Alexander Campbell’s “Synopsis of Reform”

THE PLACE OF THE SCRIPTURES IN RESTORATION

Alexander Campbell had considerable to say about the relationship of the Bible to the task of restoration, the sacred work that was so close to his heart. In his day a discovery of the role of the scriptures was made difficult by the place gained by various creeds, It was a matter not only of restoring the Bible to its authoritative position but of exposing the creeds as divisive and sectarian.

In our day it is different as we attempt to explain the role of the Bible in reference to such ecumenical concerns as unity and evangelism. Creeds still exist of course, but they can hardly any longer be pointed to as the cause of division. Our problems in reference to the place of the Bible are much more serious, for there are now divergent views regarding inspiration, revelation and interpretation. In many communions the Bible simply is not accepted with the significance that it once was. The century since Campbell has given us modern biblical criticism, which has challenged some of the orthodox views of the Bible. Even within the larger brotherhood of Restoration churches we have those who not only reject the verbal inspiration of the scriptures, but to whom psychology, sociology and human experience are viewed as reliable sources for the word of God as the Bible itself.

In the other direction are those who are naive enough to suggest that the Bible only need be read to be understood, that “It says what it means and means what it says,” and is in no need of interpretation. The answer to our divisions thus becomes a simple Take the Bible for what it says. It is noteworthy that those who talk this way the most are as eager as any to give their explanations of what the Bible means. Seldom are they satisfied merely to pass out Bibles to folk. They choose rather to spend huge sums of money to see to it that one of their men is on hand to make sure that the Bible is understood the way they understand it.

This evil is compounded by the phony notion that in some way we have become infallible guardians of the Scriptures. Many of our folk believe that only our preachers really understand the Bible, that others simply are incapable of interpreting correctly. Our rather extensive use of “sectarian” commentaries does not really contradict this fact, for even here the one who consults Clarke, or Barnes, or Barclay has those areas blocked off in his mind in which such scholars are not reliable and cannot be expected to be right. Of course he has to be wrong if he says anything other than what Churches of Christ have always taught.

Even more serious is the idea emerging in our own ranks, as it has long prevailed generally, that only the professionally trained preacher or professor is a reliable exponent of the Word. There is an increasing number of complaints from “laymen”, who have long been close students of the Bible, that the college-trained preacher, and especially the visiting professor from Abilene or Nashville, resents being questioned about anything at all either in a class or what he says from the pulpit. This is further evidence that the clergy system is becoming solidified in our own ranks, and with this of course come the assumed clerical prerogatives.

To all this may be added the problem of a kind of bibliolatry that sees the Bible as a book of magic, as if most any problem can be solved if enough passages are brought to bear. We thus rely more on print than on a Person. It was a baby that God gave to save the world, not a book; but some of us worship the book more than the Person. We have succeeded in making “True to the Bible” mean something different from “True to Christ.”

It is not surprising, therefore, that in our efforts to heal our divisive wounds there are more references to the Bible being the basis of unity than to the Christ. The implication is that we can unite upon a book, whereas the truth must be that it is only in a Person that oneness will ever be realized. The Bible may well be seen as the telescope that brings the Christ into focus in all His glorious reality. The Bible thus introduces us and acquaints us with the Person who can make us one. Filling our minds with biblical doctrines will not do it, however important they may be. Nor does “Taking the Bible for what it says” have any relevance to our problem, for each one has his own idea about what the Bible says, whether instrumental music or congregational cooperation, and he is too often inclined to make his interpretation a test of fellowship and thus preserve his faction.

All this points to a need for a reexamination of the place of scripture in our present efforts. It may be that the judgments of Campbell will prove helpful.

The Bible must be proposed as a book of facts, not of doctrines or opinions. It must be understood and regarded as arranged upon the principle of cause and effect, or that action is to produce corresponding action.

Campbell’s Lockean philosophy shows through when he starts talking about the nature of scripture. A century earlier John Locke, the noted empiricist, began a reformation in philosophy which rejected speculative theories in favor of cool, objective experimentation. The mind is capable of understanding what needs to be understood, Locke argued, if it is not hindered by ambiguous theories and speculations.

So in Campbell’s thinking about the Bible. It is a book that needs to be taught, to be sure, but it is to be taught like any other literature—in terms of its facts, principles, and propositions. He realized that the Bible is a book subject to speculation and theorizing. Opinions may abound about many of its subjects. All this is all right if one will keep such an amusing enterprise to himself and not make it a part of his public teaching. He believed that divisions could be traced to those theories about scripture that were made tests of fellowship.

Campbell employed five key words to describe what may be called a commonsense view of the Bible, which is to say that the Bible is to be read as a newspaper would be read. The words are fact, testimony, faith, feeling, and action. These terms, rightly appropriated in Bible study, would cure many a sectarian ill, he believed.

All five terms apply to the same point in scripture, only from different perspectives. For example, the gift of Jesus is the love of God in fact. When that love of God is reported by the proclamation of the apostles, it is the love of God in testimony. When the apostolic preaching is believed, it is the love of God in faith. The faith arouses gratitude, joy, repentance. This is the love of God in feeling. When one responds to the love of God by obeying the divine precepts, this is the love of God in our action. This is what he means by saying each action is intended to produce a corresponding action. God gives His Son (action) and we respond by obeying the gospel (action).

Campbell explains that a fact is something said or done; testimony is a report of it in words; faith is the belief of those words; feeling is the power of those words; action is the effect of those words.

Thus we have the Bible in terms of cause and effect, for it is the testimony that causes faith, the faith causes feeling, and feeling causes action or obedience. It is this cause and effect principle that makes the Bible different from all philosophical and speculative systems. To see the Bible as facts that set up a cause and effect reaction is to see it as distinct from all theorizing.

Theories and abstract doctrines are matters purely intellectual, Campbell insisted, and are addressed to the understanding rather than to the heart. The facts of scripture, the grand principles and propositions, are, on the contrary, directed to the heart, using the intellect only as a means of reaching the heart.

This approach to scripture could be most helpful in healing our divisions, for Campbell is saying that only those things directed to man’s heart, those facts calculated to illicit a response from man’s feelings, can be the basis of Christian communion.

To run down the list of things that have led to our ugly divisions: instrumental music, societies, cooperative enterprises, classes, cups, millennial theories—is to see that they are hardly related to the facts of the Bible that are directed to the heart of man. They are rather our own preferences and prejudices, opinions and theories.

With this help from Campbell we may issue this as a challenge to our thinking: Nothing is to be made a test of fellowship that is not based upon the facts of scripture that are intended to touch man’s heart and lead him to repentance and obedience.

This conforms to what Campbell has said elsewhere about fellowship being based upon one fact and one act. The event of Christ is of course the one great fact. Obedience by being immersed into Christ is the one great act. This is a shorter version of what he has said above.

The Bible alone, instead of any human creed, as the only rational and solid foundation of Christian union and communion.

While we appreciate this emphasis upon the Bible in reference to Christian unity, we are convinced that it is more accurate to say that it is the Christ revealed in the Bible who is the basis of unity. In view of what Campbell said about the foregoing principle, we conclude that this is what he meant. There was of course union among believers before the New Covenant scriptures were ever written. While the scriptures solidify the union through their comfort and instruction, it is a Person and not a book that makes us one. This is what Campbell is saying when he speaks of our being united on the facts of the Bible, or better still, the great fact of Christ and our response to it.

What Campbell is after in this principle of reform are the creeds that in his day formed the basis of fellowship. He would not have objected to a creed that merely explained or professed and did not legislate. His quarrel was over creeds being made terms of communion. And is not the complaint equally valid in our own day, except that now it is unwritten creeds that brethren bind on each other? If a man places a requirement for fellowship before his brother that God does not make a condition for pardon, then that requirement in his creed. This is the point of Campbell’s principle of looking to the Bible for the ground of union, and not to one’s pet theories about the Bible.

The reading and expounding of the sacred scriptures in public assemblies instead of text preaching, sermonizing, and philosophizing.

It may be on this point that the heirs of Campbell’s movement are most vulnerable, for we are increasingly creating pulpit-centered services and preacher-dominated congregations. We have too many sermonizers and theorists of scripture and not enough expounders of the Word. One only needs to listen carefully to what is said from our pulpits: to realize that the people cannot possibly learn much from what is said. One mainline minister conceded in a recent statement that “The churches in Dallas are suffering from spiritual starvation.” This kind of poverty with our highly paid clergy?

Campbell’s idea was that the one who stands before the congregation should open the word of God, read from its pages at some length, and explain the meaning, relating it to the problems of life. This calls for long and careful study and an understanding of the principles of the Bible, along with a grasp of the historical connections.

He saw the preaching of a sermon, or text preaching, which is so often based on skeleton outlines, as something entirely different. It may perform a ritual but it does little educating, and those who so impose upon an audience need know little about the Bible.

What do our ministers know about the great themes of the book of Isaiah? How often do they expound on the prophetic sections of the Bible? Do they ever read considerable portions of Hebrews or Romans and expound upon the significant subjects of the Christian faith? Do they ever take a book like Philippians, explain its background and develop its great thesis.

In view of what one may witness in listening even to our name preachers in meetings, we may suppose the charge of Campbell has application even to our own situation: “This scheme (of sermonizing) has filled the pulpit with a race of pygmies in the Bible as diminutive as ever lived.”

Renewal comes not only through a recovery of the Bible and it alone as our guide in matters of faith and practice, but through a respect for the scriptures that will make us careful and dedicated students and effective interpreters of the word. Being a successful preacher of sermons could be something entirely different from this.

The right of private opinion in all matters not revealed in contradistinction from the common faith, without the forfeiture of Christian character or Christian privilege.

No one practiced more consistently the principle of the right of private opinion than Alexander Campbell. His own father had strong Calvinistic convictions till his dying day. Some of his closest coworkers, including Barton Stone, had views that called for controversial exchanges, but he never once drew the line of fellowship on a brother who differed with him.

We will all agree with Campbell on the right of private opinion, but we have great difficulty in distinguishing between opinion and faith. We will not allow another brother his opinion on instrumental music, for to us it is a matter of faith. On the other hand we insist on keeping the Sunday School on the ground of our opinion, while to the non-class folk it is a matter of faith.

The way out of this dilemma is found in Campbell’s reference to the common faith. Elsewhere he speaks of it as the faith as distinct from faith. It is true that one man’s opinion is another man’s faith, but it is not the faith or the common faith. Man may have “faith” in eating only vegetables (Rom. 14:2) or “faith” that he should not eat food sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8:7).

In all such areas there is to be liberty of opinion, and this would include the likes of organs, classes, societies. Our “faith” (opinion) about these things will differ from the “faith” (opinion) of others. But the faith transcends all this and makes us one in Christ, despite the differences. The faith is the gospel or the good news: of what God has done for us through Christ. When we believe this and obey it in baptism we are one in Christ. Those won by the gospel are one in Christ.

Once in Christ our different temperaments and backgrounds will lead to wide divergence of opinion about a lot of things. Some of us will believe that clean things are really unclean, and Paul says: “If a man believes that something is unclean, then to him it is unclean.” So what we call his opinion is to him a matter of faith, and is of great importance. But since the faith still makes us one in Christ, we do not allow this to be a serious problem.

There cannot possibly be any other answer to the agony of division. We will never in this world see clean things and unclean things, sinful things and sinless things, alike. Each must be allowed the liberty of his own “faith”, while recognizing that it is the faith that stands as the only condition to Christian fellowship.—the Ed.