James Denney 1856-1917

James Denney is now best known, though in increasingly restricted circles, for The Death of Christ, considered a standard treatment of objective atonement understood in substitutionary terms. However there is a breadth and depth to Denney's thought, a richness and passion in his theological work, and 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, following his intellectual development through university and college years, and considering the impact of a long pastoral ministry, a context is created for studying the mind, personality and faith that informed his mature theological writing. For twenty years, he taught biblical theology and exegesis, 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 This first major study of Denney uses the large corpus of Denney's unpublished theological papers and sermons held in New College, Edinburgh. These, together with Denney's published work, and wider biographical research, form the basis for this intellectual and contextual biography of one of Scotland's most attractive and forceful theological personalities.