William Cunningham (1805-1861) was born and raised in Lanarkshire. He began his studies at Edinburgh University in 1820, and while there was invited by some friends to hear the Rev. Robert Gordon. He was converted under Gordon’s preaching in 1825. After attending the Divinity School, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Dunse in 1828.
He was called to the Middle Parish Church, Greenock, in 1830, and then to Trinity College Parish, Edinburgh, in 1834. After taking an active part in the Ten Years' Conflict, Cunningham demitted his change to become one of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. He was called to the new denomination’s Theological College to assist Thomas Chalmers in teaching Divinity, but he did not take up his position until 1844 due to his being sent as a member of a delegation to America. Then, at the death of David Welsh in 1845, he was appointed to the Chair of Ecclesiastical History. When Chalmers died two years later, Cunningham became Principal. He held that position until his death.
Cunningham came to his teaching position with thirteen years of pastoral experience. Examples of his preaching can be found in a collection of his sermons edited by the Rev. J. J. Bonar and first published in 1872.
The part of the Divinity curriculum which was assigned to Cunningham in 1844 was Evidences of Revealed Religion; a course which he covered in fifty-one lectures and which was printed in 1878, titled Theological Lectures. After delivering a seven-lecture introduction to studying theology, he begins an extended exposition of the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith with a long digression into Christian evidences. The printed lectures do not stand as chapters in a book. Cunningham changes subject mid-lecture and begins a new lecture where he left off previously as if the intervening hours had not existed. The lack of editing makes the book difficult to use, but it does give the reader an authentic experience of the course.
Being Thomas Chalmers’s assistant, Cunningham set the relevant volumes by Chalmers as required reading. Throughout the lectures, he refers to the applicable standard works of the time. The Systematic Theology text which he recommends is Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology.
Cunningham’s Theological Lectures cover material which comes under the headings of prolegomena and apologetics. The apologetic material is dated, but his exposition of the doctrine of Scripture has stood the test of time.
The lectures which Cunningham gave as Professor of Ecclesiastical History were edited after his death by his literary executors James Bannerman and James Buchanan. Rather than there being continuous flow as there is in the Theological Lectures, the Historical Theology lectures are divided into chapters and sections, and they are indexed. Thus, the lectures for one generation became the textbook for the next.
The lectures were described as Historical Theology rather than Ecclesiastical History because Cunningham thought that the narrative aspect of history, with names, dates, and places, could be easily learned from books and that there was no point in going over that ground again in his lectures. Instead, he focused on the principal doctrinal discussions in which the church engaged from the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), through the Trinitarianism and Christology of the ecumenical creeds and the defining doctrines of the Reformation and the Arminian debates, to the Erastian Controversy of his own day.
Buchanan and Bannerman also edited two volumes of book reviews and pamphlets on Historical Theology and Historical Ecclesiology. In The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, Cunningham responds, among other things, to assertions about Calvin and Beza and Zwingli and the Sacraments, subjects still debated today. His Discussions on Church Principles: Popish, Erastian, and Presbyterian are mainly historical reviews which will now become part of historical reviews.
In his lectures and writings, Cunningham compares or contrasts the subject under discussion to the doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. The doctrine of the subordinate standards is the doctrine of the church, the doctrine of its ministers, the doctrine of its students, and of their studies.
Greatness is often used to describe Cunningham’s abilities as a theologian. His greatness comes from his ability to marshal facts and to identify and assess key issues. Unfortunately, like many of his contemporaries, the incisiveness of his thoughts can be blunted by the number of words he uses to express them. Nevertheless, the effort is always rewarded.