Scotland does not lack theological vigour. None more than John McLeod Campbell (1800–72) has bequeathed an inheritance of controversy on the crucial themes of Christology and soteriology. When the tidal influence of Barth swept in during this century and when a thinker of the stature of T.F. Torrance united themes from Barth and McLeod Campbell, a theological proposal of great fecundity and power emerged. This is what Kettler describes for us.

The vicarious humanity of Christ is the answer to the critical question: where is the reality of salvation to be found? In the first part of his three-part study, Kettler looks at the treatment of salvation in six contemporary thinkers: Cobb, Boff, Moltmann, Pannenberg, Hick and Kung. Their common fault is to try to locate salvation in an anthropocentric, experientially based theology. In concluding this discussion, Kettler advances and defends Barth’s alternative proposal. This is not simply to replace anthropocentricity with theocentricity. Barth wanted to root the humanity of Jesus Christ in the very being of God so that humanity as it is found in Christ is not alien to, but indeed is an element in, the deity itself. God comes to us, then, not in a form divinely alien to our human reality, but in human form which is true to his deity but apt for our humanity.

What Barth leaves undeveloped and what is needed, however, is a notion of the vicarious humanity of Christ. This is provided by T.F. Torrance as described in Part Two. To say that the humanity of Christ is vicarious is to say that it is for us in the strongest, most comprehensive, most inclusive sense. All is done for us in Christ and in all his life Christ is for us. That extends, on the one hand, to such claims as that Christ believes for us (he is the ‘great believer’) and, on the other, to the claim that the whole of his life is an atonement, communicating to us the life of God. We are saved as we participate in Christ whose humanity has accomplished our salvation. McLeod Campbell developed the celebrated notion of the vicarious penitence of Christ (he is the ‘perfect penitent’). That has its due place in Kettler’s exposition. And not the least of the author’s emphases is on the epistemological and hermeneutical implications of vicarious humanity (pp. 183–186).

We need, however, further to describe the locus of salvation in the present world and so in the final part of the book we have ‘the vicarious humanity as ecclesial reality’. Barth returns here in a discussion of the way humanity is displaced in the church as the church is constituted as the community of the last Adam. The church participates in the vicarious humanity of Christ in the world, which means death to anything we can do apart from or in addition to that humanity (hence displacement). The concrete place of salvation is not found in the agenda we devise for the church but in that vicarious humanity which contains the church. In his preface, Kettler announces his intention of forging the link between Torrance and Bonhoeffer: relatively little is actually said of Bonhoeffer in this work, but those who know their Bonhoeffer will constantly remember Christ, community and the concrete in his thought as they come to the end of Kettler’s work.

This book has three merits. Firstly, Kettler writes clearly and without undue convolutions. Secondly, while the first part contains a routine, sometimes well-worn, account of the relevant thinkers, it will furnish a good introduction for students to the thinkers concerned. Thirdly, we are well, though quite succinctly, presented with the concerns of Torrance et al, although students should be warned against using this as an introduction to the relevant debates, for the great alternative Reformed perspectives in Christology and soteriology are not properly expounded. But what of the theological substance?

The issues involved are immense and weighty and one recoils from uttering a comprehensive ‘aye’ or ‘nay’. All that can be said here is that, taking the scheme in its fulness, I am not at all persuaded. When Barth offers his christological reading of the Lucan parables in terms of Jesus as the ‘great sinner’, the Prodigal Son, or the lost sheep, one must simply say that while such possibilities arise on the periphery, as it were, in train of sophisticated theological reflection, they do not at all indicate the natural direction in which Scripture takes the reflective theological mind. (Perhaps it is worth noting that what Barth meant by all this, and what he meant by speaking of humanity in deity, must be taken in context or it will seem scandalous.) Again, perfect penitence is a possibility, and a profound one at that, but one should be wary of building on it, even if it is accepted. I question whether we should make anything christologically or soteriologically foundational that is not close to the surface of Scripture. The allurements of theological construction seem to me to portend a scheme that is precarious in the case of T.F. Torrance. From his emphasis on the humanity of Christ, Torrance deduces that ‘it would not be theologically proper to offer an account of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures apart from a doctrine of atoning mediation between the Word of God and the word of man’ (Kettler quotes part of this sentence on p. 135, but one should look at Torrance’s own text here). The concept of atonement has expanded here to a point of semantic unnaturalness.

If one is unhappy with these deductions, the question is whether promising premisses have yielded dubious conclusions or whether dubious premisses are yielding consistent conclusions. Big and worthy questions for theological students, of whom I am the chief! Barth and Torrance are impressive exponents of the doctrine of Christ, centre of Christianity. Kettler has usefully portrayed the theological possibilities of Christ’s vicarious humanity but just as certainly encourages (however unwittingly) investigation of the counter-possibilities.