From the Early Enlightenment to the Late Victorian Era

This three-volume work comprises over eighty essays surveying the history of Scottish theology from the early middle ages onwards. Written by an international team of scholars, the collection provides the most comprehensive review yet of the theological movements, figures, and themes that have shaped Scottish culture and exercised a significant influence in other parts of the world. Attention is given to different traditions and to the dispersion of Scottish theology through exile, migration, and missionary activity. 

The volumes present in diachronic perspective the theologies that have flourished in Scotland from early monasticism until the end of the twentieth century. The History of Scottish Theology, Volume I covers the period from the appearance of Christianity around the time of Columba to the era of Reformed Orthodoxy in the seventeenth century. Volume II begins with the early Enlightenment and concludes in late Victorian Scotland. Volume III explores the 'long twentieth century'. Recurrent themes and challenges are assessed, but also new currents and theological movements that arose through Renaissance humanism, Reformation teaching, federal theology, the Scottish Enlightenment, evangelicalism, mission, biblical criticism, idealist philosophy, dialectical theology, and existentialism. Chapters also consider the Scots Catholic colleges in Europe, Gaelic women writers, philosophical scepticism, the dialogue with science, and the reception of theology in liturgy, hymnody, art, literature, architecture, and stained glass. Contributors also discuss the treatment of theological themes in Scottish literature.

Volume II: From the Early Enlightenment to the Late Victorian Era

This second volume in The History of Scottish Theology comprises 29 essays ranging from the early Enlightenment to the end of the ‘long nineteenth century’. Attention is devoted to key doctrinal and apologetic themes relating to the inheritance of Reformed orthodoxy and the appearance of deism, as well as to newer challenges and revisionist approaches that later emerged. The extent to which the mid eighteenth-century scholars of the Church of Scotland were committed to the movement that later became known as ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ is discussed by several contributors who explore the importance of Moderate and Evangelical trends. The influence of nineteenth-century continental developments, including kenotic Christology, idealism, and biblical criticism, is also registered, alongside exploration of the issues raised by religious scepticism, slavery, and the natural sciences. Several essays are devoted to describing the wider dissemination and refraction of theological ideas in Gaelic women’s poetry, Scottish literature, liturgical reform, preaching, hymn writing, and civic architecture. The international influence of Scottish theology is also described, both through the work of important thinkers who migrated to the USA and in the establishment of Scots colleges in Europe.