4 - Reformed Theology

Summary

In typically spirited fashion, Hugh Trevor-Roper characterized seventeenth-century Scottish religion as ‘dictatorial, priestly, theocratic’, and perhaps best styled ‘intolerant’. In a more recent appraisal of Robert Baillie's theological writings, the authors described them as a ‘fierce, intemperate defence of Calvinist orthodoxy’. In similar vein, historical theologians have criticized Baillie, Samuel Rutherford and James Durham for diverging from Calvinist theology in their introduction of a strict framework of federal theology. Whilst acknowledging that Calvinism was ‘not monolithic’, such studies have highlighted differences across historical periods between, for instance, John Knox's theology and that of Rutherford, or between federal theologians of the mid-seventeenth century, such as David Dickson and Durham, and those of the eighteenth century's ‘Marrow’ controversy, such as Thomas Boston. Elsewhere, the Covenanters’ theology has been described as ‘the faith of the Gospel on fire’. By supporting other Reformed confessions alongside their own, Protestant Scots ‘had one Rule of Faith and they had one and the same attitude towards it’. By such historiographical accounts, seventeenth-century Scots had a clear and uncontested vision of what constituted theological ‘orthodoxy’ and were unwilling to accept any deviations from this norm.

By contrast, this chapter suggests that Baillie's conception of orthodox theology was more malleable and contextually determined than such historiography suggests. His writings on theological controversies may appear, prima facie, to present an inflexible vision of Reformed orthodoxy, but such a conclusion neglects subtleties of his theology. Characterization of Baillie as an obstinate and intolerant theologian partly reflects the Manichean rhetoric of the theological disputations in which he participated. Baillie's published and manuscript theological writings were exclusively framed as refutations of ‘heterodox’ or ‘erroneous’ beliefs and such polemical works were ‘central to [presbyterian] campaigns’ for ecclesiastical reform in 1640s Britain. For most early modern theologians, disputes over matters of faith were conducted in a scholastic style, whereby disputants refashioned their positions as fundamentally opposed to that of opponents. Accounts of debates may imply that disputants were separated by insurmountable divides, but such divisions were not deeply wrought.