A Theological History of Restoration Movement Thought, Part 5 (Moses Lard and Benjamin Franklin)

Alexander Campbell died shortly after the Civil War end, leaving a united Movement. The various congregations had a number of disagreements, but they were all willing to tolerate one another’s disagreements for the sake of unity. A handful of congregations had allowed the use of an organ, but the issue was not yet divisive. Campbell had been the president of the first national missionary society and had vigorously campaigned for its institution and support, but a few voices had been heard in opposition to this new venture.

After the Civil War, no one man stood as a singularly influential leader. However, leaders arose representing different points of view, each with his own periodical. Among the more conservative were Benjamin Franklin and Moses Lard. Among the more moderate was Isaac Errett.

Lard published Lard’s Quarterly, while Franklin published the American Christian Review. Errett published the Christian Standard (now published as the Standard). Until this time, leaders of different views tended to publish in the same periodicals, as Campbell and Stone had established open editorial policies, opening their pages to people with whom they disagreed. This generous spirit was never to return to the Movement.

Lard began publishing in 1864 and immediately demonstrated his independence from Campbell by declaring the unimmersed lost–

But suppose a man to be a true believer in Christ, to be truly penitent, to be sprinkled and not immersed, and sincerely to think this baptism, to be a strictly moral man, and to feel in heart that he is a Christian—what then? May he not commune? I answer yes; provided it can be first shown that sincerely thinking so transmutes an act of sprinkling into an act of immersion, or causes God to accept the thing he has not appointed for the thing he has. Otherwise, I say, not that the man may not commune, but that he cannot and does not commune.

Campbell had also taught that the unimmersed may join in the Lord’s Supper, saying we “neither invite nor debar,” which has been the Church of Christ position ever since. But Lard pressed for a closed communion.

Moreover, Lard insisted that all Christians must agree on every single point–

For if both of these men be true Christians neither more nor less, evidently there cannot exist between them even a nominal, to say nothing of a real difference. … Consequently they are now, be it supposed, Christians strictly according to the Bible; that is, they mentally accept and in heart hold, as the matter of their faith, precisely and only what the Bible certainly teaches; they do and practice what, and only what, it either expressly or by precedent enjoins; in spirit, temper, and disposition, they are exactly what it requires; and as to names, they wear none save those which it imposes.

Here we see the idea of “tests of fellowship” greatly expanded beyond the teachings of Stone and Campbell, already going to the opposite extreme. The Campbells counseled that the church’s practice be only what is commanded or established by example, but this was no test of fellowship. In Lard’s writings, however, having the right name and practices establishes who is saved.

A similar approach to fellowship is found in the writings of Franklin. In 1877 he wrote about the difference between moral and positive commands in “Positive Divine Laws.” Franklin reasoned that commands that are not based on standards of moral behavior are “positive” commands, that is, they are the law solely because God says so, whereas moral law does not require any special revelation.

God’s grace covers mistakes in obedience to the moral law–no one is perfect–but the positive commands are a test of faith and must be obeyed perfectly on threat of condemnation.

In a 1868 article, Franklin teaches, perhaps for the first time in Restoration Movement history, the notion that the one true church is defined by certain marks:

I. A body, or community, not built on the foundation which God laid, is not the community which the Lord calls “my Church.”

II. A community not founded and established in the right place, is not the Church of Christ.

III. A community not founded at the right time, is not the kingdom of Christ.

IV. No church can be the true Church not founded by the proper persons, Christ and the apostles.

V. A kingdom, with any other law than the one given by the head of the Church, is not the kingdom of Christ.

VI. Any community labeled with a foreign name, or a name not found to designate the body of Christ, in the New Testament, is not the kingdom of God.

Here we see a particularly radical departure from the teachings of Stone and the Campbells, who taught that the only marks of the church were faith in Jesus and baptism.

The Movement’s history would quickly show the fruit produced by these teachings.