JOHN NELSON DARBY (1800-1882) J. N. Darby is not as well known today as he should be. He was a movement leader, a missionary, a scholar, Bible translator, apologist, and, unofficially, “the father of Dispensationalism.” The respected preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once publicly referred to him as “the great Darby.” He was born in London on the cusp of the 19th Century, a time of spiritual decline in England after the revivals of the previous half- century. Educated at the …
Category: Church History
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON (1834-1892) When one is commencing a series of short “Bios” of Christians of former days whose lives advertised something of the glory of God, there are some names which almost force themselves upon us. Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, Wesley, Edwards, to name but a few. One who was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with such men is Charles H. Spurgeon, a preacher whose name is as respected today as it was when he was at the height …
Over on Larry Hurtado’s blog there is an interesting short article about textual transmission. The article reports on studies in ancient classical Latin texts by a scholar named James Zetzel. It is worth reading because it recognizes that understanding the purpose and use of a manuscript will help determine the degree of reliability of the manuscript, or at least the chances of it being changed. I remember reading Kurt Aland’s opinion that it is imperative that textual critics become conversant …
Part One Here Why Did Covenant Theology Take Hold? We have already indicated that political expediency may have encouraged the covenant mindset, at least early on. But theologically speaking, there is one overwhelming reason for its attraction. The covenant concept, especially the Covenant Of Grace, brings the Old and New Testaments together into one unity (which Dispensationalists like myself would say is a artificial, forced unity). The Covenant Of Grace provides the continuity that is essential if the Church is …
As an outsider to Covenant Theology (CT), but one who has attended a Seminary that taught it and who appreciates the great men associated with it, I thought I would write a short history of Covenant Theology for those non-CT’s who might like to know a tad more about it. My purpose in here is not to define what is known as Covenant Theology. What I wish to do is to provide some of the salient historical backdrop to it …
95 THESES AGAINST DISPENSATIONALISM 1. Contrary to the dispensationalists’ claim that their system is the result of a “plain interpretation” (Charles Ryrie) of Scripture, it is a relatively new innovation in Church history, having emerged only around 1830, and was wholly unknown to Christian scholars for the first eighteen hundred years of the Christian era. Response: By “plain interpretation” Ryrie simply meant grammatico-historical hermeneutics (G-H) (see his book Dispensationalism, 79-88). There is nothing novel about this. G-H was employed by …
Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman, by John R. Muether, Phillipsburg, PA: P&R, 2008. Any biographer of a man like Cornelius Van Til needs to assume certain things. First, Van Til’s thought, though brilliant, is not always easy to divine. Second, that this is made more problematical by the coming together of at least two different obstacles: a. Van Til’s sometimes awkward way of putting things, and, b. the difficulty many of us have with obeying the injunction to …
A Concise History of Christian Thought, rev. & exp. by Tony Lane, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006, pbk, 336 pp., $19.99. This is one of the most accessible histories of Christian doctrine I have seen. The author teaches Historical Theology at London School of Theology and is well regarded in the evangelical community. The method employed in the book is to survey the lives of the eminent theologians from East and West and connect them with the controversies or …
A Brief History of Biblical Interpretation – a paper. Yesterday’s Giants Charles Haddon Spurgeon Jonathan Edwards John Nelson Darby …
The history of the interpretation of the Bible is a long and involved one. For many centuries people have approached the Scriptures supposing that it should be interpreted literally whenever possible, or that one ought to look deeper than the surface meaning to find its true spiritual center. Still others have believed that the Old and (to a lesser extent) the New Testament is opened up by means of three or four hermeneutical categories. In this paper we shall try …
