Tales of the Inner City Book

Fantastic critique of dualistic "container" theories of reality ala Aristotle and Kant. He spends a lot of time explaining Einsteinian relativity and how this scientific model destroys "container" theories. Space isn't a container we move through - yet that is the outmoded theory much philosophy is built upon, especially atheistic materialism in the form of Dawkins, et al.

I do wonder if he reintroduces the duality he tries to avoid when it comes to human language; and this is directly related to his weakness when it comes to Scriptural revelation (his view is neo-orthodox, but in fairness, he doesn't spend much time fleshing it out in this book).

Like Barth, he identifies revelation with God; and Christ is God's revelation. Torrance proposes formulating a new language that is "open" on God's end but relatively "closed" on our end in order to accomodate fuller signification. Even if we formulate language that is more "accomodating" to God, in what sense does that expand our understanding since the openness is on God's end? Seems this is just a different way of re-stating the Kantian noumenal/phenomenal duality. Perhaps more "open" language gives freedom for concepts to roam, but that divorces the concept from word, which means language functions as an "imprisonment" of sorts obstructing the relationship between signifier and the signified.

This is probably a small criticism given the relatively brief amount of time he dedicated to human language; but it is relevant given Torrance's attempt at "scientific" theology and eradicating heretical notions of duality.