Scottish theologian named Princeton Seminary president
The Layman Online, April 14, 2004
Iain R. Torrance, the moderator of the General Assembly of Scotland and a member of a family of scholars noted worldwide for their commitment to Trinitarian Christianity, has been named the sixth president of Princeton Seminary.
Iain R. TorranceParker T. Williamson, chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor in chief of its publications, commended the seminary’s board of trustees for selecting Torrance. “Princeton Theological Seminary has distinguished itself with its choice of a new president,” Williamson said. “Iain Torrance represents a family of theologians whose scholarly commitment to the Triune God of grace has won it worldwide esteem. The Church owes Princeton a debt of gratitude for having named a leader who will be true to the Christian faith.”
Other Torrance family members, including Iaian Torrance’s father Tom, contributed to a book titled A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry, which was published jointly by Handel Press in Edinburgh and PLC Publications (Presbyterian Lay Committee) in 1999.
Iain Torrance is dean of the Faculty of Arts and Divinity at the University of Aberdeen, and master of Christ’s College, Aberdeen, where he is professor in patristics and Christian ethics. In assuming the presidency on July 1, Torrance will succeed Thomas W. Gillespie, who served from 1983 to 2004.
He is editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology. In 2001, he was appointed a chaplain-in-ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen in Scotland. He has served as president of the Aberdeen Association of University Teachers and was convenor of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland’s Committee on Chaplains to the Forces (1998-2002). He is a member of the international dialogue between the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Orthodox Church.
He was elected as moderator of the Church of Scotland in May 2003 and will complete his term in May 2004. As moderator, he has made a recent trip to Iraq, and will leave on April 16 for a three-week official visit to China.
Born in Aberdeen in 1949, Torrance was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Monkton Combe School in Bath. He received the master of arts degree from the University of Edinburgh, the bachelor of divinity degree from St. Andrews University, and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oriel College, Oxford University.
A minister in the Church of Scotland, Torrance served the parish of Northmavine in the Shetland Islands for three years prior to becoming lecturer in New Testament and patristics at Queen’s Theological College, Birmingham, in 1985. He then moved to the University of Aberdeen to his current position, and in 2001 was named dean of the Faculty of Arts and Divinity.
Torrance is the author of Christology after Chalcedon and Ethics and the Military Community, coeditor of Human Genetics: A Christian Perspective and To Glorify God: Essays on Modern Reformed Liturgy, and editor of Bioethics for the New Millennium. He has contributed numerous articles and book reviews to theological journals.
He is married to Morag Ann (née MacHugh), who is manager of the information technology unit at the University of Aberdeen. They have a son, Hew, and a daughter, Robyn, both university students.