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.