QUESTIONS FROM MISSOURI

A reader from the “Show Me” state has asked some questions that might interest others of you. While I am not exactly “the Answer Man,” I have made some response.

1. Is there really a pattern in the New Testament for a New Testament church to follow today?

Does this not depend on what one means by pattern? If one looks at Webster’s dictionary, he sees that the term is not all that easily defined, for even an abridged Webster’s will have several definitions. If by pattern one means “a model or plan used as a guide,’ to quote Webster (such as directions for building a model airplane?), the answer has to be no, for the New Testament clearly is not that kind of book. This is especially evident when Webster adds “a predictable and prescribed route” (such as a travel bureau’s markings on a Texas highway map that directs you across the Lone Star state?), for the New Testament is more descriptive than it is prescriptive. It certainly does not prescribe anything like a highway map, or a recipe for a lemon meringue pie.

Nor is the New Testament all that predictable, which Webster also sees as the meaning of pattern. Starting with the church’s birthday on Pentecost in Acts 2, a reader of the New Testament might predict that all subsequent churches started by the apostles would be, more or less, carbon copies of each other, but this obviously is not the case. Modern sects are sufficiently “patterned” by their creeds, written and unwritten, that their churches are remarkably identical. But such is not the case with the New Testament churches. The church at Antioch was considerably different from the one in Jerusalem, and the Corinthian church was hardly identical to the one at Thessalonica or Ephesus.

Prescription and predictability require more detailed information than we have in the New Testament. Recently Ouida and I did something entirely new for us when we installed a ceiling fan over our king size bed (Ah, what luxuries we moderns have!) It was all very predictable, for it was certain that we would have a ceiling fan like the one pictured on the carton if we followed the directions that accompanied the unassembled hardware. We not only had directions; we had drawings and diagrams. We had what Webster calls a pattern. Still we had a hard time of it, with Ouida doing her thing in the bedroom while I worked with wires in the attic. Finally, we had it all installed, a perfect reproduction of what one sees on the carton, fresh from Ward’s. Then came the moment of truth. Ouida turned the switch but the blades did not move, not even one revolution. So we started over, following our instructions step by step. Back in the attic I discovered a disconnected wire, so we were home at last, though not exactly home free. We had our fan, for we faithfully followed the prescribed and predictable pattern.

Is building a church from the New Testament like that? Hardly. When we hear of native Africans starting a Church of Christ, is it predictable that it will be like the Church of Christ at 6th and Izzard in Little Rock? The truth is that such churches are often quite different, which may be just as well. When a missionary points to the New Testament as “the pattern,” he must be careful to interpret that pattern according to his own biases, lest the churches turn out to be quite diverse and hardly likenesses of the church that sent him. Except of course in a general way.

But if by pattern we mean that the New Testament in a very significant way is the norm, standard, guide, authority for the church today, apart from a “fixed pattern” mentality, then the answer is yes. While no church in the Scriptures can be our model, or even all of them combined, there still emerges a distinct norm of what the Body of Christ is to be. When one of the ancient councils formulated that great creedal line, We believe in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, it drew upon what might be called the biblical pattern, for the Bible makes it clear that God’s church has all four of those qualities, even if no church in the New Testament was all that exemplary.

And we know considerable about how sinners became Christians and what it means to live a Christian life, and, allowing for some diversity, we know something of the life, government, work, and mission of the New Testament churches. But this is where it gets difficult, for we cannot be sure that the Lord intended for the churches throughout the centuries to be exactly like the primitive ones, assuming that such were possible. Maybe it is better to think of our mission as doing for our generation what they did for theirs, but not necessarily in exactly the same way. Their experience, and the New Covenant Scriptures which they eventually produced, stand always as our first frame of reference. They are authoritative for us.

So, yes, the New Testament may be looked upon as our model or pattern, provided it is responsibly interpreted, free of parochial and sectarian implications. This is especially true in that the whole of the New Testament milieu points to Jesus Christ, who is first and last our living pattern.

2. What is your definition of the term “Restoration Movement”? Again we are using a term that means different things to different people. In the history I wrote on The Stone-Campbell Movement I called attention to a vast amount of research done by a Harvard professor on “the Radical Reformation,” which concerns those sects that emerged in protest to the Protestant Reformation. While Luther and Zwingli sought to reform the existing church, these radical sects, such as the Anabaptists, insisted that the church was too corrupt to be reformed, and that, in fact, the true church had ceased to exist. So they worked for a “restoration” or a “restitution” of the New Testament church, believing that they and they alone were the one, true church of the Bible. They were therefore as opposed to the denominations that emerged from the Reformation as they were to Roman Catholicism. All were false churches except their own. Thus they have come to be called the radical part of the Reformation. They subsequently divided into numerous feuding sects, each believing that it and it alone is the true church. Some of these sects today are the Amish and the Mennonites.

Prof. George H. Williams of Harvard concluded his study of these people by saying in part: “So widespread was restoration (restitutionism) as the sixteenth-century version of primitivism that it may be said to be one of the marks of the Radical Reformation, over against the (institutional, ethical, and party dogmatic) Reformation on the Magisterial side.”

There was thus one historian of that period named Leonard Verduin who wrote a book on the restoration movement, which of course was long before the beginning of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

So, if we refer to the Restoration Movement I suppose we should go back to the Anabaptists as the authors of such a movement. But we must recognize that many restorationist sects (one historian has counted 176!) have begun since the days of the Anabaptist, each of course claiming to be the true church. And who can believe that the New Testament is a “pattern” in this sense, allowing for 176 different versions of the true church?

Even if we refer to our own heritage as the American Restoration Movement we do not escape confusion, for there are such sects as the Mormons who claim to be the restored church of Jesus Christ. But the greatest difficulty is that the term “the Restoration Movement” as applied to ourselves is but of recent origin and was not used by our pioneers. I will not say that the term does not appear at all in the annals of our first generation pioneers, but since I have not yet found a single instance of its use I can only conclude that it must be used very rarely if at all.

They did occasionally use the term restoration by itself, especially Campbell’s “a restoration of the ancient order” and sometimes “a restoration of primitive Christianity,” but if you ever find Campbell referring to a restoration of the church, I would be pleased to have the reference. Campbell and the others nearly always referred to themselves as reformers, not restorers, and their Movement as “the reformation” or “this reformation.” Campbell thus designated his efforts as “the New Reformation,” which placed him within the reformed tradition of Martin Luther, not within the restorationist tradition of the Anabaptists. When the Campbells thus spoke of “the Church of Christ on earth,” they were saying the church existed in their day and had always existed since Pentecost, even if it were in need of reform. Their mission therefore was to restore to the church things that were wanting, not the church itself.

But, in response to the question at hand, I am afraid we are stuck with the term Restoration Movement, and I am pragmatic enough to accept that as a fact and make the most of it. We can use the term in a meaningful way, as referring to renewal. Carl Ketcherside has wisely defined restoration as “renewal through recovery of the apostolic proclamation in its power and purpose.” That is great because it implies an ongoing reformation rather than the presumption that we have restored the New Testament church “in name, worship, doctrine, and practice,” and that we are thus the true restored church to the exclusion of everyone else.

3. How should the independent Christian Church have handled the Disciples of Christ issues?

Again, those who read my The Stone-Campbell Movement will see that I dealt with the division between the independents and the Disciples with some detail. And I found some heroes, one being P. H. Welshimer, who, though strongly opposed to some of the Disciple doings, never drew lines of fellowship, insisting that “We can disagree without being disagreeable.” He attended the conventions of both sides, serving as an officer of both. He invited Disciples to his pulpit in Canton, Ohio, the largest church of the entire Movement at the time, and he freely spoke at such places as Bethany College. While he chaired the committee that created the North American Christian Convention, it was not his intention that it be of separatist influence and certainly not the beginning of a separate church.

So, I think the conservative brethren (who eventually became the Christian Church) should have been of Welshimer’s peacemaking persuasion and not made “the issues” a test of fellowship, as they eventually did under the leadership of the Christian Standard. Open division could thus have been avoided for a time, with conservatives and liberals accepting each other within the same fellowship. But it is evident that the Disciples would have eventually “left” anyway, in the sense of restructuring themselves into an official denomination, as they have done, leaving the independents to go their own way.

I suppose I am only saying that there could have been less sin and divisiveness in the separation that was inevitable.

4. Should a break ever take place?

If we are indeed the Body of Christ, we must heed Paul’s gripping question, /s Christ divided? And we must accept the fact that division is a sin (period). So, if by “break” one means dividing the Body of Christ, the answer has to be no. Jude 19 tells us that those who cause divisions and separate themselves are sensual and devoid of the Spirit.

But few things are absolute and without exception. If a people are with a church where they can no longer serve under the lordship of Christ because of severe oppressive actions and attitudes, it would be appropriate for them to leave. Some of our more open churches started not because of a factious attitude, but because they were persuaded they could serve the Lord better in a new beginning, and they sought to maintain peace with the older church.

So a “break” does not necessarily imply the divisive spirit, which is always wrong.—the Editor