THE ESSENCE OF THE CAMPBELL PLEA

James Wallis was one of the heroes of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Britain. Once a Scotch Baptist, he accepted “the Plea” through the writings of Alexander Campbell. For over a quarter of a century he yielded considerable influence among the British churches as the editor of the Christian Messenger, a journal he himself founded.

In 1837 he wrote a letter to Mr. Campbell, which was published both in his paper and Mr. Campbell’s, in which he named what he saw as the essence of “the reformation” led by Mr. Campbell, the term he always used to identify the Movement. Wallis’ insight is of value to us, not only because it provides some understanding of how our British pioneers in those days compared in their thinking to our pioneers in America, but it challenges us to have a more precise concept of what our pioneers were trying to do. We are usually rather vague in our understanding as to what it was all about. But there was nothing vague about Wallis’ concept. He wrote as follows to Mr. Campbell in reference to what he called “that all important truth”:

It is to you, brother Campbell, under the providence of a kind and gracious God, that myself and others in this place are indebted for a more clear and correct knowledge of that all-important truth which in these days of darkness is kept so much out of view —viz, that the religion of Jesus is founded altogether upon the knowledge and belief of facts, instead of abstract influences of mystic operations upon the mind. (Mill. Harb., 1837, p.239)

The Britisher saw in Campbell’s movement what has been unclear to many Americans: that Campbell called for the unity of all Christians only upon an allegiance to the facts of the gospel. Campbell saw a fact as something done. In reference to the gospel that would be what God has done through Christ for man’s redemption. This distinguishes a fact from a truth —all facts are of course truths, but all truths are not facts. That God exists is a truth, that God created the universe is a fact as well as a truth. Believers become one when they believe and respond to what God has done in Christ, facts, not by opinions, theories, or deductions about those facts, even if they are truths. There are many truths that God has given, but only the facts of the gospel save and unite people in Christ.

Brother Campbell thus distinguished between the apostles’ doctrine (teaching), which consists of many truths, and the gospel, which consists of such basic facts as the death (for our sins), burial, and resurrection of Christ. In believing and obeying the gospel (facts) sinners become Christians and are one in Christ. Other truths of Scripture, such as the apostles’ teaching, are of course true and important to maturity in the faith, but they are not the gospel, which is what brings us into Christ and makes us one.

There are many Scriptures that point up this distinction, but 1 Cor 4:15 is especially clear: “Though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” Paul was the spiritual father of the Corinthians because it was he that preached the gospel to them. Once in Christ by believing and obeying the gospel, they had numerous teachers who instructed them in doctrine. The apostle makes the same distinction in 1 Cor. 15:1-4 where he defines the gospel he had preached to them as the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

If we Americans all these years could have been as insightful as James Wallis, it would have spared us many crippling divisions. In presuming that “all the New Testament” is the gospel and the basis of unity, we have made our own opinions and theories tests of fellowship. Rather than a simple response to the gospel we have made societies, instrumental music, Sunday Schools, methods of serving Communion, etc. conditions of accepting each other as faithful brethren. We have deceived ourselves into concluding that such things are part of the gospel since they are deductions we draw from something the New Testament says or doesn’t say. We badly err when we make our opinion or preference, such as singing only acappella, part of the gospel.

The Britisher saw clearly what happens when something beside the gospel itself is made a test of fellowship. After telling Mr. Campbell about a new church that had begun in Nottingham, England on Christmas Day, 1836, based on “the principles of the reformation,” he said in the same letter: “I trust that we are all fully convinced that so long as human opinions are to be made the bond of union in the congregation of the Messiah, there will of necessity be divisions among the disciples:”

I fear that after a century and a half we are not fully convinced, for we go right on separating from each other over our opinions and deductions. Differences among believers do not themselves divide, for Christians always have and always will have differences, just as Peter and Paul had. It is making our differences a test of fellowship. It is the old satanic attitude of, “If you don’t agree with me and do it my way, then you are unfaithful to the gospel and I will not accept you.”

But we have blessings to count. We have those through history, like James Wallis of England, who clearly discerned what our heritage is all about. We can save ourselves from obscurantism and sectarianism by taking to heart these principles of our heritage. They are wonderfully simple and simply wonderful. The first is that we can all unite upon the facts of the gospel, even when we differ on the implications of those facts. The second is that whenever we allow opinions to be made tests of fellowship it will necessarily cause division among believers.

These truths will show us that we can have churches that support certain agencies and those that do not, and yet they can be united and work together and accept each other as equals. We can have churches that are premillennial and some that are amillennial, and even some that have hardly heard of the millennium, and yet be of one heart in serving Jesus Christ. We can have churches that use the instrument in singing and those that are acappella, and even some that hardly sing at all, and yet accept each other in love and forbearance.

This means that, of course, we will be in the fellowship with folk that are “in error,” for we are all in error on some things since none of us is perfect. It is the nature of the error that matters. Our forebears were discerning in this regards also. Brother Campbell distinguished between errors of the mind (“imbecility of intellect” he called it) and errors of the heart, the latter being much more serious.

One might be sincerely mistaken about various doctrines (He is still growing!) and yet right about Jesus Christ. That should be no threat to fellowship. It is only when one is unfaithful to Jesus Christ, when he has a bad heart, or when he rejects the simplicity of the gospel itself that unity and fellowship are made impossible. —the Editor