John Nelson Darby and the ruin of the church: tracing the development of Darby's views concerning the present and future state of the church (1820–1840)

Abstract

This study seeks to demonstrate that despite the attention given by historians over the past two centuries to John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), the nineteenth century Anglo-Irish ecclesiastical maverick remains largely unknown. Many ideas that have been ascribed to him, such as a seven-dispensational arrangement of history, and differing ways of salvation for the different peoples of God, he never espoused. Dispensational premillennialism, with its distinct notion of the rapture of the church followed by the activity of the Antichrist and the subsequent millennial reign of Christ on the earth, has been wrongly perceived as the central dogma of his idiosyncratic brand of theology.

This thesis will demonstrate that the development of Darby’s ideas stemmed from his peculiar notion of the ruin of the church. Moreover, it was Darby’s concept of ecclesial ruin that determined his ecclesiology, informed his eschatology, and codified his dispensational theology. Whereas most treatments of Darby’s thought engage his published works, as they are presented in the Collected Writings, with little attention given to the progression in the early development of his ideas, this thesis takes a markedly different approach. This thesis traces the development of Darby’s views concerning the present and future state of the church over the two decades in which his ideas were coalescing into a codified whole (1820–1840). This original approach to understanding Darby’s thought reveals that Darby’s dispensational eschatology developed out from his ecclesiastical concerns, all of which was shaped by his prevailing concept of the ruin of the church.

Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2029.

Date of Award	Jul 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Crawford Gribben (Supervisor) & Clifford Dixon (Supervisor)