James Denney (1856-1917)

James Denney is now best known, though in increasingly restricted circles, for his book The Death of Christ, considered for over a century a lucid and standard exposition of objective atonement understood in substitutionary terms. However, there is breadth and depth to Denney's thought, a richness and passion in his theological work, an attractive integrity and spiritual immediacy in his writing, that resists any reducing of his legacy to that of being an apologist for one aspect of Christian doctrine.

By exploring his early years growing up in Greenock, Scotland, following his intellectual development through university and college years in Glasgow, and considering the impact of a long pastoral ministry in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, a context is created for studying the mind, personality and faith that informed his mature theological writing. For twenty years, from 1897-1917, he taught biblical theology and exegesis in his denominational College in Glasgow, developing his theology through articulation, and then exploring and expounding the gospel of Christ as first and originally expressed in the apostolic experience and testimony embedded in the New Testament documents. The theological work of Denney, taken as a whole, was both intellectually engaged and ecclesially focused, as he sought to construct a secure basis for biblical faith. His theology was offered in the service of the church, his learning a self-conscious discipleship of the intellect.
This is the major study of Denney to use the large corpus of Denney's unpublished theological papers and sermons held in New College Library, in the University of Edinburgh. These, together with Denney's published work, and wider biographical research, form the basis of this study, an intellectual and contextual biography of one of Scotland's most attractive and forceful theological personalities.
""James Gordon's study offers the first full-scale intellectual biography of Principal Denney. Informed by a deep knowledge of James Denney's writings (both published and unpublished), he offers an engaging treatment of his subject. In particular, the contextualising of Denney's work in the setting of late Victorian and Edwardian Christianity contributes to a unique appreciation of his life and theology.""
--David Fergusson, Head of the School
of Divinity, New College
University of Edinburgh
""It is the merit of this new book that it give an honest evaluation of the man that recognizes his worth without turning a blind eye to his complexity. Here is a clear and compelling account of a remarkable theologian whose theology was utterly christocentric and for whom 'not Bethlehem by Calvary' was 'the focus of revelation'.""
--I Howard Marshall, from the Foreword
""Jim Gordon's study of the theology of James Denney, the great Scottish theologian of the cross, is a first class piece of work. As well as showing a mastery of Denney's published works, Gordon has made excellent use of a mass of hitherto untapped manuscript material. 'The study is not a comprehensive systematic presentation of Denney's theology, but a biography of the mind which produced it.' It succeeds admirable in its intention.""
--D. Densil Morgan, Professor of Theology,
University of Wales, Bangor
""Dr. Gordon brings to life for us this leader of Scottish liberal evangelicalism. He shows us a Christian thinker who. throughout his life, reshaped his articulation of the faith in response to the spiritual and intellectual challenges of his day and, above all, to make the faith communicable.""
--Andrew Ross, Honorary Fellow,
New College, Edinburgh
Jim Gordon is Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, at the University of Paisley. He has been a Scottish Baptist minister for thirty years, serving churches in Glasgow, Paisley, Aberdeen, and Stonehaven. He is married to Sheila, and they have two grown children. His previous book, Evangelical Spirituality is currently being revised and updated for inclusion in this series,