Caricatures Abound

Somehow I missed John MacArthur's series, "Why Every Calvinist Should Be a Premillennialist" when it came out. I found a reference to it on the testing 5-2-1 blog, and thought it would be a worthwhile listen. Was it ever! It was a remarkably good sermon series. I've listened to it twice now.

But...

In the first message, he talks about J. N. Darby (the transcript is available here), and it wasn't the most flattering. He didn't hit too hard on Darby, but his tone toward dispensationalists was more than a little dismissive.

Now, it's fair to point out that dispensationalism became (or maybe "has become") a nesting place for some of the unclean birds he mentions: newspaper exegesis, and Revelation 9 helicopters are two examples he gives. And I'll agree with him that those are wrong. It seems obvious to me that a lot of credibility was lost by some of that.

At the same time, to accuse dispensationalists of teaching "two ways of salvation" is a caricature at best, slander at the worst. And to be clear: MacArthur's not the only one I've heard make that accusation in the last year. 

I don't own a Scofield Bible, so I'm not going to attempt to defend it. I don't go in for Scofield-ism myself, I think it's a little brittle. But I've read a whole lot of Darby's writing, and he absolutely did not teach two ways of salvation. In fact, I'm pretty sure he didn't teach seven dispensations either.

I've mentioned before that the first big effect reading Darby had on me was to push me away from Scofield's dispensationalism.

For whatever reason (and I can think of a few), people love to beat on Darby. Oddly enough, it's hard to find someone with strong opinions on Darby who has read more than a snippet in a pull quote. I suppose he's in good company: people like to expound scripture without apparently reading it too.

So no, much as I think MacArthur makes some excellent points, his caricature of Darby seems to have nothing but the name in common with the man himself.

It's self-evident from his writings (especially his letters) that Darby didn't always think too hard before he acted. "Brethren" love to talk about how he never married, thinking he would be more effective as a single man. Twenty-five years after I first started reading him seriously, I've come to the conclusion that marriage would have been an improvement: it might have taught him to think first.

But even while I lament he acted terribly at times, I have to say he is one of my heroes. Why? Because I have never read, or heard from, or spoken to another person who bowed to Scripture and treated it like God's actual words like J. N. Darby did. 

Maybe Martin Luther. Maybe.

What I learn from J. N. Darby's writings is that Scripture is not only infallible, but it's also sufficient. The latter is what I see so lacking amongst all Christians. We all agree that Scripture is infallible, but very few seem to think it's sufficient. We all long to go back to Rome and have co-authorities with God's words. But Darby held tenaciously to Romans 3:4, "let God be true and every man false."  Darby recognized what others simply cannot accept: that the Word of God doesn't need help.

I've mentioned Kelly before, he was one of the campus chaplains when I was a student. Kelly once told me a story he'd heard from someone else: 

Imagine you're lying in bed at night and someone kicks in your door. You grab your pistol from the nightstand and point it at the housebreaker, who tells you he doesn't believe that gun can stop him. Guns don't actually work, he says, they're just a myth. What do you do? Do you try to explain ballistics to him? or do you just squeeze the trigger?

That's a pretty telling scenario. I'm afraid Christians as a whole have been trying to explain ballistics my whole life, when they should just have been squeezing the trigger.

Darby understood that in a way perhaps even someone like William Kelly didn't.

If people really heeded the word of God, and took simply from Scripture what Scripture states, such things would never be said.

Nor do I talk about private judgment on such things; between man and man that is all very well, reasonable enough, but do you think if God has spoken to me, I am to talk of private judgment on what He has said?

Why, it is blasphemy.

I can understand an unbeliever not knowing what is God's mind, and reasoning about what is written; but man by reasoning never got faith at all; and man's reason is perfectly incompetent to judge about God and His words.

If my mind could judge about God, then God is the subject matter, and my mind is the master of the subject matter.

It is a mistake altogether. You want a word from God to reach conscience, that is the first thing. I grant you man's mind is the measure of all the truth he can have, but the first thing I want is a hammer upon conscience.

Suppose I knock you down, does it not make an impression upon you? You are acted upon. This is what conscience needs. But people think it must be the activity of their own minds.

I do not take a candle out to see if the sun is shining!

("Detached Memoranda from a Reading Meeting")

 

So while I hope I act with more prudence than Johnny D., I aspire to his view of Scripture, his knowledge of it, and his earnest zeal in searching it.