In this essay, “theology” and “culture” are placed together around a set of core social relations. The author defines and configures these relations within a Trinitarian and incarnational theological framework drawn largely from the thought of Scottish Reformed theologian T. F. Torrance. Then it is suggested that this particular theological vision, and the configuration of social relationships it suggests, not only accounts for the emergence of human culture and cultural activity but is open to insights from work being done in other anthropological disciplines. Convergence between these other disciplines and the theological vision developed here is demonstrated through brief considerations of the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and sociologists Christian Smith and Peter Berger.
Culture as a Social Coefficient: Toward a Trinitarian Theology of Culture
This essay will suggest that Thomas F. Torrance may be read as a theologian of culture, and that in his writings may be found the clues and resources necessary for the development of a theology of culture that is distinctively Trinitarian. Those resources, in particular, may be found through thinking together his doctrines of God as triune Creator, creation as contingent and the human person as a ‘priest of creation and mediator of order.’ For Torrance these three ideas stand as the basis for ‘the ontological substructure of our social existence.’ This substructure both necessitates and generates what Torrance refers to as ‘social coefficients of knowledge.’ It is these social coefficients of knowledge that bear a striking resemblance to modern anthropological theories of culture, both in their formation and function.