E. W. Bullinger
Ethelbert William Bullinger (15 December 1837 – 6 June 1913) was an Anglican clergyman, biblical scholar, and ultradispensationalist theologian. Early life. He was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, the youngest of five children of William and Mary (Bent) Bullinger. His family traced their ancestry back to Heinrich Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer. His formal theological training was at King's College London from 1860 to 1861, and he earned an associate degree. After graduation, on 15 October 1861, he married Emma Dobson, 13 years his senior. He later received a Doctor of Divinity in 1881 not from a university  but from Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, who cited Bullinger's "eminent service in the Church in the department of Biblical criticism". Career. Bullinger's career in the Church of England spanned from 1861 to 1888. He began as associate curate in the parish of St. Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, in 1861, and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1862. He served as parish curate in Tittleshall (1863–1866), Notting Hill (1866–1869), Leytonstone, (1869–1870) and Walthamstow until he became vicar of the new parish of St. Stephen's in 1874. He resigned his vicarage in 1888 . Trinitarian Bible Society. In the spring of 1867, at the age of 29, Bullinger became clerical secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society, which he held, with rare lapses for illness in his later years, until his death, in 1913. The society's accomplishments of TBS during his secretariat include the following: Bullinger and Ginsburg parted ways, and another edition of Tanakh was published by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Author. Bullinger was editor of a monthly journal "Things to Come", subtitled "A 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 the Victorian era, he belonged to the Low Church, rather than the High 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-untranscribed Breton hymns on his visits to Trémel, Brittany. He also published “Fifty original hymn-tunes” in 1874 which reached a third edition in 1897. The  first, , is the only still in use today, often sung to the words “I am trusting Thee, Lord Jesus”. Friends. Bullinger's friends included well-known Zionist Dr. Theodor Herzl. It was a personal friendship, but accorded with Bullinger's belief in a Biblical distinction between the Church and the Jewish people. Another close personal and theological friend was the famous Sir Robert Anderson. Bullingerism. 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 as Bullingerism. Noted dispensationalist Harry A. Ironside (1876–1951) declared  Bullingerism an "absolutely Satanic perversion of the truth." 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." He lists seven dispensations: Other views. Other than ultradispensationalism, Bullinger had many unique 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, and  that Jesus was crucified on a single upright stake without crossbar with four, not just two, criminals and that this last view was supported by a group of five crosses of different origins (all with crossbar) in Brittany (put together in the 18th century). Bullinger argued for mortality of the soul, the cessation of the soul between death and resurrection. He did not express any views concerning the final state of the lost, but many of his followers hold to annihilationism. 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. In his book "Number in Scripture" he expounded his belief in the gematria or numerology values of words in Scripture (names and terms), a concept of which the "Encyclopædia Britannica" says: "Numerology sheds light on the innermost workings of the human mind but very little on the rest of the universe." He strongly opposed the theory of evolution and held that Adam was created in 4004 BC. He was a member of the Universal Zetetic Society, a group dedicated to believing and promoting the idea that the earth is flat, and on 7 March  1905, he chaired a meeting in Exeter Hall, London, in which the flat earth theory was expounded. Works. List of works