Divine Agency and Human Agency in the Sacramentology of T. F. Torrance

This article argues that Torrance utilizes the conceptual structure of the hypostatic union as an archetypal unitive frame of thought within which to develop his sacramental theology. Observed in this connection, a core aspect of Torrance’s sacramentology is the unequal collaboration of divine agency and human agency, in which human agency is subordinate to and dependent upon divine agency. The principle of unequal collaboration between divine and human agency is introduced through a short analysis of the impact of the hypostatic union on Torrance’s account of theological cognition, which has been developed more fully elsewhere. The connection between the methodological priority of the hypostatic union for Torrance’s understanding of the relationship between the divine and the human thus established, the unequal collaboration between divine agency and human agency is then traced through Torrance’s baptismal theology and his Eucharistic theology.