Thomas Erskine

Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (1788-1870) was a Scottish lay theologian. Trained as an advocate, he withdrew from legal practice after inheriting the family estate near Dundee and devoted himself to religious writing. In works such as Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion (1820), An Essay on Faith (1822), and The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828), he opposed the restrictive Calvinism of his day, teaching that God's fatherly love and the atonement of Christ extend to all. With his friend John McLeod Campbell he helped turn Scottish theology toward these broader views, which had become widely accepted by the end of the nineteenth century.

Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, a Scottish advocate turned lay theologian, argued that the gospel is a pardon already granted to every human being — to be believed, not earned. Though he stopped short of dogmatic universalism, the logic of 'unconditional freeness' pointed that way, and his influence on McLeod Campbell, MacDonald, and the broadening of Scottish theology was profound. The quiet Scottish spring of the Victorian wider hope.

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