The Marrow Controversy, 1718-1723

“I’ve read and perused this volume many times throughout my life, and I still consider it to be the best scholarly work ever produced on the famous Marrow Controversy.”

—Dr. Joel R. Beeke, Chancellor, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

“The late Dr David Lachman’s patient scholarship and theological acumen made—and still makes—The Marrow Controversy a landmark study. Here is the essential guide to the way issues that often haunt the church exploded in 18th century Scotland. Its long-hoped-for republication is good news indeed!”

—Sinclair Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary

“David Lachman’s superb study of The Marrow of Modern Divinity controversy in the early decades of eighteenth century Scotland, is a model of historical research and theological insight. Sadly the issues that dominated the controversy continue to surface in every age of church history. Lachman’s engaging thesis will help scholars and lay folk alike to appreciate both Thomas Boston’s defence of The Marrow and how necessary, even vital, it is for the church today to stand where Boston stood. It is both a pleasure and privilege to commend such a fine book”

—Ian Hamilton, Professor of Historical Theology, Westminster Seminary, UK

The 1718 republication of the Marrow of Modern Divinity ignited a furious debate within the Established Church of Scotland over the doctrines of grace, and particularly the relationship between law and gospel.

Most of the literature on the Controversy has been written from a point of view that is exceedingly partial to the Marrow and the Marrow Brethren. Much of this borders on hagiography. These historians defend the doctrines of the Marrow, condemned by the 1720 and 1722 General Assemblies, as orthodox and in harmony with the Westminster Standards. They characterize the opponents of the Marrow as legalists and Neonomians and portray the Marrow and the Brethren as the true representatives of Reformed Orthodoxy. The ecclesiastical process is depicted as being essentially unfair, and the Act of the 1720 Assembly condemning the Marrow is described as an oversight, hurried through by a few ‘leading-men’ and not representative of the mind of the Church as a whole.

Recent interpreters agree that two schools of thought were represented in the Controversy, but classify them somewhat differently. Generally, the opponents of the Marrow are described as the true representatives of Reformed Orthodoxy—though narrow, logical, and scholastic—while its defenders are commended for leaning toward the warmer evangelical religion of the Marrow, often judged to be more in line with the early Reformers than with the Westminster Standards.

However, since at least Thomas M’Crie’s 1831 Account of the Controversy, no writer has given the impression that his acquaintance with the literature of the Controversy itself is any better than secondhand. Consequently, current analyses seldom appeal to the primary sources necessary to sustain firm, evidence-based conclusions.

Two key questions thus emerge. First, in view of the Marrow Brethren’s continued protests to the contrary, were the ecclesiastical proceedings essentially fair, arrived at after due process, and representative of the mind of the Church as a whole? And second, was the General Assembly historically correct in condemning the Marrow as being incompatible with the Westminster Standards and Reformed Orthodoxy? Dr. Lachman’s Marrow Controversy provides a sufficiently thorough historical and theological analysis to produce a fair and conclusive answer to these questions.