THE BELOVED PHYSICIAN ON REFORMATION

One of my favorite writers in Restoration literature is Robert Richardson, who was Alexander Campbell’s physician as well as his biographer. His large two-volume work on the Memoirs of Alexander Campbell has long been the authoritative study on Campbell’s life. He was a co-editor and general associate with Mr. Campbell, conducting his affairs at home during many of his journeys. Richardson’s presence in the village of Bethany was reassuring, and he was known as the beloved physician on horseback, with his top hat and medical case. It was he who was called to the Campbell home in an effort to save young Wycliffe, who was drowned while his father was in Europe, and it was he who ministered to the dying Campbell.

But Richardson is much more than this in Restoration history, for he was an astute thinker, an effective teacher (serving as the first “professor of chemistry” in American education at Bethany College), a minister of the Word, and a writer who probably excelled both of the Campbells. The new science hall at Bethany appropriately bears his name. He had deep insights into the implications of the Movement, and he was more discerning than was Campbell in detecting the hazards. It was he who urged Campbell not to affirm in his debate with Rice that the Spirit operates through the Word alone. He often served as the balance wheel between extreme views, and he was alert to point out that leaders in the Movement sometimes made so much of their opinions as to violate the very principles they were advocating. And during a period when the Holy Spirit was studied only in his role in conversion, it was Richardson who published a book on the work of the Spirit in which he reviewed the Spirit’s mission in the life of the believer.

But this is not intended as a study of Richardson himself, though I did publish an extended piece on The Role of Robert Richardson in the Restoration Movement in the 1961 edition of this journal. It is rather to point to a series of articles he did in the Millennial Harbinger from 1847 to 1850 entitled “Reformation” which extended through 19 installments and dealt with the principles then being promulgated. One will not find a more pungent and reasonable presentation of “our position” than these essays, and those who are interested in republishing the best of our pioneers would do well to consider this. He also has extended treatments, running through several volumes, on such subjects as unity, fellowship, self-improvement, history of the disciples, and even a series on “Christian Knockings.”

The series on reformation (Campbell and Richardson both, as most of our pioneers, used reformation to describe their efforts more than restoration) sets forth many vital principles, often couched in pithy language. That alone which saves men can unite them, said the beloved physician as he discounted the value of theological speculation. Let the Bible be our spiritual library; but let the Gospel be our standard of orthodoxy, he said in distinguishing between the gospel and biblical doctrines, a difference our generation is slow to learn. In this context he points out that the early church could not have united on the “Bible alone,” for it had no Bible, certainly not the New Testament. But it did unite upon the “Gospel alone.”

He also recognized the gradual and progressive nature of reform, that no man or institution is ever completely reformed. It is a relative experience at best, for no mind, however acute, can comprehend at a glance the whole system of divine truth. The doctor here shows his respect for the “eminent and pious of any age” who have struggled for truth. Rather than to reprove or ignore them we should build upon their labors, thankful for the progress they made.

In one essay the doctor observed that reformation must begin in each man’s heart, that spiritual progress is largely a matter of choosing between the materialism of this world and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Heaven attracts him by its glories, or earth deludes him with its toys.

He chided the Protestant world of his day for renouncing papal authority for the sake of individual conscience and then turning creeds and clerics of their own invention for their authority. With what consistency can we reject a decision of the Pope and yet submit to one of the Primate? He strongly insisted that individual liberty can be preserved in a unity that is based upon the pure gospel, consigning all theories and speculation to the area of personal opinion.

But the one principle that he considered most vital to Christian union is a generalization of Christianity. By this he meant a well-balanced acceptance of the whole of Christianity, apart from those peculiarities that disunite and mark out sects. Sectism emerges when people place undue value on some tenets of the Bible to the neglect of others. It is the partial view of things and the elevation of controverted questions to an undeserved conspicuity that has given us partyism, he insisted. So, one can have a sect without adopting any error, but by making too much of what is true in its proper place. Partyism is always worse in proportion as its favorite dogmata are remote from the grand essential features of Christianity.

He also noted that while a truth may be relatively important it does not follow that it is intrinsically important. The important question is not the one Pilate asked, What is truth, but What is the truth? It was to this that Jesus spoke: “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.” The doctor complained that religionists have long asked What is true doctrine?, and whatever was adjudged to be true has been made an article of faith and a test of communion. But they should ask What is the important truth? or What is the gospel?, and make only that the basis of union.

A survey of church history will confirm the doctor’s analysis of the rise of sects on the ground of only partial acceptance of Christianity, with an overemphasis on that which is accepted. This he called sectism through synecdoche. Sects have emerged by “majoring” in missions, baptism, the Holy Spirit, church government, holiness, an exclusive name, the mother of Jesus, ministry of healing, tongues, etc. Even the Bible is some time made an end rather than a means, resulting in bibliolatry . Not many of us have discerned, as did Dr. Richardson, that even a truth can be so overstressed as to be made into an error, which often results in a sect. It is this balance, this generalization of the Christian faith, that the doctor would persuade upon our current Holy Spirit movement.

Reformation’s loftiest principle is love, which, according to the apostle binds everything together in perfect harmony, and the doctor saw significance in Paul’s point that love is even greater than faith. Yet the divines, said he, make “faith” — orthodox belief — greater than love, for they will sacrifice the love that unites and sympathizes for the sake of orthodoxy. He deplored the tragedy of “correct views in religion” being made more important than that love that reaches out and claims a man because he is a beloved brother. He identified one cost of partyism: when the instrument is regarded as greater than the work it is to accomplish, and the means are accounted superior to the end. How often in our own time do we see the grand end of brotherly love sacrificed for the sake of “pure doctrine.”

Richardson could not write at length on reformation without a reference to the principle of sound words, the calling of Bible things by Bible terms. It is in turning from “wholesome words, even the words of the Lord Jesus Christ” that men uphold their opinions and build parties. It is the science of theology that has produced the systems of religion. Each system must have its own nomenclature. “Nature is a revelation of things,” he observed, “but religion is primarily a revelation of words.” In nature man is to find words for things, but in religion he finds things for words. Nature has her sciences, and so words may change to meet the new findings. But in religion, where words reveal things, a change of language necessarily involved a change of things.

By both conviction and temperament a man of peace, Dr. Richardson stressed that the reformation he and others had launched was originally intended, not for destruction, but for conciliation. He regretted that there were so many who rejoiced in skinning the sects, supposing that destruction is reformation. “It is not the mission of the reformation to carry on a crusade against the peculiar opinions or doctrines of any party in particular, or of all parties in general. Such a purpose formed no part of the original plan, but, on the contrary, is directly inconsistent with it, and calculated to pervert its influence and utterly frustrate its proper designs. It was not intended as an aggressive movement.”

He went on to insist that the Movement did not propose to debate the merits or demerits of any existing creed, but to take a position far above party strife, moving “in the pure heaven of divine truth and beneath the undimmed splendor of the sun of original Christianity.”

Reformation asks man to make a simple choice, though a weighty one: to love Jesus more than he loves his theories. Here the doctor stood where we should all stand. Now that the Movement that Richardson labored for is itself torn by partyism, we should come to terms with that same choice. Do we love Jesus more than our own party? If we really do, then the character of reformation that he envisaged can be realized in our own lives and in the institutions we serve. —the Editor