The Accidental Restorer

PART 1

The digital age in which we live gives us access to an amount of information unprecedented in human history. In a matter of seconds a person can download an entire book onto their Kindle device; for example, today’s Christian might elect to download Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life or Joyce Meyer’s Battlefield of the Mind. Just as our modern society advanced technologically from the computer-driven Digital Revolution, the 18th Century Industrial Revolution enabled the mass production of items that previously took weeks to months to produce. With specific regard to literature, a secondary revolution which has been called the Second Printing Revolution streamlined corporate mass distribution of books into the hands an eager and increasingly literate society. Steam powered printing presses, mechanized paper making, automated typesetting and new binding/illustration techniques represented a quantum leap that allowed newspapers and books to be mass-produced, giving birth to modern mass media in the form of numerous newspaper companies and cheap paperback material.

Taking advantage of this new sensational technology, evangelical publishers flooded the British market with a vast number of books for the general public in Victorian England, including pocket-sized, modernized versions of the wildly popular Autobiography of Madame Guyon. Her autobiography became highly fashionable as an essential handbook for earnest Christians seeking a closer connection to God, and it was her book that played a pivotal role in the development of William Irvine’s ministry. Perhaps you might say her book “went viral”.

Madame Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon was a controversial 17th Century Catholic mystic from France. She was inspired by Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos who wrote in his 1675 workThe Spiritual Guide about the “annihilation of the soul’s powers” as the ultimate avenue to internal peace and direct access to God. This inspired a movement called Quietism. Madame Guyon took this concept and put it into simple, highly accessible French vernacular in books like A Short and Easy Method of Prayer. She taught that any everyday believer (not just clergy) could achieve an “annihilated self” through quiet, interior surrender of the will. It was this accessible, mass-market translation of an old medieval concept that ultimately caught the attention of 19th-century Protestants like William Irvine. He essentially was reading a paperback bestseller, not dissimilar to a Max Lucado book you might purchase while waiting to check out at grocery store.

Madam Guyon was controversial because throughout history many mystic writers have been viewed with suspicion by the Catholic Church. In this regard Guyon is in the same distinguished company as St. Joan of Arc, St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross - all of whom, at one time or another, were investigated and sometimes persecuted by Church authorities. She promoted “pray reading”, where the believer prayerfully meditates on the Scriptures to foster an inward, passive surrender to God’s will. In her book A Short and Easy Method of Payer she advised pausing while reading as soon as one felt the touch of the Holy Spirit. Rather than analyzing the text intellectually the reader was meant to "sink into" a state of silent, loving communion with God.

From the Catholic Church’s perspective, discernment of spirits is a practical dilemma. Guyon’s support of the “Annihilated Self”, where a believer completely surrenders their mind, logic and will so that God can control them directly meant that it was difficult for the Church to determine if a mystic’s visions were genuinely from God, the product of psychological delusion, or even deception by a demon. The Church was concerned that this could lead to moral laxity, where a person might claim they are no longer responsible for their actions, making sin impossible. They were also concerned that having such “direct access” to God would lead people conclude they no longer needed the institutional church with its sacraments. As a result their default response, often Draconian in scope, was always skepticism and rigorous interrogation until proven otherwise.

150 years after she wrote her Autobiography, American theologian Thomas Cogswell Upham wrote The Life and Religious Opinions and Experience of Madame de la Motte Guyon. His biography was widely reprinted and devoured by British Evangelicals, Methodists, and Anglicans. He deliberately portrayed her as a proto-Protestant hero who fought institutional corruption. As a result her writings became deeply influential as moral and spiritual instruction to 19th Century Protestants including the Keswick and “Higher Life” movements who adapted her theology into a practical framework through multiple versions of devotional literature, heavily shaping the idea of sanctification by faith and person holiness. For example, after stripping away all that troublesome papist theology, books like A.B. Earle’s The Rest of Faith took Guyon’s concept of soul-passivity and rebranded it as “Victorian Holy Rest” where believers were taught to stop struggling against sin through self-effort and instead rest entirely in Christ’s power. Her emphasis on the complete annihilation of the self-will was translated into the Keswick pillar of “absolute surrender” in the book The Surrendered Will by Hanna Whitall Smith, whose other book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life was a massive bestseller teaching that the Christian life should be one of continuous, effortless inward victory rather than constant moral struggle.

In Guyon’s Autobiography (chapter 29), while facing intense uncertainty she opened her Bible for spiritual guidance as she was considering leaving Paris. This was the passage that was so influential for William Irvine. Attempting to overcome her despair, and trusting that her "annihilated self" would allow God to guide her hand directly for some form of divine guidance, she opened her Bible and “met with this passage in Isaiah”::

“One day reflecting humanly on this undertaking of mine, I found my faith staggering, weakened with a fear lest I were under a mistake, which slavish fear was increased by an ecclesiastic at our house, who told me it was a rash and ill-advised design. Being a little discouraged, I opened the Bible, and met with this passage in Isaiah, "Fear not thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel. I will help thee saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the holy one of Israel." and near it, "Fear not; for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee."

Although the idea of opening the Bible randomly may sound unusual today, it was a culturally normalized practice among 19th-century British Evangelicals, Methodists, and Plymouth Brethren. This was a well-established Victorian tradition of sortes biblicae, or "scriptural lot-casting” as a means to achieve a superior tier of spiritual existence. One popular practice for families on New Year’s Day would be for them to open the Bible randomly and interpret the first visible verse as an important prediction for the upcoming year. Another method was to stand the book on its spine and let the covers fall open, or flip randomly to a page. With closed eyes, they would drop their finger on the text and interpret the resulting passage as a direct message from God.

William Irvine was no different than other people of his time, he was heavily influenced by the sociological factors surrounding him. He lived during a time of populist backlash against institutional modernism and a cultural obsession with Victorian “holiness”. Many Protestants felt that the Higher Criticism (historical-critical) style of theology was draining the supernatural power of the Christian faith. This led to the rise of anti-clericalism and independent sects with revivalist motivations such as the Plymouth Brethren and Salvation Army and the Keswick Conventions. At a time when entering the formal ministry required money in addition usually to having high social standing and academic degrees, a working-class person with no institutional power like William Irvine would have been quite receptive to the idea of bypassing the elitist educational and social requirements of the late Victorian Era.

In her book Preserving the Truth, Cherie Kropp-Ehrig proves that William Irvine read Guyon’s book and “discovered” his mission from God. Her book, along with Kevin Daniel’s book Reinventing the Truth, should be required reading for all people associated with the 2×2 Fellowship. Quoting from Irvine’s own personal correspondence, she relays his statement:

“Thirty years come June, the Lord gave me Isaiah 41…It was in June 1895, that I bowed my head and asked the Lord to give me encouragement as He had given Madam Su Yen (sic should be Madame Jeanne Guyon), whose book I was reading.  She opened the Book and put her finger on this spot, and when I opened my Book, it was at the same place.  So much was I surprised, that I was ashamed to take it.  But after reassuring myself that there was no trickery in the matter, I wrote my name and date down, little dreaming that it would all come so clear before me today, with all its glorious detail, which is impossible for me to doubt now.” (Irvine’s letter to Edwards, March 3, 1924, Telling the Truth.info)

There were several English translations of Guyon’s Autobiography by June 1895, so it is likely that this is the specific book Irvine was reading. As a ferociously devout, working-class Scot, he despised the modernist churches, so following mystics like Guyon allowed believers to bypass the clergy and seek a radical spiritual abandonment with God. Guyon, who was famously persecuted by the religious Catholic authorities of France, provided the perfect historical template for Irvine to feel as if he had just received a divine mandate directly from God above to break away from all traditional church structures to start his own independent, itinerant ministry by landing on the exact same Bible passage. As Kropp-Ehrig succinctly puts it, “Irvine believed God had called him to protest the evils of Christendom” (29)

PART 2

As described above, Madame Guyon's Autobiography contains an instance during a period of uncertainty or spiritual distress, she opened Scripture and interpreted the passage she encountered as a direct, divine answer to her circumstances. This is consistent with the historic practice of sortes biblicae ("scriptural lot-casting”). According to the transcription of that letter written by William Irvine in 1924, he acknowledged that he sought divine guidance from God “as He had given Guyon” by opening Scripture at random, and he believed that the passage that appeared was a prophetic message from God in all its “glorious detail”. In doing this, his claim of extraordinary divine guidance represents a rejection of the traditional interpretive authority of the historic Church and much of Protestantism. If he believed that God privately told him the “protest the evils of Christendom”, the very foundation of his authority to do so depends largely on the legitimacy of the method by which he claimed to receive such a directive. So, if it can be demonstrated that the methods he employed were contrary to Scripture, then the foundation of his authority is undermined, if not wholly disqualified.

Necromancy is the practice of divination by communicating with the spirits of the dead. In its essence, sortes biblicae is a form of bibliomancy, which is the practice of seeking guidance by opening a book to a random page. The reader interprets the randomly selected passage as a harbinger of the future or an answer to a specific question. It is an ancient practice, as there are examples of sortes Virgilianae and sortes Homericae, where people opened randomly the books of Virgil or Homer to attempt to discover the future. For reference, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were composed around 750 B.C.

Bibliomancy is itself a form of divination because it is an attempt to gain hidden knowledge or to predict the future through supernatural means other than seeking God. The Bible explicitly condemns divination as a sin because it bypasses God's authority and relies on potentially deceptive spiritual forces as a means of discovering God’s will. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 says “Neither let there be found among you any one that shall expiate his son or daughter, making them to pass through the fire: or that consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams and omens, neither let there be any wizard, nor charmer, nor any one that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune tellers, or that seeketh the truth from the dead.   For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations he will destroy them at thy coming.” Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah said, “For thus saith the Lord of hosts the God of Israel: Let not your prophets that are in the midst of you, and your diviners deceive you” (Jer 29:8, see also Lev 19:26, Is 8:19-20, Ez 13:6-9).

The Protestant Reformers emphasized the principle of the perspicuity of Scripture and testing subjective impressions against Scripture as interpreted according to its grammatical and historical context. It is the idea that the Bible’s message regarding salvation and essential Christian living is sufficiently clear and coherent by “due use of ordinary means”. William Irvine using randomly selected verses for individualized revelation does not fit within this principle. You cannot treat isolated verses as your own personal oracle, even if you are affirming God's providence in bringing passages to mind. Furthermore, it matters little that the Old Testament prohibitions were against pagan practices - it is the method, rather than the object consulted, that is the problem. If someone expects God to reveal His will through a random mechanism, the Bible is being treated as an oracle rather than as sacred Scripture.

In his letter William Irvine admitted to intentionally reenacting Guyon’s same devotional practice but Scripture is meant to be thoughtfully and prayerfully interpreted, not randomly consulted. Once the expectation is that randomness itself becomes God's chosen means of communication to His people, it invites total subjectivism. As a result there is no objective method for distinguishing between coincidence and God’s Providence, no reliable way to discern whether your thoughts represent wishful thinking or divine intervention. This means the owner of the random pointed finger in question determines which verse is used, how literally or metaphorically the passage is to be understood, and for how long and under what circumstances - which in Irvine’s cause was unmistakably self-serving. Instead of asking himself “What did Isaiah mean?", he tried to cut to the front of the hermeneutical line by asking "What does the first verse I happen to randomly open mean for my future?" Given his personality and strong anti-clerical prejudice, it should be unsurprising that, instead of believing that God desired a deeper relationship with him as he grew in holiness and humility, Irvine adopted a self-aggrandizing posture as the heroic savior of a “corrupt”institutional church.

Scripture provides useful evidence of what God thinks about people trying to manipulate an immediate answer from Him. After the large crowd that had been miraculously fed with the loaves and fishes (Jn 6:30) asked for a sign, Jesus shifted their focus from physical food to eternal life. When the Scribes and Pharisees demanded a sign from Jesus in Matthew 12:38-39, He refused and called them an evil and unfaithful generation. He gave the same answer again in Matthew 16:4. When the Pharisees asked for a sign in Mark 8:11-12 Jesus sighed deeply in His spirit and rebuked their spiritual blindness. When the crowd in Luke 11:16 tested him He gave them a stern warning. When the temple leaders asked for a sign Jesus responded with a cryptic prophecy rather than a physical demonstration (Jn 2:18-19). And when King Herod asked for a sign Jesus simply said nothing at all (Lk 23:8-9).

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve’s sin was they didn’t trust God, believing the serpent's lie that God was withholding something beneficial from them, which led them to assert their own will over His command to avoid the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Instead of being content to remain subordinate creatures dependent on their Creator, they attempted to elevate themselves to “be like God” (Gen 3:5). This is very different from the way Jesus addressed the disciples’ curiosity about the future just before His triumphant Ascension, telling them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority.” (Act 1:7)

In contrast, Jesus praised those who trust in Him without signs. When Thomas finally believed after physically touching the holes in His hands and side Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn 20:24-19. Also, He explicitly praised the Roman centurion whose faith operated strictly on the authority of His word without needing to physically see a miraculous action taking place (Lk 7:9). Given these clear scriptural examples, William Irvine would have been better served to recall Jesus’s words to Satan during His temptation in the desert, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test” (Mt 4:7). The Bible consistently teaches discernment through prayer, obedience, counsel, and meditation. It was written to reveal God's nature, moral laws, and plan of salvation - not to give daily predictions or to answer trivial personal questions. Practicing bibliomancy replaces wisdom with a chance roll of the dice. It looks for a shortcut by trying to bypass God and become master of one’s future which contradicts the honor and respect we owe to God alone.

Finally, for all of Irvine’s fanatical adherence to Matthew Chapter 10, he overlooked the fact that the Apostles never promoted bibliomancy. They quoted Scripture constantly, yet there is no example in the New Testament of an Apostle opening the Book of Isaiah randomly or seeking guidance from random scripture passages. This is because Apostles, perhaps unlike Irvine, understood the difference between divination and discernment. Practicing divination by bibliomancy represents a disordered desire to exert control, whereas true spiritual discernment seeks compliance. Divination tries to force God to reveal the future to alleviate human anxiety, whereas discernment asks God for the grace to accept His will, whatever that might be. Divination is transactional, treating spiritual tools like some short of cosmic vending machine where a button can be pushed to receive an answer.

In short, divination demands signs, discernment looks for fruits (peace, joy, charity, etc).

In summary, William Irvine claimed a restorationist authority by assuming that God personally directed him to rescue the “corrupt” Christian church; however, his approach to discerning God's will reflected his wider tendency to borrow from the Protestant revivalist milieu that surrounded him and formed his opinions, whether he was aware of it or not. In deliberately copying a popular Victorian Era fad of bibliomancy, he departed from biblical Christianity and simply echoed the 19th Century Higher Life traditions of men. As a result, the burden of proof for legitimacy rested on him, not the Christian church of the times, to prove that his message was authentic, not accident.

Kropp-Ehrig, C. (2022). Preserving the truth: The church without a name and its founder, William Irvine. Clarion Call Publishing, p. 29.