Peter Taylor Forsyth

Peter Taylor Forsyth, also known as P. T. Forsyth, (1848-1921) was a Scottish theologian.

The son of a postman, Forsyth studied at the University of Aberdeen and then in Göttingen (under Albrecht Ritschl). He was ordained into the Congregational ministry and served churches as pastor at Bradford, Manchester, Leicester and Cambridge, before becoming Principal of Hackney College, London (later subsumed into the University of London) in 1901.

An early interest in critical theology made him suspect to some more 'orthodox' Christians. However, he increasingly came to the conclusion that liberal theology failed to account adequately for the moral problem of the guilty conscience. This led him to a moral crisis which he found resolved in the atoning work of Christ. The experience helped to shape and inform a vigorous interest in the issues of holiness and atonement. Although Forsyth rejected many of his earlier liberal leanings he retained many of Adolf von Harnack's criticisms of Chalcedonian Christology. This led him to expound a kenotic doctrine of the incarnation (clearly influenced by Bishop Charles Gore and Thomasius). Where he differed from other kenotic theologies of the atonement was the claim that Christ did not give up his divine attributes but condensed them; i.e., the incarnation was the expression of God's omnipotence rather than its negation. His theology and attack on liberal Christianity can be found in his most famous work, The Person and Place of Christ (1909), which anticipated much of the neo-orthodox theology of the next generation. He has often lazily been coined the 'Barthian before Barth', but this fails to account for many areas of divergence with the Swiss theologian's thought.

While many of Forsyth's most significant insights have largely gone ignored, not a few consider him to be among the greatest of English-speaking theologians of the early twentieth century.

In his textbook Christian Theology: An Introduction, Alister E. McGrath makes note of Forsyth's Justification of God (1916). McGrath says this book "represents an impassioned plea to allow the notion of the 'justice of God' to be rediscovered. Forsyth is less concerned than Anselm for the legal and juridical aspects of the cross; his interest centers on the manner in which the cross is inextricably linked with 'the whole moral fabric and movement of the universe.' The doctrine of the atonement is inseparable from 'the rightness of things.' "