mpb
Puritan Board Freshman
Stephen G. Myers (Professor of Systematic & Historical Theology at PRTS) has an interesting take on the Marrow Controversy written in his chapter in The History of Scottish Theology, Volume I (Oxford). Here are a few quotes to get an idea of his interpretation of the controversy:
---Dr. Myers goes on to analyze the controversy in-depth and explain his view, but essentially this is what he comes away with:
I'm curious on other's take on this. I remember hearing Dr. Lachman's work being spoken of as the standard, or at least the best, take on the interpreting the Marrow. Dr. Myers obviously has some disagreements with that approach.
With the albeit limited view you get into Myers' approach from these quotes, does his stance hold up better?
"For centuries, interpreters have argued that this Marrow controversy resulted from the intrusion of a foreign doctrinal element into eighteenth-century Scottish theology. In older and more self-consciously evangelical scholarship, the controversy is blamed on a burgeoning legalism dissonant with the traditional evangelical warmth of Scottish thought (Macleod 1973: 139–66). In this analysis, the Marrow brethren maintained traditional Scottish theology against a party within the Assembly that espoused a novel Neonomianism in which human obedience to a new ‘Gospel Law’ merited salvation. In later and more self-consciously academic scholarship, the disruptive intrusion is identified differently. In this analysis, the Marrow brethren had been influenced by older theological language and commitments and were using that idiom in the midst of an Assembly that had been influenced by, and that was espousing, a later, post-Reformation set of more legalizing doctrinal formulations (Lachman 1988)..... While there are obvious differences between the older and newer analyses, both share the same core assumption—the Marrow controversy was an evangelical/legalist dispute which resulted from the interruption of Scottish theology’s continuous development in the early eighteenth century, whether that interruption came from a novel legalism or an antiquated evangelicalism.
All of these theories of disjuncture, however, leave unanswered several nagging questions....
...These questions and their lack of resolution point to an intriguing possibility. Perhaps the Marrow controversy did not result from an intrusion into Scottish theology that pitted either evangelicals against legalists or Reformation theology against post-Reformation theology. Perhaps the Marrow controversy resulted from divergent developments within Scottish theology itself; developments that split men of overwhelmingly shared theological exposure into camps which subsequent history would show eschewed stark evangelical/legalist division. In fact, precisely such a situation emerges when one examines the two theological systems whose collision resulted in the Marrow controversy. In the first instance, consideration must be given to the theology of James Hadow. Hadow produced two of the most influential anti-Marrow works of the controversy, first in 1719 and then in 1721; the Assembly followed the theological critiques of those works in their censures of Marrow doctrine in both 1720 and 1722; and contemporaries recognized Hadow as the chief architect of the Marrow’s condemnation (Boston 1853: 12.327). Secondly, consideration must be given to the doctrinal systems of Thomas Boston and Ebenezer Erskine, the two theological leaders of the Marrow brethren. While other Representers wrote individually in defence of the Marrow, Boston and Erskine were the two brethren who did so officially, with Boston drafting the initial Representation and Petition of 1721 and Erskine preparing the brethren’s answers to the Commission’s queries in 1722.
When Hadow’s theology is compared with that of Boston and Erskine, there appears no evidence of either a foreign legalism or a re-appropriated evangelicalism. Rather, both doctrinal systems appear as legitimate, continuous developments of a shared body of Scottish federal theology. The Marrow controversy did not occur because some outside emphasis differed from the status quo of contemporary Scottish theology. Rather, embedded within that theology itself were unresolved tensions that, when cobbled together in different systems, produced disparate readings of one provocatively written book." --pages 344-346
"After exploring these differences [between Hadow’s federal theology and that of Boston and Erskine], an examination of one issue central to the Marrow controversy will suggest that it was this federal variety which underlay the dispute." -- page 348
---Dr. Myers goes on to analyze the controversy in-depth and explain his view, but essentially this is what he comes away with:
"As federal theology continues to be a distinctive of the Reformed tradition, the implications of different components of that theology must be appreciated by those who would forward federal doctrine. A bi-covenantal view does not guarantee a sound evangelicalism and a tri-covenantal view does not ensure a lurking legalism, but the doctrine behind the Marrow controversy does expose the potential implications of both views. An overall federal theology is more than just the amassing of composite doctrinal parts; there are dynamics within larger systems that can have profound effects on one’s overall understanding of the Gospel and one’s posture in the Gospel offer....
...In the Marrow controversy, over six decades of unresolved tensions within Scottish federalism ignited. The result was not a clash between evangelicalism and legalism, but rather a collision between two differing federal systems and those systems’ understanding and expression of the Gospel offer. In this, the Marrow controversy confirms that between federal theology and the evangelistic mission of the Church, there is the tightest of connections." --pages 356-357
I'm curious on other's take on this. I remember hearing Dr. Lachman's work being spoken of as the standard, or at least the best, take on the interpreting the Marrow. Dr. Myers obviously has some disagreements with that approach.
With the albeit limited view you get into Myers' approach from these quotes, does his stance hold up better?
Last edited: