Angus Harley

I recently read the article “Who was William Barclay?” in the Got Questions Evangelical website.[1] As is typical for conservative Evangelicals, Barclay is given a pass as a theologian but with grave concerns, we might say. In fact, Evangelicals have made it an art to justify their love of Barclay, but in so doing they deliberately shape the narrative, willfully reinterpreting the relevance of the glaring evidence before their own eyes.

The Evangelical art of shaping the narrative

The article (which has no stated author) draws attention to Barclay’s ‘Evangelical’ upbringing. It then paints his education in generic terms as a theological professor. Nothing is said about how the Church of Scotland was doctrinally in his day compromised to the hilt and had reduced the authority of Scripture.[2] Nor is there any mention of how the University of Marburg he attended in I933 was dedicated to Neo-Orthodox theology, whose department of the New Testament was headed up by no less than the arch-heretic Rudolf Bultmann, under whom he studied.  Instead, Barclay is represented as a champion of the ordinary working-class Scotsman. And he is noted to have been a “vivacious” figure.

After this short biography, the author takes us to a few examples of the dubious parts of the theology of Barclay. I will come back to this evidence later. The article ends with the writer citing three positive ‘Christian’ quotes by Barclay. All in all, the article is deliberately shaped to draw attention in the biographical section to his Evangelical background and his theological training; the article ends on a positive note. In-between the biography and the positive quotes, we have the dubious theology. The writer deliberately shapes the article to defend Barclay as an Evangelical, but not without some reservations. So, the writer states after the dubious theological section:

“In light of Barclay’s theological problems, he should be read with care. Yet there is value in his work. He was a good writer who was adept at organization and pulling together the various themes of Scripture into an understandable whole. And he always issued a call to action. William Barclay believed every Christian should be a student of God’s Word, applying its truth and living out the teachings of Christ in daily life.”

The dubious section

Now, I’ve written about Barclay before and shown quotes by him that reject the divinity of Jesus, demonstrate his universalism, and so forth.[3] This time, however, I will simply quote in full the entire mid-section of the article from Got Questions:

“Barclay described himself as a “liberal evangelical” (Douglas, op. cit., p. 61), and his modernism became more evident the older he became. Barclay was reluctant to defend the inspiration of Scripture, was critical of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, and expressed doubts about the virgin birth. He downplayed the literal nature of the miracles in Scripture. For example, he doubted that Jesus truly raised the widow’s son to life in Luke 7:11–17:

It may well be that here we have a miracle of diagnosis; that Jesus with those keen eyes of his saw that the young man was in a cataleptic trance and saved him from being buried alive, as so many were in Palestine. (Barclay, W., The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Luke, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, p. 105).

The same “keen eyes” of Jesus are also used to explain away the miracle of the draught of fish in Luke 5:1–11:

There is no need to think that Jesus created a shoal of fishes for the occasion. In the Sea of Galilee there were phenomenal shoals which covered the sea as if it was solid for as much as an acre. Most likely Jesus’ discerning eye saw just such a shoal and his keen sight made it look like a miracle. (Ibid., p. 68).

Barclay even cast doubt on the divinity of Christ:

It is not that Jesus is God. Time and time again the Fourth Gospel speaks of God sending Jesus into the world. Time and time again we see Jesus praying to God. Time and time again we see Jesus unhesitatingly and unquestioningly and unconditionally accepting the will of God for himself. Nowhere does the New Testament identify Jesus and God. He said: “He who has seen me has seen God.” There are attributes of God I do not see in Jesus. I do not see God’s omniscience in Jesus, for there are things which Jesus did not know.

(Barclay, W., The Mind of Jesus, Harper & Row, 1961, p. 56).”

There is no dubiousness

In the above extensive quote, I put in bold text the relevant terms and sentences I want the reader to reassess. The assumption is that the Evangelical side of Barclay was more dominant when he was younger, and as he got older the Modernist aspect took over. This is a gratuitous assumption, it has to be said. Given his own theological positions that he developed as he studied Scripture from his time as a student, the fact that he, too, studied as a young man under Bultmann, his dedication to a denomination that severely cut-away the divine authority of Scripture, what reason would we have to think Barclay was predominantly an Evangelical when a young student and scholar? The elephant in the room is this: how can one be a Modernist and an Evangelical? They radically contradict one another.

The extensive quote I cited is full of terms and phrases that give Barclay some leeway, some wiggle-room: “reluctant… expressed doubt….downplayed….explain away….cast doubt”. Yet, the quotes by Barclay are not doing anything of the sort! They are outrightly and categorically, in plainest of language, rejecting the deity of Christ and his miracles:

-“Jesus with those keen eyes of his saw that the young man was in a cataleptic trance and saved him from being buried alive”

-“There is no need to think that Jesus created a shoal of fishes for the occasion.”

-“Nowhere does the New Testament identify Jesus and God”

The ‘doubt’ element, if there is any, is not found in Barclay’s anti-miracle, anti-Jesus’ divinity, theology, for there is no doubt in those things: to Barclay Jesus was not God and he performed no miracles. Any element of doubt, in the quotes, enters in only at the level of Jesus’ perception with his “keen eyes”. That is, Barclay is guestimating at what Jesus might have seen with his very human (non-divine), but keen, eyes.

Plainly, to Barclay, Jesus was deluded. Moreover, we have to call Jesus an out-and-out liar- in following through on Barclay’s own system- since everywhere Jesus claims to be doing miracles. Yet, the writer of the article conveniently fails to recognize these logical outcomes of Barclay’s theology.  

Why would anyone advance a theologian who is directly teaching that Jesus was deluded? Why would any Evangelical site give the green light to a man who overtly and strongly denied Jesus’ divinity and his miracles? It is, quite frankly, disgraceful and shocking that conservative Evangelical scholars continue to give Barclay, a rank Liberal theologian, a pass, but with reservations. But this is the day and age we live in: I will be considered the evil one for writing this article, and those who love Barclay will double-down on their willful deception!

[1] https://www.gotquestions.org/William-Barclay.html.

[2] Iain H. Murray, “How Scotland Lost Its Hold of the Bible”, Banner of Truth, July 16, 2015, https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2015/how-scotland-lost-its-hold-of-the-bible/

[3]Angus Harley, “The Very Non-Enigmatic William Barclay”, All Things New Covenant, April 6, 2024, https://allthingsnewcovenant.com/2024/04/06/the-very-non-enigmatic-william-barclay/.