E. W. Bullinger | |
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| Born | Ethelbert William Bullinger 15 December 1837 Canterbury,Kent, England |
| Died | 6 June 1913(1913-06-06) (aged 75) London, England |
| Education | King's College London (1860–1861) |
| Occupation(s) | Clergyman, Biblical scholar, and theologian |
| Known for | The Companion Bible |
| Relatives | Heinrich Bullinger,Johann Balthasar Bullinger |
Ethelbert William BullingerAKC (15 December 1837 – 6 June 1913) was anAnglican clergyman, biblical scholar, andultradispensationalist theologian.
He was born inCanterbury,Kent,England, the youngest of five children of William and Mary (Bent) Bullinger.[1] His family traced their ancestry back toHeinrich Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer andJohann Balthasar Bullinger, a Swiss painter.[2]
His formal theological training was atKing's College London from 1860 to 1861, and he earned an associate degree.[3] After graduation, on 15 October 1861, he married Emma Dobson, 13 years his senior.[4] He later received a Doctor of Divinity in 1881 not from a university but fromArchibald Campbell Tait,Archbishop of Canterbury, who cited Bullinger's "eminent service in the Church in the department ofBiblical criticism".[5]
Bullinger's career in theChurch of England spanned from 1861 to 1888. He began as associatecurate in theparish of St. Mary Magdalene,Bermondsey, in 1861,[4] and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1862.[6] He served as parish curate inTittleshall (1863–1866),Notting Hill (1866–1869),Leytonstone, (1869–1870) andWalthamstow until he becamevicar of the new parish of St. Stephen's in 1874. He resigned his vicarage in 1888.[7]
In the spring of 1867, at the age of 29, Bullinger became clerical secretary of theTrinitarian Bible Society, which he held, with rare lapses for illness in his later years, until his death, in 1913.[8]
The society's accomplishments during his secretariat include the following:
Bullinger and Ginsburg parted ways, and another edition of Tanakh was published by theBritish and Foreign Bible Society.
Bullinger was editor of a monthly journalThings to Come, subtitledA Journal of Biblical Literature, with Special Reference to Prophetic Truth. The Official Organ of Prophetic Conferences for over 20 years (1894–1915), and he contributed many articles.
In the great Anglican debate of theVictorian era, he belonged to theLow Church, rather than theHigh Church.
He wrote four major works:
As of 2020, those works and many others remain in print, or at least are reproduced on the Internet.
Bullinger was also a practiced musician. As part of his support for the Breton Mission, he collected and harmonized several previously-untranscribedBreton Hymns on his visits toTrémel,Brittany. He also published “Fifty original hymn-tunes” in 1874 which reached a third edition in 1897. The first,BULLINGER, is the only one still in use today, often sung to the words “I am trusting Thee, Lord Jesus”.
Bullinger's friends includedZionist Dr.Theodor Herzl.[10]
Bullinger's views were often unique and sometimes controversial. He is so closely tied to what is now called ultradispensationalism that it is sometimes referred to asBullingerism.[11] Bullingerism differed from mainstreamdispensationalism on the beginning of the church. Mainstreamdispensationalism holds that the Church began atPentecost, as described early in theActs of the Apostles. In contrast, Bullinger held thatthe Church, which the Apostle Paul revealed as theBody of Christ, began after the end of Acts,[12] and was not revealed until the Prison Epistles of theApostle Paul.[13] DispensationalistHarry A. Ironside (1876–1951) declared Bullingerism an "absolutely Satanic perversion of the truth."[14]
Bullinger described dispensations as divine "administrations" or "arrangements" under which God deals at distinct time periods and with distinct groups of people "on distinct principles, and the doctrine relating to each must be kept distinct." He emphasizes, "Nothing but confusion can arise from reading into one dispensation that which relates to another."[15] He lists seven dispensations:
| Dispensational Scheme of Bullinger | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edenic state of Innocence | Period "without law" | Period under the Law | Period of Grace | Epoch of Judgment | Millennial Age | The Eternal State of Glory |
| Genesis 1-3 ended with the expulsion from Eden | Genesis 4 to Exodus 19 ended with the flood and judgment on Babel | Exodus 20 to Acts 28 ended at the rejection by Israel of the grace of God at the end of Acts | Church History will end at the Day of the Lord | Tribulation will end at the destruction of the Antichrist | Rev 20:4-6 will end with the destruction of Satan | Rev 20-22 will not end |
Other than ultradispensationalism, Bullinger had many unusual views. For example, Bullinger argued that the death of Jesus occurred on a Wednesday, not a Friday, after Pilate had condemned him at the previous midnight,[16] and that Jesus was crucified on a single upright stake without crossbar[17] with four, not just two, criminals and held that this last view was supported by agroup of five crosses of different origins (all with crossbar) in Brittany (put together in the 18th century).[18]
Bullinger argued formortality of the soul, the cessation of the soul between death and resurrection.[19] He did not express any views concerning the final state of the lost, but many of his followers hold toannihilationism.
Bullinger was a supporter of the theory of the Gospel in the Stars, which states the constellations to be pre-Christian expressions of Christian doctrine.[20][21][22][23] In his bookNumber in Scripture he expounded his belief in thegematria ornumerology values of words in Scripture (names and terms), a concept of which theEncyclopædia Britannica says: "Numerology sheds light on the innermost workings of the human mind but very little on the rest of the universe."[24] He strongly opposed thetheory of evolution[25] and held that Adam was created in 4004 BC.[26] He was a member of theUniversal Zetetic Society, a group dedicated to believing and promoting the idea that the earth is flat,[27][28][29] and on 7 March 1905, he chaired a meeting inExeter Hall,London, in which the flat earth theory was expounded.[30][31][32]
As Dr. E. W. Bullinger so aptly points out in his book,The Story of the Breton Mission, M. Lecoat had returned to a land of a corrupt religion... an organised crusade was begun to graft the Romish religion on to that of the Druids. Many of the tall-standing stones were transformed into crosses, but, where the stone was too hard for the mason's chisel, crosses and crucifixes were fastened to them. Dr. Bullinger tells how that in one vear no less than five thousand were so transformed by the then Bishop ofSt. Pol de Leon.
"all the truth"...was reserved, and not permitted to be revealed, until the public proclaiming of "the kingdom" had ended, after the close of the "Acts". (See Notes on the Epp., specially Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.) Then, when "blindness in part is happened to Israel" (Romans 11:25), "the church which is His body" (Ephesians 1:22, 23) began to be formed "to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:6, and Note on 15:14)
It is ignorance of this Divinely given standard that results in the deplorable attempts to "square" the teachings of our Lord in the Gospels, which concern the kingdom of heaven (Ap. 114) and the Jewish Polity, with the teaching of Paul the apostle and bondservant of Jesus Christ in the Church Epistles. And so, when it is found that they cannot be "squared", we have the unseemly utterances and procedure of those who throw over the "Pauline doctrine", as they term it, in favor of "the teaching of Jesus", with contemptuous references to "the Hellenistic tendencies of Paul's mind", &c.; and such statements as "the Master's words must be preferred to a disciple's; "we must get back to Jesus", and so on.
Having had most intimate acquaintance with Bullingerism as taught by many for the last forty years, I have no hesitancy in saying that its fruits are evil. It has produced a tremendous crop of heresies throughout the length and breadth of this and other lands, it has divided Christians and wrecked churches and assemblies without number; it has lifted up its votaries in intellectual and spiritual pride to an appalling extent, so that they look with supreme contempt upon Christians who do not accept their peculiar views; and in most instances where it has been long tolerated, it has absolutely throttled Gospel effort at home and sown discord on missionary fields abroad. So true are these things of this system that I have no hesitancy in saying it is an absolutely Satanic perversion of the truth.
Nothing but confusion can arise from reading into one dispensation that which relates to another. To connect with God said and did in one dispensation with another, in which His administration was on an altogether different principle, is to ensure error. And finally, to take doctrine of late revelation and read it into the time when it was "hidden" leads to disaster. The nations, Israel the Chosen Nation, and the church (Ap 186) are each dealt with in distinct "times" and on distinct principles, and the doctrine relating to each must be kept distinct.
Mislead by tradition and the ignorance of Scripture on the part of medieval painters, it is the general belief that only two were crucified with the Lord. But Scripture does not say so... it is clear [from cited Scriptural evidence] that there were four "others" crucified with the Lord.... To show that we are not without evidence, even from tradition, we may state that there is a "Calvary" to be seen atPloubezere nearLannion, in theCotes-du-Nord, Brittany, known as Les Cinq Croix ("The Five Crosses"). There is a high cross in the center, with four lower ones, two on either side.
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