Sword & Trowel 2020: Issue 1


Scottish evangelical history. If I just mention some of those names, you may well recognise them: Thomas Chalmers, William Cunningham, Robert Candlish, Rabbi Duncan, Andrew and Horatius Bonar, James Buchanan, Thomas Guthrie, James Bannerman, Patrick Fairbairn, George Smeaton. Here we find great preachers of the Gospel, great Bible scholars, great theologians, a galaxy of good and godly men. Many of their writings are still in print today and cherished by evangelicals, espe- cially those who are reformed.


Reformed theology


And these men were indeed all im- peccably reformed in their theology. The Free Church gladly inherited from the Church of Scotland the Westminster Confession of Faith as its doctrinal standard. As reformed Baptists know, the Westminster Confession was a slightly corrupted version of the 1689 Baptist Confes- sion, somewhat mangling the 1689 Confession’s teaching on baptism and church government, but other- wise very sound. I jest, of course: the 1689 Confession is a slightly modified form of the Westminster Confession. That Confession was the great Presbyterian Confession of Faith produced by Puritans during the English Civil War, a Confession that became authoritative throughout the whole English-speaking Pres- byterian world. The Westminster Confession, and its reformed theol- ogy, were sincerely embraced by the founding fathers and brethren of the Scottish Free Church, as a noble ex- position of biblical Calvinism.


Such then was the Free Church of Scotland at its origin. But within one generation, the Free Church would be transformed from a shining citadel of reformed orthodoxy into the most theologically liberal denomination in Scotland. C H Spurgeon lamented this. He spoke of the original Free Church thus: ‘That Church in which we all gloried, as sound in the faith, and full of martyrs’ spirit…’ But he contrasted this with the current state of the Free Church (he was writing in 1889, roughly one generation af- ter that church’s origin): ‘The Free Church of Scotland must, unhappily, be for the moment regarded as rush- ing to the front with its new theology, which is no theology, but an opposi- tion to the Word of the Lord.’ Such was the verdict of Spurgeon. It is one of those cases in church history that makes us think, with fear and trembling, of the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10.12, ‘let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall’ – a warning that can be applied to churches as well as indi- viduals. The moment we think, ‘That could never happen to me,’ or ‘That could never happen here,’ is very likely the moment when our pride has written our death certificate. One more word of explanation for those of us denied the privilege of a good grounding in Scottish church history: almost the whole of the Free Church of Scotland was amalgamated in 1900 with the United Presbyterian Church, creat- ing a new denomination, the United Free Church. In its turn, almost the whole of the United Free Church, in 1929, went back into the Church


From Divine Revelation to Human Reason


 page 21


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