Accountability to God. By Andrew B.Torrance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Pp. 240. £70.00.

‘[A] body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.’1 When Thomas Paine wrote thus against hereditary aristocracy in Rights of Man he ensured accountability, as a corrective to untrustworthiness, a pre-eminent place in any post-Enlightenment politics. That is why Torrance's Accountability to God is, perhaps, more significant than his stated aim of attempting to ‘rethink the popular meaning’ of accountability from a ‘theological perspective’ (p. 4). This is a modest proposal on the surface, made more so because he does not intend to engage with Enlightenment politics. In fact, the closest Torrance comes to that is with a brief footnote to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Torrance does, however, note the ‘negative’ (p. 1) or ‘retributive’ (p. 4) connotations in the idea of accountability—connotations which flow precisely from a formulation like Paine's—but chooses to move away from this to a more ‘positive, constructive, and, indeed, theologically apt way to think about accountability’ (p. 1). This very move, I suggest, is the beginning of a thorough theological re-casting of what has been, since the Enlightenment, an essentially retributive idea. My contention, therefore, is that Torrance offers in this work much more than a rethinking of a ‘particular word’ (p. 4); he has instead opened the way to a thoroughly theological response to Enlightenment politics. The work is broken into two parts, the first being a conceptual analysis of ‘accountability’, the second, a theological one. This is not to suggest that the parts are absolutely divided, though. Torrance intelligently opens his general definition of accountability, given in the first part, to theological refinement in the second—the effect being a careful and considered building of his case. The construction begins with a stipulative definition of accountability in the first chapter, which he unpacks in the next two. Here, already, Torrance bridges into the theological by arguing that accountability is a relational virtue ‘before God’ whereby one ‘embrace[s] God as the ultimate authority who defines humans and helps them to achieve ends that serve their flourishing’ (p. 68). Accountability is, thus, about conforming (or not) to God's account of who we are and what we are for—an account which is for our flourishing. Torrance tests this definition against slavery in chapter four, both to stave off objections and to clarify what is meant (and not meant) by accountability to God. Such periodic testing of the case is a feature of the book, appearing again in chapter seven with a comparison of Aquinas's account of fear with Torrance's case for accountability. For a work in analytic theology, the meritorious desire for conceptual clarity is no surprise. The periodic testing can, however, give the book a stilted sense. Torrance continues constructing in part two where he moves overtly into the theological. Here, Torrance employs several themes from systematics to give life to his idea of accountability. In chapter five he shows how covenant provides what he considers the necessary narratival aspect of accountability to God: situating one within a story, with an author, to which one's life may conform (or not). Torrance also considers the Fall in chapter six as the rejection of precisely this notion of accountability, before moving to redemption in chapter eight where he considers baptism as the beginning of accountability to God in the life of the believer. Before concluding, however, Torrance inserts a chapter on Paul's conversion. Unlike the chapters on fear and on slavery, however, this chapter does not serve to clarify the case he is making. It seems, rather, to be a support to the claim he makes earlier, namely that the narration of one's life, the account to which one is held, is not subjectively made, but is written by another: God. Only, that is the point: Torrance has made this point earlier—sufficiently, I think, for his purposes. It would have been better either to incorporate this Pauline material into the chapter on covenant, in which the point is already made, or to leave it out. The chapter seems to divert the reader away from the conclusion rather than to it by introducing unnecessary detail. Nevertheless, there are many commendable qualities of the book. The first, and most important, is that the work is theological. I have already touched on this, but it is worth noting because this attribute sets Torrance's book apart from much of the work being done by theologians on accountability. Too often the concept is adopted wholesale from fields such as politics, governance, and economics, which retain the retributive sense of the Enlightenment meaning, and is thus never subjected to a thorough theological re-thinking. In contrast, Torrance offers a way of thinking about accountability that is informed by theology all the way through. There is nothing of his definition that is uncritically borrowed from elsewhere. This is the book's greatest quality. Another is Torrance's well controlled argumentation. Given the topic itself is awkwardly placed between morals, dogmatics, questions of narrative, and other theological themes, this is no easy task. To his credit, Torrance does not confuse the question or muddle the reader by expanding into those fields more than he must: phrases such as ‘we do not have space here’ (p. 163) are common. His control, however, does mean that someone approaching the book from any one of these angles may want to press on particular aspects of the argument—aspects situated in extensive debates in the history of theology or philosophy but are treated in the book without reference to such debates. For instance, central to Torrance's notion of accountability is the claim that God creates humans for certain ends. He holds that these ends constitute their flourishing, so they are fulfilling of human nature (p. 30). He also holds that accountability relies on God having an authority over humans such that ‘moral wrong is an act in which a person (consciously or unconsciously) rebels against God's authority, and a moral right is an act in which a person (consciously or unconsciously) conforms to God's authority’ (p. 13). One familiar with the history of moral theology and philosophy would recognise that Torrance is placing himself simultaneously in an ethics that is both teleological, on the one hand, and deontological on the other. Of course, he does not have space to iron out how he might reconcile these two positions, which are often held to be incompatible, but a moral theologian might want him to. Torrance also manifests argumentative control in his use of sources: he does not wander into texts that do not help him build his very precise case. Though ultimately a strength, this is one of the ways I think the work could be extended. It is odd, for instance, to have a theological discussion of the believer as a character in a story written by God—an idea which plays a significant role in Torrance's notion of accountability—without referring, at least, to Balthasar. No reference to the Theo-Drama, even in the footnotes, is an odd omission. Furthermore, if I am right in seeing Torrance's work as the beginning of a theological response to an Enlightenment idea, then placing his theological notion of accountability more consciously within the history of the idea to demonstrate the contrasts to earlier formulations found in Paine, Smith, or Bentham, for instance, would be a profitable way to extend what he has already achieved in this work. One place he could beneficially expand in this direction is his chapter on baptism. Torrance makes an interesting case for baptism as the beginning of one's accountability to God in Christ and in the Church. Such accountability, in a society based on peace and trust, or ‘love’, as he says elsewhere (p. 9), is a far cry from Paine's idea of accountability as a response to untrustworthiness. Understanding baptism in this ecclesial sense, and understanding accountability in this baptismal sense, could suggest a politics quite different to the Enlightenment politics of mistrust, making more explicit engagement with Enlightenment sources an illuminating addition to the argument. That, of course, would require a much larger, more ambitious work, and that is not what Torrance has given us. What he does offer is a tight argument for a theologically coherent understanding of accountability to God. For that reason alone, I would recommend it. But I would also recommend it for where it could lead.