In its maturing development, the “Brethren Movement,” with which many of our readers identify, was Biblicist and dispensational in its theology. It took its cue from the Scriptures itself, as opposed to Calvinism or other such man-made systems. Its driving force was the unity or oneness of the Body of Christ1 together with that of the priesthood of all believers.2 It was born in an atmosphere of Romanticism,3 when looking to the past or the “old paths” as a model exercised a strong influence on the minds of men. In the following paragraphs and articles to follow, we will flesh out each of these distinctive features of the brethren DNA.
The nineteenth-century British Isles were awash with that romantic spirit that looked back with nostalgia to the good old days. Religion and the church were no exception. Roman Catholicism, existing in England long before its crushing defeat in the sixteenth century at the hands of Henry VIII, was on the rise again. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had “removed the sacramental tests that barred Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom from Parliament and from higher offices of the judiciary and state. It was the culmination of a fifty-year process of Catholic emancipation which had offered Catholics successive measures of relief from civil and political disabilities…”4
Within the established Church of England, an increasing number of dissatisfied communicants were to be found, some of whom occupied leading ecclesiastical positions. Without a doubt, one of the most famous of these was the influential churchman and man of letters, John Henry Newman. From his position at the University of Oxford, he led what became known as the Oxford Movement for a reformation of the Church of England. Its adherents increasingly embraced Catholic beliefs and practices such as that of apostolic succession, to name but one. Newman himself ultimately went over to the Roman Catholic Church, eventually becoming one of its cardinals. Thus, he left the Church of England with its limited 300-year history in favor of the Roman Church which purported to trace its unbroken tradition all the way back to the apostle Peter himself.
Another dissatisfied member of the established Church was John Nelson Darby. As of 1826 he was an ordained clergyman, serving as curate in the Irish parish of Powerscourt in County Wicklow, to the south of Dublin. The following year, Ireland’s Archbishop William Magee required that “all converts from Roman Catholicism take the oath of allegiance and supremacy.”5 This was grounded in the erroneous view that the civil ruler is in a position to choose the best religion for his subjects and to establish it, with its ministers thus becoming instruments of the state.6 To some evangelicals this requirement was an intolerable confusion of the claims of Church and State. Following his protest addressed to the archbishop, “for at least one of the Irish founders of the Brethren, J. N. Darby, it provided the crisis-point of departure from the established church”.7 Where, now, could he turn?
In the brief interim between the circulation of his written protest and the withdrawal from his curacy, God saw fit to set J.N.D. aside due to an injury sustained in a riding accident. During this time, he experienced an increasing sense of the authority of the Scriptures as God’s perfect revelation. From this flowed quite naturally the concept of the New Testament alone providing a model for the church.
Comparing these two men, Newman and Darby, both looked to the past, the one to ecclesiastical tradition, the other to the Word of God. It was Darby that would go on to become a leading figure in the beginnings and development of the brethren movement along New Testament lines. Of course, he was not alone. Men like Anthony Norris Groves, George Müller, and Benjamin Wills Newton, among others, all played significant roles. That the Spirit of God was “moving upon the face of the waters,” so to speak, there can be no doubt.
Closely linked with the action of the Holy Spirit was that of the Word of God, molding the minds and consciences of the early brethren leaders. Many of these, having left the Church of England, brought with them the Calvinism which marked that religious community. Not surprisingly, therefore, at the outset some form of Calvinistic teaching seems to have been generally accepted among them.8 This being said, while the movement as a whole remained true to Calvinist orthodoxy9, as time progressed, Biblicism gained the ascendency and the brethren increasingly distinguished themselves from that theological position. When pushed to the wall, the movement has often been characterized as being “moderately Calvinistic.”10
Stevenson says of the evangelicals of that time, that they tended to eschew systematic theology, which they believed imposed an artificial structure on the Bible. The systems of Calvinism and Arminianism were often the victims of this attitude. Specifically, moderate Calvinists had little appetite for speculation … they preferred to take their doctrine directly from the Bible.11 Grass notes, “For most Brethren, Scripture was not merely the supreme authority, but the sole authority . . . they rarely accorded authority to creeds and confessions and sat lightly to the Protestant tradition of biblical interpretation.”12
That the brethren were prominent among the evangelicals of their time soon became evident. By taking the stance of the sole authority of Scripture, one could argue that they were true sons of the Reformation. Believing as they did in the clarity of the Word of God, they became “earnest students of the Bible,”13 to come to an understanding of its teaching (see 1 John 2:27). It has been said of the brethren, especially concerning those of a past generation, “every man a theologian.” Would to God that the same might still be said today!
To be continued…
Endnotes:
1“The principle that created the Assemblies was the oneness of the people of God at a time when there was general deadness, and when a sectarian spirit marked the denominations.” G. C. D. Howley, The Church and Its Members in A New Testament Church in 1955, p.26.
2“Two of the key distinctives that emerged throughout the movement arose out of a desire of brethren to testify to their Christian unity: The Lord’s Supper – the one loaf, the uniting ordinance … and the elimination of the distinction between clergy and laity.” Donald Tinder, The Brethren Movement in the World Today in The Journal of the Christian Brethren Research Fellowship, #25, 1973, p.10.
3Mark Stevenson, The Doctrines of Grace in an Unexpected Place, Pickwick Publications, 2017, p.2.
4Wikipedia.
5F. Roy Coad, A History of the Brethren Movement, Eerdmans, 1968, p.27.
6Tim Grass, Gathering to His Name, Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, Glasgow, 2021, p. 17.
7Peter L. Embley, The Origins and Early Development of the Plymouth Brethren, p.17.
8Stevenson, p.3.
9Embley, p.94.
10W. Blair Neatby, A History of the Plymouth Brethren, Hodder and Stoughton, 1901, p.230.
11Stevenson, p.49.
12Grass, p.84.
13Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries: A History of the Christian Church, Zondervan, 1954, p.437.