LESSONS FROM CAMPBELL’S LUNENBURG LETTER

Here of late I have had occasion to study once more Alexander Campbell’s response to the woman in Lunenburg, Va. who wrote and asked him if only those who are baptized by immersion are Christians. Campbell’s reply became controversial in his own time, and all these years it has remained one of the most famous documents of our heritage. This time around I examined it with greater depth and am persuaded that it has much to say to us today, not so much about baptism itself, however important that is, but about principles of religion in general.

The woman was disturbed by Campbell’s frequent references to “Christians among the sects,” and she wondered how this could be since Campbell himself had championed the position that people become Christians by believing in Christ, repenting of their sins, and being buried by baptism into Christ, and this was not generally what the sects taught. She asked Campbell to define a Christian point-blank.

The editor responded by giving a definition that is now well-known among our people: “But who is a Christian? I answer, Everyone that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will.” He went on to say that he could not make immersion absolutely essential to a Christian.

This disturbed many of his followers then and continues to do so today, even though he made it clear that if one understands that immersion is according to the will of God he must submit to it to become a Christian. No one can despise an ordinance of God and be a Christian. Yet he said he could not make anyone duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion. One who has a submissive heart before God will obey a command in the sense in which he understands it. He emphasized the importance of habitual or general obedience, not loyalty to one duty.

What gives the letter special significance are the principles that Campbell draws on in reaching his conclusions about baptism. It is these that I want to call to your attention. You will find them liberating.

1. Mistakes of the mind and errors of the heart are greatly different.

This important truth is often neglected. Campbell says errors of mind and heart are poles apart. An angel may mistake the meaning of a commandment, but since it is not an error of the heart he will obey in the sense in which he understands it. He notes that John Newton and John Bunyan had very different views on baptism, but both had good hearts and obeyed according to their understanding. There are others who have depraved hearts whose errors are wilful. Errors of the heart are therefore much more serious than errors in understanding, which are unwillful.

2. Ignorance is always a crime when it is voluntary. but innocent when it is involuntary.

It is wilful neglect of the means of knowing what is commanded, Campbell says, that indicates a corrupt heart. He concedes that there must be many who are guilty of wilful ignorance. But still there are many who cannot even read and others who are poorly educated who have difficulty understanding aright, and there are. many others who innocently follow their teachers. There are those who desire to know the whole will of God who mistake the meaning of this or that commandment. Campbell says he would sin against his own convictions to say that such ones must perish forever.

3. There are perfect Christians and imperfect Christians, but both are Christians.

That the apostle Paul would urge the Corinthians to be perfect in understanding (1 Cor. 14:20) infers that some or most were not. In 1 Cor 2:6 he referred to speaking wisdom “among those who are perfect,” which implies a distinction between perfect and imperfect believers. He also distinguished between the carnal and the spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1) and between the weak and the strong (Rom. 14:1). Jesus in his parables taught that even among the honest and good hearts some bring forth thirty fold while others bring forth a hundred fold. Some of God’s children are retarded, others are highly gifted. Some have a defective faith, some a defective obedience, which might be a mistaken view of baptism. But still they are Christians if their hearts are set upon following Christ the best they know how. Campbell notes that it is an easy thing for the supposedly “strong” or “perfect” Christians to pass judgment upon the weak and immature. Many a good man has been mistaken, Campbell says.

4. It is the image of Christ that th£ Christian looks for and loves.

Campbell insists that this does not consist in being exact in a few items, but in general devotion to the whole truth as far as known. We should not substitute obedience to one command for universal or general obedience, he says. If he saw one who had been only sprinkled who was more spiritually-minded and more generally conformed to the likeness of Christ than one duly immersed, he would be inclined to favor him or her the most, he ventured.

Campbell concluded his letter to his Lunenburg reader by observing that because one might be excused from exact obedience to a command through honest misunderstanding does not excuse one who understands what his duty is. One who tries to use the involuntary mistake of another to justify his own wilful neglect of any commandment docs not have the Spirit of Christ.

The reformer received a lot of negative response to the Lunenburg letter, which reflected a more liberal view of baptism in general and religion in general. He noted that all the negative reaction proved that there were not many Campbellites after all! What they saw was a compromise of the doctrine of baptism by immersion, while Campbell was trying to avoid what he called ultraism. Too, Campbell could not bring himself to conclude that until his people came along there was no Church of Christ upon earth, no Christians, no kingdom of God, and that the promise that the gates of hell would never prevail against the church had failed. ‘’Therefore, there are Christians among the sects,” he told the sister in Lunenburg.

The furor over this letter lived on. It identified a strong reactionary element within the Movement that Campbell was hardly aware of. It was the beginning of the exclusivism that eventually divided the Movement, not as long as Campbell lived, but it began to bear its destructive fruit soon after his death.

But it is the principles in this letter that matter most of all. If we could implement them into our thinking today they would go far in liberating us from some of our self-deprivation.—the Editor