William Kelly
William Kelly was an amazing scholar in the 19th century and the turn of the 20th Century. William Kelly was born in 1821 in northern Ireland to Episcopalian parents. After being left fatherless early in life, he supported himself by teaching on the island of Sark. He graduated with classical honors from Trinity College, Dublin. He joined the Plymouth Brethren around 1840. He was a gifted writer, biblical expositor and active in New Testament Greek textual criticism. His textual work was certainly in a conservative light. Unlike one of his mentors JN Darby, he had a very clear and easy to understand writing style. It is remarkable that he had the task of translating so much of John Nelson Darby's wrtings. Darby was notorious for not writing in a smooth flowing style, at least in English. Reading a sentence from Darby takes a really good long term memory. He may start on an idea at the beginning of a sentence and then wander around through the forest before he gets back to where he started. The paragraphs below are from books in my library that summarize William Kelly's work.
William Kelly was a close associate of John Darby, serving as the primary translator and editor of Darby's writings. He was considered almost a clone of Darby and effectively continued the dispensational theological tradition among the Brethren movement[1].
Regarding the new covenant, Kelly held a nuanced view. He argued that Christians do not have the new covenant itself, but they do have its foundational blood. He believed the new covenant is specifically tied to Israel's future blessing, and while Christians have received some of its spiritual aspects (like having God's law written in their hearts and sins forgiven), they also have unique blessings not promised to Israel, such as the Holy Spirit's presence and union with Christ in heaven [1].
Kelly viewed dispensations as revealing God's principles and interactions with humanity. He observed that in each dispensation, humans consistently failed in their responsibilities, and there was no restoration of a dispensation, though God's grace might temporarily sustain it[2].
Throughout his life until his death in 1906, Kelly was revered as a sound teacher, continuously defending what he considered truth and particularly opposing higher criticism[3]. He was instrumental in introducing a new form of Premillennialism that was closely tied to Dispensationalism in the mid-19th century[4].
Mike Stallard, "The Interpretation of the New Covenant in the History of Traditional Dispensationalism," in Dispensational Understanding of the New Covenant, ed. Mike Stallard (Arlington Heights, IL: Regular Baptist Books, 2018), 83-84.
Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Dispensationalism, Rev. and expanded. (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1995), 78-79.
Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908-1914), 97.
L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 710.
