Book Review: The Ecclesiology of Thomas F. Torrance: Koinōnia and the Church by Kate Tyler

The Ecclesiology of Thomas F. Torrance is the first academic monograph that focuses exclusively on Thomas F. Torrance’s doctrine of the Church. Based on her doctrinal dissertation at the University of Otago, Kate Tyler begins the book with an essential ecclesiological question: what, or who, is the church? She maintains that “the Church must be understood as an empirical community in space and time that is ultimately shaped by the Triune God who is a perichoretic communion of the three divine persons” (ix). Tyler is convinced that, as Torrance has shown, studies of ecclesiology must both be grounded upon and begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The flow of this book is thus analogous to Torrance’s conviction that “ecclesiological inquiry must proceed from above rather than below” (xi): chapters 1–4 unfold the integral correlation between the doctrinal loci of the Trinity and the Church, and chapters 5–9 then draw out the theological and ecclesial implications for a trinitarian ecclesiology according to Torrance’s understanding. Tyler begins her study by highlighting the contours of major contemporary ecclesiological inquiries such as communion ecclesiology and themissio Deimovement, and then suggests that all of these ongoing conversations share a central focus on the trinitarian shape of the Church. What follows is a helpful overview of contemporary scholarly contributions on the ecclesiology of Torrance. The first chapter introduces both Torrance’s family influence and the core ideas that shaped his approaches to theological thinking. The highlights here include how Torrance’s missionary heritage influenced the missional and ecclesiological orientation of his works, as well as how he appropriates Michael Polanyi’s theory of personal knowledge in the domain of dogmatic theology for fostering an incarnational (i.e., kataphysic, “according to nature”) and scientific mode of thinking that avoids the pitfall of epistemological dualism (i.e., the modern fact-value dichotomy). Book Review