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John Nelson Darby is best known as the architect of the most influential system of end-times thinking among the world's half-a-billion evangelicals. This book re-examines Darby's thought and argues that claims that Darby is the father of dispensationalism may need to be revised.
List of contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Soteriology
- Chapter 2: Ecclesiology
- Chapter 3: Pneumatology
- Chapter 4: Eschatology
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Crawford Gribben is Professor of History at Queen's University Belfast. He writes about the religious history of Britain, Ireland, and North America, focusing on the literary cultures of puritanism and evangelicalism, with special interests in millennial and apocalyptic thought.
Summary
J.N. Darby and the Roots of Dispensationalism describes the work of one of the most important and under-studied theologians in the history of Christianity. In the late 1820s, John Nelson Darby abandoned his career as a priest in the Church of Ireland to become one of the principal leaders of a small but rapidly growing religious movement that became known as the “Plymouth Brethren.” Darby and other brethren modified the Calvinism that was common among their evangelical contemporaries, developing distinctive positions on key doctrines relating to salvation, the church, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the end times.
After his death in 1882, Darby's successors revised and expanded his arguments, and Darby became known as the architect of the most influential system of end-times thinking among the world's half-a-billion evangelicals. This “dispensational premillennialism” exercises extraordinary influence in religious communities, but also in popular culture and geopolitics. But claims that Darby created this theological system may need to be qualified -for all his innovation, this reputation might be undeserved. This book reconstructs Darby's theological development and argues that his innovations were more complex and extensive than their reduction into dispensationalism might suggest. In fact, Darby's thought might be closer to that of his Reformed critics than to that of modern exponents of dispensationalism.
Additional text
This book is, no doubt, the definitive, concise study of the theology of J. N. Darby, particularly of his eschatology and of the role it played in the creation of modern dispensationalism. It establishes the author's surprising judgment that Darby "contributed some of the system's [dispensationalism's] key ideas: he saw the roots, but not the birth, ofdispensationalism".
