James Bannerman (theologian) explained

James Bannerman
Birth Date:1807 4, df=yes
Birth Place:Cargill, Perthshire
Death Place:Grange Cemetery, Edinburgh
Nationality:Scottish
Education:University of Edinburgh, Princeton University
Occupation:Pastor, Theologian
Period:mid 19th-century
Notable Works:The Church of Christ, Inspiration
Tradition Movement:Free Church of Scotland (1843–1900)
School Tradition:Calvinism
Main Interests:Ecclesiology, Biblical inspiration

James Bannerman (9 April 1807 – 27 March 1868) was a Scottish theologian. He is best known for his classic work on Presbyterian ecclesiology, The Church of Christ.

Life

Bannerman was the son of James Patrick Bannerman, minister of Cargill, Perthshire. He was born at the manse of Cargill on 9 April 1807, and after a distinguished career at the University of Edinburgh, especially in the classes of Sir John Leslie and Professor Wilson, became minister of Ormiston, in Midlothian, in 1833, left the Established Church for the Free Church in 1843, and in 1849 was appointed professor of apologetics and pastoral theology in the New College, Edinburgh, which office he held till his death, 27 March 1868, at his home, 7 Clarendon Crescent, near Dean Bridge.[1]

In 1850 he received the degree of D.D. from Princeton College, New Jersey. He took a leading part in various public movements, especially in that which led in 1843 to the separation of the free church from the state, and subsequently in the negotiations for union between the nonconformist presbyterian churches of England and Scotland.

Works

His chief publications were:

Rosemary Mitchell asserts: "Bannerman published several theological works: one of the most significant, Inspiration: the Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1865), was criticized by the theologian A. B. Davidson (1831–1902) for calling forth 'no opposition and no assent' (Drummond and Bulloch, 263). Nevertheless, it sounded a cautious retreat from the fundamentalism of Free Church orthodoxy, as Bannerman dissociated himself from the theory of verbal inspiration and accepted translations (and even paraphrases) as equally valid with the Greek and Hebrew scriptural originals."

Family

In 1839 he married David (sic) Anne Douglas (1821–1879), a daughter of David Douglas, Lord Reston, one of the Senators of the College of Justice.

They had three sons and six daughters, including David Douglas Bannerman (b.1842)[3] and James Patrick Bannerman.[4] A third son, Major General William Burney Bannerman FRSE (1858–1924), married Helen Brodie Cowan Watson, daughter of Robert Boog Watson,[5] and he and his wife are buried with the parents in the north-west section of the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh.

He married 2 April 1839, David Anne (died 11 April 1879), daughter of David Douglas, Lord Reston, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, and had issue —

References

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1868
  2. Web site: James Bannerman. The Banner of Truth.
  3. Ewing, William Annals of the Free Church of Scotland
  4. Web site: Descendants of James Bannerman . Mit.edu . 2020-02-26.
  5. Web site: Account Suspended . Royalsoced.org.uk . 2020-02-26 . 19 September 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150919152306/https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf . dead .