John Nelson Darby

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John Nelson Darby

John Nelson Darby (born November 18, 1800 in London , † April 29, 1882 in Bournemouth , England ) was a leading figure in the Brethren movement .

Life

Darby was the youngest son of the wealthy Anglo-Irish merchant John Darby (1751–1834) and his wife Anne nee. Vaughan (1757-1847). He received his middle name in honor of Lord Nelson , who was possibly also his godfather .

From 1812 to 1815 attended Darby the Westminster School in London, then he studied until 1819 at the Trinity College in Dublin Jura . On July 10, 1819, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and received the highest award for Classical Philology . He spent his eight compulsory quarters at Lincoln's Inn and finished it on November 26, 1821. On January 21, 1822, he was admitted to the bar in Ireland .

In 1820 or 1821 Darby had seen a conversion to the Christian faith; In 1824 or 1825 he decided to give up his legal career and become a clergyman. On August 7, 1825, he was ordained Deacon in Raphoe Cathedral by Bishop William Bissett , the lowest degree of ordained minister in the Anglican Church . From 1825 to 1827 he worked among the rural poor in Calary near Enniskerry ( County Wicklow , Ireland ). On February 19, 1826 he was ordained a pastor ( priest ) in Christ Church Cathedral (Dublin) .

A speech given by Archbishop Magee at St. Patrick's Cathedral (Dublin) on October 10, 1826, in which he opposed the Roman Catholic system, preoccupied Darby. Magee wanted a strong link between church and state and praised the churches of England and Ireland for their loyalty to the state. Many people converted to Protestantism at that time, which exacerbated the ecclesiastical conflict. Darby, on the other hand, assumed that someone who preached the gospel was exposed to hostility and that it would therefore not be logical to seek refuge in the "world". The real head of the Christian community is God and not an earthly king.

A riding accident in late 1827 forced Darby to recover in Dublin at the home of his brother-in-law, Edward Pennefather. There he made the acquaintance of Francis William Newman (the brother of John Henry Newman ), who thought that a dozen Darby people had contributed more to the conversion of Ireland to Protestantism than the entire state church apparatus. During this period of intense reflection, Darby developed views that became the basis of his later work, including: a. about the authority of the Bible , the new position of the believer in Christ, the congregation as the body of Christ (regardless of membership in a church organization), Christian service, the second coming of Christ and the establishment of his rule.

In the winter of 1827/28 Darby came into contact with independent Christian circles, the germ cells of the Brethren movement . He first joined a group around Anthony Norris Groves and John Gifford Bellett , which at the end of 1829 united with a similar circle around the doctor Edward Cronin and moved to a public hall in May 1830.

After his recovery, Darby did not return to his church service, but took on a leading role in the young brotherhood movement. His first preaching trip took him to Limerick and then to various other places in Ireland and England. Sometimes he still preached in Anglican churches, sometimes he met already existing independent circles. In many places, new Christian congregations emerged, for example in Plymouth in 1832 , where around 700 people soon gathered.

Financially independent through an inheritance, Darby was able to expand his sphere of activity from 1839 to mainland Europe , North America , Australia and New Zealand . From 1839 to 1845 he stayed mostly in French-speaking Switzerland , where he initially visited existing free church circles, but from 1841 called for the establishment of his own congregations in the spirit of the Brethren movement. From 1843 onwards, several Brethren congregations also sprang up in France . Apart from brief visits by Darby to Tübingen and Stuttgart in 1850, his meeting with the Elberfeld elementary school teacher and evangelist Carl Brockhaus was significant for developments in Germany . Darby's first visit to Elberfeld took place in 1853, and by 1878 he came to Germany seven more times. Together with Carl Brockhaus and Julius Anton von Poseck , Darby also edited the Elberfeld Bible translation .

Tombstone of John Nelson Darby

From 1845 on, Darby was involved in several theological disputes in England that led to divisions within the Brethren movement . At the end of 1845 he separated in Plymouth from Benjamin Wills Newton , whom he accused of clerical tendencies, in 1848 from the congregation in Bristol under Georg Muller and Henry Craik , which refused to examine and condemn Newton's controversial teachings on the sufferings of Christ (this resulted in the worldwide separation between “open” and “closed brothers”). In 1858, Darby, for his part, published doctrines on the sufferings of Christ that some of his friends (including William Henry Dorman and Percy Francis Hall ) found false doctrines, and so they separated from him in 1866. 1879–81 there were disputes over issues of church discipline and the recognition of parish resolutions, which again resulted in a separation (inter alia from William Kelly ).

Teaching

Darby saw the Bible divided into different salvation-historical epochs, the so-called "households" (English. Dispensations ). In his view, scriptures must be read in the context of these epochs. Particularly important is the strict separation between Israel (the earthly people of God with earthly promises and an earthly future) and the church (the heavenly people of God with heavenly promises and a heavenly future). This theological-hermeneutic model became known as dispensationalism , especially in American Protestantism, far beyond the Brethren movement and, among other things, forms a part of it. a. the basis of the Scofield Bible .

Because of his salvation history vision, Darby also took the view that the church had deteriorated beyond repair after the time of the apostles . The decline had already started in the time of the New Testament . Darby agreed with the Free Churches on many doctrinal statements, but criticized their declared intention to restore the "New Testament Church". A restoration of the original church of Jesus is no longer possible, since God never restores anything that man has corrupted and, moreover, the apostolic office is missing. For the present congregation (the Elberfeld Bible speaks of “assembly”) it is only possible to assemble in the name of Jesus ( Mt 18:20  ELB ). By this gathering in the name of Jesus Darby understood primarily the Sunday “breaking of bread” ( Lord's Supper ). His vision was that all believers in every place in the world would gather at the “table of the Lord” and be guided in their gathering by the Holy Spirit. According to Darby, only those who differ from the others through healthy teaching, pure change and separation from evil (this also includes church structures) are allowed to participate in “breaking bread”.

The letters of Revelation (Chapter 2-3 EU ) and the churches in Asia Minor described therein were, for Darby, types of the individual epochs of church history. He saw the brethren churches as Philadelphia : small and powerless, but without blame and with a great promise ( Rev 3 : 7  ELB ).

Fonts

Darby's writings are summarized in the following editions:

English language editions

  • The Collected Writings of JN Darby. Ed. by William Kelly. 34 volumes. Morrish, London 1867-1900. - Reprinted: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, Kingston-on-Thames undated (around 1960). Further reprints thereof.
  • Synopsis of the Books of the Bible. 5 volumes. Morrish, London undated - Reprint: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, Kingston-on-Thames 1943. Thereof further reprints.
  • Notes and Comments on Scripture from the Note Books of JN Darby. 7 volumes. Carter / Humphery, London 1883–1913. - Reprinted: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, Kingston-on-Thames 1959–1961. Further reprints thereof.
  • Notes and Jottings from Various Meetings with JN Darby. 5 volumes. Foreign Gospel Tract and Book Depot, London undated (around 1930). - Reprinted in one volume: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, Kingston-on-Thames 1962. Other reprints thereof.
  • Spiritual songs. Ed. by HA Hammond. Tract Depot, Dublin 1883. - Various reprints.
  • Letters of JND 3 volumes. Morrish, London n.d. - Reprint: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, Kingston-on-Thames n.d. Thereof further reprints.

A directory of Darby's individual writings can be found in the catalog of the Christian Brethren Archive ( Manchester ).

German-language editions

  • Reflections on the Word of God. Part 1-7 . New edition in 7 volumes, Ernst-Paulus-Verlag , Neustadt an der Weinstrasse 1981. (German translation of the Synopsis of the Books of the Bible )

literature

  • WG Turner: John Nelson Darby. A picture of life. R. Müller-Kersting, Huttwil / Bern 1928.
  • Gustav Ischebeck: John Nelson Darby. His time and his work. Bundes-Verlag, Witten 1929.
  • Erich Geldbach : Christian assembly and salvation history with John Nelson Darby . R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1971, 1975.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Darby, John Nelson. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2nd, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1 , Sp. 1223-1227.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • William Kelly: John Nelson Darby - as I knew him. Christian publication, Hückeswagen 1987.
  • Max S. Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the beginnings of a movement . Christian literature distribution, Bielefeld 1988, ISBN 3-89397-312-5 .
  • Working group history of the brother movement (ed.): 200 years of John Nelson Darby. Edition Wiedenest. Jota publications, Hammerbrücke 2000.
  • Berthold Schwarz: Life in the victory of Christ. The Importance of Law and Grace to the Life of Christians in John Nelson Darby . Brunnen, Gießen / Basel 2008.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 36.
  2. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 37.
  3. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the beginnings of a movement , pp. 38f.
  4. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 41.
  5. ↑ Randall Herbert Balmer: Darby, John Nelson (1800-1882) . In: Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism . Baylor University Press, Waco 2004, ISBN 1-932792-04-X , pp. 204 (English).
  6. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the beginnings of a movement , pp. 42f.
  7. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 50.
  8. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , pp. 50–54.
  9. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , pp. 55–57.
  10. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 65.
  11. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , pp. 66–68.
  12. ↑ Weremchuk: John Nelson Darby and the Beginnings of a Movement , p. 92.
personal data
SURNAME Darby, John Nelson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British theologian, co-founder of the Brethren movement
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1800
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1882
Place of death Bournemouth , England