The Fork in the Road: “The Way of UNITY between “Christian Churches” and Churches of Christ,” Part 4

I’ll skip a few paragraphs in Boles’ speech until we get to —

Thomas Campbell

Thomas Campbell was the father of Alexander Campbell and the founder of the Campbell branch of the Restoration Movement. The founding document of that branch is his “Declaration and Address” (1809). Boles quotes from that document,

Our desire, therefore, for our brethren and ourselves would be to reject human opinions and the inventions of men as of no authority, or as having no place in the church of God. We should cease from further contentions about such things, returning to and holding fast by the original standard, taking the divine word alone for our rule; the Holy Spirit for our teacher and guide; and lead us into all truth … that, by so doing, we may be at peace among ourselves, follow peace with all men, and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

I’m confident that Thomas Campbell would have objected to the instrument, had that been an issue in his day. But he never would have made it a fellowship issue. In the same document, 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 churchs’s confession.

You see, Campbell pushed for two things — primitive Christianity and unity based on faith in Jesus. And he made it abundantly clear that the ultimate test of fellowship is not agreement with him on primitive Christianity but faith in Jesus.

5. That with respect to the commands and ordinances of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the scriptures are silent, as to the express time or manner of performance, if any such there be; no human authority has power to interfere, in order to supply the supposed deficiency, by making laws for the church; nor can any thing more be required of christians in such cases, but only that they so observe these commands and ordinances, as will evidently answer the declared and obvious end of their institution. Much less has any human authority power to impose new commands or ordinances upon the church, which our Lord Jesus Christ has not enjoined. Nothing ought to be received into the faith or worship of the church; or be made a term of communion amongst christians, that is not as old as the New Testament.

According to Campbell, we may not fill silences with laws. Would that God raise up more Thomas Campbells!

In short, Boles is using Campbell, out of context, to “prove” exactly the opposite of what Campbell stood for. Campbell would have been like McGarvey — insistent on a cappella worship and absolutely resolute in continuing in fellowship with those who disagreed with him.

Martin Luther

Boles quotes Luther’s famous line —

When Martin Luther was summoned by imperial authority before the Diet of Worms and asked to recant what he had said, he closed his speech with these im­mortal words: “Unless you confute me by arguments drawn from the scripture, I cannot and will not recant anything; for my conscience is a captive to God’s word, and it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I take My stand — I can do no otherwise. So help me God Amen! “

What was the primary charge of heresy leveled at Luther? What teaching was he defending? His books, including especially his “Sermon on Good Works,” in which he wrote,

The first, the noblest, the sublimest of all works, is faith in Jesus Christ. It is from this work that all other works must proceed: they are but the vassals of faith, and receive their efficacy from it alone. If a man feels in his heart the assurance that what he has done is acceptable to God, the work is good, if it were merely the lifting up of a straw; but if he have not this assurance, his work is not good, even should he raise the dead. A heathen, a Jew, a Turk, a sinner, can perform all the other works; but to trust firmly in God, and to feel an assurance that we are accepted by him, is what a Christian, strong in grace, alone is capable of doing.

A Christian who possesses faith in God does everything with liberty and joy; while the man who is not at one with God is full of care and kept in bondage; he asks himself with anguish how many works he should perform; he runs to and fro; he questions this man and that; he nowhere finds peace, and does everything with sorrow and fear.

Consequently, I have always extolled faith. But in the world it is otherwise. There, the essential thing is to have many works – works high and great, and of every dimension, without caring whether they are quickened by faith. Thus, men build their peace, not on God’s good pleasure, but on their own merits, that is to say, on sand. (Matthew 7:27.)

To preach faith (it has been said) is to prevent good works; but if a man should possess the strength of all men united, or even of all creatures, this sole obligation of living in faith would be a task too great for him ever to accomplish. If I say to a sick man: ‘Be well, and thou shalt have the use of thy limbs,’ will any one say that I forbid him to use his limbs? Must not health precede labour? It is the same when we preach faith: it should go before works, in order that the works themselves should exist.

Would that Boles had read more Luther!

Alexander Campbell was seen by many of his friends and supporters as the second coming of Martin Luther. Earl West reports that Walter Scott often signed his letters to Campbells “Philip,” meaning Philip Melancthon, Luther’s right hand man. Campbell referred to his movement as a “reformation,” because he saw himself as completing the Reformation of Luther and Calvin, because despite their many gains for Christ, they failed to find a basis for unity.

After the 1939 unity meeting, Boles’ speech was made into a tract and widely circulated. It’s still taught as doctrine in many schools of preaching. It remains a source of division, as many a preacher has been trained on those words, trained by the editor to consider all disagreement about the Bible as grounds for damnation.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but it concerns me that Boles soon stopped publishing notices of unity efforts with the instrumental churches. Moreover, it was only recently that books were published with the full text of Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration and Address.” When I first taught a class on the Restoration Movement around 1980, my church had an excellent Restoration Movement library for its day, with many books on the subject — and no copy of the founding document. Why not?

The first copy I read was in J. M. Powell’s 1987  The Cause We Plead: A Story of the Restoration Movement, a marvelous book that opened my eyes to how the 20th Century Churches of Christ taught the very opposite of what the Restoration leaders taught.

No, the founding principles of the Restoration Movement were hidden for decades by a horrible misreading of Thomas Campbell, “Raccoon” John Smith, and others, Bible verses ripped wholly out of context, and the abuse of the words of such men as J. W. McGarvey and Martin Luther. History, scripture, and logic were all re-ordered  in order to turn the Regulative Principle into the central teaching of the Bible and the ultimate test of fellowship.

And history tells the result. We divided and divided. Around here, there are churches divided over fellowship halls, whether elders may be re-affirmed, whether the children’s church is allowed, clapping for a baptism, and on and on and on. And thanks to the teachings of men such as Boles, we must damn and divide over all such issues. And we must harbor and nurse our resentments over the divisions caused by the other side for daring to be wrong, indeed, for daring to prefer their opinions above ours.

It’s a sad, sad thing. It’s as utterly contrary to scripture as can be imagined. And it’s exactly the opposite of what the Restoration Movement was founded to oppose. We have become the very thing the Restoration Movement was founded to end.