Edward Irving: an interpretation of his life and theological teaching

Abstract

Jesus Christ had become a figure, remote and speculat¬ ive, to many minds in the early Nineteenth Century. Chris¬ tianity was either a code of ethics or a quasi-political creed of human achievement, and the Church the refuge of respectability and material success. For Irving the exist¬ ing expression of religious truth was a shattering rebuke. All his efforts, thinking and writing became an attempt to break through to reality and yet not depart from foundation beliefs and doctrines. Like all reformers he looked back as well as forward. The faith once delivered to the saints was real enough. It was a new and fresh understanding and interpretation which was of urgent moment. His recurring claim to orthodoxy was not a smoke screen to cover erratic and esoteric thought, but an honest proclamation of essential truth.

To-day we may find it difficult to sympathise with the extremes of opinion which beat about his brief life, and we may puzzle at the arguments which sometimes he developed at such length, but his instinct was right if his conclusions were on occasion wrong. An ethereal Christ just as much as a human Jesus was no answer to man's need, and no answer to man's essential problem. It is to Irving's credit that he sought to do for his generation, what still remains to be done for ours: to preach a Christ who will satisfy mail's longing, inspire his devotion, and make whole his life. No Theology can square with present problems and bring alive religious belief which does not humanize the Christ of God and make Divine the Jesus of History. Irving was a lot nearer truth than his judges were. It remains the task of tiiis generation to clarify the issues which he raised, and to make vivid and strong the doctrines which he drew out of the shades of unbelief and obscurity.

There is a spot near Haddington which was once known as Irving?s leap. Irving was always leaping further than he could see, and higher than it was safe. That was at once his glory and his undoing. He does, however, point to the place from whence we must leap, and he has described as nearly as is humanly possible the place of our arrival. Dr. George MacLeod has recently asked,

"When will all of us in the Church recover again the 235 faith that God cam© in a body and rose in a body to give body to holiness? When we do multitudes who to¬ day are careless, will want to crucify us, but other multitudes will want to join us, just because at last both multitudes will know we really care, as a Man cares".

Irving would have denied that at any stage in his life, he was a rebel against the Church, but he was always a 3harp critic of its ways and manners. He did, however, believe that the STRUCTURE of its life required change. He brought to sharp focus the question which faces us just as urgently to-day - how to reform the Church frora within. He failed to keep a foothold within orthodoxy, and it remains to be seen whether reformation is possible without the forced or chosen excommunication of the Individual reformer. What Irving meant by the Church's structure, was its ministry, its government and its economy. Within a few years of his death the Disruption of the Church in Scotland was proof enough of Ms right Instinct. He was moved to challenge the prevailing conception of the Ministry, not primarily because it was inadequate for Its work, but because it did not conform to Biblical Teaching. While he held a high

In the previous chapter we briefly considered Irving's many writings which ccane under the heading "Prophecy". Signs are not wanting of a revival of interest in these, as indeed in Irving himself as a theologian. Modern preoccupation 237 with a Christian Philosophy of History must lead to a closer examination of vshat Irving was searching after in the many pages which he wrote under this heading. It Is possible that Irving's claim to a place among Scotland's great theologians may yet be upheld when these comparatively un¬ known works are tested and more clearly understood. What stands out as a beacon In all his preaching and teaching, is that Theology is no intellectual exercise governed solely by reason and a scrutiny of Holy Scripture and amplified by the ancient Creeds, but something deeply rooted in life, always in transition, and afire with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - the expression of the Mind of Christ in this period of the time between the times - between the time of Christ's coming in flesh and His coming again In glory.