Amazing Grace: Our Heritage of Wonderful Slogans

We don’t teach Restoration Movement history as much or as well as we should. For purposes of this series of lessons, I thought it might be helpful to cover a small but very important part of our heritage — one of which I’m particularly proud.

You see, Thomas and Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott, especially Scott, were great sloganeers — and the slogans they coined defined the Movement for generations. Sadly, we’ve forgotten or misinterpreted nearly every one of them.

We’ve all heard,

We speak where the Bible speaks; we’re silent where the Bible is silent.

This one goes back to Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” and has been greatly misunderstood.

You see, Campbell would have been infuriated at the suggestion that this slogan means that those who use instruments or the like are damned. Campbell certainly advocated a return to First Century practice, but he also taught — and taught vigorously — that inferences from the scriptures should never be tests of fellowship.

In his “Declaration and Address,” he wrote,

6. That although inferences and deductions from scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God’s holy word: yet are they not formally binding upon the consciences of christians farther than they perceive the connection, and evidently see that they are so; for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men; but in the power and veracity of God — therefore no such deductions can be made terms of communion, but do properly belong to the after and progressive edification of the church. Hence it is evident that no such deductions or inferential truths ought to have any place in the church’s confession.

Plainly, Campbell was not speaking of authority but terms of communion. He meant that we should never bind as tests of fellowship those things not expressly found in scripture! Those who make instrumental music a test of fellowship are not part of the Restoration Movement, as they deny it’s founding principle.

In light of this teaching, it’s not surprising that the Campbells also taught,

We are Christians only, but not the only Christians.

This one was commonly taught for decades after Alexander Campbell’s death but is now nearly forgotten — because many of us now deny it. But the slogan well summarizes key Restoration Movement principles. Campbell wanted us to return to First Century practices (Christians only) but not bind those practices as tests of fellowship (not the only Christians).

More well known is —

In faith, unity
In opinion, liberty, and
In all things, charity

This was not original with the Campbells, but it still remains a commonly stated principle among us. However, its meaning has been changed. By “faith,” Campbell meant “faith in Jesus,” because this is how the Bible defines “faith.” “Opinion,” therefore, meant everything else. Of course, “charity” meant love in the 19th Century.

Nowadays, we use “faith” to mean anything the Bible mentions, while “opinion” is anything else, but this is quite plainly not Campbell’s view. See Faith vs. Opinion.

Campbell simply meant that we should treat as brothers all who share our common faith in Jesus. It’s really that simple. Of course, as any Bible scholar would know, Campbell believed that “faith” includes a commitment to obey God’s commands — to make Jesus Lord of our lives — but he also understood that we all do this imperfectly and can count on grace to cover our doctrinal shortcomings.

Finally, we should add the still-famous slogan,

We have no creed but Christ;
No creedbook but the Bible.

This has, of course, been distorted a bit. We more typically combine the two and say, “We have no creed but the Bible.” And we have trouble explaining why we so object to creeds when we are fine with doctrinal position statements on our websites and in our tracts and Sunday school material.

You see, Campbell’s objection to creeds was that they were used as tests of fellowship. And so he meant that the only test of fellowship we have is Christ. If you’re in Christ, you’re in fellowship with us, even if we disagree on something else.

The lessons we’re covering on grace simply take us back to the founding of the Restoration Movement — returning us to our founding principles — not because they’re part of our heritage, but because they’re Biblical.

It’s a sad irony, isn’t it, that we’ve become the very thing that the founders of our Movement dedicated their lives to ending.