Edward Irving

File:Edward-Irving.jpg

Edward Irving was a noted Scottish clergyman, and generally regarded as the founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church, whose members were sometimes called Irvingites. He was a leader of the premillennialism movement in the nineteenth century and an early origintor of the doctine of the Rapture. He was born in the town of Annan in the Scottish county of Dumfries and Galloway on August 4, 1792 and died on Decemeber 7, 1834.

His youth

Irving's father worked as a tanner, descended from a family long known in the district. His Scottish lineage had been tinged by an alliance with French Huguenot refugees. His mother came from the Lowther family, who were farmers or small proprietors in the Annandale area, and it seems that from her he may have derived the most distinctive features of his personality. His early education took place at a school run by Peggy Paine, a relation of Thomas Paine of the Age of Reason. He later entered the Annan Academy, taught by Mr Adam Hope, of whom there is a graphic sketch in the Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle.

Work in Scotland

At the age of thirteen he entered the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 1809. A year later, on the recommendation of the physicist Sir John Leslie, Irving was chosen as master of an academy newly established at Haddington, East Lothian, where he became the tutor of Jane Welsh, afterwards famous as Mrs Carlyle.

He was engaged in 1812 to Isabella Martin but fell in love with Jane Walsh. He tried to get out of his engagement with Miss Martin, but was prevented by her family and married her in 1823. After completing his divinity studies Irving was licensed to preach in June 1815, but continued to focus on his scholastic duties for three more years. While studing mathematics and physical science, he also begane to read the old classics including works from the theoligian Richard Hooker, who became his favorite author. At the same time he became fond of Arabian Nights, and it is said to have carried a miniature copy of James Macpherson's cycle of poems Ossian, in his waistcoat pocket, which he would often recite passages from.

In the summer of 1818 Irving resigned his mastership, and in order to increase the probability of obtaining a permanent appointment in the Church of Scotland, took up residence in Edinburgh. Although he was well known for his public speaking his propects of becoming a minister in the church looked dim. Irving was about to go on a missionary tour in Persia when he finally found work in the church as an assistant and missionary to Dr Thomas Chalmers in St John's Parish, Glasgow.

Irving's passionate and lively style of preaching, which Thomas Chalmers, the first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, compared to Italian music, found little interest among the congregation of St John's. However, as a missionary among the poorer classes in Glasgow, Irving herelded an influence that was altogether unique. He was welcomed into peoples homes, where his benediction "Peace be to this house," was greeted warmly. His ability to preach in homely settings won him many admirers, many who were taken up by his embracing personality and vibrant spirit.

His rise in London

In the winter of 1821, Irving again turn his attention towards missionary work in the East but recieved an invitation from the the Church of Scotlnd congregation at the Caledonian Church in Hatton Garden, London, to minister to the small gathering there. He was ordained as a Presbyterian Church minister in July 1822. In previous years Irving had expressed a desire to preach to the leading figures in society, the arts and literature. Suddenly he found himself in such a situation as important members of society flocked to hear him preach. His sudden leap in popularity may have been occasioned in connection with a veiled reference to Irving's striking eloquence made by George Canning a leading member of the House of Commons, who had attended Irving's church. It became clear that Irving was a brilliant preacher and orator. His intelect and theological arguments made an impression on the political, legal and scientific men of the era. He was popular as well as controversial, as he preached that the Christian Church was entering a period of judgement in preparation for Christ's imeninent return. In 1825 he ws invited to preach to the Continental Society, where he met the influential banker Henry Drummond, who was to become a key figure and sponsor of the future Catholic Apostolic Church. The Drummond family to this day, still funds the few remaning Catholic Apostolic Churches in England. It appears Irving had all the qualities of being a great preacher. He had the intellectual capabilites to discourse with some of the great minds of England, while at the same time an ability to capture his audiance with his deep expressions of emotions. He was a deeply spiritual man who drew in his audiance with his vision and passion. Irving felt he was specially prepared, to teach his prophetic and apocalyptic speculations to the leading figures of the age. However, he faced a fire of criticism from pamphlets, newspapers and reviews for his volume of Orations, published in 1823. Irving was certain that based on numerology derived from the Book Of Revalations mankind had entered the last days and Christ would return soon. Irving's passionate oratory brought him great popularity and his congregation grew so much, that in 1827 he moved into the larger Regent Square Church. Irving believed that the early spirituality of the Church had become hardended formulas. As his sermons began to emphasize the supernatural and the imminent return of Christ, Irving faced critcism, especilly on his views concerning the human nature of Christ.

Forerunner of the Catholic Apostolic Church

In 1826 Irving was introduced to the ideas of Manuel Lacunza a Spanish Jesuit who under the assumed Jewish name of Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra had written a book entitled "the Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty". Irving was so taken by the ideas of Lacunza that in he mastered Spanish and in 1827 published a translation of Lacunza's book with a 203 page preface. It was through Irving that Lacunza's theory was introduced to the early leaders of the Plymouth Brethren, whose early leaders such as John Nelson Darby attended one of the conferences on biblical prophecy at Powerscourt House (the home of Lady Powerscourt) and various other localities in County Wicklow from 1830 to 1840. The Letters and Papers of Lady Powerscourt have been published by Chapter Two Publishing Trust, London [[1]].At the time Irving also discussed his ideas millenarianismwith the British poet [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge|Coleridge.

The first stage of his later development, which resulted in the establishment of the Irvingite or Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, in 1832, was associated with conferences at his friend Henry Drummond's seat at Albury concerning unfulfilled prophecy, followed by an almost exclusive study of the prophetical books and especially of the Apocalypse, and by several series of sermons on prophecy both in London and the provinces, his apocalyptic lectures in 1828 more than crowding the largest churches of Edinburgh in the early summer mornings. in 1830, however, there was opened up to his ardent imagination a new vista into spiritual things, a new hope for the age in which he lived, by the seeming actual revival in a remote corner of Scotland of those apostolic gifts of prophecy and healing which he had already in 1828 persuaded himself had only been kept in abeyance by the absence of faith.

At once he welcomed the new powers with an unquestioning evidence which could be shaken by neither the remonstrances or desertion of his dearest friends, the recantation of some of the principal agents of the gifts, his own declension into a comparatively subordinate position, the meagre and barren results of the manifestations, nor their general rejection both by the church and the world. His excommunication by the presbytery of London, in 1830, for publishing his doctrines regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ, and the condemnation of these opinions by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the following year, were secondary episodes which only affected the main issue of his career in so far as they tended still further to isolate him from the sympathy of the church; but the irregularities connected with the manifestation of the gifts gradually estranged the majority of his own congregation, and on the complaint of the trustees to the presbytery of London, whose authority they had formerly rejected, he was declared unfit to remain the minister of the National Scotch Church of Regent Square.

After he and those who adhered to him (describing themselves as of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church) had in 1832 removed to a new building in Newman Street, he was in March 1833 deposed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland by the Presbytery of Annan on the original charge of heresy. With the sanction of the power he was now after some delay reordained chief pastor of the church assembled in Newman Street, but unremitting labours and ceaseless spiritual excitement soon completely exhausted the springs of his vital energy. He died, worn out and wasted with labour and absorbing care, while still in the prime of life, on the 7th of December 1834.

Monument

There is a statue of Edward Irving in the grounds of Annan Old Parish Church in Dumfriesshire.

Bibliography

The writings of Edward Irving published during his lifetime were:

• For the Oracles of God, Four Orations (1823)
• For Judgment to come (1823)
• Babylon and Infidelity foredoomed (1826)
• Sermons, etc. (3 vols, 1828)
• Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1831)
• an introduction to The Coming of the Messiah, a translation of Ben-Ezra
• an introduction to Horne's Commentary on the Psalms.

His collected works were published in 5 volumes, edited by Gavin Carlyle. The Life of Edward Irving, by Mrs Oliphant, appeared in 1862 in 2 vols. Among a large number of biographies published previously, that by Washington Wilks (1854) has some merit. See also Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age; Coleridge's Notes on English Divines; Carlyle's Miscellanies, and Carlyle's Reminiscences, vol. 1. (1881).

For further reading

• Gordon Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving; London, 1973.
• Dallimore, Arnold, The Life of Edward Irving, the Fore-runner of the Charismatic Movement, Edinburgh, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1983. ISBN 0-85151-369-7, (188pp).
• Stunt, Timothy C.F., From Awakening to Secession, Radical Evangelicals in Switzerland and Britain 1815-35, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 2000. ISBN 0-567-08719-0, (402pp).
• Warfield, B. B., Counterfeit Miracles, Banner of Truth, 1996. ISBN 0-85151-166-X. Note: this book is not exclusively about Edward Irving, but discusses him and his ministry critically.

External links

• Significant Scots - Edward Irving
• Collected Works of Edward Irving Edited by Gavin Carlyle Vol 2, Vol 3
• The Life Of Edward Irving by Margaret Oliphant Vol 1 & Vol 2

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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