WHERE IS THE PATTERN FOR RESTORATION?

In spite of the name that this journal bears I have in recent years grown increasingly suspicious of the term restoration. Since the word may be defined in different ways, I suppose we will retain the title, even though renewal impresses me as a more appropriate appellation. Renewal, just the one word, is the name I might now choose. But after 22 years name changing seems foolish. It would be like changing Ouida’s name. Pragmatically wise perhaps, but emotionally disturbing. It’s like the fellow that got tagged with Marmaduke. He figured it was better than having no name at all.

We are properly restorationists if we mean that our task is to restore to the church of our time what we believe to be lacking, such as the unity and fellowship of the Spirit. Restoration also implies a cleansing experience, such as would be the case in the removal of dirt and grime from a precious painting that has come upon hard times. Restoring a painting or even an old home does not mean that they do not exist and that the task is really a reproduction job. Things are done to the painting so as to restore it to its pristine elegance. Some things may be removed, true, and some things added, yes, but the basic quality has always been there, whether a painting, a house, or the church.

The church has always been, ever since the Spirit of Christ breathed it into existence. And it has always needed to be reformed, even from the’ outset, for it has always been made up of fallible men and women, usually distributed into congregations. No congregation yet has been perfect. No Christian has ever yet been completely without error. Now and again throughout history the church of Jesus Christ has had a hard time of it, and sometimes it has been so serious that it could be described as a “falling away,” to use Paul’s language. But the church has never apostatized itself out of existence, out of God’s favor perhaps, but it has never ceased to exist. This is because the church is the Body of Christ, and as long as there are people in Christ the Body is a reality, and never mind about how many popes or heresies you can count. Heresies may impinge upon the Body but they can never destroy it, not even all the powers of the Hadean world. That is what Jesus said in the few recorded instances that he said anything about the church: The gates of the underworld shall never hold out against it! (Mt. 16:18).

But to many of our people the task of restoration is to bring into existence what once was and then ceased to be. It is indeed an accomplished fact in what we call the Church of Christ, which is seen as an exact reproduction of the apostolic church. The New Testament is viewed as “the pattern” for this accomplishment. That this pattern has yielded six or eight different kinds of Churches of Christ, each claiming to be the true church, does not appear to be disturbing, not to mention upwards of 400 sects through the centuries that have adopted the restorationist-patternistic philosophy. If one looks at the record, he should at least be suspicious of the claim that the New Testament is a blueprint or a constitution that clearly prescribes all the details of what the church is to be. What kind of a “pattern” is it that yields 400 different kinds of “true” churches, all the way from Shakerism to Mormonism - and Church of Christism?

An example of Church of Christism may be seen in an ad that appeared in the Erwin Record in Tennessee last Christmas Eve. Published by the Love Station Church of Christ of Erwin, the ad is a cartoon strip that depicts a lad making a purchase for his father. “Get a blue one,” the father tells him, but as the frames continue the son eventually delivers a red one to the father, saying,” “You didn’t say not to get red.” Besides, opines the son, isn’t one color as good as another, and is it not a matter of interpretation anyway? But the father has the last word, insisting that the difference is that he had specified blue.

All this is perfectly clear to the Church of Christ mind, if not to others, and one need not read the copy that follows the cartoon, which has more of the same. “Let’s suppose you are ordering a suit of clothes, size 40, from a catalogue,” the ad goes on to say. “Obviously you wouldn’t have to tell them not to send size 42, 38, 44, etc., nor not to send blue, green, gray etc. When you stipulated what you wanted you would expect them to abide by your request.” This is the way it is in the service of God, the ad goes on to say. “We are to do ‘all things according to the pattern’,” it urges, quoting Heb. 8:3. To do something that is not specified in the Bible is to go beyond the doctrine of Christ, the reader is told, and the proof text is 2 Jn. 9.

The ad is another instance of the fallacy of irrelevance. It simply does not get at the problem of interpreting Scripture for modern man. We have no problem with what God clearly says in Scripture, such as “Get me a blue one.” We may not always obey the injunctions against murder, anger, and greed and for love, joy, and peace, but we all agree on the right and wrong of these things. If God says, “Get me a blue one,” the various sects of the Church of Christ (and others too of course) would argue over how to go about getting a blue one, or where to get a blue one, or from whom to get a blue one, and even with whom can we cooperate in getting a blue one. History bears witness to the fact that we divide over methods of doing what God says rather than over what He actually says.

The Tennessee ad reflects a costly fallacy in the way we view the Bible, as if it were a catalogue that lists specifics not unlike a Sears-Roebuck mailout. There is only one way to interpret a Sears catalogue, and it is folly to suggest that the Bible is this kind of book. We are all going to come up with varying interpretations over much of the Scriptures, whether it be Isaiah, Romans, or Revelation. When we are dealing with the facts set forth in the Bible there can be substantial agreement, and that is why our pioneers were wise in predicating unity and fellowship only upon facts (not opinions about those facts), especially the facts of the gospel. Opinions never saved or condemned anyone, they would insist, but facts are redemptive in that they reveal what God has done in history through Christ.

This Church of Christism, which in essence says that others are not Christians unless they see and do just as we see and do, is further evident in a new publication from Rowlett, Texas called The Restorer. In a one-page spread there is an urgent warning signed by 15 preachers and elders in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area entitled “Perilous Times Confront the Church.” Among the eight perils listed one is the practice of “children’s church.” The evil here, we are told, is “separating some Christians from the worship assembly of the whole church,” and the prooftext is I Cor. 14:23, where it refers to the whole church gathered into one place (it also refers to their speaking in tongues!). Another peril is “using denominational people” (we aren’t denominational of course!), such as in the James Dobson films, which have the added sin of instrumental music in the background. The proof text here is I Jn. 9-11, where an apostle draws the line on those who deny that Jesus came in the flesh (verse 7). This means you sin in showing a Dobson film!

It is all right, of course, to show a Jules Miller film, for he is “Church of Christ” and not “denominational.” But since proof texts are called for, where is the Scripture for any kind of film? And if I Cor. 14:23 means we cannot separate the children into a “children’s church,” why does it not also prohibit Sunday School? If our folk insist on legalistic interpretation, they must remember one basic rule: that which proves too much proves nothing. If they do not watch, the very proof texts they use to condemn others will condemn themselves. Rom. 2:1 is the prooftext!!

But I wish to close out this piece with good news. In still another publication from within our larger Movement, Envoy, emanating from Emmanuel School of Religion, Fred P. Thompson says some helpful things about the meaning of restoration. He first shows that the notion of restoring the New Testament church is misleading, for which New Testament church should be restored since they were all different in some important respects? After conceding that none of the churches in the New Testament, nor all of them in the aggregate, are appropriate models for the church today, he finds the pattern in “the true character of the church disclosed in the apostolic testimony.”

While the ideal church did not exist in apostolic times, just as it does not in this century, it nonetheless appears in the teaching of Christ and the apostles. President Thompson wisely distinguishes between the advocacy of the ideal and the achievement of the ideal. When we confuse these and suppose we achieve the ideal because we advocate it, we end up with the false conclusion that we and we only are the true church.

We could not agree more, and we find his conclusions refreshing. Yes, the ideal church is in Scripture, not in the way that goods are described in a catalogue or instructions in a blueprint, but in what might be called “the apostolic experiment.” From all that is written to the churches, the good and the bad alike, along with the struggle to respond faithfully to the gospel, the ideal church emerges. As for the differences we find both in the congregations in apostolic times and those today, there was and is but one answer: in matters of opinion, liberty. A church will decide for itself if it chooses to join in cooperative enterprises such as a society, or whether it will have a Sunday School or a children’s church, or an instrument. Contrary to the thrust of the plea referred to, it is not necessarily “perilous times” when such differences obtain.

We are in far greater peril when we wrest and twist the Scriptures so as to bend them to the will and whim of our own sectarian bigotry, and thus make of the Bible a kind of book that God never intended, a claim that it does not even make for itself. --- the Editor