Introduction
1. IT BEGAN IN SCOTLAND
   
2. THOMAS CAMPBELL WRITES HIS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
   
3. THE SPIRIT OF THE "DECLARATION AND ADDRESS"
   
4. PRINCIPLES OF THE DOCUMENT
   
5. HISTORIC NOTES ON OUR FIRST CHURCH
   
6. "LET CHRISTIAN UNITY BE OUR POLAR STAR"
   
7. THE NOBLEST ACT IN BARTON STONE'S LIFE
   
8. LEARNING FROM A BACKWOODS PREACHER
   
9. CHRISTIANS IN BABYLON
   
10. WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?
    
11. THE ESSENCE OF THE CAMPBELL PLEA
    
12. THE DEATH OF A DREAM
    
13. THE SAND CREEK ADDRESS
    
14. A MUDDLED MOVEMENT
    
15. THE AUTHORITY TOTEM
    
16. THE PARTY SPIRIT
    
17. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
    
18. OUR COSTLIEST SIN: EXCLUSIVISM
    
19. RESTORATION OR REFORMATION
    
20. A BOY LEARNS THE MEANING OF BROTHERHOOD
    
21. THE BUTTING BRETHREN
    
22. ANALYSIS OF LEGALISM
    
23. THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
    
24. THOUGHTS ON FELLOWSHIP
    
25. ON THE ROCKS
    
26. WITHDRAWING FROM THE DISORDERLY
    
27. CAUSING DIVISIONS
    
28. TWO GREAT ERRORS
    
29. UNION IN TRUTH
    
30. ONE BODY IN CHRIST
    
31. UNITY AND IDENTITY
    
32. UNITY IN DIVERSITY
    
33. IS DOCTRINE IMPORTANT?
    
34. THE WEIGHTIER MATTERS
    
35. MUST WE GIVE UP OUR OPINIONS?
    
36. WHAT DIFFERENCES DO DIFFERENCES MAKE?
    
37. THE "ONE BAPTISM" AND FELLOWSHIP
    
38. ARE WE TO FELLOWSHIP THE UNIMMERSED?
    
39. OUR FATHERS ON "WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?"
    
40. "OUR BROTHERS IN THE DENOMINATIONS"
    
41. WHAT IS "OUR FELLOWSHIP"?
    
42. ARE WE TO FELLOWSHIP THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH?
    
43. I WOULD ABDICATE
    
44. A BASIC FALLACY TO OVERCOME
    
45. CAN WE BE UNITED AND NOT KNOW IT?
    
46. SEPARATED BUT NOT DIVIDED
    
47. THE ONE CHURCH INDIVISIBLE
    
48. UNITY WILL COME, BUT
    
49. IF NOT BROTHERHOOD, THEN CO-EXISTENCE
    
50. THIS IS OUR GLORY!
    
51. THE UNIFYING POWER OF THE CROSS
    

TWO GREAT ERRORS

The First Error

The fundamental error in our thinking as a people came when we confused the restoration movement with the church of God. The church is a divine organism; the restoration movement was a project originated by men at a given period in the history of the church. It's purpose was not to restore the church to earth, for the church never ceased to exist on earth. The temple of God has never been razed, the body of Christ has never died, the family of God has never become extinct. The announced purpose was to "restore unity, peace and purity to the whole church of God." True, the church was rent by schism, and the people of God were a scattered flock but that same condition prevails even now!

When Thomas Campbell wrote "The Declaration and Address," there was not a separate party anywhere which was called by the distinctive title "Church of Christ" and there had been no such organization for centuries. Even after the Campbells and their co­laborers were driven out of the Presbyterian and Baptist communions, they formed no party under this title. Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone united their forces as the result of a meeting held in Lexington, Kentucky in 1832. Campbell preferred the name "Disciples" while Stone preferred "Christians." Eventually the terms "Christian Church" and "Church of Christ" were used interchangeably. It remained for David Lipscomb in 1906 while writing in reply to an enquiry from the United States Census Bureau to bring about a separate listing under the title "Church of Christ."

It is obvious that there is a difference between the church of Christ and "The Church of Christ" just as there is a difference between the church of God and "The Church of God" in our time. The church of Christ embraces within it every saved person on earth. There is not a child of God outside of it. This is not the case with "The Church of Christ" as it came to be so designated among the religious bodies covered by the census. Indeed there are now some twenty­five parties which wear this title and with few exceptions each of these regards itself as the one holy, catholic and apostolic church of God on earth, while repudiating the claims of all the others. The exclusive attitude of these is an indication of the party spirit which motivates them.

The church of Christ was in existence before the days of Alexander Campbell. He was a member of it even while he was allied with the Redstone and Mahoning Associations of the Baptist Church. But "The Church of Christ" as that title is now employed designates a party in Christendom which grew out of the reformatory work launched by the Campbells. The members of this party confusing it with the church of God now deny that there are Christians in the sects and most of them refuse to regard as brethren in the Lord those who are affiliated with segments of the same movement. Instead of laboring to unite the Christians in all sects they frequently divide and separate from each other, setting up rival parties in the same area, thus adding to the confusion in the religious realm. Some of them go so far as to argue for re­immersion of those who come to them from other parties of the movement. Thus has the spirit of sectarianism crystallized in new tests of fellowship and unwritten creeds.

A Second Error

Another tragic mistake was made when men lost the distinction between the good news of Christ and the apostles' doctrine. This affected the congregation of saints in a vital way, since it set up knowledge of a system instead of faith in a person as the primary ground of admission to the fellowship. The gospel was to be preached; the doctrine was to be taught. The first was a message announced to the world to bring men into a relationship with Christ; the second was a course of instruction for training those in the Lord. Alexander Campbell early saw the importance of the distinction and wrote:

"Preaching the gospel and teaching the converts are as distinct and distinguishable employments as enlisting an army and training it or as creating a school and teaching it. Unhappily, for the church and the world, this distinction, if at all conceded as legitimate, is obliterated or annulled in almost all protestant Christendom. The public heralds of Christianity, acting as missionaries or evangelists, and the elders or pastors of Christian churches are indiscriminately denominated preachers or ministers; and whether addressing the church or the world, they are alike preaching or ministering some things they call Gospel. . . .They seem to have never learned the difference between preaching and teaching."

Because of the fatal errors arising from confusion at this point Campbell was insistent that a return to the vocabulary of the Spirit must include a proper understanding of the distinction between these words. In Popular Lectures and Addresses he said:

"The difference between preaching and teaching Christ, so palpable in the apostolic age, though now confounded in the theoretic theologies of our day, must be well defined and clearly distinguished in the mind, in the style and utterance of an evangelist or missionary who would be a workman that need not to blush, a workman covetous of the best gifts and of the richest rewards. . ."

The difference between the good news which was to be proclaimed and the system of doctrine which must be interpreted and taught is clearly marked in an article in Millennial Harbinger for April, 1862:

"We preach, or report, or proclaim news. But who teaches news? Who exhorts it? We preach the gospel to unbelievers, to aliens, but never to Christians, or to those who have received it. Paul taught the Christians; he admonished, exhorted, commanded and reproved Christians, and on some occasions declared the glad tidings to them who had received them, but who seemed to have forgotten them, as he wrote the Corinthians."

Let me explain why it is so important to the community of saints to recognize and maintain this distinction. Jesus commissioned the apostles to proclaim the gospel to all creation. He declared that those who believe and are immersed will be saved. Salvation from past sins and introduction into the fellowship is conditioned upon belief of the gospel. The gospel consists of facts related to Jesus Christ. That which must be believed in order to salvation is that Jesus is the Messiah and God's Son.

Many today have been conditioned to think that the entire scope of the new covenant scriptures constitutes the gospel. They regard the letters addressed to churches and individuals as part of the gospel. Since one must believe the gospel in order to be saved it follows that one must understand and accept their reasoning and interpretation of every point of doctrine to be recognized as a child of God. We must never overlook the fact that the partisan spirit always substitutes the interpretation of God's word for the word itself and demands conformity not just to what God says but to what the party deduces he meant when he said it. This completely alters the Christian system. It makes salvation dependent upon attainment to a certain degree of knowledge rather than upon faith in a person.

This has been the real root of division within all Christendom. It is the basis of most controversy among sincere religionists. It is the ground of orthodoxy which has been used to stifle all original thought and hound out as traitors all honest dissenters. It is the rock upon which every restoration movement in history has run aground and been battered to pieces. The Campbells clearly understood this and labored to offset it in advance. They did this by two methods. First, they carefully defined the terms essential to entrance into the fellowship, showing what was involved in faith. In the second place they carefully pointed out that unanimity of opinion, interpretation or knowledge in doctrinal matters could never be made a proper foundation for unity.

With reference to the first, Alexander Campbell wrote in The Christian System as follows:

"But the grandeur, sublimity and beauty of the foundation of hope, and of ecclesiastical or social union, established by the author and founder of Christianity, consisted of this-that the belief of one fact . . . is all that is requisite, as far as faith goes to salvation. The belief of this one fact, and submission to one institution expressive of it, is all that is required of heaven to admission into the church."

That there may be no question as to what is meant by this language, Campbell proceeds to explain further:

"The one fact is expressed in a single proposition-that Jesus the Nazarene is the Messiah . . The institution is baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Every such person is a disciple in the fullest sense of the word, the moment he has believed this fact . . . and has submitted to the above­mentioned institution; and whether he believes the five points condemned, or the five points approved, by the Synod of Dort, is not so much as to be asked of him: whether he holds any of the views of the Calvinists or Arminians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, or Quakers, is never once to be asked of such persons, in order to admission into the Christian community called the church."

Having come to a realization through observation and study, that fellowship in Christ can never be made contingent upon conformity in interpretation, Thomas Campbell expressed this idea in his "Declaration and Address." The careful student will be amazed at the wisdom exhibited in his statement. It places reasoning and research in proper perspective. The right of every individual to go directly to the sacred writings for himself and the concomitant right to form conclusions based upon personal investigation is asserted. It is conceded that when deductive reasoning is fairly done the concepts may be called the doctrine of God's word. But it is asserted that these concepts are not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians except as they are grasped and understood to be truth.

I must confess that I studied this matter for years before I caught the significance of the word "formally." Every man who sets to his seal that God is true thereby obligates himself to accept all truth as revealed by God. But the nature of man necessitated that revelation be given gradually and progressively-"line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little." Revelation has been perfected but man has not. His knowledge and understanding of truth must also be gradual and progressive. He must "grow in grace and knowledge of the truth." Every man in Christ sustains a moral obligation to the Creator to accept all truth as it is revealed to his consciousness to be truth. Because of his frailty and imperfection some things may appear to be truth in one stage of development which will need to be discarded in the brightness of greater light.

No two of us possess the same degree of mental aptitude. We are at various stages of growth and intellectual attainment. It would violate conscience to be forced to acknowledge as truth that which cannot be personally established as truth. To take the reasoning of one individual or group and bind that formally upon all others, even those who have not as yet been able to arrive at the same conclusions, is to do an injustice to the human spirit and is a violation of the Christian ethic. Such matters must not be made terms of fellowship but belong to the edification of the members of the body in love.

It would be as absurd to demand conformity of all to a higher degree of attainment in a system conditioned upon progression in knowledge as to demand it in a world requiring progression in revelation. In other words, one could as justifiably demand that Isaac and Jacob understand the epistle to the Romans in order to be saved as to demand that every person in the fellowship of Christ fully grasp all that is implied in chapter twenty of the Revelation letter to be saved. Every child of God is morally bound by his relationship to Jesus to accept all truth as he becomes aware of it but the relationship we sustain to each other does not convey the right to formally bind our interpretations upon each other. Any such coercion and compulsion of spirit must result in faith in the wisdom of men. All that we have thus stated is contained in a few simple sentences written by Thomas Campbell in these words:

"That although inferences and deductions from the Scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God's holy word, yet they are not formally binding upon the conscience of Christians further 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 properly do 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."

It has been the fate of most religious reformations "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men in Christ are created equal" to fall into the hands of ambitious men who manipulate them to the achievement of their own ends. Men desire the blessings of freedom without accepting the responsibilities associated therewith. It is easier to abdicate our share in the royal priesthood than to serve in our capacity. As any such movement grows its adherents moved by frantic fear for its survival come to depend more and more upon methods devised by human ingenuity and less and less upon the providential care of God.

Almost without exception every reformation inaugurated to free men from the dominance of a clergy has ended up with a clergy of its own. The clerical spirit thrives on the party spirit and is sustained by it. The clergymen become the authorized interpreters of the oracles of God. By subtle means the average man becomes convinced that he cannot understand the will of the Lord so he relegates this to professionals, trained specialists. By the same token the doctrinal interpretations of these must be accepted without question. To doubt the clergy is to disbelieve God. The Romish church set up an infallible interpreter. Most of the parties growing out of the Restoration Movement believe they have an infallible interpretation. The last is actually worse than the first for belief in an infallible interpreter will at least preserve unity. The Roman Catholic Church today is one of the most tightly knit organizations in the world. An infallible interpretation substitutes party dogmas for papal decrees and is productive of division every time someone discovers additional truth.

Perhaps it was a realization of the dangers inherent in dogmatism and orthodoxy that prompted Thomas Campbell to reject doctrinal knowledge and conformity as the basis for Christian fellowship. Of course he was also motivated by a clear conception of the foundation of communion expressed by God. One reads with wonder and amazement the safeguards thrown about truth and his heart is saddened to see how his own brethren by deviating from these announced principles have not only failed the restoration movement but have become sectarian in doing so. Consider the following clear statement as found in the "Declaration and Address":

"That although doctrinal exhibitions of the great system of Divine truths and defensive testimonies, in opposition to prevailing errors, be highly expedient, and the more full and explicit they be for those purposes the better; yet, as these must be, in a great measure, the effect of human reasoning, and of course must contain many inferential truths, they ought not to be made terms of Christian communion, unless we suppose, what is contrary to fact, that none have a right to the communion of the church, but such as possess a very clear and decisive judgment, or are come to a very high degree of doctrinal information, whereas the church from the beginning did, and ever will, consist of little children and young men, as well as fathers."

There is no use denying that the heirs of the great project to "unite the Christians in all the sects" is now "in evil case." The two errors in thought with which we have been dealing are not the only ones which foster the partisan spirit that has fragmentized and fractionalized us. We have referred to them in this treatise primarily because the first confuses the nature of the church of God while the second confuses the nature of the message of God. These are fundamental. It was because of these two grave errors in the religious world that the "Declaration and Address" was written. That document was clear upon these issues. It is a sad and tragic thing that we have now made a full circle and are once more involved in sectarianism of our own creation because we have lost the truths enunciated so many years ago.

Unless there is a reversal of attitude and a change of philosophy "the Churches of Christ" can only look forward to a grim future of strife, contention and division. These various parties contain within themselves the seeds of schism and they will "multiply and fill the earth after their kind." There will be little of a constructive nature contributed to the distressed and distraught realm of Christendom.

Conclusion

Certain conditions existed in the early part of the nineteenth century which called for inauguration of a reformatory movement. Sincere men who loved the Lord could no longer continue to go deeper and deeper into the welter of sectarianism. Creeds and parties were multiplying. God's children were separated and segregated from each other. They were enemies instead of friends. Alexander Campbell wrote thus:

"Tired of new creeds and new parties in religion, and of the numerous abortive efforts to reform the reformation; convinced from the Holy Scriptures, from observation and experience, that the union of the disciples of Christ is essential to the conversion of the world, and that the correction and improvement of no creed or partisan establishment in Christendom, could ever become the basis of such a union, communion and co­operation, as would restore peace to a church militant against itself, or triumph to the common salvation; a few individuals, about the commencement of the present century, began to reflect upon the ways and means to restore primitive Christianity."

The same situation now prevails among the heirs of the restoration movement. If that movement was the answer to the tragic state existing in the early part of the previous century is it not the answer to the same tragic state existing in the last half of the twentieth century? Is it not time once more that a few individuals begin to reflect upon ways and means? In short, is it not time to restore the spirit of restoration?

(This is part of a treatise, "Restoring Restoration", Mission Messenger: Vol. 23, No. 8; Aug. 1961.)