ABSTRACT
Any honest assessment of John Witherspoon as an ecclesiastical or political leader must take into account his background in and lifelong commitment to the theology of evangelical Calvinism. As a delegate to the Constitutional Congress at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, Witherspoon was easily recognizable. Jack Scott sees Witherspoon as maintaining the façade of orthodox Calvinism but undermining the original article because he rejects ‘the arbitrary Deity portrayed by ultra-Calvinists’ and goes against ‘Pure Calvinism’ in teaching, for example, the efficacy of prayer. The history of the Scottish Kirk has often been told as its own tale instead of as part of larger story of the growth of international Calvinism. Witherspoon’s Edinburgh classmate, Alexander Carlyle, famously described Gowdie as ‘dull, and Dutch, and prolix’. For Witherspoon, proper theology beings with an understanding of human depravity. Like Robert Hamilton who succeeded him in the Chair of Divinity, and like Andrew Hunter who succeeded Hamilton, Gowdie’s theology lectures were based on Pictet’s Theologia Christiana.
