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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The churchs ruin and restoration : the development of ecclesiology in the Plymouth Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church c. 1825-c.1866. Grass, Timothy George The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Oct. 2021 THE CHURCH'S RUIN AND RESTORATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIOLOGY IN THE PLYMOUTH BRETHREN AND THE CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH, c.1825 - c.1866 Timothy George Grass A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy King's College, London 1997 (RIN) ABSTRACT Timothy George Grass The Church's Ruin and Restoration: The Development of Ecclesiology in the Plymouth Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church, c.1825 - c.1866 This study seeks to explain the similarities between these two evangelically-inspired restorationist movements by tracing the development of their theoretical ecciesiology against the nineteenth-century background. Brethren and Catholic Apostolics drew on a range of ideas current within post- Revolution evangelicalism, particularly in eschatology and ecclesiology. Both believed in the church's constitution by the Spirit's descent at Pentecost, its heavenly nature as Christ's body and the importance to its witness of its visibility. Both agreed that the universal church had become ruined: losing sight of its heavenly calling and hope, the church had disowned the Spirit and fallen into apostasy. Eschatological judgment, including the destruction of visible Christian institutions, was inevitable: this followed the pattern established by previous dispensations, which had all ended in divine judgment on human disobedience. The differences between them appear in their beliefs concerning the the church's relationship to the world and the possibility of the church's restoration before the Parousia. Catholic Apostolics saw apostles as given to rebuild the universal church and recall the world to submission to Christ; Darbyites saw apostles as essential to the institutional church but denied the possibility of institutional restoration and eschewed involvement ii the world; and Open Brethren confined themselves to forming local congregations along New Testament lines. The originality of this thesis lies in its sustained comparison of these movements, which demonstrates that they owed much to earlier thinkers and to the contemporary intellectual climate. It is suggested that their high ecclesiologies may be viewed as Romantically-influenced versions of Calvinist thought, with their heightened stress on human inability and divine sovereignty and their reverence for a perceived primitive ecciesiological ideal. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 5 1. INTRODUCTION 6 1.1. The purpose and relevance of this thesis 6 1.2. The scope and method of this thesis 7 1.3. Literature survey 8 1.3.1. Brethren 8 1.3.2. Catholic Apostolic 10 1.4. Acknowledgments 13 2. BACKGROUND AND HISTORY 15 2.1. General religious background 15 2.1.1. England, Ireland and Scotland 15 2.1.2. Geneva 22 2.1.3. Henry Drummond and the prophetic conferences 23 2.2. Realising the body of Christ: the Brethren 26 2.2.1. Early events in Ireland 26 2.2.2. Oxford and Irvingism 32 2.2.3. Beginnings at Plymouth 35 2.2.4. Turmoil in Switzerland 39 2.2.5. Tension and dWision: Darby, Newton and Bethesda 40 2.3. The evolution of an apostleship: the Catholic Apostolic Church 46 2.3.1. Coleridge, Irving and the emergence of apostles 46 2.3.2. The parting of the ways: Port Glasgow rejects the London apostles 53 2.3.3. Cardale and the consolidation of apostolic authority 55 3. THE NATURE AND CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 63 3.1. Brethren 63 3.1.1. The dangers of misunderstanding Darby's thought 63 3.1.2. The heavenly church and the earthy Israel 64 3.1.3. The church, constituted at Pentecost 69 3.1.4. The church and the world 72 3.2. Catholic Apostolic 74 3.2.1. The church - God's people 74 3.2.2. The church - Christ's boo'y 76 3.2.3. The church - the Spirit's cM'elling place 79 3.2.4. The church's heaveny nature 80 3.2.5. The church and the world 81 3.2.6. Prophetic utterance - a distinctive source for typology 89 3.3. Assessment 92 4. THE RUIN OF THE CHURCH 96 4.1. Brethren 96 4.1.1. Roots of their doctrine of the church's ruin 96 4.1.2. How did the ruin occur? 101 4.1.3. The church's ruined condition 104 Loss of unity 106 Loss of holiness 110 Loss of catholicity 112 Loss of apostolicity 114 3 4.1.4. The future of the ruined Church 115 4.1.5. The believer's present responsibility 116 Rejection of existing approaches 117 Recognition of the church's condition 118 Separation from evil 120 4.2. Catholic Apostolic 128 4.2.1. Roots of their doctrine of the church's ruin 128 4.2.2. How did the ruin occur? 131 4.2.3. The church's ruined condition 134 Loss of unity 135 Loss of holiness 136 Loss of catholicity 136 Loss of apostolicity 138 4.2.4. The future of the ruined church 140 4.2.5. The believer's present responsibility 143 4.3. Assessment 148 5. APOSTLES - THE KEY TO THE CHURCH'S RESTORATION? 154 5.1. Brethren 154 5.1.1. Apostles as a foundational ministly 154 5.1.2. The Jewish and Gentile apostolates 159 5.1.3. Apostolic succession 160 5.2. Catholic Apostolic 163 5.2.1. The first twelve and the last twelve 163 5.2.2. The mission of the restored apostles: preparation for Christ's return 166 Their mission to the baptised 167 Ruling the church 168 Bestowing the Spirit 170 Leading the church's worship 173 5.2.3. Bishops and apostles 173 5.2.4. Apostles and their critics 176 Signs of the apostles 176 Schism 179 The absence of apostles 180 Invalid call to office 181 5.3. Assessment 182 6. GENERAL EVALUATION 186 6.1. Ecclesiological sources 186 6.2. Shared theological emphases 186 6.2.1. The church as constituted by the Spirit 190 6.2.2. Radical Calvinism 192 6.2.3. The church's apostolicity 194 6.3. Ecclesiological questions raised 195 BIBLIOGRAPHY 199 APPENDICES 232 1. The structure of the Catholic Apostolic Church 232 2. The Catholic Apostolic apostles 234 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BDEB - Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography 1 730-1860 BS - Bibliotheca Sacra BT - Bible Treasury CBR - Christian Brethren Review CH - Christian Herald CW - Collected Works (Irving), Collected Writings (Darby) CWit - Christian Witness DNB - Dictionary of National Biography JEH - Journal of Ecclesiastical History JCBRF - Journal of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship MW - Morning Watch NIDCC - New International Dictionary of the Christian Church OCP - Old Church Porch ODCC - Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church PW - Prophetical Works (Irving) QJP - Quarterly Journal of Prophecy SCH - Studies in Church History VE - Vox Evangelica Biblical quotations are taken from the King James Version. Underlining and italics in quotations are given as they appear in the sources. 5 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. The purpose and relevance of this thesis A feature of recent evangelicalism has been the rapid growth of movements seeking to restore what they see as the divinely-ordained pattern for church life. They proclaim that God is restoring to the church the New Testament pattern of worship and church government (hence the term often used to describe them, "restorationist"), and in particular the whole spectrum of charismatic gifts; most would see the restoration of the ministries mentioned in Ephesians 4.11-1 2 (including that of apostle) as part of this, and essential for the church's perfecting. This thesis aims to investigate the development of a restorationist ecclesiology within two nineteenth-century groups, the Brethren and the Catholic Apostolic Church. 1 ft seeks to demonstrate that their approach to ecclesiology can be viewed as an outworking of their reappropnation of Calvinist thought with its stress on divine sovereignty and human inability, itself an emphasis characteristic of the Romantic climate of thought which influenced evangelicalism greatly from the 1 820s. I have chosen to study these groups for several reasons: Firstly, although parallels between them have been noted 2, and early links have been the subject of much speculation, no full-length comparison has ever been undertaken. Nor has any sustained account been given of the reasons for their ecciesiological similarities. Secondly, it is increasingly recognised that they can be viewed as precursors of modem restorationist movements.
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