Distinguished Southern Presbyterian theologian and educator, born in Marlborough District, South Carolina. He was educated at South Carolina College (now University of South Carolina), then attended Andover Seminary, Harvard University, and Columbia (S.C.) Seminary. He was converted to Calvinism through reading the Westminster Confession of Faith. He served as pastor of the influential First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, and eventually became president of South Carolina College, which he purged of strong deist and unitarian influences. Afterward, Thornwell became professor in Columbia Theological Seminary.
His theology, which was traditional, evangelical Calvinism, displays a vast erudition in classical and modern philosophy, as well as in the history of thought. Thornwell, according to Thornton Whaling, endeavored to bring reason and faith, theology and philosophy, dogma and ethics, into a systematic unity. Like Calvin, he held that the major theme of religious thought is the relationship between God and man. Whaling shows that Thornwell summarized theological science in terms of "The Moral Government of God in its Essential Principles; as Modified by the Covenant of Works; and as Modified by the Covenant of Grace." Although Thornwell died too early to compose a systematic theology, he was a prolific theological writer, and also edited the Southern Quarterly Review.
Thornwell's ecclesiology has perhaps attracted more interest than his theology. He held to a pure spirituality of the church, entailing an absolute separation of church and state, and thus opposed church sanction of movements of social reform. In opposition to Charles Hodge, he did not favor the introduction of boards into church government. He was a vigorous defender of slavery as scriptural and of state's rights, and was a founder of the Southern Presbyterian Church (P.C.U.S.), which separated from the national body in 1861 over the Civil War.
D. F. KELLY