Episode Details

Andrew Torrance—Year C Proper 9-12

Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month, our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary.

The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the One who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.

Anthony: Hello, friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture, found in the Revised Common Lectionary, and sharing commentary from a Christ-centered and trinitarian view.

I’m your host Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Andrew Torrance. Andrew is a professor of theology at the University of St. Andrew’s School of Divinity. He’s also the co-director of the Logos Institute of Analytical and Exegetical Theology, along with Oliver Crisp.

Dr. Torrance is a member of a group of scholars organized by BioLogos, exploring the nature of human identity and personhood. Recently he finished co-writing with Alan Torrance, the book Beyond Eminence, the Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth.

Andrew, thanks for being with us and welcome to the podcast. And since this is your first time on the pod, we’d like to know a little bit about you, your story, and how you are participating with Jesus these days.

Andrew: Okay. Thank you, Anthony. It’s really great to be here. And it’s always hard to know where to start, when I say something about who I am. But as you mentioned, I teach theology at the University of St. Andrews. I see that as my primary calling. And serving the church in this world through working with students and helping them to really know and understand who the triune God of love is, and how we in creation relate to that God. And so that’s my primary calling in this world. But I’m also actively involved in the church very well in the Church of Scotland as an elder.

And actually, recently though, I’ve been more involved in a denomination called United Free Church, where I’ve been attending a slightly different congregation for a while. I was very involved with in a fresh expression of ministry in St. Andrews, where we ran a breakfast church in St. Andrews. But for a variety of reasons, COVID wasn’t great for a breakfast church, and so we ended up having a hiatus, which sort of ended up finishing that ministry. Since then, I’ve been taking a bit of a season of time out from being more actively involved in church ministry. But I’m going to be starting doing a bit more preaching things again and being involved in different ways as well. Yeah, that’s me.

[00:03:03] Anthony: I mentioned in the introduction Andrew, that you wrote a book called Beyond Eminence, and I’m just curious. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but I plan to. So, what insights are you hoping somebody like me will take away from the reading experience?

[00:03:18] Andrew: Great. So, there’s a variety of different topics that we’re covering in that book.  It’s primarily a book thinking about the relationship between Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. But I think what makes them so interesting as thinkers is that there are two thinkers that really center their theology and their Christian vision on the reality of Jesus Christ, what it means to participate in that reality and to follow Jesus Christ in a world that is always resisting that reality.

And particularly it’s interesting to think about them in the respective context as they sought to understand the gospel in ways that were resistant to forms of Christian nationalis