fail to show people that he who sees Jesus sees God, and that there is no other way to know God face to face except in Jesus, we are hirelings and not true shepherds.
Any minister who denies the deity of Christ should have the moral courage and honesty to resign from the holy ministry. Perhaps the time has come when all ministers should be asked by the General Assembly to renew their ordination vows.