Why Read William Cunningham?

We have heard with our ears, O God, Our fathers have told us, the deeds You did in their days, In days of old.

—Psalm 44:1 (NKJV).

The early years of the Free Church of Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century produced literature of enduring value for the Christian church. Much of that emanated from the faculty of New College, Edinburgh—for example from Thomas Chalmers, James Buchannan, John “Rabbi” Duncan and James Bannerman.¹The Banner of Truth Trust has republished works by all of these men, and they repay careful study. But perhaps the outstanding theological and literary figure of this galaxy of Christian ministers was William Cunningham.²Unhappily there is no modern biography of Cunningham. It is a great joy to introduce this new edition of his Historical Theology, a major feature of which is the provision in footnotes of English translations of all of Cunningham’s foreign language quotations, words and phrases.³All footnotes placed within square brackets have been supplied by the present publisher.

Who was William Cunningham?

Cunningham was born in 1805. His father died in 1811 and Cunningham was largely brought up by his mother. She was dependent on the generosity of her family for support, much of which came from Cunningham’s uncle—a minister whose sympathies were with the “Moderate” party in the Church of Scotland.⁴Perhaps as helpful a definition of these terms as any is: “By an Evangelical they have always meant mainly, one who in heart and life is favourable to that Christian religion which finds dogmatic expression in the Reformation doctrines of grace: by a Moderate they have meant mainly, one who is not favourable to that religion.” James MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” in British and Foreign Evangelical Review, xx (1871), 757. Cunningham was academically able, and he began studies in the University of Edinburgh in 1820. At this time he was, given his family background, attached to the same “Moderate” party in the church as his uncle.

However, he was converted under the ministry of one of the leading evangelical preachers, Dr Robert Gordon, in 1825. Thereafter he studied Divinity in Edinburgh and began his ministerial calling in Greenock (a small town west of Glasgow). While in Greenock he demonstrated his theological ability, and his commitment to the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, in opposing the teaching of John McLeod Campbell of Row. McLeod Campbell had abandoned (at least) particular redemption, and commitment to that doctrine was to mark Cunningham’s career.

Cunningham came to national prominence at the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1833. These were days of substantial debates over the relationship between church and state in Scotland. In particular the right to choose their minister had long been denied to congregations. But the tide was turning against this abuse. At the 1833 Assembly Cunningham delivered a powerful speech against the “intrusion” of ministers. His abilities came to the attention of the Evangelical party in the church.

As a result of this he was called to Edinburgh in 1834 to serve in Trinity College Kirk. This move brought Cunningham to the centre of the great events of the “Ten Year Conflict” which eventually resulted in the formation of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. During those years Cunningham provided the theological drive and steel that held men fast to the principle of the rights of congregations to choose their ministers. So, it has been said, “During the struggle which preceded the Disruption, few sustained such a prominent position as Dr Cunningham, to whose powerful advocacy the Free Church was largely indebted for the hold which her principles took of the mind of the Christian community.”⁵“Death of Principal Cunningham,” in The Home and Foreign Record of The Canada Presbyterian Church, 4:1 (Feb 1862), 96.

After the Disruption Cunningham was chosen to serve in New College, Edinburgh, the new training college for ministers in the fledgling Free Church. Initially he was a junior colleague of Thomas Chalmers in theology, but on the death of David Welsh he was moved to the professorship of church history. He adorned this department with exceptional distinction and his great works are the fruit of his labours here. On Chalmers’ death, Cunningham was made principal of the college. He served in this capacity for the rest of his life, and taught until his death in 1861, shaping many future ministries. On Cunningham’s death his literary executors, James Bannerman and James Buchanan, saw several volumes into print. Whether or not they demonstrate that Cunningham was, as Charles Hodge felt, “the greatest Calvinistic divine of our new time,” there is no doubt that to read Cunningham is to read a great theologian.⁶MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 753. And nowhere is that displayed more fully than in Cunningham’s two-volume Historical Theology.

Why Read Historical Theology?

But why pick up a work of historical theology that is over 150 years old? There are many reasons.

First, this is not simply a work of historical theology. It is more accurately a systematic theology framed around the great historical doctrinal debates of the Christian church, e.g. Trinity, Christology, Pelagianism, the fall, the will, justification, Socinianism, atonement, Arminianism. Cunningham does not merely give us a history of dates and figures. Nor does he simply give an account of what people believed in the past and why. Of course, he does both of these things. But beyond this Cunningham gives us his theological judgment. He writes as a believer, one who is interested in right and wrong. To be guided through the grand sweep of doctrinal development in church history, and to have a great believing mind provide his theological evaluation of these developments is invaluable.

And in this regard, it is important to note one of his key strengths— his ability to state a question properly. Indeed, he has been called “the scholastic of his party” due to “the prominence he gave to the exercise of determining the true nature of the question raised, and the burden of proof, and the kind and amount of evidence to be reasonably expected.”⁷Ibid., 768. No one reading Cunningham on the great debates in church history is left in any doubt as to the real nature of the issue at hand.

The following is a beautiful summary of Cunningham’s value as a precise but believing historical theologian: “Under the scholastic forms of discussion, there always burned and shone a moral and spiritual intensity of earnestness which made them [his students] feel that the matter in discussion was one of profound and vital interest to them, not only as the future teachers of the church, but also and especially as men whose personal relations to God depended on their clear and full ascertainment of his truth.”⁸MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 784.

Second, Cunningham devoted significant attention to a topic which has been neglected for too long, namely church-state relations. Clearly, with Cunningham having to wrestle through the overreach of the state into the affairs of the Scottish church, this was a pressing matter for him. But in the years since Cunningham the relation of church and state has not been of such practical relevance. However, with the decisions of the state impacting the church during the recent Covid pandemic, and with the state potentially encroaching on the sphere of the church in various “conversion therapy” laws, these are live issues again. It is therefore of great interest to hear a master on these topics cover areas such as “The Civil and Ecclesiastical Authorities,” and “The Civil Magistrate and Religion.” Cunningham’s writings on church and state abundantly justify the comment that he possessed “an aptitude for ecclesiastical business, and a capacity for ecclesiastical discussion, such as rendered George Gillespie so famous.”⁹J. A. Wylie, Disruption Worthies: A Memorial of 1843 (Edinburgh: T. C. Jack, 1881), 198.

Third, Cunningham discusses many difficult and intricate areas with great modesty of thought and expression. Cunningham’s discussions of the trinitarian debates in church history and of Scholasticism are orthodox and deeply committed to classical confessional orthodoxy, but they are wisely balanced in terms of what is of first importance. He was wary of the value of overly complex philosophical or metaphysical distinctions for, “as to merely metaphysical considerations, derived from contemplation of the natural system of things, he habitually repelled them as incompetent in the domain of Christian theology.”¹⁰MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 789. As an example, he states, “Some of the fathers indulged in unwarrantable and presumptuous speculations about the relations of the persons in the Godhead; and this was carried to a far greater excess, and exhibited much more offensively, by the schoolmen, who were accustomed to discuss many questions concerning this subject which assuredly the word of God affords us no materials for deciding …”¹¹William Cunningham, Historical Theology (2 vols.; Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1870; repr. 2024), 1:313. However, he was equally concerned about “the opposite extreme; and to leave out, or to refuse to take up, positions which there is good ground to believe that the word of God sufficiently warrants.”¹²Ibid., 1:313. Cunningham even seems to suggest that “disgusted with the presumptuous speculations of the schoolmen” Calvin had tendencies in its direction.¹³Ibid., 1:313. Consistent with this, “While making the resources of Church history of thought richly available as an introduction to the study of doctrines, he was unwearied in inculcating and practising the principle, that with reference to any question of distinctively Christian doctrine the only real source of evidence is the written revelation of God’s mind …”¹⁴MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 789.

Fourth, there is value in Cunningham’s occasional disagreements with earlier reformed theologians. It was undoubtedly true that “Dr Cunningham was justly regarded as one of the Master Theologians of the day. He had thoroughly studied the [reformed] system, and might indeed be regarded as an embodiment of the old orthodox theology.”¹⁵“Death of Principal Cunningham,” 96. However, it would be wrong to deduce from this that Cunningham was a mere reproducer of earlier thought. He was his own man, and when he differs from prior reformed views he is worth listening to.

One clear example of this is how Cunningham rejected the positions of earlier theologians on toleration. Cunningham said, “we admit that they [the Reformers] held erroneous views upon the subject of toleration, and ascribed to the civil magistrate a power of punishing upon religious grounds, which is now universally rejected by Protestants.”¹⁶Cunningham, Historical Theology (2024), 2:593. Great figures are always advancing as well as conserving truth.

Fifth, Cunningham combines a zeal for truth with a warm catholicity of spirit. It has been said of him, “He was a man of war … such a powerful man-at-arms, with immense resources, and erudition, and learning, and knowledge, with almost matchless intellect, ready to fence, ready to fight for the truth, and fearing no man.”¹⁷Thomas Guthrie as cited in “Death of Principal Cunningham,” 97. Cunningham himself believed he was constitutionally fitted for controversy, saying while a student that, “If my life is spared, it will be spent in controversy, I believe.”¹⁸D. MacGregor, “Principal Cunningham,” in William Arnot, ed., The Family Treasury (London: Thomas Nelson. 1871), 421. Indeed, among Cunningham’s last words were “I have done with fighting; I am going quietly home.”¹⁹“Death of Principal Cunningham,” 97

But it was equally true that “he did not love controversy even when he lived in it. He fought because he fought for the truth.”²⁰Thomas Guthrie as cited in “Death of Principal Cunningham,” 97. And so “while in ecclesiastics he was a Free Churchman of Free Churchmen, and while in theology he was a Calvinist of Calvinists, he was at the same time much more than this: in comprehensiveness at once of affection and of thought, he was the most catholic of Free Churchmen after Chalmers.”²¹MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 779. Thus while Cunningham was moulded by “the type of Reformation theology, as set forth by the great divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” he was also deeply knowledgeable in “Patristic and Scholastic Theology.”²²Ibid., 788.

And this balance comes across in his discussions of the key theological debates in church history. While all error comes under his criticism, there is a fairness in his description of opposing views that demonstrates a vast intellect and a charitable heart. This is a good model.

Conclusion

To conclude, it is not necessary to agree with all Cunningham argues for in this volume to benefit from it. There is no denying, that granting his catholicity, Cunningham writes as one whose “theological opinions were very decidedly and completely Calvinistic and Presbyterian.”²³MacGregor, “Dr William Cunningham,” 787. Each reader (including this Calvinist and Presbyterian!) will therefore have their own areas where we see relative weakness. Nevertheless, even in these areas, it is instructive to see a great Christian mind wrestle with difficult questions, and where Cunningham fails to persuade, there remains significant value in engaging with his perspective. To read Cunningham’s Historical Theology will likely lead you to see the truth that “men such as he was are extremely rare.”²⁴Ibid., 784. You may even be brought to say: “we believe the best judges will be the most decided in pronouncing him the greatest systematic theologian that Scotland has produced.”²⁵Ibid., 786. But Cunningham, no doubt, would rather you left these volumes with a more profound understanding of the truths of Scripture, a deeper love for the triune God, and a renewed commitment to live for his glory. I have no doubt, blessed by the Spirit, they will have that effect.

The preceding article is the introduction to William Cunningham’s Historical Theology, written by Dr. Donald John Maclean, one of the elders at Cambridge Presbyterian Church and a trustee of the Banner of Truth.