chapter 11 Edward Irving’s Hybrid: Towards a Nineteenth- Century Apostolic and Presbyterian Pentecostalism
Peter Elliott
Introduction
The London-based ministry of Edward Irving was short, stellar, and controver- sial. Born in south-west Scotland in 1792 and educated at Edinburgh University, Irving served as parish assistant to Church of Scotland minister Thomas Chalmers in Glasgow for three years from 1819 to 1822. In 1821, he received an unexpected call from the Caledonian Chapel in London to preach for them with a view to becoming their next minister, an invitation that was probably less of a compliment to Irving than a reflection of the dwindling fortunes of the congregation.1 Irving preached for them during December 1821 and took up the position as their minister in July, 1822.2 Twelve years later, in December 1834, Irving was dead at the age of 42. These twelve years from 1822 to 1834 saw a rapid rise and gradual decline in Irving’s ministerial career, if not his hopes, as during this time he became London’s most popular preacher, a published author, and a theological innovator. His theological contributions, while often focused elsewhere, had inevitable implications for the issue of leadership within the church and other religious organisations.
Explosive Growth
The influence of Romanticism on Irving has been frequently noted.3 Like most of his contemporaries, he was affected by the political aftermath of the
1 The congregation had dwindled to about 50 at this time, and was barely able to pay a minis- ter’s salary. Arnold Dallimore, The Life of Edward Irving: the Fore-runner of the Charismatic Movement (Edinburgh, 1983), p. 31. 2 Margaret Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving, 5th ed. (London, n.d.), pp. 68, 76. 3 One of the first writers to make this explicit was J.J. Nantomah, Jesus the God-man: the Doctrine of the Incarnation in Edward Irving in the Light of the Teaching of the Church Fathers and its Relevance for a Twentieth Century African Context, University of Aberdeen, Ph.D. Thesis, 1982, p. 33. Also see my Edward Irving: Romantic Theology in Crisis (Milton Keynes, 2013).
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French Revolution and the Napoleonic years, and the associated cultural reactions. In addition, his network of acquaintances included a number of significant Romantic figures. He maintained a friendship with Thomas Carlyle that extended back to their youth in Scotland, and his London acquaintances included William Hazlitt, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Lamb and, especially, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.4 Romanticism affected Irving’s theological development and his views on church leadership. A year after his arrival in London, the small congregation Irving had inher- ited was experiencing explosive growth. Numbering about 50 when he arrived, by 1823 more than 1,000 people were trying to attend morning worship.5 Irving now had an audience for his sermons, and he soon turned this into a reader- ship. One of Irving’s early publications was a reprint of an address he gave in 1824 for the anniversary of the London Missionary Society;6 no doubt its offi- cials were hoping that obtaining the city’s most famous preacher would help increase their financial support. They were to be sorely disappointed. The building was so crowded that the service began an hour before the appointed time, and an astonished crowd heard Irving proclaim the ideal missionary as one who went with no visible means of support and was answerable to no committee – a Calvary-driven apostle: “[Missionaries] dare not be under other orders than the orders of Christ. It is a presumption hardly short of Papal, to command them. They are not missionaries when they are commanded. They are creatures of the power that commandeth them.”7 In his three and a half hour address, Irving promoted what he saw as the biblical pattern for missions against an overly prudent pragmatism which he believed dishonoured God by valuing worldly wisdom more than courageous faith:8
4 Oliphant, Irving (see above, n.2), p. 92. Irving was introduced to this literary circle through Basil Montagu. Irving met Coleridge in July, 1823 and although their views often differed, their friendship was characterised by mutual respect and admiration. Coleridge, twenty years Irving’s senior, died some five months before Irving in 1834. 5 Dallimore, Irving (see above, n. 1), p. 32. 6 For Missionaries after the Apostolic School. A Series of Orations, in Four Parts (London, 1824). Irving delivered the address in May, 1824, less than two years after his arrival in London. 7 Irving, Missionaries (see above, n. 6), in The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, ed. Gavin Carlyle, 5 vols. (London, 1864–1865), 1: 504. Oliphant, Irving (see above, n. 2), p. 96. 8 Ibid., 1: 431. Dallimore, Irving (see above, n. 1), p. 48. During this lengthy address, there were two breaks for hymns.