Living Wittily: Thomas Erskine and Rabbi Duncan; different, but the same

May 06, 2008

Thomas Erskine and Rabbi Duncan; different, but the same

God is the only real centre, and separation from Him the only real schism.
Thomas Erskine

I desire to know more and more the importance of learning Christ, rather than Christianity; the living, loving, almighty Lord of our spirits, rather than the logic about him.
Thomas Erskine

We make far too little of the Incarnation; the Fathers knew much more of the incarnate God. Some of them were oftener at Bethlehem than at Calvary; they had too little of Calvary, but they knew Bethlehem well. They took up the Holy Babe in their arms; they loved Immanuel, God with us. We are not too often at the cross, but we are too seldom at the cradle; and we know too little of the Word made flesh, of the Holy Child Jesus.
Rev John Duncan (Rabbi Duncan)

Two 19th Century Scottish Christians who couldn't be more different in theological style and substance - except their Christ-centredness which tends to make all the other differences sound a wee bit relative. Erskine was an adventurous and speculative theologian who pushed at the frontiers of the orthodoxy of his day arguing for a universal gospel. Duncan, one of the most gifted linguists and biblical scholars of the Free Kirk, a man of granite loyalty to the Calvinism of the Westminster Confession. And both, part of our Scottish Christian heritage, at times tense and suspicious of diversity and thrawn and independent in spirit. But the passionate loyalty to Christ is unmistakable.