Category: Christian Individualism

John Nelson Darby: Christian Individualist? Despite his ecclesiology, yes.

[Also on Substack]

John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) was a Christian individualist long before Otis Q. Sellers (1901–1992) coined a word for it. I know Darby would have rejected Sellers’s denial that any Christian—or any assembly of Christians—constitutes an ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) in the New Testament sense during the present Dispensation of Grace.

Still, exegesis is what matters. Darby would have understood, even if he rejected, Sellers’s reasons for his denial. What Darby would have thought, however, is mere speculation. In spirit, if not in detail, he implicitly carried forward Darby’s work, even if Darby would not have acknowledged the kinship.

Darby was a Christian Individualist because of his manner of living, marked as it was by the preeminence he gave to Christ in His Word, without regard for the consequences. Though ordained in the Church of Ireland, he made himself ecclesiastically unreachable. He may never have left Anglicanism formally, but by rejecting bishops, parishes, and national churches, he had already placed himself beyond its reach.[1] Continue reading “John Nelson Darby: Christian Individualist? Despite his ecclesiology, yes.”

Rod Dreher’s Newmanesque snobbery?

[Also on Substack]

Rod Dreher’s gratuitous dig at the formal principle of the Reformation made for a handy foil for a response. The dig could have come from any Catholic; I’m sorry it came from him.

I’ve enjoyed Rod’s writing, including his latest essay,[1] and am glad to get my fill of it on his Substack “Diary.” But I cannot respond, as I feel I must, to that portion of his essay (a tissue of emotive non sequiturs) without coming across as gracelessly unecumenical.

Let the chips fall where they may.

I won’t disturb the peace of Rod’s combox with my biblicist (i.e., Sola Scriptura-based) protest, which he must find intolerably tone deaf. I welcome such disturbance here if anyone thinks fomenting it is worth the bother.

First, we have the irenic autobiographical set-up:

Though I would learn in time that I was wrong to judge all of Protestantism by my own experiences, and by megachurchery — there really is intellectual depth there, is what I’m saying, and besides, you cannot deny many good fruits in the lives of individual Protestant brothers and sisters in Christ . . .

Well, thank you very much!

. . . — there is zero chance that I would become Protestant.

Why? Here comes a dash of what I must call Newmanesque snobbery.

I agree, with [19th-century Roman Catholic convert and “canonized saint” John Henry Cardinal] Newman, that to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant.

Its sheer assertion prompts my invocation of infidel Christopher Hitchens’s apt “razor”: Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Continue reading “Rod Dreher’s Newmanesque snobbery?”

My Substack focuses on Christian Individualism, both the idea and the book. This site is for everything else.

I have wound up, by both God’s grace and design, an apologist for or “theoretician” of Christian Individualism.[1] As more than 300 essays on this site attest, however, some stones on this long, winding road were stumbling, not stepping, stones.

But not all. There were verdant pastures where I took shade with fascinating people who lightened my load. This site will continue to explore both the rocky road and the times of refreshment, populated with channels of God’s grace. (I may very well blog my memoir into existence as I did my other books.) You will take an interest in these explorations only if they resonate with you. To do that, however, they will somehow have to scratch where your mind is itching. As their author, I have limited control over my sowing’s efficacy. I’ll have to leave any reaping to God.

Note

[1] See, for example, today’s Substack essay, “When Charles H. Welch Visited Otis Q. Sellers: A 1955 Snapshot.”