The Marrow Controversy (1717–1723) was a significant Scottish ecclesiastical dispute regarding the book “The Marrow of Modern Divinity.” During the controversy, Thomas Boston of Ettrick and Principal Hadow of St Mary’s College and their associates hotly debated the issues of assurance, legalism, antinomianism, and the nature and offer of the gospel. A central contention was how evangelists could, in good conscience, freely offer the gospel to all despite believing that Christ did not die for all. This paper examines how Boston balanced limited atonement and unlimited gospel offer by decoupling Christ’s definite representation in the covenant of grace from Christ’s indefinite administration of it — the former for the elect alone while the latter for all sinners. Specifically, this paper reinterprets the Marrow Controversy by arguing that Boston reconciled particular atonement and the universal gospel offer through accentuating union with Christ over covenant theology.
Union with Christ and covenant theology are complementary theological structures for Boston. The covenant becomes personal and experiential through union with Christ by faith, taking hold of Christ as offered in the gospel, which is the proclamation of the covenant of grace. The two structures are not mutually exclusive but linked through Boston’s notion of the fourfold state. Notably, Boston integrated the covenant of redemption into the covenant of grace to create a binary structure that aligns covenant theology with union with Christ. In Boston’s two-covenant scheme, a person is represented either by Adam (in the state of nature under the covenant of works) or Christ (in the state of grace under the covenant of grace). Hence, the indefinite nature of the covenant of grace is inherent in the scheme of union with Christ. Before coming to Christ, sinners only need to acknowledge their state of nature in Adam. It is irrelevant if Christ died for them or whether they are among the elect because all that matters is whether one is in a legal bond with Adam. That is why Boston insisted on the free offer of the gospel to everyone, as everyone was in Adam before coming to Christ. Boston grounded this universal offer of the gospel not on Christ’s universal death, as Hadow understood it, but on Christ’s universal administration of the covenant of grace. Taking his cue from the “Marrow of Modern Divinity,” Boston went one step further to assert that Christ is the covenant itself. Hence, the gospel offer is not simply an offer of salvific graces — from justification to glorification — but Christ himself.
The Marrow Controversy thus reveals two contrasting interpretations of the “Marrow of Modern Divinity”: through covenant theology and union with Christ. Hadow and the General Assembly focused their reading through covenant theology, while Boston and the Representers emphasized union with Christ. By reasserting the primacy of union with Christ, Boston provided a corrective to the eighteenth-century Scottish federalism increasingly influenced by a neonomian, legal, contractual, and preparatory propensity. Moreover, by distinguishing between Christ’s definite representation and indefinite administration within the covenant, thereby uncoupling the gospel offer from the atonement and the decree of election, Boston liberated Reformed preachers to offer the gospel universally, laying the theological foundation for the flourishing of global evangelicalism in the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century.