While researching Lamb he had made pencil and pastel portraits of several of Lamb’s
While researching Lamb, he had made pencil and pastel portraits of several of Lamb’s sitters, hence the inclusion of, among others, Duncan Grant, Lady Pansy, Diana Mosley, Bryan Guinness (Lord Moyne) and Quentin Bell. In addition, Clements wrote in the catalogue, being a frequent visitor to Monk’s House, Charleston and Berwick inspired me to look afresh at these much-painted subjects and, with a little impertinent whimsy, hint at the occasional haunting presence of Bloomsbury personages.From his student years Clements had drawn and painted Sussex, but he began to feel that he had “become increasingly seduced by the notion of Olde Sussex, succumbing, sometimes sentimentally, to childhood memories, caught up in waves of nostalgia”. Thus in his show at Pallant House, Chichester, in 1996, entitled “New Vistas: Sussex from the bypass”, he sought to admire, indeed applaud, the bold, imaginative sweep of the new A27 through the lately resolved Southwick tunnel, an instant masterpiece that might well have had an approving nod from Brunel.Clements’s last solo exhibition was at the Thebes Gallery, Lewes, in 2002. Despite a long illness, he contributed six pictures to the just- finished Salon at Sabl?ur-Sarthe, in France, where only one foreigner a year is invited to exhibit.David Buckman. James Bruce Torrance, theologian and minister of the church: born Chengdu, China 23 February 1923; ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland 1950; Minister, Invergowrie Parish Church 1954-61; Lecturer in Divinity and Dogmatics in the History of Christian Thought, New College, Edinburgh University 1961-72, Senior Lecturer in Christian Dogmatics 1972-77; Professor of Systematic Theology, King’s College, Aberdeen University and Christ’s College, Aberdeen 1977-89 (Emeritus), Dean of the Faculty of Divinity 1978-81; married 1955 Mary Aitken (one son, two daughters); died Edinburgh 15 November 2003. James Torrance, Professor of Systematic Theology at Aberdeen University from 1977 to 1989, was a member of an extensive theological clan with significant input into the life of the Church of Scotland.
He shared with his older brother Tom, his nephew Iain and his son Alan the dignity and re
James Bruce Torrance, theologian and minister of the church: born Chengdu, China 23 February 1923; ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland 1950; Minister, Invergowrie Parish Church 1954-61; Lecturer in Divinity and Dogmatics in the History of Christian Thought, New College, Edinburgh University 1961-72, Senior Lecturer in Christian Dogmatics 1972-77; Professor of Systematic Theology, King’s College, Aberdeen University and Christ’s College, Aberdeen 1977-89 (Emeritus), Dean of the Faculty of Divinity 1978-81; married 1955 Mary Aitken (one son, two daughters); died Edinburgh 15 November 2003. Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (1996) summarised in its title many of his concerns, yet again expressed with typical conciseness. He was a man of deep devotion, and it is entirely appropriate that his final set of lectures (the Warfield at Princeton in 2003) should have been on prayer.Stephen May. He was not only chair of the Panel on Doctrine from 1982 to 1986, but co-chair of the British Council of Churches Study Commission on Trinitarian Doctrine that published in 1989 the deeply influential The Forgotten Trinity, and chair of a joint Presbyterian and Roman Catholic Commission.His warm concern for students had distracted Torrance from writing as much as he might have done and his retirement years were marked by the publication of a number of works. In his analysis of civil religion, he had harsh things to say about the misuse of theology and Christianity for political ends notably there, in the United States and Northern Ireland.James Torrance’s temper was fundamentally ecumenical and irenic. His emphasis on the universal scope of God’s love and the priority of God’s grace led him to be a trailblazer in the admittance of children to Communion in the Church of Scotland. His analysis of the way in which a perverted interpretation of the Reformed tradition had led to the tragedy of a theological justification for apartheid led him to outspoken and courageous involvement in the church struggle in South Africa.
Shunning superficial “relevance”, he was concerned with the deep roots of the Christian tradition, which could both bring together Christians of different denominations and simultaneously impact on politics and society. By contrast, Eastern Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on the Trinity as a communion of love and the relationship with God as being fundamentally filial rather than judicial, had much to offer.Torrance’s perceptions were both deeply orthodox and deeply radical. In the “Marrowmen” disputes, in the conflict that led to the shameful condemnation for heresy of Macleod Campbell, one of Scotland’s greatest theologians, Torrance saw not esoteric arguments but the heart of Christianity at stake.Through his philosophical study he had become convinced that Western society held in its depths a harsh and destructive legalism inherited from the Roman juridical system and introduced into theology through Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine. In his analysis of Scottish theology, Torrance saw the strains of argument between a harsh legalism on one hand and advocates of God’s unconditional love on the other. He wanted to equip his students to feed their people with the Gospel, a Gospel not of rebuke and judgement but of comfort for their souls, abolishing the demands of an unfeeling law and replacing it with a loving relationship with their heavenly Father.
It ceased, he argued, to be an arduous, independent activity on our part which brought us merit, and became instead joyful Spirit-given participation in the worship of Christ. Armed with this and similar significant conceptual tools, Torrance re-examined the history of theology, and particularly that of his native country and the Reformed tradition. This brought conflict at times with those who read Scottish theology, and particularly the legacy of Calvin, very differently.From his experience as a parish minister in Invergowrie Torrance brought both a desire to teach and a feeling for ordinary Christians in their day-by-day struggles which led him to be a deeply caring pastor. The Trinity was not just an epistemological reality (telling us about how we know God) but an ontological one too (telling us both how God is, and how we should mirror His being.)Torrance developed the notion of the “vicarious humanity of Christ” with particular reference to worship.
