£100k Scholarship Fund Set Up In Memory of Former Moderator

                                                                                                                                                    Wednesday June 29 2016

SCHOLARSHIPS honouring a former Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and renowned theologian have been set up by the University of Aberdeen following a £100,000 gift.

The Thomas F Torrance Scholarship will be awarded to gifted postgraduate divinity students studying at the university.

The bursaries have been funded by a £100,000 gift in memory of Thomas F Torrance (1913-2007), who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1976. During his ministry he also served as minister of Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen from 1947 to 1950.

T F Torrance has been acknowledged as one of the most significant English-speaking theologians of the twentieth century. He served for 27 years as Professor of Christian Dogmatics at the University of Edinburgh.

His son, the Very Rev Professor Iain Torrance was born in Aberdeen, and was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Divinity at Aberdeen, serving as Moderator of the General Assembly (in 2003) and then President of Princeton Theological Seminary. He explained that the gift came from the sale of the Scottish Journal of Theology which his father had founded in Aberdeen with Professor J K S Reid in 1948.

Professor Torrance said: “We ran the journal with very low overheads. I was co-editor for 33 years and the editors were unpaid. This meant that in the last five years we have been able to give over half a million pounds to support theology students at the University of Edinburgh, at Oriel College, Oxford where my father and I both were, and now at the University of Aberdeen. Nothing would have pleased him more.”

The endowment will help provide support for students of divinity, which has been taught at the University of Aberdeen since it was established in 1495. 

Professor Sir Ian Diamond, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, said: “We are very grateful for this generous donation in memory of Thomas F Torrance.

“The University of Aberdeen has a proud tradition in the subject dating back to its foundation in 1495 and this gift will help to support the next generation of talented divinity scholars.”

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