As the conversation continues Campbell has Luther say of his ancestors, "They lived in conformity to all they knew, and died in the church; I live in conformity to what I know, and have left that church." Luther goes on to say, "Certainly as the brain grows the heart should grow." And finally Campbell has Luther tell Erastian that one must obey the light God has given him.

One can see that Campbell puts himself into that conversation. It is a definition of piety, which today we call spirituality. Piety is the basis of one’s acceptance before God, Campbell understood, and it means to respond faithfully to such knowledge or light God has given him. Luther’s ancestors were saved in the Roman church because they were pious – conforming to such knowledge as they had. Luther had more knowledge, and had to leave that church. As Campbell had Luther say to the monk, "The ratio of piety is the ratio of conformity to the revealed will of God," and "No man can be justified today by living in accordance with the knowledge that he had yesterday."

Campbell saw himself as one who had been given more light than Luther. Just as Luther had more light than his parents, and had to go beyond where they were, so Campbell, having more light than Luther, had to go beyond where he was.

Again, we can see Campbell’s own situation in that definition. When he received more light about baptism through arduous study, he was baptized by immersion, something Luther never did. But he nonetheless saw Luther as a Christian – just as he saw himself a Christian while yet unimmersed -- in that he was faithful to such knowledge as he had.

If one has a problem with this, he only needs to compare the knowledge he has now with the understanding he had when he first became a Christian. No one can believe that a just God – let alone a God of mercy – would condemn a person for the sins of his youth based on the knowledge of his advanced years. It is axiomatic that one can do only what he knows to do. He is accountable only for the light he has at any given time.

This principle recognizes -- as Scripture bears out, as in John 1:9 – that every person has some light from God. It might be called moral consciousness, a "law written in the heart" as Paul puts it Rom. 2:15. And in that passage the apostle finds people either "excused" or "accused" according to the response they make to that law.

If one is faithful to the light he has, God may well provide him with more light. This was the case with Cornelius, who was a righteous man who reverenced God and prayed to God while yet a pagan (Acts 10:2). The Ethiopian eunuch, whose story is told in Acts 8, is another instance of one receiving more light while obedient to lesser light. The point is that all through Scripture those who are justified are always justified by faith – as with Cornelius and the eunuch – in that they responded in faith to such understanding as they had.

When people are exposed to this view of available light, they often question it on the grounds that if one is "righteous" when he has less light – like Cornelius – then why take him more light – why preach the gospel to him and take the risk of his rejecting it and being lost?

That will not and cannot happen. No one is ever worse off for hearing the gospel. If one has a heart for God – if he is of "the elect," one who walks by such light as he has – he will always accept and live by any additional knowledge he is given, on and on, until his dying day. I expect to still be learning on my last day on earth – a tiny fragment of more light – and I expect, in my faltering way, to be true to that last vestige of knowledge.

Too, we want the likes of Cornelius to hear and obey the gospel because it is that good news that brings them into the joyous fellowship of the family of God. And it is that good news that conforms them to the image of Christ, which is the ultimate purpose of God for all the elect.

And who are the elect? Everyone, for Christ died for all! Everyone, that is, except those the Bible names as lost --- those who reject God’s grace by refusing to respond in faith to whatever measure of light God has given them, and persist in that disbelief to the end (Rev.21:8). Only God knows how few or how many that is.

This distinction gave Campbell and his movement their new hermeneutics. The clergy of his day was inclined to make no clear-cut distinction between the Old and New Testaments, applying them indiscriminately. There was even the idea of "the identity of the covenants," so that the Old Testament was as relevant to the church as the New. This resulted in such notions as the "Christian Sabbath" and such dogmas as baptism taking the place of the circumcision of the old Mosaic law, which was used to justify infant baptism.

Campbell rejected the view that the New Covenant was an extension of the Old. They are entirely different institutions – in their mediators, purpose, ethics, commands, ordinances. Using Rom. 8:3 as a text, he emphasized that the law was ineffective for the new order because it came through Moses as a legal code, while grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. This is why the "Christian System" – another term Campbell liked – was not only a New Covenant, but a New Institution as well.

The watershed occasion for this bold distinction was Campbell’s "Sermon on the Law" in 1816 before a gathering of Baptist leaders. While he and his first congregation, Brush Run, were at this time still in fellowship with the Baptists, it was this distinctive approach to the Bible, as set forth in this sermon, that led to his separation from the Baptists. The Baptist leaders condemned it as "damnable heresy" and "not Baptist doctrine."

As for Campbell and his movement, the new hermeneutics of viewing Scripture in terms who, what, when, where, why, and to whom – which was seen as "rightly dividing the word" – was instrumental in separating them as a separate church. It also gave Brush Run and the other early congregations biblical defense for their distinctiveness. Baptism was a new ordinance in a New Institution, with no relation whatever to the circumcision of the Old Covenant. The Lord’s day likewise was an ordinance of the New Institution, with no connection to the Sabbath of the Old. The Lord’s supper, yet another ordinance of the new system, was a Christian institution, with no Mosaic predisposition.

This does not mean that Campbell did not have a high view of the Old Testament, but that its value must be seen as fulfilled in the New. While he insisted that the Mosaic order gave way to the New Institution, there were two features in the Old Testament that lived on – the moral law as reflected in the Ten Commandments, and the Two Greatest Commandments, love for God and for neighbor. While these are in the Old Testament, he observed, they are not part of the Mosaic order as such, but are eternal in nature.

So, the moral imperatives in the prophets, the devotional material in the Psalms, the wisdom literature, etc. – all products of the eternal Ten and Two (rather than the Mosaic legal code) -- were as relevant to Campbell as the New Testament.

In other words, when Micah 6:8 mandates "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God" it was to Campbell as much the word of God for all time to come as anything Paul ever said. This is because it is based on eternal law – as stated in the Ten and the Two – and not because its context is the Mosaic dispensation. It transcends its Mosaic context by being eternal moral law.

We have given enough of these biblical distinctions, as posited by Alexander Campbell, to show that his movement was both informing and liberating. And so different from what the masses usually heard in frontier preaching! It not only opened up the Bible for the people, but made it more understandable.

It wasn’t just happenstance that Alexander Campbell early on – as early as 1827 – had issued his own translation of the New Testament, the first of modern translations. He likewise early on set forth rules for the interpretation of the Bible.

A new translation and rules for interpreting! That goes a long way in understanding the origins of our Churches of Christ heritage – a heritage to be treasured.

Ouida and I will be on a working vacation in Kentucky and West Virginia for a week this month. I give the keynote address for the Restoration Forum on Sunday evening, October 16, at the Broadway Christian Church in Lexington. We plan to visit "horse country" in Kentucky and some select sites in West Virginia as guests of Jack and Ruby Gibson.

All previous essays of this series are now available at leroygarrett.org under "Soldier On." Also available are the 60 issues of my newsletter "Once More With Love," which concluded in 2003. There are also some volumes of my journal Restoration Review, which ceased publication in 1992 after 40 years running.

We add names upon request.