Baptists and Disciples: David Lipscomb Appeals for Unity in 1866

May 10, 2012

In 1866 Lipscomb called for a representative meeting of Baptists and Disciples–whom he characterized as “brethren”–to seek a way to foster unity between the two groups. He identified their common theology (including a common baptism), but also stressed their common heritage which, he claimed, stretched back through “eighteen centuries of persecution and martyrdom.”

For Lipscomb, Baptists and Disciples have:

  • common baptism
  • common rule of faith
  • common discipline
  • common Lord
  • common Heaven
  • common ancestry
Read his plea for churches to meet together with prayer and fasting so as to unite as one people.

David Lipscomb, “To Baptists and Disciples in Tennessee,” Gospel Advocate 8 (10 April 1866), 236-37.

Brethern:–The Savior of the world prayed that his people and his followers might be one–that the world might believe that the Father had sent him. The oneness of the people of God, the unity of the followers of the Lord in one body, is made a condition of the world’s believing in the Son of God, that that world might be saved from the woe of hell. Division and strife to-day separate the professed followers of the Savior, and the world in infidelity and sin is going down to the dark abodes of eternal death. In the face of this lawful consequence of division among the people of God, what are doing to bring about union and peace? Are we making the efforts and the sacrifices to avoid division and bring about union that the importance of the subject demands? We divide and separate, and in careless indifference perpetuate that division in despite of the prayer of Jesus, and as a consequence our fellowmen, our neighbors, friends, brethren, husbands, wives and children go down to death, how can we be held guiltless in the sight of God? The union of Christians in one body, in one faith, in one walk, directed by the same rule, is the demand of God and the crying want of the world. Shall Christians make no effort to comply with the demand of God, and supply this want of the world? We appeal to Baptist and Disciples as having many points of agreement to make a move in this direction. They teach a common rule of admission into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, to-wit: A penitent believer’s burial in Baptism, in order to a resurrection to a new and holy walk with God, they have a common rule of faith and practice for individual Christians, and book of discipline for the Church of God, the simple, pure, unadulterated word of God. They have one common Lord and Master, one common Heaven of rest and happiness after life’s trials and sorrows are over. They have, too, one common ancestry, one common history for eighteen centuries of persecution and martyrdom. Can they not live and labor together in love and harmony as children of a common Father? Our brethren, too, in Virginia, have set us the example of trying to effect a union. Shall we not follow their good example? Shall we not have a meeting either of men chosen from our respective bodies at large, or commend to the churches to meet together, with fasting and prayer to God, and seek to unite as one people. How greatly would our capacity for good be increased? What joy to the good of earth and the angels of Heaven, would such an effort cause?

Will our brethren, Baptists and Disciples, at once speak out and say whether we shall make the effort, and if so, how, and how soon.

11 Comments | Church History, Stone-Campbell, Theology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

David Lipscomb (1912)–More Gems

April 9, 2009

The octogenarian David Lipscomb, knowing his last years were upon him, intentionally broached subjects and pressed points that he hoped would shape the future of the church. Here are few examples.

Debates Need to End. Lipscomb thought that debates between “Baptists and disciples” needed to change or cease. They needed to stress the commonalities more than the differences. He believed much more united them than divided them.

It has been a growing thought in my mind for some years that the end or purpose of debates among professing Christians should be changed. Now they debate to see how much and how far they differ. Each tries to make the faith of the other look as bad as possible. That is not a kind and fraternal way of treating each other. Doctor Loftin and Brother [F. W.] Smith have been discussing the differences between the disciples and the Baptists. In doing this they were compelled to observe the points of agreement. Without the knowledge of either of them, I propose that they discuss and show the points of agreement between them. They both believe in the Bible as the word of God; in God, the Father; in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world; in the Hooly Spirit, who came to the world to guide men in the paths of salvation. They both believe in faith, repentance and baptism into Christ….The controversy is as to the point at which, in his mind, God forgives the sins of one coming to him. Does man’s knowledge of the point at which God forgives sin hinder or help God in forgiving when the sinner comes to the place in the path of obedience? [1]

General Booth and the Salvation Army. Lipscomb’s preference for the poor is on full display as he comments on the death of William Booth (1829-1912), the founder of the Salvation Army.

But he was not a man to be laughed out of his work. His work was a much-needed, but neglected, work. It was a God-approved work. God has instructed his children to preach to the poor. They were not, are not, doing it. When the world saw Booth, a man of faith and energy and life, engage in the work, they responded promptly to his call and helped forward his work. He has moved the whole religious world on this point of preaching to the poor. That was a needed work. It is a work, an effort in a direction to which all should respond. All should magnify the work of preaching to the poor and helping the needy by all speaking well of, and encouraging in a right way, the work ordained by God. The work of helping and preaching to the poor should be exalted and magnified by the children of God leading in and exalting that work, by Christians doing it in God’s appointed ways and through the provisions he has made. [2]

Humble Obedience. In his continuing war against rebaptism, Lipscomb constantly stressed the nature of true obedience. It was not a matter of perfect or precise understanding but about trust (faith). This piece goes to the heart of his argument against rebaptism. Saving obedience is not about precision, perfection or even fully accurate understanding. It is about the mercy of God.

The letters to the churches show much weakness and many mistakes and wrongs among Christians in the early ages of the church; but not once do we find a person rejected or required to do his work over again for weakness of faith or misunderstanding requirements. To do this is something new under the sun, and is of man, not of God. I had rather go before God realizing my weakness and liability to sin, trusting him for mercy and pardon, than to go relying upon my good understanding and obedience to the perfect will of God. I hope and trust to be saved, not by the fullness and correctness of my understanding of God’s will, but by his love and mercy to all who want to serve him. [3]

“Poor in Spirit” the Key to Unity. This comment is from 1911 but it dovetails with the previous point. Again in conversation with Rebaptists, he stressed that their sectarianism is destroying not only the unity of God’s people but undermining the priority of faith.

The first prerequisite for entrance into the kingdom of God is, one should feel ‘poor in spirit.’ He must feel his own lack of spiritual power or resources before he can come to God in an acceptable spirit, in a spirit that God will accept. The spirit that feels its poverty, its helplessnesses, its need of guidance and strength, is the one that God looks on with pity and compassion and is willing to lift up and guide.”

We have pleaded for the union of Christians. Our work has been felt. Are we fit to still lead on in this work? While emphasizing truths connected with this union, have not we become sectarian ourselves? Many have espoused a common sectarianism with the churches around us [the Disciples of Christ, JMH]. Are not many others moving into a sectarianism in opposition to others [the Rebaptists, JMH]? Let us be humble and faithful, looking to God for help and guidance, and not be self-sufficient.

‘For remission,’ or ‘into the remission of sins,’ occupying its God-given place among other blessings leading to obedience, is a wholesome doctrine, full of comfort and blessing; but, taking out of it place and exalted above other blessings and favors promised by God, it becomes a party ensign and hinders rather than helps forward the union of God’s people and the salvation of the world. God makes all of his truths helpful in leading men forward in the work of salvation, yet he demands that his requirements should all be treated alike, each occupying the place assigned it by God himself. To exalt one promise or one duty above another is to mutilate and subvert the plan of salvation and hinder rather than help to save man. Faith in Jesus Christ as the great, leading, far-reaching principle that molds the life and leads to and helps every act of service, God has placed before and above all other services of man. The acts of obedience that grow out of faith, as fruits of faith, come in to complete and finish the character and life of the believer, and to fit it for a home with God. [4]

Overemphasis on Baptism? What does it mean to preach the Word? Lipscomb saw among his contemporaries some dangerous tendencies and he called them back to the fundamentals of Christianity—the Sermon on the Mount. Once again, for Lipscomb, the gospel is not simply the death and resurrection of Jesus, it is the good news of the kingdom breaking into the world to transform lives as into the image of Christ.

Every spiritual system as a standard of excellence to which it proposes to bring man….The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5, 6, 7) gives the theory and rules of life to attain that standard. The principles laid down in the Sremon on the Mount, lived up to as Jesus did, would produce the life he lived….That Sermon is the perfection and consummation of the gospel of God to the world. To teach and preach these truths and principles to man is to bring the gospel in its fullness to man

There is no virtue in believing, repenting, and being baptized unto the remission of sins, and then doing nothing to left up and help men as Jesus labored to help them. Nothing short of the full life of Christ as an example and help to man is the gospel. How few of us realize this truth! When we preach faith, repentance, and baptism, we satisfy ourselves and teach others that we have preached the gospel, and those who act on these teaching think that they have obeyed the gospel. Hence the immense number who come into the church and imagine their salvation is secure and do nothing more. Young men often come to the Bible School and want to get up sermons that will enable them to debate with the sects. To qualify a young man to debate with the sects is nine times out of ten to make him a sectarian. Having truth does not hinder sectarianism. A man may hold the truth, not in the love of it; he may hold it to build up his party, not to honor God and save sinners. Sectarianism is sinful whether it is based on the truth or not. Training young preachers to debate is not to educate them in the needed Bible teaching. Often it is hurtful to a young man’s usefulness and his after life to make a debater of him. The debating spirit is often not the Christian spirit. The spirit that suffers and stands steadfast unto the end is the one that God [5]

The more I read Lipscomb the more I appreciate his heart for the poor, the humility of his spirit, his earnest desire to obey God in every thing, and his hatred of sectarianism. 

Footnotes

[1] David Lipscomb, “A New Discussion Proposed,” Gospel Advocate 54 (19 Dec 1912) 1377.

[2] David Lipscomb, “General Booth,” Gospel Advocate 54 (19 Sept 1912) 1049

[3] David Lipscomb, “God is Best Pleased with the Humblest and Most Obedient Trust in Him,” Gospel Advocate 54 (30 May 1912) 671.

[4] David Lipscomb, “Religious People Hard to Move,” Gospel Advocate 53 (2 March 1911) 268-69.

[5] David Lipscomb, “’Preach the Word,’ Gospel Advocate 53 (25 May 1911) 587, 590.

6 Comments | Stone-Campbell | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

Confession and the “Plan of Salvation”: Another Texas and Tennessee Difference

March 4, 2009

In an earlier post I quoted a piece from G. C. Brewer’s autobiography where he objected to the emphasis that some placed on the plan of salvation rather than on a personal savior. His comment came in the context of discussing the role of confession in the five-step (or is it four-step or three-step?) plan of salvation. Brewer did not think “confession” was a necessary part of the plan of salvation (1945).

This was quite a divisive topic at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. J. W. Jackson, one of the editors of the Firm Foundation, was even asked if a church should withdraw from a person who “contends that the confession before baptism is not essential to the remission of sins” (1897; he had earlier recommended excluding those who did not believe that baptism was for the remission of sins). To his credit Jackson advised bearing with the brother even though he believed that “faith in Christ includes the confession of that faith, for a faith that does not act is a dead faith and valueless.” But the question indicates the intensity of the discussion which did not abate throughout the next decade. J. R. Lane scolded David Lipscomb for his “denial of the clear teaching of God’s word on the subject” and his “presumption in doing in the name of Jesus Christ something that he says ‘no mention is made of in connection with any baptism in the scriptures!’” (1907).

There were three positions among Churches of Christ in the late 19th century: (1) the confession of faith before baptism was not a necessary condition of salvation (Gospel Advocate, Lipscomb, Sewell and the Tennessee Tradition generally), (2) the confession of faith before baptism was a necessary condition of salvation (Firm Foundation, McGary, Jackson, Savage and the Texas Tradition generally), and (3) the exact form of the confession in Acts 8:37 was a necessary condition of salvation (J. P. Nall, editor of the Word of Truth; cf. McGary, 1900).

The seriousness of the question is indicated by how the question is focused in the question “What must I do to be Saved?” which was a standard homily at the time. While A. J. McCarty complained that he had heard a supposedly “loyal” brother preach on the question “and he did not once mention the confession” (1898), Joe S. Warlick took pride in the fact that he “never” puts “confession in the answer” because neither Jesus nor any “inspired apostle ever included it in answer to the question” (1899). Warlick believed that “more than half” of the “strongest preachers in Texas” agreed with him (1900) though the Firm Foundation opposed him. The Tennessee Tradition (David Lipscomb, E. G. Sewell, etc.) also agreed with Warlick (though he did not call attention to this fact himself).

McCarty did not believe “any man” had a “scriptural right to be silent on this important item in the gospel plan of salvation” and whoever neglects it is “unfaithful.” He advised that those who do not teach and practice the confession should be marked and avoided as Romans 16 teaches. “Brethren, will we do it?” was his concluding question.

Warlick insisted that there were “only three conditions in the plan of salvation to the alien” and Jesus himself stated them in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15-16; and Luke 24:45-47). “And the apostles in preaching to sinners never hinted at a fourth, but used only three” (1900). Warlick even offered $100 to the person who could “produce chapter, verse or any fractional part thereof” for this fourth step (confession) in the New Testament (1901).

All the editors of the Firm Foundation insisted on a confession of faith prior to baptism as a “necessary condition of salvation” in the plan of salvation. McGary, for example, believed it was “necessarily implied” in the Great Commission (1900). George Savage argued in this manner: “Since ‘the faith’ is the gospel, and since the confession is part of the faith preached everywhere to both Jew and Greek by the apostles of Christ, it follows that the confession is part of the gospel. Since the gospel in all its parts is essential to salvation, it follows with all fidelity to God that the confession is necessary to salvation” (1904). Confession, then, is one of the commands of the gospel just like baptism and therefore it is absolutely necessary to salvation.

Why was this so important for the editors of the Firm Foundation? What was driving the pursuit of this controversy? It is related to the rebaptism controversy. Since Baptists confessed that their sins had already been forgiven, this is not the “good confession” required in the New Testament, according to McGary and others. Referring to Lipscomb and Sewell as “unstable souls,” McGary believed that “were it not for the practice of receiving Baptists on their baptism (who did not make this confession when they were baptized),” it would not be an issue at all (1901). But Lipscomb and Sewell continued to insist that even Baptists were immersed upon a confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God—the same confession upon which Alexander Campbell himself was immersed. Consequently, they were forced, in McGary’s opinion, to deny that confession was a necessary condition since the confession Baptists made was not the same as the “good confession” in the New Testament.

According to McGary, the combination of accepting sect baptism and denying the necessity of confession as a condition of salvation far exceeds the seriousness of the “advocacy of instrumental music in worship and human societies in the work of the Lord.” Though the instrument and socities are “great evils,” they “do not begin to compare in their enormity of crime against God, with this most gigantic and presumptuous sin of virtually endorsing Baptist doctrine, which openly contradicts Christ” (1901). Lipscomb and the Gospel Advocate were in error on the plan of salvation and this was more serious than instrumental music!

The confession and rebaptism issues, then, were bound up together for the Texas Tradition. Both commands are part of the gospel itself (the gospel includes facts, commands and promises–the standard mantra that enables “gospel” to include every command in the NT if so construed). Confession is a command by necessary inference and baptism for the explicit purpose to remit sins is based on reading “for the remission of sins” in Acts 2:38 as part of the command. These particular gospel commands distinguished Churches of Christ from the Baptists. Lipscomb believed both “commands” were “ritualism” since they had been made an “essential form” where some “valued the form above the substance” (Lipscomb, Queries and Answers, pp. 97-98).

When the Tennessee Tradition does not agree, it essentially—according to the Texas Tradition—sides with the Baptists and undermines the distinct identity of Churches of Christ. Steps (4) and (5) in the Texas plan of salvation—confession and baptism for the remission of sins (see a previous post on this point)—function to distinguish Churches of Christ from the Baptists. In other words, this peculiar, distinctive and late (1880s forward) understanding of the “gospel plan of salvation” is sectarian in character and functions to exclude obedient believers (e.g., those who were immersed out of a trust in Christ in obedience to God) from the visible church of God, the fellowship of the church.

The debate over the place of “confession” in the plan of salvation, then, was but another part of constructing the 20th century identity of Churches of Christ. Anyone who grew up in the Churches of Christ of the mid-twentieth century can testify to the unquestioned assumption that there were five steps in the plan of salvation and the fourth one was “confession.” But it had not always been so among “us”! Historically, it became so out of largely—though not exclusively—sectarian motives.

For further examples of the Texas-Tennessee difference, see that category under “Stone-Campbell History” in the Serial Index.

Citations:

G. C. Brewer, “Confession and the Plan of Salvation,” Gospel Advocate 87 (26 April 1945) 233.

J. W. Jackson, “Question,” Firm Foundation 13 (30 Nov 1897) 4.

J. R. Lane, “Brother Lipscomb on the Confession,” Firm Foundation 23 (13 August 1907) 1.

David Lipscomb, Queries and Answers, edited by J. W. Shepherd (Cincinnati, Ohio: Rowe Publishers, 1918).

Austin McGary, “Bro. M’Gary’s Good Confession,” Firm Foundation 16 (20 November 1900) 775.

Austin McGary, “Unstable Souls,” Firm Foundation 17 (10 September 1901) 4.

Austin McGary, “[Untitled Editorial],” Firm Foundation 16 (29 May 1900) 344.

George W. Savage, “The Confession—It is a Condition of Salvation—No. 2,” Firm Foundation 20 (20 Dec 1904) 4.

Joe. S. Warlick, “Bro. M’Gary’s Good Confession,” Firm Foundation 16 (20 November 1900) 774.

Joe S. Warlick, “Bro. M’Gary’s Good Confession,” Firm Foundation 16 (5 February 1901) 4.

Joe S. Warlick, “The True Position on the Confession,” Firm Foundation 15 (16 May 1898) 312.

10 Comments | Stone-Campbell | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

Christian Experience: Alexander Campbell and the Baptists

February 23, 2009

Alexander Campbell’s relationship with the Baptists is rather complicated.  His Brush Run congregation petitioned for membership Redstone Baptist Association in 1815 and then was admitted in 1816.  In 1823 Alexander Campbell, along with thirty members from the Brush Run church, planted a new congregation in Wellsburg, Virginia. That congregation joined the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.  The Redstone Association effectively removed the Brush Run church from their rolls in the years 1824-1826 due to rising tensions.  In 1829 the Beaver Association anathematized the Reformers and six other Baptist Associations did the same in 1830.  These anathemas split the Baptist church in Kentucky. Between 1829-1831 Baptists, in Kentucky alone, lost 9,580 members to the Reformers and half their churches.

The primary tension between the Reformers and the Baptists was the relationship between faith, baptism and “christian experience.”  The 1830 Redstone Association “resolved” that the “exclusion” of the Reformers “was on account of being erroneous doctrine [sic], maintaining, namely…that faith in Christ is only a belief of historical facts…rejecting and deriding what is commonly called christian experience…there is no operation of the Spirit on hearts of men…”  (Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 3-5, 1830, p. 5).

Alexander Campbell attempted to maintain fellowship with the Virginia Baptists despite the rejection of the Kentucky Baptists. He sought dialogue with leading Baptist ministers such as Robert B. Semple and Andrew Broaddus. But Campbell’s “Extra” on the baptism for the remission of sins in July 1830 was a major breaking point as Broaddus believed this was at odds with “christian experience.”  In 1832 he wrote a friend: “To his view of baptism, as the only medium of actual pardon, justificatio, sanctification, reconciliation, adoption and salvation from the guilt and power of sin–and to his view of divine influence as consisting merely in the moral influence of the word, I would not consent” (Broaddus, Memoirs, 289-90). 

Eventually, the Dover Association of Virginia excluded the Reformers in 1832 based on resolutions drawn up in December 1830 (e.g., seventy-two members were dismissed from the First Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia). Campbell himself commented that the “whole matter” of the Dover resolutions “is the denial of their mystic influences of the Holy Spirit, and immersion for the remission of sins” (Millennial Harbinger, 1831, 78). Thus, both the Baptists and the Disciples (Campbell) recognized that the theologial differences between them were basically two (though there were other tensions, of course):  the design of immersion and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion. 

This, of course, remained the primary tension between the Stone-Campbell Movement and the Baptists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.   Many debates ensued on those two topics (e.g., the Nashville Debate between Moody and James A. Harding as well as the Hardeman-Bogard Debate, and many, many others). I have suggested in another presentation that reproachment is possible (“Seeking Consensus: A “Kinder, Gentler” Campbellite Baptismal Theology“) and especially so in the light of recent discussions among the Baptists themselves (especially Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ).  Understanding the origins of our differences, their nature ,and how they were originally polarized is an important first step in pursuing dialogue today. 

For those interested my article Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience: Baptists and Disciples Part Company discusses the history of this separation of Baptists and Disciples in some detail and explores the theological tension between them on the nature, means and content of “christian experience” in relation to salvation.  The article first appeared as “Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience: Baptists and Disciples Part Company” in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by William Baker (Downer’s Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002). It now appears on my Academic page.

16 Comments | Stone-Campbell | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

Academic Articles

April 2, 2008

I have recently created some pages where I can offer some previously published and unpublished materials for download.  I will occasionally comment on these to alert readers of their availability.

At the moment there are several documents available on the Academic Materials page.

One article is a presentation I made at the Christian Scholar’s Conference on a Christian rehabilitation of the concept of Law as a guide for sanctification.

Two articles focus on the Lord’s Supper.  One attempts to understand the eschatological meaning of the Lord’s Supper and the other reflects on the meaning and practice of the Supper among Churches of Christ in the early and mid-20th century.

Two articles focus on Stone-Campbell theology.  One explains the meaning and significance of sacramental theology within the Stone-Campbell Movement (baptism, Lord’s Supper and Lord’s day assembly) and the other is the set of handouts I used in lecturing on James A. Harding at the Center for Spiritual Renewal (Lipscomb University) a few years ago.

Another article is the presentation I made at a meeting of representatives from Southern Baptists and Churches of Christ at Abilene Christian University several years ago on the subject of baptism.  I sought a kind of reproachment between the two fellowships on the design/function of baptism.

The final article is one that was presented at a sermon seminar at Rochester College on preaching community laments. I focused on Psalm 44 and 58 as my primary examples.

 I hope some find these helpful as I make them available in this form.  There will be more to come as I have time to post them.

Shalom

 John Mark

6 Comments | Biblical Texts, Pastoral Care, Stone-Campbell, Theology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 937 other followers

%d bloggers like this: