Who Was Marcus Dods? Glasgow Pastor and Expositor's Bible Author

Biography Commentary Bible Study

Marcus Dods was a Scottish minister and Bible scholar who lived from 1834 to 1909. He served for twenty-five years as pastor of Renfield Free Church in Glasgow, then taught the New Testament at New College, Edinburgh, where he became principal near the end of his life. He wrote and edited a great many books, but he's best remembered today for his volumes in The Expositor's Bible, a commentary series for ordinary readers: Genesis, the Gospel of John in two volumes, and 1 Corinthians. He was a careful scholar who wrote like a pastor, and his pages keep turning from the text to the reader's own heart.

Here's a short account of his life, what marks his writing, and where to start reading him.

A minister's son

Dods was born on April 11, 1834, at Belford in Northumberland, in the north of England, just below the Scottish border. His father, also named Marcus Dods, was a minister of the Church of Scotland there. The younger Marcus was the youngest son. He grew up in Scotland and studied at the Edinburgh Academy and then at the University of Edinburgh, finishing his arts degree in 1854. He went on to study divinity for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland.

Years of waiting

He was licensed to preach in 1858. Then came a hard stretch. For about six years he preached as a probationer, a licensed minister without a church, filling pulpits wherever he was sent. Congregation after congregation heard him and chose someone else. Accounts of his life say more than twenty churches passed him over. He used the time to read, write and translate.

In 1864 Renfield Free Church in Glasgow finally called him, and he stayed for twenty-five years. In 1871 he married Catherine Swanston. They had three sons and a daughter.

Pastor in Glasgow

At Renfield, Dods became known as a thoughtful, honest preacher who took the hard questions of his day seriously and kept bringing his hearers back to Christ. Much of what he later published began as preaching to that congregation. His short book How to Become Like Christ gives a taste of it. In the title address, on 2 Corinthians 3:18, he says that most Christians make excuses for not aiming at likeness to Christ, and then he shows how simple the way is:

Every Christian has that for a destiny: to be changed into the image of his Lord.
How to Become Like Christ, How to Become Like Christ

As often as we stand before Christ in spirit and let Him win our love, he says, we take on a little of His glory.

Through these years he also worked as an editor and translator. He edited the English edition of the works of Augustine, translated Augustine's City of God, and with Alexander Whyte edited a series of handbooks for Bible classes.

Professor in Edinburgh

In 1889 the Free Church made him professor of New Testament exegesis at New College, Edinburgh, the church's main school for training ministers. Not everyone was pleased. Some of his writing on the inspiration of Scripture had been charged as unsound, and around this time he was called before the church's General Assembly. The charge was dropped by a large majority. He taught at New College for the rest of his life, and in 1907, after Robert Rainy died, he became principal of the college.

In 1901 he was chosen as moderator of the General Assembly of the United Free Church, the highest honor his church could give, and he declined it. He died in Edinburgh on April 26, 1909, at seventy-five.

The Expositor's Bible volumes

Dods's lasting work for most readers is his four volumes in The Expositor's Bible. They aren't verse-by-verse notes. Each chapter takes a passage, explains what it means, and then presses its lesson home.

In Genesis he says plainly that Genesis was not given to teach science but to teach who made the world and why. Then he follows Abraham, Jacob and Joseph with a sharp eye for human character. He keeps coming back to grace:

God's favour is always a matter of grace, it is favour conferred on the undeserving; it is never a matter of debt, it is never favour conferred because it has been won.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Genesis, chapter 11

In his two volumes on John, he shows that God is known in the life of Jesus. The first volume covers chapters 1 to 11, from the Word made flesh to the raising of Lazarus. The second covers chapters 12 to 21, including the Upper Room, Christ's prayer in John 17, the cross and Peter's restoration.

Never again can men separate the idea of the true God from the life of Jesus Christ; it is in that life we come to know God, and through that life His glory shines.
The Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St. John, Vol. II, chapter 16

In 1 Corinthians he walks through Paul's letter to a troubled church in a busy seaport: its factions, its questions about marriage and liberty, its disorder at the Lord's Supper, and Paul's great chapters on love and the resurrection. He puts the cross at the center:

All the power that dwells in God to draw men out of sin to holiness and to Himself was actually in the Cross.
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 4

How he wrote

Dods wrote short, searching sentences. He liked to turn a Bible story into a question for the reader. On Abraham leaving home on nothing but God's word, he asks:

What have you ventured that you would not have ventured but for God's promise?
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Genesis, chapter 7

He was honest about sin, too. He didn't want anyone to treat God's forgiveness as cheap:

To ask for pardon Without real shame is to treat sin lightly; and to treat sin lightly is to treat God lightly.
How to Become Like Christ, Shame on Account of God's Displeasure

Why he's still read

Preachers still reach for Dods because he gets to the point of a passage and says it in a way you remember. Ordinary readers like him because he never stays in the study. Whether he's writing about Jacob at Peniel or Peter by the Sea of Galilee, he ends with what the passage asks of you, and with Christ.

Where to start

TheWay Library has five of his books, all free to read.

Start with How to Become Like Christ. It's short, six addresses in all, and it shows his heart as a pastor.
For Bible study, read his Gospel of John, Vol. I, then Vol. II.
Then try Genesis or 1 Corinthians, depending on what you're studying.

Our guide to Marcus Dods's books describes each one, and our collection of Marcus Dods quotes gathers his best lines. All his books are on the Marcus Dods author page.