Thomas F. Torrance: Theology and mission in practice

Abstract

This article proposes that scholarship needs to take into account the intensely missional and practical nature of T.F. Torrance’s life and work. Using primary sources, it isolates mission to the Qiang in China as the area in which personal mission practice and theology coincide. It shows that Torrance’s theology of divine-human communion is rooted in the missio Dei, expressed in the nature of the perichoretic interrelations of the ontological Trinity and the mission of the economic Trinity in the world through the covenant history of Israel. This concept is illustrated practically in the mission history of the Qiang. A holistic concept of mission and theology is therefore at the heart of both Torrance’s biography and theology.