Cambridge Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Enquiry, Controversy and Truth (review)

David M. Thompson's Cambridge Theology in the Nineteenth Century is a welcome addition to our understanding of elite Christian thought in Britain from the French Revolution to the Great War. Most historians of modern British Christianity ignore Protestant Nonconformists, and many of them are uncomfortable with the intricacies of theological discussions, making Thompson's work a particularly valuable contribution.

In terms of scholarly attention, moreover, what Dissent is to Anglicanism, Cambridge theology is to Oxford theology. Thompson sets out to discover whether there might be a neglected "Cambridge Movement" to put alongside the much explored Oxford Movement (1). His cast of characters includes Richard Watson, William Paley, Herbert Marsh, Charles Simeon, John Kaye, Hugh James Rose, J. C. Hare, Connop Thirlwall, F. D. Maurice, William Robertson Smith, and P. T. Forsyth. At the heart of the book is the Cambridge trio of B. F. Westcott, J. B. Lightfoot, and F. J. A. Hort. A special effort is made to ensure that Hort, the least celebrated of the three, is given his due.

Thompson's answer to the question he sets himself is signaled in the opening chapter: "perhaps one of the lasting legacies of the Victorian view is to suppose that an openness to theological questioning is incompatible with a personal conviction of the truth of Christianity. Yet if there is a Cambridge tradition in theology, it is that the two are not incompatible" (25). The conclusion puts it this way: "if there is a thread running throughout the account which has been given, it is the willingness to consider theology as a series of open questions rather than already determined conclusions" (174).

This admirable trait does recur in the narrative, but the book's evidence could be reframed around an even more dominant one. Thompson himself notes that the Cambridge tradition was preoccupied with apologetics. Indeed, in the introduction, the metaphor of a connecting "thread" is used for apologetics as well (5), although "openness" wins out as the true thread in the conclusion. Frankly, the apologetic thread is stronger and more consistent and therefore more convincing as an answer to the volume's orientating question. With apologetics firmly in place as the Cambridge theology, one might see a certain openness and avoidance of theological fights over church party issues as a natural by-product of the way that apologetics is always pursued: it is typical in apologetic works to focus on the broad, fundamental issues at stake and refuse to be diverted into defending less strategic outposts. Nevertheless, what is apologetics if not a defense of "already determined conclusions"?

More specifically, a striking result of this investigation is the remarkable extent to which Cambridge theology was essentially biblical studies. The Scriptures are a uniform preoccupation across the period under consideration from Watson's An Apology for the Bible (1796), through a chapter entitled "Herbert Marsh and the Beginning of Biblical Criticism," culminating in the biblical scholarship of the Cambridge trio, and holding strong to the end—even Forsyth is recorded offering the surprising utterance, "there is but one Christ, and the Bible is His prophet" (157). Of course, these two strands are interrelated as the Bible was universally situated on the frontline in the pressing issues of apologetics. To take a more quirky example of this persistent theme, the assumption that biblical studies were at the heart of the matter was so pronounced that the philosopher Henry Sidgwick's response to his personal crisis of faith was to learn Hebrew.

Thompson has read deeply in the primary sources, and he puts this hard work to good use by delivering apt summaries and deft judgments. He does not interact with the secondary literature as much as one would expect or desire, however. A book as key for his primary cast of characters as J. W. Rogerson's The Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain: Profiles of F. D. Maurice and William Robertson Smith (1995) does...