Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:18:01.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nature and Grace in the Theology of John Maclaurin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2012

Jonathan Yeager
Jonathan Yeager*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN 37403, USAjonathan-yeager@utc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The important, but unexplored, John Maclaurin of Glasgow (1693–1754) represents the branch of enlightened evangelicals in the Church of Scotland who defended aspects of supernaturalism as compatible with reason. Evangelicals like Maclaurin endorsed the transatlantic evangelical revivals while still maintaining that such pervasive and multifarious spiritual awakenings were not a chaotic display of enthusiasm. Maclaurin supposed that God had created humanity with the ability to reason and could influence one's thinking to adopt epistemological assumptions about religion which some saw as irrational and superstitious. In order to prove this point, Maclaurin turned the tables on the opponents of the revivals by arguing that in order to be truly natural, in the sense of being a complete human, one must embrace the inner workings of the Holy Spirit. The corruption of our nature which occurred as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve left mankind in an incomplete state. Therefore, the purpose of God's supernatural grace is to restore mankind to its authentic natural state. Without such divine aid to form knowledge, he argued, one would never be able to gain a full understanding of spiritual truth. Similar to Thomas Aquinas, Maclaurin assumed that humans can know many things about God and his work in the world using reason. Sin has not corrupted our intellect to the extent that we cannot ascertain any truth about God from observing the world around us. Nevertheless, in order to have a thorough understanding of God, divine grace is needed. Following Aquinas, Maclaurin claimed that God uses secondary causes like preaching to motivate people to seek grace. Such secondary causes cannot produce any real change in a person unless accompanied by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. As opposed to many of the more liberal ministers of the day, Maclaurin, although not entirely comfortable with the fainting and weeping which sometimes appeared at the revivals, was willing to admit that emotional displays could be a natural response by a person whose heart had been moved by the spirit of God. While defending extreme emotions, Maclaurin's main point in his sermons was that evangelicalism was entirely reasonable.

Keywords

EnlightenmentevangelicalismJohn Maclaurinnature and graceScotland
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , November 2012 , pp. 435 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Crawford, Michael J., Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England's Revival Tradition in Its British Context (New York and Oxford: OUP, 1991), p. 227Google Scholar; O'Brien, Susan, ‘A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735–1755’, American Historical Review 91 (1986), p. 819CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simonson, Harold, ‘Jonathan Edwards and his Scottish Connections’, Journal of American Studies 21 (1987), pp. 353–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Christopher W., ‘Jonathan Edwards's Scottish Connection’, in Kling, David W. and Sweeney, Douglas A. (eds.), Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad: Historical Memories, Cultural Movements, Global Horizons (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 222–47Google Scholar; Christopher Wayne Mitchell, ‘Jonathan Edwards's Scottish Connection and the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Evangelical Revival, 1735–1750’, Ph.D. dissertation, St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, 1997, p. 313. The majority of the letters exchanged between Edwards and Maclaurin are lost; however, a few abstracts have survived. See Jonathan Edwards Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn, vol. 16 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

2 Mitchell, ‘Scottish Connection’, p. 227; Maclaurin, John, The Works of the Late Rev. John Maclaurin, One of the Ministers of Glasgow (Edinburgh: Waugh & Innes, 1818), p. viii.Google Scholar On the Concert for Prayer, see Crawford, Seasons of Grace, pp. 229–30, and Foster, John, ‘The Bicentenary of Jonathan Edwards's “Humble Attempt”’, International Review of Missions 37 (1948), pp. 375–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mitchell, ‘Scottish Connection’, p. 235.

4 On the Cambuslang and Kilsyth revivals, see Fawcett, Arthur, The Cambuslang Revival: The Scottish Evangelical Revival of the Eighteenth Century (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971)Google Scholar; Robe, James, Narratives of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God, at Cambuslang, Kilsyth, &c. Begun 1742 (Glasgow: David Niven, 1790)Google Scholar; Noll, Mark A., The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), pp. 108–13Google Scholar; Landsman, Ned, ‘Evangelists and their Hearers: Popular Interpretation of Revivalist Preaching in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, Journal of British Studies 28 (1989), pp. 120–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smout, T. C., ‘Born Again at Cambuslang: New Evidence on Popular Religion and Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, Past and Present 97 (1982), pp. 114–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the population figures of Glasgow and the surrounding areas, see Devine, T. M., ‘Urbanisation’, in Devine, T. M. and Mitchison, Rosalind (eds), People and Society in Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1988), pp. 27–52Google Scholar, and Whyte, Ian D., ‘Urbanisation in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, in Devine, T. M. and Young, J. R. (eds), Eighteenth Century Scotland: New Perspectives (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), pp. 176–94Google Scholar.

5 Erskine, John, ‘The Agency of God in Human Greatness’, in Discourses Preached on Several Occasions, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: William Creech & Archibald Constable, 1798), p. 270Google Scholar.

6 Maclaurin, John, The Works of the Late Rev. John Maclaurin (Edinburgh: Waugh & Innes, 1818), p. xvGoogle Scholar.

7 See Kennedy, Thomas D., ‘William Leechman, Pulpit Eloquence and the Glasgow Enlightenment’, in Hook, Andrew and Sher, Richard B. (eds), The Glasgow Enlightenment (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1995), pp. 56–72Google Scholar, and the preface in Leechman, William, Sermons, ed. Woodrow, James, vol. 1 (London: A. Strahan & T. Cadell; Edinburgh: E. Balfour & W. Creech, 1789)Google Scholar.

8 Besides the previously mentioned scholarship, one may consult the comments made in Henderson, G. D., The Burning Bush: Studies in Scottish Church History (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1957)Google Scholar; McIntosh, John R., Church and Theology in Enlightenment Scotland: The Popular Party, 1740–1800 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Macleod, John, Scottish Theology: In Relation to Church History since the Reformation, 3rd edn (Edinburgh: Knox Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

9 The best work on this group of ministers continues to be Sher, Richard B., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, but other notable contributions include Camic, Charles, Experience and Enlightenment: Socialization for Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Broadie, Alexander, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2001)Google Scholar; and Drummond, Andrew L. and Bulloch, James, The Scottish Church 1688–1843: The Age of the Moderates (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

10 Brown, Stewart J., ‘William Robertson (1721–1793) and the Scottish Enlightenment’, in Brown, Stewart J. (ed.), William Robertson and the Expansion of the Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 28Google Scholar.

11 Sher, Richard B., The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland and America (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 259Google Scholar.

12 Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (New York: Harbinger, 1962), p. 295Google Scholar.

13 John Erskine, for instance, engaged in a heated debate with his fellow Edinburgh University schoolmate, William Robertson, over the integrity of George Whitefield and his preaching at Cambuslang. See Wellwood, Henry Moncreiff, Account of the Life and Writings of John Erskine, D. D., Late One of the Ministers of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co., 1818), p. 99Google Scholar.

14 Allison, C. F., The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2003)Google Scholar.

15 Noll, Mark A., ‘The Rise and Long Life of the Protestant Enlightenment in America’, in Shea, William M. and Huff, Peter A. (eds), Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought (New York and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and CUP, 1995), pp. 103–4Google Scholar.

16 Sher, Church and University, p. 176.

17 See e.g. Chitnis, Anand C., The Scottish Enlightenment: A Social History (London: Croom Helm, 1976), ch. 3Google Scholar.

18 On Scottish evangelicals and the Enlightenment, see Landsman, Ned C., ‘Presbyterians and Provincial Society: The Evangelical Enlightenment in the West of Scotland, 1740–1775’, in Dwyer, John and Sher, Richard B. (eds), Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1993), pp. 194–209Google Scholar; McIntosh, Church and Theology in Enlightenment Scotland; Bebbington, David W., Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar; Noll, Mark A., ‘Revival Enlightenment, Civic Humanism, and the Evolution of Calvinism in Scotland and America, 1735–1843’, in Rawlyk, George A and Noll, Mark A. (eds), Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993), pp. 73–107Google Scholar.

19 Maclaurin, Works, pp. 28–9.

20 Ibid., p. 105.

21 Ibid., p. 194.

22 Ibid., p. 190.

23 Ibid., p. 154.

24 Ibid., pp. 43–5.

25 Ibid., p. 192.

26 Ibid., pp. 193–4.

27 Ibid., pp. 213, 215.

28 Ibid., p. 114.

29 Ibid., p. 132.

30 Ibid., pp. 114–23.

31 Ibid., pp. 130–1.

32 Ibid., p. 136.

33 Ibid., p. 239.

34 Ibid., pp. 240–1.

35 Ibid., p. 241.

36 Ibid., pp. 244–5.

37 Ibid., p. 258.

38 Ibid., pp. 138–9.

39 Ibid., pp. 139–40.

40 Ibid., pp. 143–4.

41 Ibid., p. 145.

42 Ibid., p. 49.

43 Ibid., p. 50; Locke, John, The Reasonableness of Christianity with a Discourse of Miracles and Part of a Third Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ramsey, I. T. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 32–44Google Scholar.

44 Maclaurin, Works, pp. 50–1.

45 Ibid., p. 61.

46 Ibid., pp. 146–7.

47 Ibid., p. 236.