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Monday, August 30, 2010

Plymouth Brethren

Are any of the contributors to this blog Brethren?
By halo on La Paulina Commedia on 8/29/10


This is a recent question on an ancient post, so I’ll answer it here.

To my knowledge, none of the bloggers at Tblog is Plymouth Brethren. Mind you, I don’t ask folks what church they attend when I invite them to join. I judge them by their general theological orientation.

Tblog has at least one Plymouth Brethren site on the blogroll. Although I disagree with Plymouth Brethren polity, inasmuch as I do think the NT teaches church office, albeit a barebones variety, the Plymouth Brethren represent an honorable theological tradition. On the high church/low church continuum, I myself am clearly near the low church end of the spectrum.

The Plymouth Brethren represent a limiting case of Protestant polity. I wouldn’t go quite that far myself. On the other hand, church office in many evangelical churches often more specialized than what we find in the NT.

4 comments:

  1. Just as an aside, one Plymouth Brethren who has been doing some fine apologetics work these days is John Lennox.

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  2. But the best of the PB is David Gooding, a tremendous teacher and writer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Willoughby_Gooding

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  3. Although he would deny being "Plymouth Brethren" (as I would also deny it of him and myself), George Muller has still had a great influence on the "Brethren movement" and I would consider his works and life testimony the greatest of the movement. Also Anthony Norris Groves and Bill MacDonald has been very influential.

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