Wednesday, December 8, 2021

John Roche in Response to the Moravians (1741): The "Ancient of Days" is God the Father, not Jesus

John Roche, an 18th-century theologian from Dublin, wrote a work critiquing the Moravians. In response to the claim that the “Ancient of Days” was Jesus, not God the Father, Roche wrote:

 

In this Refutation we shall attempt no more than to consider as brief as possible, in recapitulatory Manner, the foregoing Passages quoted from their Writings.

 

First. They say that—"The Ancient of Days is an Infant made." I don't know a Clearer Confutation of this Error than the four of five following Verses in the same Chapter of Daniel where God is called the Ancient of days. I think it is impossible for a Person of common sense to read that Chapter through, without seeing the absolute Distinction, made between the Ancient of Days, and the Son of Man, which is an Appellation there given to Christ, and afterwards specially adapted, to him in the Gospel. (John Roche, Moravian Heresy [Dublin, 1741(*)], 250-51. Roche is responding to John Cennick [1718-1755], Collection of Sacred Hymns, p. 15)

 

While Roche held to the “traditional” interpretation, it does evidence some Moravians (to whom he was responding) held to an alternative interpretation (here, it was Jesus).


(*) some have the publication date as 1641, not 1741, as the Roman numerals in the texts I have examined often have MDXCLI (1641; this caught me out initially until I found out that he was interacting with Cennick who was born in 1718, so the publication date is 1741. Just thought I would share).