Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology

How Liberal Theology Infected Scotland

by Rev. Angus Finlayson

To many it will seem strange indeed that some twenty years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the vast majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation.

The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than 100 behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet and explained, 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.

The Seeds of Decline

The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church [The denomination which separated from the Church of Scotland in 1843 claimed to be taking with it the essential constitution of the Reformed Church in Scotland, and named herself the Church of Scotland, Free (later changed to Free Church of Scotland). The freedom referred to in the title was freedom from the interference and control of the state authority].was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a postgraduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a hitter harvest. Germany then was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant Churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.

The German Rationalism takes over

What the critical rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Troelsch propagated till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness.

The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren rationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the Church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through our Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.

Its Foothold in the Free Church Colleges

It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr. John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is On record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, His Work, His Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start in his own classroom.

In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr. Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr. Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Davidson had the field to himself and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregations in small doses' (this given to the writer on the witness of one of them).

But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views', the very man to do the job in Scotland!

But clever or not, Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1875 on 'angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all in its most offensive form into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what was termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride', seen in his articles.

Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and in the first instance the Principal of New College, Dr. Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Professor James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that in his opinion Smith's views could be reconciled with the Westminster Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism'.

But after an admonition for his first article, Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Davidson replied in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!

The Infection Spreads

The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen.

The present century opened with a blare of trumpets sounding the victory of liberalism and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. George Adam Smith, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Free Church Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church. When the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, only a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.

Hesitant Supporters

True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is Sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr. James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr. Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised.

Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ: and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.

It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent Critic: 'You should hear Prof .... conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of William Barclay, [William Barclay (1907-78) was to become a very influential Professor of New Testament at the University of Glasgow. His writings popularised the liberal theology that was current in the mid-twentieth century.] it can be said that he paid exquisite attention and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception.

But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing. And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yes, has God said?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.' It is to beware of the peril of reaction.

Rev. Angus Finlayson was the redoubtable minister in the Free Church of Scotland and a native of Calbost in South Lochs. In 1927 Mr Finlayson was admitted as a candidate for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland. During the next eight years he studied successively at Skerry's College, Glasgow University and the Free Church College, Edinburgh. On the 23rd of April 1935, he was licensed to preach the Gospel. In 1964 Mr Finlayson was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. He retired as minister of Tolsta Free Church congregation in October of 1972 and is the author of such notable books as "No More Sea: Sermons and Addresses," and a writer of many great Christian articles. The Lord took Angus from us suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday, March 30 in 1973.