Christian Faith and Christian Freedom:

A PLACE TO STAND AND ROOM TO GROW
Thomas Langford

One of the continuing problems of the Restoration Movement in the twentieth century has been the difficulty of reaching consensus on distinctions between faith and opinion. This problem has had profound effects on the realization of the unity into which all of God’s children are called. What are the essentials of that unity, and where does “the faith once for all delivered” shade into opinion and personal interpretation? Some insist that the seven “ones” listed in Ephesians 4 represent the irreducible minimum for our common faith, and that unless we agree on these, we cannot enjoy unity in the faith.

I suggest, however, that unity in Christ rest on something even more essential than intellectural agreement. If the church of God on earth is essentially and constitutionally one, as dear old Thomas Campbell so wisely wrote; if the church is God’s family and bears important analogous characteristics to the human family as the scriptures teach; if the church possesses an element which the world cannot receive, as the scriptures also say with reference to the Spirit—then there is a unity which goes back beyond our efforts to find common ground on this issue or that, even issues so fundamental as those in Ephesians 4.

This essential and constitutional oneness of the church, based on the very nature of what God does for all who are born into this family, was what led A. Campbell to argue that nothing ought to be made a condition of fellowship which God had not made a condition of salvation. Whatever God requires of man as requisite to his entry into the spiritual family, into Christ and salvation, puts that man into fellowship with all others who have experienced the same conversion. I suggest, however, that Campbell probably meant more than one’s initial conversion. A man’s salvation is accomplished whenever he comes into Christ, but that gift has implications also for eternity, and must be maintained, in the nurture of the Spirit, through time. A man may neglect the faith which brought him salvation, even reject it and consequently be lost. If God has made continuance in faith the requisite for eternal salvation, as we think he has, then the brother who rejects or denies the faith has broken his fellowship, his part in the unity, with those who maintain it.

It is faith in and submission to Christ that saves, then, and open and wilful rebellion against Christ that destroys. Whether one is a child of God and in his family or not, he cannot be saved so long as he refuses to submit to the lordship of Christ. On the other hand, one who is in Christ and continually seeking his will, though he err and even sin, through weakness or ignorance, will still be saved. God’s salvation is not a reward for perfect righteousness achieved by man, but rather a gift resulting from total trust in the perfect righteousness of Christ. All of us here, no doubt, claim the promise of salvation. But no one of us would claim such perfect obedience on our part as to have earned this boon. We know that we will be saved in spite of our mistakes, because we trust and seek to live for him whose righteousness qualified him to be our perfect sacrifice for sin. Isn’t this the message of Paul to the Romans? Is there any alternative position, save Pharisaical legalism? In other words, Christ’s atoning death covers all our sin, so long as we stay with him, trusting, praying, seeking his will. But his blood covers none of us in rebellion, in wilful or premeditated flaunting of his will. Weak but growing children, yes—but rebels, no.

If we can agree with A. Campbell that nothing ought to be made a test of fellowship which God has not made a condition of salvation, we have need merely to determine what is the faith that saves, both initially and eternally. What is the faith, the acceptance of which brings life, the denial of which separates from God? It is response to the fact that Jesus Christ is God’s son and the Lord of life. “Believe on the Lord with all thy heart, and thou shalt be saved.” The one who accepts this, with all that it involves, is saved. Of course, acceptance of the Lord involves obedience to his direction,—“He that believeth and is baptized will be saved.” It also involves a whole and radically new attitude toward life—an attitude which says that in every circumstance of life, one’s response will be determined by the mind of Christ—the perspective, the feeling, the surrendered will of Christ. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Now this approach may seem rather simplistic to some. It may seem to leave out too much. It certainly does not settle all of the “issues” which have concerned us so much in the past. But I am convinced that the faith that saves is something far more fundamental than all of these things: it is a response to life, a total surrender to Christ’s way of life. It does not guarantee that we will apprehend the truth on every issue of life, influenced as we are by personal experience and background, but it does give assurance that all that is needful to our salvation will be given to us, as we trust, pray, and study. God will not allow a child of his to be lost, so long as he has yielded himself completely to the mind of Christ and seeks daily to perfect that surrender.

Once again, let me emphasize this process; the faith which saves leads to surrender to God’s will in obedient trust. That surrender, illustrated by repentance and immersion into Christ, allows God to come in and take over the life that formerly was in league with rebel forces. God’s entry is by the medium of the Holy Spirit, just as any newly born child receives his Father’s spirit, the breath of life, and the likeness of the parent. So it was that Peter said, “Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Or, as he elsewhere wrote, “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, but the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.” That Spirit, the living representative of the will of God, takes up his home and begins his work upon this initial act of submission, at this point of birth. What the “Spirit will do from this point on, depends upon the quality and completeness of one’s surrender. In some cases the surrender is so nominal that the presence of the Spirit can scarcely be detected. Such persons go through life, “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” They conform to what their intellectual understanding tells them a Christian should do and be, but they scarcely ever yield themselves to the full flow of the Spirit’s leading and joy. Others live each day with the will of God foremost in their hearts. Their surrender is so complete that they may be said to be “filled with the Spirit.” that is, so full of God’s life that there is little room for the fleshy, worldly self. And, of course, there are many of us somewhere between. In our search for Christian maturity, for the “stature of the fullness of Christ,” we have our days of glory and our periods of rather mechanical Christianity when, although there may not be great evil, there is also little evidence of the spirit.

This submission is the faith that saves, the faith which surrenders man to be the instrument of God. It is the acceptance of the Lordship of Christ, the yielded life. All else is peripheral. The faith is not correct interpretation of scriptures on instrumental music, bible classes and missionary societies (there are no such scriptures!). The faith is not what you or I think of Herald of Truth, orphans’ homes, premillenialism, or individual cups in the Lord’s Supper. The faith is that Jesus Christ is God’s son and Lord of all of our lives. If you have accepted that fact by being born again of water and the Spirit, you are my brother. Because you have received according to His promise the same Spirit as I, we are fellows together, joint heirs of God and brothers of Christ. The faith brought us together at baptism and the Spirit sealed and certified our union. I certainly care what you think about other things, but your opinion about nothing can take precedence over our agreement about and union in Christ.

Yes, I have some very definite opinions about your Sunday Schools and your instruments of music in worship. I was raised in a tradition which opposed them and I freely confess that they still bother me. I think they are both monuments to our neglect as a people, in the home and in the assemblies. There is no more scriptural warrant for one than the other; in fact, so far as I can see, none for either. So I think we would do better to dispense with them. I don’t think anyone can show that either really does much good. The energy expended in organizing, maintaining, and rejuvenating Sunday Schools might accomplish more directed toward cultivation of home study and more lively, active family participation in the edification services of the church. And the pride of organ tones might more happily be directed toward cultivation of deeper involvement of all the congregation in meaningful praise from heart and lip.

“But all you are giving us is your own opinion.” you are surely saying. I’m glad you see it. And, as opinions, they ought not to be barriers to our general fellowship. “The faith” is our mutual acceptance of the Lordship of Christ, our submission to his will in all matters, insofar as we can know it. It is not the perfection of our understanding of that will, as some seem to think. We differ in our opinions on many things, some important, some not, just as we differ in our levels of maturity and understanding of God’s revelation. Some of these differences we have elevated to such importance as to be the tests of acceptance of brethren, the causes to division. Yet no opinion can be that important—only the faith, the acceptance of the authority of Christ, is that important.

I keep going back to that inspirational document of the early 19th century, Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address.” Have you ever read it all? I know you have heard excerpts from it, here and there, but if you haven’t, please take the time to read it carefully in its entirety. What a message it still has! After insisting that “the New Testament is a perfect constitution . . . for the New Testament church,” Campbell argued that “where the scriptures are silent. . . no human authority has power to interfere, in order to supply the supposed deficiency by making laws for the church.” Don’t we all agree with that? It’s bound to be right. But what does that do for my arguments against the Sunday School? Since the scriptures are silent on the subject, I must merely argue, and seek to persuade you of the validity of my opinion that since Sunday Schools are not in the Bible you should consider whether they are valid institutions for the church today.

But I must not legislate for you, “to supply the supposed deficiency” of the scriptures which do not specifically forbid that you have your Sunday Schools. These are my opinions, they may be correct opinions (of course I think they are), but I must not impose them upon you. Now I can’t see but that the matter of instrumental music is in exactly the same realm. I agree with many of you that there is no authorization for their use in the public worship, as far as the scripture is concerned. But neither is there a prohibition. The only argument that can legitimately be made from silence of scripture on this point is that I must not legislate for others “to supply the supposed deficiency” of the scripture.

Campbell goes further to write: Although inferences and deductions from scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word, yet are they not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians farther than they perceive the connection, and evidently see that they are so; for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power and veracity of God. Therefore, no such deductions can be made terms of communion, but do properly belong to the after and progressive edification of the church. Hence, it is evident that no deductions of inferential truths ought to have any place in the church’s confession.

When these words were written our divisions had not yet come. Campbell was inveighing against all of the creedal distinctions and tests of fellowship common among Presbyterians and other sects in America in the early 1800’s. Is it not ironic that we must now cite the same words to point up the folly of division among those who became heirs to the Campbell unity movement? Doesn’t everything I’ve just read apply clearly and unquestionably to such things as have separated us during this century? We have deductions on these things, our inferences from scripture, but we know that in most instances the scripture neither plainly requires nor condemns the practices that have become sources of such contention among us. All of us have our opinions, based upon our deductions from scripture, but “they ought not to be made terms of Christian communion. Listen again:

Although doctrinal exhibitions of the great divine truths, and defensive testimonies in opposition to prevailing errors, be highly expedient, and the more full and explicit they be for those purposes, the better; yet, as these must be in a great measure the effect of human reasoning, and of course must contain many inferential truths, they ought not to be made terms of Christian communion; unless we suppose, what is contrary to fact, that none have a right to the communion of the church, but such as possess a very clear and decisive judgment, or are come to a very high degree of doctrinal information; whereas the church from the beginning did, and ever will, consist of little children and young men, as well as fathers.

Nothing that I have read in all of the literature of unity speaks so well to our situation today. It is a pity that we have cut ourselves off from the wisdom of our restoration pioneers. Some neglect them because their platform was too liberal—too devastating for the sectarian and party spirit. Others have turned away because they think the movement sought an impossible ideal—and has been judged and found wanting practically by the events of history. In spite of the defections of the right and left, I find the “Declaration and Address” as beautifully appropriate today as when it was written—true to scripture and true to common sense. When I hear criticism of the whole Restoration principle from a younger generation, I am convinced that it is not the program of these early stalwarts that is being found wanting, but the perversion of their ideals by a sectarian spirit that came later. The Restoration Movement has come for many to mean “patternism”—the blueprint concept—which sees the New Testament as a detailed rule book which sets forth every facet of the work and worship of the church. Our fathers of the early years of the movement were scarcely so restricted or constrictive in their views of the Book. Their distinction between matters of faith and areas of opinion was clearer. The scriptures were normative for them, as it seems to me that they must be for all who take Christianity seriously, but in areas where interpretation and deduction were possible and needful, there was room for differences within an unbroken fellowship.

Some of you know the story of Aylette Raines, the preacher within the movement who believed in universalism. The Campbells insisted, against considerable pressure, upon continued fellowship in the work with Raines, so long as he retained his universalist views as personal persuasion and did not insist that others should conform to his views. Raines later gave up universalism, testifying that it gradually faded into insignificance as he was caught up in the great fellowship of the Gospel work. Had he been excluded and isolated, as many wanted, his views would have become more important to him and he would likely have pursued and defended them to his death.

Paul’s essay on faith and opinion in Romans 14 seems to me to have justified the Campbells’ treatment of Raines and to provide us a sound principle for brotherhood relations today. Although the question of meats may not bother us much today, we can understand Paul’s strong censure of those who despised their brethren. “Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.” In the following chapter, Paul gives the admonition the church sorely needs today: “Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

It will be a good day for us and the church of God when we begin to obey Paul’s injunction to the Romans, when, as God has done, we receive each other simply on the basis of each one’s faith in Christ, “not to doubtful disputations,” not to debate over opinions, but to grow together as we learn together, as together we drink of the same spirit, in what Campbell called “the after and progressive edification of the church.”—Associate Dean, Graduate School, Texas Tech U., Lubbock. Presented to 9th Annual Unity Forum, Nashville, July 5, 1974.