John Mark Hicks

This begins a new section in Hosea, the last of three. The sentence, “The LORD has an indictment” in Hosea 12:1 parallels the one in Hosea 4:1 that opened the second section of the book as well as the indictment in the first section (Hosea 2:2).  The first two sections are (1) chapters 1-3 focused on a marriage analogy and marital unfaithfulness and (2) chapters 4-11 culminating in the parental analogy and a rebellious child. Both sections ended, however, in hope of renewal and return. The same pattern holds for this last section, beginning Hosea 11:12 and runs through the end of the book. Lim calls it “literary recapitulation” with increased intensification (Hosea: Two Horizons, 200). The same pattern of unfaithfulness leading to disaster but never hopelessness is consistent throughout the book. All three oracles move from indictment to exile to hope.

The Indictment (Hosea 11:12-12:1)

The charges against Israel (Ephraim) are expressed in poetic form but may be enumerated in the following charges: (1) Israel lies and deceives, (2) multiplies violence, and (3) seeks political alliances.

Ephraim’s deceit (בְּמִרְמָ֑ה) in Hosea 11:12 is the same word Isaac uses to describe Jacob’s action in Genesis 27:35 (בְּמִרְמָ֑ה). In contrast to Judah who is faithful to the Holy One, Israel lives by deceit and seeks power, wealth, and honor (all the blessings) through lies.

Israel also multiplies violence with their falsehoods. There is no further comment on this point, but it probably entails political murder, shedding innocent blood, and war for the sake of national existence as we have seen throughout Hosea.

The political alliances are intended for political and national survival. Oil to Egypt was probably an attempt to win Egypt’s assistance just as Israel made treaties with Assyria to stave off extinction as a nation. Neither worked.

The upshot is that Ephraim seeks to preserve itself by shepherding the wind and pursuing its power “all day long.” But it is a futile and useless task. No one can chase the wind and capture it. It is like grabbing Superman’s cape. It backfires and leads to destruction.

The difficult aspect of this section is how Judah is named. Judah is regarded in a positive light in Hosea 11:12 (contra NIV) but is indicted in Hosea 12:2. Perhaps 11:12 reflects the stability of Judah in this period of history as it did not fall to the Assyrian empire like Israel did. Nevertheless, this is a longstanding problem. Hosea consistently addresses Israel instead of Judah as his primary audience. But Judah is sometimes mentioned (Hosea 5:5, 10, 12-14; 6:4; 8:14; 10:11) and typically in a negative way. So, the positive reference is atypical, though Judah is, at times,also pictured as the faithful kingdom in contrast to Israel (Hosea 4:15; cf. 1:7).

The use of “Judah” in Hosea 12:2 seems to expect “Israel,” especially in terms of the parallels and the addressee in the rest of the chapter is Ephraim. Some suggest a later editor inserted “Judah” to apply it to the national struggles of Judah after the fall of Israel. Perhaps. But the text reads well with Judah and Israel in parallel with the focus on Ephraim as in early texts in Hosea. In effect, as Lim puts it (p. 201), “Whether Judah likes it or not, they will be the inheritors of Ephraim’s tradition, both its promises and its failures.” Judah will ultimately and sadly follow the path of Ephraim. Indeed, they will follow the path of their ancestor Jacob. Judah is ultimately included in the disobedient people of God, and they will imitate Israel, the northern kingdom just as the whole nation follows the trajectory of their ancestor Jacob.

Three Remembrances of Jacob (Hosea 12:2-6)

Judah is not blameless—the prophet Micah will delcare an indictment against the southern kingdom in Micah 6:1-8, but Israel will soon discover its end as their deeds will catch up with them. Their end fits their ways; their judgment accords with how they broke covenant with Yahweh. 

Jacob is the archetype of what is happening to Ephraim in the present. Hosea refers to three incidences in the life of Jacob in this section, and then a fourth in the last part of chapter twelve.

Birth (Hosea 12:3a)

“In the womb [Jacob] tried to supplant his brother [Esau].” This recalls the birth of the twins when Jacob was grabbing the heel of his brother. Hosea uses the same Hebrew word for supplant (עָקַ֣ב) that appears in Genesis 27:36 (יַעֲקֹ֗ב). Even the word heel (בַּעֲקֵ֣ב) is a cognate of the verb translated supplant (Genesis 25:26). From the beginning Jacob was a usurper—one who deceived others for his own advantage and position. In other words, Jacob is selfish, ambitious, and takes what does not rightly belong to him. Israel, too, as a nation, has been self-centered and plowed their own path rather than following God’s ways.

Wrestling Match (Hosea 12:3b-4a)

Jacob “strove (שָׂרָ֥ה) with God” and “strove (יָּ֤שַׂר) with the angel.” The Hebrew word for “strove” appears in Genesis 32:28 (שָׂרִ֧יתָ); Jacob struggled with this seeming adversary. The verb carries a broad semantic range from persistent exertion to contending or struggling. It is the verb that is part of the name of Israel (יִשְׂרָאֵל): one who struggles with God.

With whom did Jacob struggle? A human being (Genesis 32:28), God (Genesis 32:28; Hosea 12:3b) or an angel (Hosea 12:4a)? Was this a good thing?

The word angel simply means a messenger, an actor through whom God acts or sends a message. “Angel” does not refer to an ontology but a function; it is one sent from the heavenly realm. At the same time, this actor comes in the form of a human being. The messenger is a theophany in human form; it is God acting, condescending to Jacob for a wrestling match. This is confirmed by what Jacob names the place; he calls it Paniel, that is, the face of God. It is also confirmed by the name God gave to Jacob, that is, Israel, which means one who struggles with God. Jacob, then, encountered God in human form as a messenger from the heavenly realm (much like we might think about Abraham entertaining God in the form of three angelic visitors).

But was this a good thing? In Hosea 12, it is viewed negatively. But in Genesis 32, it is viewed positively. How is Hosea appropriating this story so that it reflects negatively on Jacob? Jacob is a contentious person, using deceit to gain what he wants. He is a scrapper. He wants a blessing from his opponent in the wrestling match and is determined to extract it. But the key may be that Jacob wept. This detail is absent in Genesis 32 but is present, using the same verb, in Genesis 33:4 when Jacob and Esau wept (יִּבְכּֽוּ). Hosea probably refers to the whole scenario where Jacob fears Esau, wrestles for a blessing, and then meets Esau with tears. In other words, this was a stressful, anxious string of events due to Jacob’s earlier deceit. Jacob uses whatever means available to preserve his life, even sending his wives and children ahead of him to Esau. Hosea uses the incident to remind us of the story of Jacob’s struggles with Esau, himself, and God. Israel, the northern kingdom, participates in this story—they are deceivers and liars who are even now struggling with God and others. But it will not turn well for them as it did for Jacob because they do not continue to seek God but abandon the covenant through idolatry.

Bethel (12:4b).

Exile is Israel’s destiny, just as it happened to Jacob when he went into Aram, even though Israel, like Jacob, had encountered God. Israel encountered God at Sinai, and Jacob encountered God at Bethel, which means “house of God” (Genesis 28:11-22; Genesis 35:6-15). God spoke to Jacob at Bethel just as God spoke with Israel at Sinai (Exodus 20:19—using the same verb as in Hosea 12:4). Yet, neither God speaking to Israel at Sinai nor speaking to Jacob at Bethel reshaped their identity—they were both still deceivers and liars. Their encounter with God had not transformed their character; at least, not yet.

Appropriation for Israel (12:5-6)

Yahweh is still Yahweh, the God of the heavenly armies. Yahweh’s identity is steadfast love and faithfulness (cf. Exodus 34:6). Yahweh is the standard of holiness; the one who yearn, as chapter 11 told us, to act with steadfast love toward Israel.

But the northern kingdom must “return” to God. Remember “return” is a key word in Hosea: return to God (Hosea 2:7; 3:5; 6:1; 14:1-2; 14:7) or return to Egypt due to their misdeeds (Hosea 4:9; 5:4; 7:10; 8:13; 9:3; 11:5), and there is a hope to return to the homeland again from Egypt (6:11; 12:9).

Their return to God, however, follows a particular path: steadfast love (hesed, חֶ֤סֶד), justice, and hopeful trust (קַוֵּ֥ה, to wait in hopeful expectation). These are the themes we encountered earlier in the book (cf. the combination of love and justice in Hosea 2:19), especially Hosea 6:4-6 where God expects Israel to reflect Yahweh’s own steadfast love in their lives. More specifically, Israel will pursue these features—returning to God—by the help of God (literally, “you will return by your God” in Hosea 2:6).

Israel’s Sin (Hosea 12:7-9)

The reference to justice in Hosea 12:6 is explained in Hosea 12:7. It is economic injustice. Traders use false scales that exploit people, and they enjoy it. Israel loves to oppress others. No doubt it gives them a sense of power and control as well economic wealth. They enjoy the benefits of oppression.

In this way, Ephraim has “gained wealth” for itself, and they take pride in their accomplishments. They have even deluded themselves into thinking that they have done nothing wrong. They have renamed oppression as justice when they practice injustice.

For this reason, Yahweh, the God of Israel, will return them to the wilderness. Though God brought them out of Egypt, they will now return to the wilderness. The festival of the Tabernacles or Booths celebrated their wilderness trek every year. It was a time of remembrance and gratitude, but this is different. These tents will not be for a week or symbolic; they will be an actual wilderness. Though they came from Egypt and even entered the promised land, now Israel will again experience the wilderness due to their sin. They will experience exile.

Appropriating Israel’s History (Hosea 12:10-14)

The story of Jacob—both in terms of the person so-named and the nation named after him—has been one filled with rebellion, stubbornness, and deceit.

Jacob fled to Aram after deceiving Isaac and defrauding Esau. He was forced to serve another for a wife and was cheated in the process. Though blessed while there, he suffered also and his flight to Aram is a metaphor for exile itself. Jacob’s sin caused him to flee and leave his home.

The prophets warned Israel and prosecuted them. God led them through visions and messages, and these messages told Israel’s history and identified their unfaithfulness. It was confrontational but also hopeful if Israel returned to God. Prophets can yield positive results—just as the prophet Moses led Israel out of Egypt and guarded them in the wilderness. But when Ephraim gives “bitter offense,” God returns them to Egypt and allows their own self-destruction.

Their sin, however, is excessive, and consequently Israel will pay the price for their own inquities. They will suffer sin’s own consequences. Two geographical spots are highlighted:  Gilead and Gilgal. Both of these were located in the northern kingdom—Gilead in the north and Gilgal in its south. There is no record of the specific sins other than this text which highlights idolatry. Perhaps the point is the land of Israel is filled with idolatry from north to south, and this is particularly egregious because Gilgal is the first encampment of Israel in the land and Gilead is the place where Laban and Jacob covenanted with each other upon Jacob’s departure (Genesis 31:23, 25, 44-54).

Both were occasions for sacrifices in the story of Jacob, and now Israel has sacrificed to Baal rather than Yahweh in their idolatry. Therefore, this is the occasion of their fall because they have given “bitter offense” to and insulted Yahweh. In this they will receive their own reward, a just recompense for their sin.

A version of this was published in Restoration Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2024), 152-158. Brad’s article “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical” was published in Restoration Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2024), 133-143.

Available in PDF here.

In his provocative and engaging essay, Brad East asserts that churches of Christ were “once catholic”—though insufficiently so—but are “now evangelical.” I think, given his descriptions of catholic and evangelical, churches of Christ have always been evangelical and still are catholic. The historical DNA of churches of Christ, according to East, is “catholic rather than evangelical.” In contrast, it seems to me, their DNA has always been and still is, at least in large measure, evangelical catholic.Of course, the terms “catholic” and “evangelical” are begging for definition. More on that momentarily.

But first, why is this claim important? East believes it has explanatory power. It explains, for example, why some have chosen to walk the Canterbury Trail. The liturgical and sacramental spirituality of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican traditions resonates with their experiences in churches of Christ. The turn to evangelical among churches of Christ, East argues, meant their congregations left them and, consequently, they sought those catholic practices elsewhere.

As congregations increasingly absorbed evangelical spirituality and abandoned catholic commitments, according to East, churches of Christ lost their distinctiveness. Becoming evangelical, members of churches of Christ found evangelical spirituality elsewhere in better and more resourced spaces. If there is no difference between the spirituality of churches of Christ and evangelicals, why remain in churches of Christ?

Consequently, East postulates two significant reasons why churches of Christ are dying: (1) they are no longer catholic and thus have lost those committed to catholic principles and (2) they have become evangelical, and others do evangelical better. Moreover, the decline of churches of Christ is also connected with how American Evangelicalism (note the capital E) in the last four decades has morphed into a political and cultural agenda. To the extent that churches of Christ embrace that transformation it contributes to decline. To that last sentence, I say, Amen!

I trust this is a fair articulation of East’s thesis. To assess it we need to focus on those pesky definitions. I’ll get there, but let’s start with the end of his article. He lands in a rather healthy and hopeful place. He describes what “it means to be faithful as a once-catholic, now-evangelical church,” and that description, he rightly believes, “pertains to all churches, at all times, of every kind”—whether catholic, evangelical, or evangelical catholic.

Faithfulness is keeping in step with the Spirit: “following Christ,” obedient to Scripture, gathering with believers, loving each other, “bearing witness” to the gospel, worshiping God “in Spirit” and in Truth (who is Jesus; I capitalized “truth”), “proclaiming the gospel,” participating in the sacraments, “catechizing our children,” serving the poor and needy, listening to all saints past and present, and “resisting the siren songs of culture and politics.”

What East describes is potentially an ecumenical evangelical catholic congregation. It can be a non-sectarian discipled sacramental community. I’m good with that. Indeed, this is how East describes his own work as a theologian: “I want my work to be catholic, evangelical, and ecumenical.”[1] This is essentially, with the addition of a robust sense of mission and other distinctives not encompassed in catholic and evangelical theology, what Mark Powell, Greg McKinzie, and I proposed in Discipleship in Community.[2] Though a proposal for churches of Christ, its intent is catholic, evangelical, and ecumenical. We share East’s conviction that belonging to Christ’s church, “which is never in trouble,” is our hope. I deeply appreciate where East ends his essay. At the same time, the way he gets there is somewhat problematic.

Let us, finally, turn to definitions, particularly “catholic” and “evangelical.” I will not contest the characteristics East identifies (though I have some quibbles) but point out that both have always been (and still are) part of churches of Christ.

First, catholic. East claims it is “more fitting” to describe the DNA of churches of Christ (its origins and historic practice) as “catholic rather than evangelical.” I think that claims too much, but I do agree churches of Christ are “catholic” given his characterization. Essentially, “catholic” refers to a high ecclesiology in which the church is central to soteriology (first three points out of twelve), baptismal sacramentalism (three points), and the assembled liturgical community (two+ points, including weekly communion). [This is similar to Campbell’s three positive ordinances of Christianity: Baptism, Lord’s Day, and Lord’s Supper.[3]] Further it looks to the “early church” as a “paradigm of moral, spiritual and sacramental faithfulness.” As East asserts, “the church simply is Christianity as God instituted on earth.”

Does this describe historic churches of Christ? Yes! At the same time, it also describes Luther and Calvin (except for the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Arminian, and Wesleyan nature of point 9). Indeed, until we are more nuanced, this understanding of “catholic” applies to classic Protestant traditions as well as Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Anglican. For example, one of the most controversial statements in the list might be (especially for American Evangelicals), “Baptism, in short, is necessary for salvation” (point 5). Yet, classic Protestants agree. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, which both Luther and Calvin (specifically, Augsburg Confession Variata) affirmed, states: “Of Baptism they [the Reformers] teach that it is necessary to salvation.”[4] Almost forty years ago Richard Harrison, Jr., highlighted the confluence of Catholic and Reformed sacramental theology in the Stone-Campbell Movement in his article, “Early Disciples Sacramental Theology: Catholic, Reformed, and Free.”[5] The “free” refers to the anabaptist character of the Stone-Campbell Movement, which is missing in East’s article but important for the identity of churches of Christ.

While churches of Christ had their own, often unique, sets of “granular scholasticism” (I like that phrase), every tradition does. It is neither a function of catholicism nor evangelicalism per se; rather, it is the nature of human traditions.

So, agreed. Churches of Christ are catholic in their DNA. And, I add, also evangelical.

Let’s turn our attention to the second term, “evangelical.” At one level, as East notes, “evangelical” can modify Lutherans, Methodists, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Agreed. Alexander Campbell, for example, identified an “evangelical” theological core that all Protestants (including himself) confess: Trinity (without using the word, of course), atoning sacrifice, reconciliation through faith, a life of obedience, and the nature of Christ’s kingdom and the new birth.[6]

But that is too broad a brush for what East intends by “evangelical.” He does not use the word in a specifically theological sense. Rather, it refers to “a certain subset of American Christianity.” In other words, though there are some theological commitments embedded in his description, it is primarily a sociological account of a North American, even White, subculture. 

Again, I will not dispute the sociological identifiers, though I lament the lack of attention to theological identity. For example, the identity of evangelical theology is primarily a witness to the gospel—God in Christ reconciling the world to God’s self by the Spirit. This is one reason “evangelical” may describe Roman Catholics as well as Anabaptists. Indeed, the “purpose” of the Campbell Movement was to “restore the gospel and its ordinances” and “establish Christian Union upon the basis of a simple evangelical Christianity.”[7] The phrase “evangelical Christianity” reflects both ecclesiological and soteriological commitments; it entails, at least for the early Stone-Campbell Movement, the meanings of both catholic and evangelical theology.

East identifies the sociological makers in a series of bullet points. These are: biblicism (specifically nuda Scriptura), “democratic impulse,” “frontier revivalism,” emphases on preaching, conversion narratives, living faith, traditional ethics, “hermeneutical literalism,” individualism, an “entrepreneurial spirit,” evangelism and missions, and “a relative lack of emphasis on structures of governance, sacramental administration, holy orders, and/or patristic-medieval tradition.” I do wonder what “sacramental administration” means. Is that another way of talking about sacerdotalism? I don’t know. And, of course, several particulars are open to diverse interpretations within limits (e.g., there are different forms of “frontier revivalism”).

If his thesis is that churches of Christ moved from a catholic to an evangelical identity, his description of evangelical involves no movement at all. Churches of Christ have always—from their beginning—had these general characteristics to one degree or another. In this sense, churches of Christ have always been evangelical, as East uses the term.

East acknowledges this, sort of. He says those “in the Bible Belt” have “always been evangelical adjacent.” Though I see no reason to restrict this to the Bible Belt, the key word is “adjacent.” I’m uncertain what this means. Is evangelical an addendum to catholic commitments within churches of Christ but not integral to their identity? Whatever “adjacent” means, it was so present (perhaps integral?) that the loss of “catholic distinctives” placed churches of Christ wholly within the “evangelical family;” so much so, no one inside or outside can tell the difference. Thus, East argues, churches of Christ, though once catholic, are now evangelical.

The catholic distinctives, East suggests, kept us “out of step with evangelicals,” especially “American [E]vangelicalism” (my capitalization). That is a legitimate point, though the evangelical characteristics listed are not necessarily hostile to catholic commitments (e.g., East explains what he means by biblicism in a footnote; it can mean other things as well). Further, I would add other distinctives that are not catholic but anabaptist. Nevertheless, East’s observation is one of the reasons I have focused on sacramental theology in my own writing. I have hoped to explain and deepen those catholic commitments.[8] To the extent that a congregation neglects or loses its sacramental imagination and practice regarding baptism or Lord’s supper, it is no longer—at least historically or traditionally—part of churches of Christ.

Yet, where are the congregations among churches of Christ that have lost their catholicity? The largest percentage of congregations are still moderately or historically conservative. Their commitment to East’s catholic twelve points is as strong as it was in the 1950s. Ask any number of the large “Church of Christ” groups on Facebook; they’ll tell you.

Most, it seems to me, have lost their sectarianism, and that is a good thing (though some have lamented that loss and are thus attracted to other traditions more sectarian in their catholicism). They are at least ecumenical to the degree that they no longer believe, to the extent that many once did, that churches of Christ are co-extensive with body of Christ on the earth. Losing this sectarianism meant we no longer fall prey to one of the negative aspects of catholic spirituality, that is, fencing the table to feed only their flock and exclude other believers (particularly Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox).

Whatever the reasons for and the nature of decline among churches of Christ, it is not because churches of Christ are no longer catholic. They are still catholic even as they remain evangelical. I think the reasons for decline and potential death lie elsewhere and in many places.

East postulates that churches of Christ have not remained faithful to their original catholic DNA for at least two reasons. On the one hand, the evangelical subculture ultimately overwhelmed those catholic commitments, especially with the rise of American Evangelicalism in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. On the other hand, churches of Christ were insufficiently catholic from the beginning. What churches of Christ lacked was an “authoritative community” with “authoritative documents and authoritative leaders.” To put it another way, we lacked a set of creeds and a magisterium to interpret Scripture so we could remain catholic enough to avoid the populist call of Evangelicalism with its “entertainment evangelism and prosperity preaching.” Perhaps, it could be argued, catholic commitments remained as long as they did within an evangelical subculture because an unwritten creed operated within the Stone-Campbell tradition and influential preachers as well as magisterial-like editor-bishops managed the interpretation of Scripture for the community. Maybe. But that has broken down in the past sixty years, and it was never absolute. We have always also been a “wild democracy” with significant diversity (to use Ed Harrell’s language).[9] Nevertheless, without creed and magisterium, East suggests, the catholic distinctives disappeared in some places under the influence of Evangelicalism. At the same time, a magisterium, while maintaining orthodoxy (though also maintaining slavery, colonialism, and patriarchalism), can also suffocate the movement of the Spirit among congregations.

According to East, that insufficiency contained the seeds of an eventual implosion. To maintain a healthy, catholic identity churches of Christ have needed a more robust catholicism. Churches of Christ must expand their canon. East suggests nuda scriptura is insufficient (and it is); it needs a creedal faith (e.g., Rule of Faith and perhaps the first four ecumenical councils) and the “authority of bishops” to secure the church’s faith (is this the solution?). For East, to remain catholic one needs the creedal tradition of the first five centuries and a magisterium to interpret it. In his The Doctrine of Scripture, he argued that “the same level of authority . . . must characterize both the text interpreted and the interpretation itself.”[10] If East is correct, the American Restoration Movement was doomed from the start. It may have had a good run, but its insufficient catholicism killed it.

How do we respond to this identity crisis created, in part, by the influence of American Evangelicalism and contemporary culture in the last sixty years? We could double down on our catholic commitments and more deeply imbibe their resources and practices (e.g., a magisterium). But those so devoted have mostly left already. Or, we could fully embrace

Evangelicalism’s theology, the natural waters of its subculture (in which we have swum for two hundred years), and its new 21^st century features. But Evangelicals do evangelical better. In either case, churches of Christ die. This is what East thinks is happening.

Are churches of Christ dying? I don’t know. Maybe. I hope not. But whether they are or not, it is not because churches of Christ were once catholic but are now evangelical. To be sure, when we lose the catholic dimension, we are no longer an identifiable historical tradition known as the churches of Christ. However, churches of Christ by-and-large have not lost their catholic distinctives. No doubt, some congregations have. That is verifiable. But the vast majority, as far as I can tell, have not. My anecdotal experience is based on teaching sacramental theology and catholic ecclesiology in over twenty countries and forty states to numerous students (over a thousand studying ministry) for forty years in universities associated with churches of Christ. I don’t think churches of Christ have irredeemably morphed into a form of American Evangelicalism because the catholic commitments are still present. I’ve been writing about sacramental theology for twenty-five years to affirm and develop those commitments. Moreover, I doubt if the catholic-evangelical dynamic is the main reason some are leaving churches of Christ or Christianity in general in North America. It is much more complicated than that.

Perhaps, in contrast to the above two options, we might intentionally embrace our identity as evangelical catholics as we reimagine what that means for the current missiological situation. We can remain churches of Christ while we seek new paths of faithfulness in a new context (a 7^th option to add to East’s six). I have sought to cultivate this among churches of Christ over the years and recently in Discipleship in Community. I see this in many spaces.

Should churches of Christ remain a distinctive tradition? Can it? Is it worth the struggle? Does it contribute to the body of Christ as a whole? Do we offer healthy, unique gifts to the body of Christ? A healthy evangelical catholic theology provides balance between personal and communal, between Scripture and tradition, between conversion narratives and catechesis, between evangelism (revivalism) and liturgy, between Word and Table, between emotion and reason, and between freedom and ecclesial governance among other elements.

An evangelical catholic can be sectarian or ecumenical. Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are sectarian (e.g., they fence the table). Churches of Christ, drawing on our historic call for unity, can serve the body of Christ as an ecumenical, evangelical, and catholic tradition (I would also add anabaptist and missional, if I get to define those terms).

I’m not willing to jump ship to another tradition. Perhaps I will go down with this ship and provide hospice care (which is a holy calling). But I find in churches of Christ a unique theological set that has possibilities for missional engagement in a Post-Christian Western culture. It may not make a big splash, but that is neither the point nor the goal. Rather, it can, and in many places does, provide a faithful and hopeful presence.

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[1] Brad East, “Theology in Division,” First Things, available at https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/04/theology-in-division.

[2] Mark Powell, John Mark Hicks, and Greg McKinzie, Discipleship in Community: A Theological Vision for the Future (Abilene: Abilene Christian University, 2020).

[3] See my “Stone-Campbell Sacramental Theology,” Restoration Quarterly 50, no 1 (2008) 35-48.

[4] The Augsburg Confession, Article 9, available at https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/.

[5] Richard L. Harrison, Jr., “Early Disciples Sacramental Theology: Catholic, Reformed, and Free,” Mid-Stream 24, no 3 (July 1985) 255-292.

[6] Alexander Campbell, “Education,” Millennial Harbinger 1, no. 6 (2^nd series; June 1837) 258

[7] Robert Richardson, The Principles and Objects of the Religious Reformation, Urged by A. Campbell and Others, Briefly Stated and Explained, 2^nd ed (Bethany, VA: A. Campbell, 1853) 6-7.

[8] John Mark Hicks, Enter the Water, Come to the Table (Abilene: Abilene Christian University Press, 2014). 

[9] John Mark Hicks, “I Stayed for the Wild Democracy,” in Why We Stayed: Honesty and Hope in the Churches of Christ, ed. Benjamin J. Williams (Los Angeles: Keledei Publications, 2018) 103-120.

[10] Brad East, The Doctrine of Scripture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021) 255.

A version was first published in The Journal Christian Studies 4, no. 2 (May 2025), 29-42.

A PDF file is available here.

I am grateful to Keith Stanglin for inviting me to participate in this issue of the Journal of Christian Studies. The five questions generated some angst as well as fruitful discussions among colleagues and friends with whom I shared them in producing this essay. I am delighted to share my thoughts and, hopefully, contribute to the conversation.

Teaching for forty years at the University level among institutions associated with the Churches of Christ, I have witnessed its unfolding story, studied, taught, and written about its history, and participated in its theological journey. My response to these questions is rooted in that experience as well as in my own understanding of God’s intent and design for the church in the biblical story.

When I use the phrase “Churches of Christ,” I am focused on the historic group that emerged out of the nineteenth century American Restoration Movement (ARM, also called the Stone-Campbell Movement or SCM) in the late nineteenth century, flourished in many ways during the mid-twentieth century, and now experiences decline in the early twenty-first century. It is historically, by any account, the conservative wing of the ARM, and that wing has endured several significant divisions within its own ranks.

At the same time, the Churches of Christ are deeply rooted in and have been shaped by the values present from the beginning of the ARM. Churches of Christ have a history and are thus traditioned in significant ways. Their family of origins has impacted their story. This includes the Puritan and Presbyterian roots of the ARM and the subsequent search for identity as Churches of Christ emerged as a distinct group within the SCM in the late nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, from its inception the intent of Churches of Christ has been faithfulness to God’s call for truth, unity, and mission. This three-fold characterization is part of their heritage. It has formed the life of many congregations as they sought authentic unity in truth so that they might proclaim the gospel to the whole world. It has also generated numerous disagreements about the nature of unity and the definition of truth as well as about how to carry out the mission. Controversy has often plagued its history, though it has also had many moments where its “better angels” were visible, and its ministry was wonderfully effective by the grace of God.

This has been our lot, whether for good or bad. We must recognize our historic origins if we are to understand ourselves, recognize our blind spots, and assess what has traditioned us. We cannot extract ourselves from our history; we live within its narrative. Yet, we can acknowledge it, take account of it, and assess it so that we might become more faithful to the divine work among us as we are guided by Scripture. To that end, these questions are a healthy exercise that attends to that task.

Question One: What are the best distinctives of Churches of Christ that should be shared with the wider Christian world?

“Distinctives” seems to ask what is unique about Churches of Christ who emerged as a distinct group in the late nineteenth century. However, I do not think much is unique about us. Rather, it is the composite or the total set that is unique. The constellation of theology and practice is itself distinctive. It is a mix of catholic, evangelical, anabaptist, missional, and unity commitments. I realize those terms beg for definition, and I will address them latter in this essay.

However, I will first describe the composite that makes Churches of Christ a relatively distinct set of beliefs and practices. None of the particulars are unique (in fact, some are universal, and many are common), but the total set is distinctive. These commitments represent the best within our history. However, we have at times failed to fully embody them, give them appropriate emphasis, and/or majored in other particulars rather than these.

I have identified ten elements of this distinct constellation of theological commitments and practices. My characterization may reflect more contemporary terminology but the essence of each is found in our history.

• The Basic Evangelical Message: the community tells the story of the Creator God who sent the Son in the flesh to redeem the world in the power of the Spirit. Churches of Christ have proclaimed the gospel story of God reconciling the world in Christ through his incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection, and exaltation to the right hand of God. The narrative of the Apostles’ Creed, for example, has always been part of the preaching and teaching of Churches of Christ even though there has been little to no explicit use of that creed.

• Biblicism: though this was sometimes—as in any tradition—made to fit preconceived notions, the idea that one can return to the story of God in Scripture to revive faith, renew commitments, retrain convictions, and reorient mission has always been vital. Churches of Christ have always sought to give serious attention to Scripture, learn from it, and find wisdom and guidance there as, at the very least, the primary authoritative resource for congregational life.

• Alternative Community: while rejecting any kind of denominational status that participated in the sectarianism of denominational partyism, Churches of Christ embraced an alternative way of life that resisted identification with the denominational and cultural powers where they lived. They were suspicious of institutions, whether political or ecclesiastical. They intended radical submission to the way of God irrespective of cultural movements.

• Discipleship: affirming believer’s baptism as a mark of discipleship, Churches of Christ stressed the importance of obedience to God as followers of Jesus. This emphasis sought to explain what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, live transformed lives, and participate in the mission of God.

• Missional Ecclesiology: while anachronistic, this language expresses the high ecclesiology embraced by Churches of Christ. The local congregation, as a voluntary community of Jesus-followers led by local leadership, is the primary means by which God works to renew the world in the image of Christ. The local congregation, apart from extra-congregational institutions, participates in the mission of God through its benevolence, evangelism, and the edification of the community. Discipleship, in other words, primarily happens in community by gathering with other disciples, forming a community of disciples, and participating in the life of that community for the sake of the world.

• Priesthood of All Believers: this invites every disciple to participate in the mission of God and use their gifts in service to God. This entailed an anti-sacerdotalism. Every believer (male, at least in its origins) may baptize and lead the congregation in worship through prayer, reading, exhortation, singing, and communion. The community is led by laity since there are no institutionalized priestly functions. Rather, everyone is fully invested with priestly privileges though they may not all share the same gift.

• Divine Action Through Ordinances: believer’s baptism and weekly Lord’s supper among the assembled people of God are means of grace through which God forgives, communes with, and nourishes the community of faith for the sake of forming disciples to send them into world for the sake of the world. In their best moments, Churches of Christ have always believed that God does something through baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the assembly.

• Hope: the eschatology of Churches of Christ has typically been goal-oriented, no matter what their concept of the eternal state was (whether a renewed earth or a celestial reality) or what their millennial convictions were (whether postmillennial, premillennial, or amillennial). There is a confidence that God is at work in the world to accomplish God’s purposes and bring history to its goal, and we confess the resurrection from the dead as our Christian hope.

• Unity: whether by transcending denominational barriers, breaking through those barriers, or deconstructing denominational identities, Churches of Christ have sought to practice a non-denominational unity. The impulse toward unity has been part of its history, though it has often been defined in sectarian ways (e.g., “the Churches of Christ are co-extensive with the body of Christ”). At our best, however, we have claimed that we are Christians only, but not the only Christians.
• Music: congregational singing without instrumental accompaniment has characterized Churches of Christ for over one hundred and fifty years, though this has changed in some quarters in recent decades. It was, in fact, the original practice of the ARM. While the primary defense of this practice was a blueprint patternism based upon the Puritan regulative principle of worship (which many now reject), it also stressed congregational participation, the beauty of the human voice as a sacrificial offering, and the unitive harmony of those voices in the worship of God.

These ten commitments and practices describe the best of Churches of Christ in their most generous formulations. Given congregational autonomy and our suspicion of institutions, this configuration will appear in different ways. Sometimes is it narrower, and sometimes it is broader. Like an accordion, it has an elasticity undefined by detailed creedal strictures, though unwritten creeds were often assumed. 

This constellation of theology and practice exists as a distinctive community within the larger Christian tradition. No single item is unique, and it shares much in common with many different traditions in Christianity. However, this specific congregational configuration of the Christian faith is distinctive. It is not the particulars that are distinctive but the combination.

Question Two: What are the most significant weaknesses or deficiencies in Churches of Christ that must be addressed?

Recently, while working through some old paper files as a retired Professor, I discovered the manuscripts of thirty-eight radio sermons I wrote and delivered in 1978-1979 at the request of the Northeast Philadelphia Church of Christ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was twenty-one years old. As I read them some forty-six years later, they illustrated some of the more “significant weaknesses and deficiencies” of the theology and practice of Churches of Christ. While these radio talks were my own creation, they represented the approach of most Churches of Christ at the time (at least in my experience). They certainly reflected some of the standard catechetical literature available in Churches of Christ including the most widely read book by Leroy Brownlow entitled Why am I a Member of the Church of Christ? (published in 1945).

The thirty-eight lessons, categorized into topics, were:

• Salvation in the church (3 lessons)
• What Must I do to be Saved (3 lessons)
• Faith Only (2 lessons)
• Baptism (5 lessons)
• Restoration and Unity (3 lessons)
• Shall We Follow Moses (3 lessons)
• Authority and Pattern (5 lessons)
• Church Organization (4 lessons)
• Acceptable Worship (2 lessons)
• The Lord’s Day (2 lessons)
• The Lord’s Supper (2 lessons)
• Singing (3 lessons)
• Acts of Worship (1 lesson)

Some might affirm the need for these lessons and applaud the series as a rather thorough description of the Church of Christ in the New Testament. It serves a polemical need, that is, to carve out a distinct role for Churches of Christ over against the rest of the Christian tradition. The sermon series focused on identifying the essential marks of the true church in the context of American denominationalism. Therein lies the significant weaknesses and deficiencies. I will identity three.

First, in almost two hundred pages of manuscript material, only one page gave any significant attention to the grace of God in death and resurrection of Jesus. There are scattered references but no intention to explain the meaning of the gospel in terms of the work of God for us in Jesus by the Spirit. My focus in teaching seekers was not God’s grace in the person of Jesus but which church they should seek out. I devoted myself to teaching the “plan” of salvation in the sense of faith-baptism, entrance into the church of the New Testament, and the pattern of the church in the New Testament as a standard and condition of faithfulness.

In other words, in a series of sermons intended to introduce people to the saving body of Christ, I had no narrative structure for unfolding the redemptive work of God that does the saving. Rather than telling the gospel story of God in Jesus by the Spirit, my preaching was shaped by the question, how do people obey the gospel and find the right church? Ultimately, this approach tends toward a deficient gospel or, perhaps, an assumed gospel that is rarely explained. More specifically, it does not present the gospel narrative of God’s redemptive work through Jesus in the the Spirit.

This deficiency produced several consequences. For example, Churches of Christ, in general, developed an anemic understanding of grace such that many struggle with the question, “have I done enough to go to heaven?” Another example is that the lack of attention to the narrative story generated an underdeveloped appreciation for the work of the Spirit due, in part, to a lack of reflection of the role of the Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption and sanctification.

Second, the primary hermeneutical lens of Churches of Christ is on full display in my series. It was important to distinguish between the covenants, that is, we are no longer under the “old law” but a new one (three lessons on that topic). Thus, nothing in the Old Testament and Gospels (at least before the cross) was pattern authority for the New Testament church. It was also important for the congregation to be organized according to the pattern of the New Testament and to worship on the right day with a weekly Supper enriched by acapella singing and other acts of worship (giving, praying, teaching). This consumed one third of the lessons. In fact, practically half of the lessons are directly related to obedience to the New Testament pattern for congregational practices. To put it another way, half of the lessons were about how to be saved (faith-baptism), and the other half of the lessons were about how to find the right church to stay saved.

An integral part of our hermeneutical strategy was to search the Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament epistles for a detailed blueprint for what constitutes a faithful church. We combed these documents to discover a blueprint for the church from the isolated data scattered throughout them. Utilizing a complex grid of guidelines (does this command exclude its coordinates?), distinctions (is this command general or specific?), categorizations (is this action expedient or binding?), and strategies (how does one recognize expediency in contrast to prohibitive silence?), interpreters constructed a blueprint that did not explicitly exist in Acts and the epistles.

The blueprint, in effect, became the standard of faithfulness as a kind of ecclesial perfectionism. Faithful adherence to the blueprint became the standard of righteousness for any community professing to be a congregation of Christ. Faithfulness to specific ways of being church (especially in gathered community), then, functioned as legal barriers to fellowship with God. One cannot be right with God if one is not in the right church. This is a form of ecclesial legalism.

Third, since unfaithfulness to the blueprint excluded one from fellowship with God, it also excluded them from fellowship with the faithful. This produced an exclusive sectarianism where Churches of Christ effectively became co-extensive with the body of Christ. Whatever the deficiency might be (denominationalism, instrumental music, quarterly Lord’s supper, etc.), it rendered that community unfaithful. Consequently, the faithful could not remain in fellowship with them. The blueprint was employed as a test of fellowship in all its particulars. Yet, since there was disagreement about how detailed the blueprint is and what it contained, there was division among Churches of Christ themselves. This resulted in separate fellowships. Nevertheless, our conclusions generally admitted little to no doubt, were full of certainty, and constituted standards of faith and practice for the true church.

Exclusive sectarianism resulted in the loss of a major value in the heritage of the SCM No longer were we engaged in a movement to unite all Christians across the denominations. Instead, we were engaged in a movement to persuade all denominationalists to join us. The desire for unity was suffocated by the rigidity of a blueprint pattern.

Question Three: What is the place of Churches of Christ today in the broader Christian world?

The Churches of Christ provide a distinct witness within the Christian world. Their configuration of theological commitments and practices distinguishes them within the Christian tradition. At the same time, they share much in common with historic Christian traditions. This constellation, embodied in a particular congregation, is catholic, evangelical, anabaptist, missional, and ecumenical (that is, seeking unity through shared commitments and practices). It is:

• catholic (the liturgical traditions) in its ecclesiology and in affirming baptism, Lord’s supper, and assembly as means of grace.
• evangelical in its biblicism, gospel message, and conversionism (revivalism).
• anabaptist in its practice of believer’s baptism, emphasis on discipleship, cultural sectarianism, anti-sacerdotalism, and voluntary congregationalism.
• missional in its commitment to evangelism, the primacy of local congregations for discipleship, and participation in the mission God through the church and our vocations.
• ecumenical in its claim that the Churches of Christ are not co-extensive with the body of Christ and seek to experience the unity of the body of Christ among all Christians.

Historically, Churches of Christ are a community of baptized believers in the Free Church tradition. A congregation is a voluntary community of disciples bound together by a shared faith expressed in baptism (specifically, immersion in water) free from both political and institutional creedal restraint.

Theologically, Churches of Christ are deeply shaped by Catholic, Reformed, and Anabaptist traditions. Our baptismal practice is baptistic in terms of believer’s baptism but informed by a strong sense of divine action (God is doing something!) rooted in Catholic history and, to some degree, the best of Reformed thought. In terms of the Lord’s Supper weekly communion reflects the historic practice on the liturgical traditions (Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican) but often (though not always) the Supper was understood primarily in memorialist terms like Anabaptist communities. Our ecclesiology is baptistic in terms of congregationalism, Reformed in terms of polity (plurality of elders), and Catholic in terms of soteriology.

All this (and more could be added) speaks to the almost eclectic way in which the early leaders of the ARM were shaped by multiple influences. Self-consciously seeking to move beyond the constraints of denominational identity and traditions, they read their Bible interested in finding the doctrine and practice of the early Christians. They attempted a fresh reading of Scripture for the sake of discerning what constituted Christian community and obedience to Jesus Christ. Despite that desire, they were deeply influenced by the surrounding traditions, and, at the same time, they generated a tradition that has its own distinct constellation of commitments and practices.

Where does this place Churches of Christ across the landscape of the Christian world? On the one hand, we have much in common with it, specifically: catholic, evangelical (notice the small case “evangelical”), and ecumenical. On the other hand, our commitments and practices empower more flexible and responsive communities for missional discipleship. It is important to appreciate and affirm both. The former means we participate in the larger Christian tradition, and the latter means we can pivot in practical ways to meet contemporary needs due, in part, to local governance and congregationalism.

To expand on this a bit, we are catholic in our ecclesiology and affirmation of divine activity in baptism, the Lord’s supper, and the assembly. We are evangelical in our revivalistic proclamation of the basic story of the gospel (analogous to the Apostle’s Creed). We are ecumenical to the extent that we are interested in and call for unity in the one body of Christ. In other words, we belong to the larger Christian tradition even though we cannot be pigeonholed by a specific historic brand (e.g., Catholic, Protestant, or Anabaptist). We are more eclectic and unbounded—a least in our origins—by a particular historical tradition of the Christian faith. Nevertheless, what we share with the Christian tradition locates us squarely within Christianity’s main trajectory. This is what Alexander Campbell called the “evangelical core.” We are Christians, but not the only Christians.

Regarding the second point, our congregationalism, local leadership, and commitment to obedience (discipleship) provides opportunities like those that Community Churches have embraced. At the same time, our sense of history and long connections with other congregations of Churches of Christ provide historical rootage and larger fellowship than most Community Churches. This means congregations within Churches of Christ have the flexibility to adapt to the missional exigencies of the moment unfettered by denominational or institutional expectations (at least in theory as practice is much more complicated if we want to maintain the loose bonds of fellowship within our own tradition). For example, the house church movement can find a receptive hearing among Churches of Christ as well as the Campus Church movement. With local governance and congregational self-definition, the potential for faithful adaptation and improvisation is great.

Question Four: What principle(s) of the Restoration Movement should we promote; what part of our identity should we pass along in our churches?

Returning to question one, I find those ten characteristics a compelling vision of faith and practice for the contemporary church as well as a valuable contribution to the historic Christian tradition. At the same time, some points are not as fundamental as others, and some should be held (and even practiced) loosely. For example, while congregational acapella music is a worthy tradition with many positive dimensions, it is not a matter of identity in terms of a faithful Christian community (nor is it a core identity of the ARM).

So, how do we think about a faithful identity within the context our family of origins and subsequent history? Do we abandon the tradition and reject any relation to its historic identity, or do we reframe it so that we do not lose what is most valuable within our history—not only for our sake but for the sake of the whole Christian tradition?

As an opening suggestion, I would recommend five points which, it seems to me, would constitute an identity faithful to the Christian tradition and faithful to the best of Churches of Christ as a distinct community within in that tradition.[1]

1. The basic evangelical message of God’s creation and redemption of the world through Jesus the Messiah in the power of the Spirit is essential for any Christian identity. All Christians confess this narrative, and no one could claim to be a “church of Christ” without embracing it as the story where we encounter and experience the love of God, the grace of Jesus the Messiah, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
2. The primary resource for understanding and embodying this evangelical narrative is Scripture. Churches of Christ are committed to the serious and attentive study of Scripture because they confess God speaks through it, provides wisdom therein, and encounters us in its proclamation.
3. Living within this narrative, believers voluntarily participate in communal life as a source of wisdom, mutual support, and missional cooperation. They form local congregations of believers who are committed to following Jesus as obedient disciples. These communities, led by gifted disciples, are grounded in a commitment to the priesthood of all believers.
4. As a community, they participate in what God is doing through believer’s baptism, Lord’s supper, and assembly. These communal moments are transformative encounters and participatory. They are means of grace by which God welcomes us, transforms us, and graces us so that we might have life—a life shared in community with God and each other. Liturgy or the worshipping assembly is participatory through shared prayers, congregational singing (including the value of, though not the exclusive use of, acapella singing), and mutual edification.
5. Though existing as local communities, Churches of Christ have a shared history that connects them with each other (whether by relationships, institutions, events, etc.) that is worth embracing and nurturing because congregations cannot thrive in isolation. In addition, Churches of Christ participate in the wider unity of the body of Christ as one historical witness to the gospel among others. Recognizing this, we may affirm a historic slogan: we are Christians only, but not the only Christians. We may maintain our interest in non-denominationalism while also recognizing that denominated groups who confess the gospel are also Christian.

These five points reflect something akin to the heart of the ARM. The identity of Churches of Christ is not found in its peculiarity or its itemized distinctives. Rather, it is found in a historic expression (ARM) of a particular embodiment of the gospel rooted in the narrative of Scripture. I think these five points are sufficient for both its evangelical (gospel) and traditioned (our history) identity.

Question Five: Have your views on these topics changed over the years? If so, in what ways, and why?

As one recognizes weaknesses and deficiencies views do begin to change as the search for more fully embodying the life of God continues. A commitment to the biblical narrative, communal discernment, and the wisdom that comes from living before God moves us along the path of growth and change. Sanctification is progressive, and it is also communal. Consequently, we might expect our views to change over the years in some ways, but not necessarily in every way. In my own experience, the five points noted under question four underwent development and deepening but remained firm and solid (for example, my understanding of baptism, Lord’s supper, and assembly). On other questions, change involved significant shifts. I will identify three significant shifts in my own understanding.

First, my understanding of hermeneutics changed. I shifted from searching the data of the New Testament (especially Acts and the epistles) for a specific blueprint for the church to probing the theological story of the whole of Scripture to discern the pattern of God’s activity so that I might imitate it. I rejected the former because it was a Puritan construct rather than a New Testament expectation, and I embraced the latter because this is what I found the authors in Scripture doing. I have outlined this shift in my book Searching for the Pattern (2019).

Second, my understanding of the nature of restoration has changed. Whereas once I understood restoration as primarily the reproduction of the church as it appears in the New Testament, I have shifted toward a broader—and, at the same time, deeper—understanding of restoration. Restoration as reproduction is too narrow and inferential (e.g., there is no call to restore the church in the New Testament). However, there is a restorationist agenda. At one level, it is the restoration or renewal of God’s intent for creation. The creator and ruler of the universe invited humanity to participate in the emergence, development, and care of the creation. This is our vocation. We are co-workers with God, and we partner with God in the renewal (restoration) of the world. At another level, one of the historic marks of the church is apostolicity. We are devoted to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42), and this devotion means its maintenance. Where the church has abandoned such, we seek its renewal, reformation, or restoration. Yet, the teaching of the apostles is not a grab-bag of unknowns or inferences. On the contrary, it is the sermons in Acts, the mystery of Christ revealed in the epistles, the story of Jesus in the Gospels, and the story of God in Israel. It is a theological story that grounds ethics, exhortations, and practices. In this sense, restoration is not the reproduction of a blueprint pattern but the renewal of God’s story in our lives as we imitate the pattern of God’s life in our own lives and in our congregations.

Third, the definition of the “the Faith” has shifted for me. It is no longer a matter of defining the blueprint and executing the plan. “The Faith” is no longer an inferred creed of blueprint particulars and practices. Rather, “the Faith” is the basic evangelical message of the gospel as part of the story of God in Jesus empowered by the Spirit. It is the narrative of God’s acts: creation, redemption, sanctification, and glorification. In its most basic form, it is the Apostles’ Creed, or in a fuller narration what the early church called the “Rule of Faith.”  These amount to little more than re-narrations of summaries in the biblical text. Whether it is the “canon” (or rule) by which we walk in Galatians 6:16, or the summary of the gospel acts of Jesus in Acts 10:35-43, or the gospel summary in Romans 1:3-5, or the creedal statement of 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, these synopses of the story (there are similar ones in Israel’s story too) provide the narrative frame, name its theological significance, and provide its emphases.

Moving away from blueprint patternism and embracing a broader notion of restorationism in the light of what constitutes “the Faith” means moving beyond denominational sectarianism and finding common ground in the narrated gospel with believers across the landscape of the Christian faith. This has enlarged my fellowship. It has returned me to one of the original impulses of the ARM—the unity of believers through faith in the gospel.

Consequently, I can do two things at once. On the one hand, I find space to welcome my sisters and brothers in other historic Christian traditions because we find common ground in our confession of “the Faith” (e.g., something like the Apostles’ Creed). On the other hand, the distinctive constellation of theology and practice described in question one is convicting to me. I can do both. I can receive fellow believers in the gospel, and, at the same time, I can advocate for and share with others the values of my distinctive tradition that enrich the practice of “the Faith” as part of the broad tradition of the Christian Faith.

The future of Churches of Christ may find a place in the coming generations by affirming its distinctiveness while also embracing a gracious acknowledgement that while we seek to be Christians only, we are not the only Christians.

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[1] See Mark E. Powell, John Mark Hicks, and Greg McKinzie, Discipleship in Community: A. Theological Vision for the Future (Abilene: Abilene Christian University Press, 2020) for a similar perspective and for more detail about this sort of vision for Churches of Christ.

Stone-Campbell Study Group

Stone-Campbell Journal Conference 2025

John Mark Hicks

A PDF File is available here.

In what I regard as a seminal article written almost forty years ago, Richard L. Harrison, Jr., raised the question “Who, indeed, are the Disciples?” as the new denomination sought to define itself in relation to other Christian traditions.[1] Though he focused on early Disciple sacramental theology, his analysis provides significant markers for the whole movement. He concluded that Disciple sacramental theology is indebted to Catholic, Reformed, and Free Church traditions. The place and function of the sacraments were Catholic “in nature,” their meaning was “generally Reformed” (following Calvin rather than Zwingli), and their liturgical celebration was “decidedly” Free Church.[2] The result is a “distinctive” mixture that is not identified with any of the three traditions.[3] Harrison saw this a valuable part of Disciples identity; it contributes to their raison d’existence. Though their sacramental theology might be categorized as generally Reformed because none of these elements are in “fundamental conflict with the broad picture of the Reformed tradition,” through their distinctive sacramental theology the Disciples “proclaim by their very nature the unity and diversity of God’s church.”[4] However, some might regard it as an eclectic and piece-meal stitching together of a nonsensical tertium quid.

In this essay, I extend Harrison’s insight to the theology and practice of Churches of Christ as an expression of the American Restoration Movement, and I expand the picture he offers. Specifically, I propose a five-fold typology that seeks a more comprehensive picture of how Churches of Christ are situated in the history of the Christian tradition. I do not mean to say that these elements are not also applicable to the early leaders of the Stone-Campbell Movement or that they are not applicable to the two other major streams of the movement. There is, no doubt, overlap and even a core belongs to all the streams. However, my interest is particularly Churches of Christ given both my assignment and my social location. Even more specifically, I will identify the DNA of Churches of Christ as what emerged from 1889-1939 where their identity was formed and solidified in distinction from the Disciples of Christ.

With Harrison, I affirm the Catholic and Reformed indebtedness, and I adjust the language of “Free church” to “Anabaptist” as I think we are more indebted to Anabaptists than we are New England Congregationalists (though they did, of course, have a strong impact). To Harrison’s analysis, I add two other categories. We might call both “evangelical,” but this is where confusion arises, especially when we consider there is a third category that we might also call “Evangelical.” This confusion is distracting and disruptive. So, it is necessary to offer some explanation.

Above, I associated the term “evangelical” with three different groups, though these groups may overlap. First, evangelical refers to the narration of the gospel story as in something akin to the Apostles’ Creed or the second and third century versions of the Rule of Faith. These are, as Campbell called them, the “gospel facts.” It is an evangelical core; it is the story of God creating the world, sending the Son, and rescuing us by the Spirit for the sake of reconciliation and communion in a new heaven and new earth. Matthew Bates’ recent book, Beyond the Salvation Wars, has argued that all Christians traditions, particularly the ones that affirm the Nicene Creed, are evangelical in this sense. “The genuine gospel,” he writes, “has never been entirely absent during the last two thousand years of Christian history.” [5] They all proclaim and sing the gospel story.

Second, evangelical refers to those who, based on a strong biblicism, place crucicentrism and conversion at the heart of their faith. They are evangelistic and revivalistic. They affirm the importance of a personal conversion narrative (much like among Churches of Christ we tell our baptismal stories). These are the evangelicals Jamey Gorman describes in his book, Among the Early Evangelicals: The Transatlantic Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement.[6] The Stone-Campbell Movement arose out of this evangelical mixture in the wake of the First and Second Great Awakenings, and its roots reach back to missionary and evangelical projects in the British Isles. This group of evangelicals would embrace the evangelicalism of the first group, but not everyone in that first group would identify with the revivalism of this second group (e.g., Roman Catholic).

Third, Evangelical (notice the capitalization) as a late 20^th and early 21^st century movement refers to a group whose activism is thoroughly political. It seeks institutional and political power to reverse the moral failings of the nation in a way akin to some form of Christian Nationalism (a current version of which is the Apostolic Reformation movement in the US). Whether we begin with theonomic perspectives, dominion theology, or Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1970s, this mix of Fundamentalism and social activism has come to dominant or, at least, hold significant sway over much of the conservative landscape of the American church.[7] This group may include people from the first and second groups (e.g., there are MAGA Catholics) while people in the first and second groups are not necessarily Evangelical in this third sense. In contrast, historically, Churches of Christ have embraced a cultural separatism of sorts that promoted an alternative community in contrast to institutional and cultural powers.[8]

Against this backdrop, I offer this five-fold typology for locating the Churches of Christ within the Christian Tradition.

• Evangelical Gospel
• Catholic Tradition (East and West)
• Reformed Tradition
• Anabaptist Tradition
• Evangelical Revivalism

What is missing from this typology is contemporary Evangelicalism which is characterized by a desire for political power. This is not part of the DNA of Churches of Christ who are more indebted to the kingdom politics of David Lipscomb than to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. To whatever extent Churches of Christ buy into MAGA politics and Christian Nationalism, it is out of step with the historical trajectory of its mothers and fathers. To whatever degree Churches of Christ embrace this cultural agenda they are no longer faithful to their own roots and represent a radical break from that tradition. Many congregations and individuals within Churches of Christ, however, are moving in that direction.

As I explain this typology, it is important to remember that while Churches of Christ may trace their family of origins through this lens and the best of Churches of Christ are seen through it, dysfunction is also part of our history. In other words, whatever good we may see in our roots and their faithful expression, our history is complicated by dysfunction through misinterpretation, misguided emphases, and ideological agendas. In other words, Churches of Christ are not perfect.

1.  Evangelical Gospel.  Early Disciples and Churches of Christ shared the common faith of the historic church. While they did not embrace creedal formulations, they affirmed the faith narrated, for example, in the Apostles’ Creed. As Campbell put it, that creed, unlike “modern creeds” which are a “synopsis of opinions,” is “a brief narrative of facts, of all the great gospel facts.” [9] Campbell believed that “[e]very society in Christendom admits the same faith or builds on all the same grand evangelical facts.”[10] These gospel facts are the basis for a “common Christianity,” an evangelical core that everyone within the Christian tradition confesses.[11]  This lies at the root of what Robert Richardson called a “SIMPLE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY.”[12] This is the language we find in the 1809 Declaration and Address. The Christian Association of Washington was created “for the sole purpose of promoting simple evangelical Christianity, free from all mixture of human opinions and inventions of men.”[13] Alexander Campbell pleaded for all Christians to unite upon this simple evangelical Christianity and to make their “the rule of union” that whatever in faith, in piety, and morality is catholic, or universally admitted by all parties, shall be adopted as the basis of union.”[14] Dysfunction arose when the gospel was identified more with the commands than the facts of God’s redemptive work or even with the New Testament as a whole rather than its basic message. These miscues are not uncommon in the history of Churches of Christ.

2. Catholic Tradition (East and West).  Brad East’s recent article in Restoration Quarterly argues that catholicity—in the sense of both East and West—is part of the DNA of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Essentially, “catholic” refers to a high ecclesiology in which the church is central to soteriology and God’s mission, baptismal sacramentalism, and the assembled liturgical community (including its mystical importance [where we meet God] and weekly communion with the risen Christ).[15] This is similar to Campbell’s three positive ordinances of Christianity: Baptism, Lord’s Day, and Lord’s Supper,[16] which Harrison also noted.[17] Further it looks to the “early church” as a “paradigm of moral, spiritual and sacramental faithfulness.” As East asserts, “the church simply is Christianity as God instituted on earth.”[18] I think this is essentially correct, and in this sense Churches of Christ are deeply embedded within a world of sacramental imagination, though we would never call it that. Dysfunction arose when the sacramental imagination was limited to baptism, and even more so when baptism was regarded as primarily a test of loyalty rather than a divine work. A further dysfunction arose when we began to regard “our” congregations as co-extensive with the body of Christ.

3. Reformed Tradition. According to Harrison, the Reformed tradition was probably the most dominant influence upon the early leaders of the Stone-Campbell Movement. This is not too surprising since both Stone and the Campbells were trained and lived in Presbyterian congregations. Those roots are deep, and we may observe its impact from several different angles. First, the Campbells employed a Reformed hermeneutic (seen in Zwingli, Calvin, and the Puritans) called the regulative principle by which, according to the Westminster Confession, God prescribed “the acceptable way of worshipping the true God” which God “instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men . . . or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture” (XXI.1). The Reformed hermeneutic assumed an ecclesial pattern in the New Testament and discerned it by using explicit statements or deducing others from Scripture by “good and necessary consequence” (I.6). Alexander Campbell began his series on “order” within the restoration of the ancient order with two presuppositions: (1) “there is a divine authorized order of Christian worship in Christian assemblies” and (2) “the christian worship in Christian assemblies is uniformly the same.”[19] The apostles provided the “constitution and law of the primitive church,” and so “shall [it] be the constitution and law of the restored church.”[20] The Churches of Christ embraced a pattern hermeneutic that used command, example, and inference as its method of discernment. Dysfunction arose when patternism became a rigid exclusivism such that it turned into ecclesial perfectionism.

Another dimension of Reformed influence is seen in the polity and liturgy of the early Disciples. Harrison recognizes the liturgical elements, but we can expand beyond sacramental administration. The sobering atmosphere of the assembly and the practices of singing, exhorting, teaching, and communing essentially reproduced what one would find in early American Presbyterianism or Puritan dissenter congregations (with the explicit addition of weekly communion). More importantly, the organization of congregations under the leadership of elders and deacons was typical of the Reformed tradition. Dysfunction arose when leadership became authoritarian, and the order of worship became specifically prescribed and rigidly exclusive.

4. Anabaptist Tradition. While the “free church” influence of New England congregationalism is present (especially in Stone), the Anabaptist tradition appears more influential (especially upon Churches of Christ). I see this, most evidently, in four ways. First, Anabaptist communities are congregational in character, though they vary in how radical this is. Typically, as in New England congregationalism, there were also often extra-congregational organizations and structures. At the heart of the Anabaptist vision, however, is the voluntary nature of the congregation, that is, a regenerated community that gathered for mutual discipline and worship. Second, as voluntary communities, they emphasized discipleship through the imitation of Jesus and obedience to the Lordship of Christ. Church discipline was practiced with a seriousness among early Disciples and early Churches of Christ that mirrored the “ban” in Anabaptist communities. Third, believer’s baptism, as among the Anabaptists (and Baptists of early 19^th century America), was standard practice among early Disciples. However, the meaning of the sacrament was more Reformed or even Catholic than among the Anabaptists. Fourth, the sense of cultural isolation and association with the poor was shared with the Anabaptist tradition (though this was not universal among Disciples, especially Alexander Campbell himself). However, it was predominantly true in the South, especially post-Civil War, and thus it is a key element of the formation of the identity of Churches of Christ. Dysfunction arose with the loss of cultural separatism (e.g., the embrace of Christian Nationalism) and with a radical congregationalism that hindered cooperation among congregations.

5. Evangelical Revivalism. The Stone-Campbell Movement was birthed in the fires of evangelical revivalism. Cane Ridge and the Washington Association were soaked in it. Cane Ridge was an expression of the Second Great Awakening which saw unity in revivalistic preaching and the work of the Spirit. The Declaration and Address was an American expression of British evangelical zeal that sought unity for the sake of mission. Both Stone and Campbell intended to lay aside denominationalism by uniting upon the New Testament alone so that the church might unite in mission for the sake of the world. While Stone’s fiery and spirited revivalism ultimately gave way to Campbell’s rational version—the mourner’s bench was replaced by believer’s baptism, this revivalism produced a conversion narrative recognized by the community of believers. That narrative was personal and necessary for incorporation into the body. Dysfunction arose when the tradition became more concerned about revivalism than discipleship.

A significant byproduct of this sort of evangelicalism (along with Anabaptist tendencies) within the Stone-Campbell Movement, especially Churches of Christ, has been the practice of the priesthood of all believers. This invites every disciple to participate in the mission of God and use their gifts in service to God. This entailed a non-sacerdotalism, that is, no disciple had special or unique priestly or clerical privileges in the community. Every believer (only male, at least in its origin) may baptize and lead the congregation in worship through prayer, reading, exhortation, singing, and communion. Everyone is fully invested with priestly privileges though they may not all share the same gifts.

These five historic Christian traditions are particularly important for shaping and identifying the distinctive nature of the Stone-Campbell tradition, particularly Churches of Christ.

So, who are we? That was the original question Harrison raised. We are a community that confesses the evangelical (gospel) message under the guidancew of Scripture. We affirm the soteriological and missional significance of the church, and we affirm not only the prominence of its sacraments but their efficacy by the Spirit of God. We read Scripture closely and attend to its details (though the nature of the patternism envisioned may vary considerably among congregations), and we organize our independent congregations under the lay leadership of elders and deacons. These communities are voluntary, regenerated, and committed to communal life together as the primary means by which God addresses the world and its powers. The church is itself a missionary community as it seeks to proclaim the gospel of Christ and invite people to participate in God’s life through the community. We are a community of disciples shaped by sacramental means of grace, guided by Scripture, dedicated to transformation and discipleship, and committed to mission. Unfortunately, the Churches of Christ, due in part to their rationalistic embrace of a patternistic hermeneutic, became exclusivist and separated themselves from the rest of the Christian tradition itself.

Are we, that is, Churches of Christ, evangelicals? I pose the question considering our DNA, whether from the early Disciples or from the Hardeman Tabernacle Sermons in 1922-1923. Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that we confess the gospel facts. Yes, in the sense that we embrace a missional, even revivalistic, agenda. But, no, in the sense that we participate in the current cultural movement toward Christian nationalism and political power. However, many congregations of Churches of Christ are now embracing some of this nationalism and thirst for political power. To that extent, they represent a divergence from the historic identity of Churches of Christ.

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[1] Richard L. Harrison, Jr., “Early Disciples Sacramental Theology: Catholic, Reformed, and Free,” Mid-Stream 24, no. 3 (July 1985): 255. Reprinted in Classic Themes of Disciples Theology: Rethinking the Traditional Affirmations of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), ed. Kenneth Lawrence (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University, 1986), 49-100.

[2] Harisson, “Early Disciples,” 285.

[3] Harrison, “Early Disciples,” 286.

[4] Harrison, “Early Disciples,” 290.

[5] Matthew W. Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars: Why Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We Are Saved (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2025), 18.

[6] James L. Gorman, Among the Early Evangelicals: The Transatlantic Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Abilene, TX: Abilene University Press, 2017), 17-18.

[7] See Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (San Francisco: Harper, 2023).

[8] See John Mark Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel: Allegiance to God and the Problem of Government (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2020).

[9] Alexander Campbell, “Reply to Barnabas,” Millennial Harbinger 3, no. 12 (December 1832): 602.

[10] Alexander Campbell, A Debate Between Rev. A. Campbell and Rev. N. L. Rice on the Action, Subject, Design and Administrator of Christian Baptism: also, on the Character of Spiritual Influence in Conversion and Sanctification, and on the Expediency and Tendency of Ecclesiastic Creeds, as Terms of Union and Communion (Lexington, KY: A. T. Skillman & Son, 1844), 835.

[11] Alexander Campbell, “Education,” Millennial Harbinger 1.6 (2nd series; June 1837): 258.

[12] Robert Richardson, The Principles and Objects of the Religious Reformation, Urged by A. Campbell and Others, Briefly Stated and Explained. 2d ed. (Bethany, VA: A. Campbell, 1853), 6–7.

[13] Declaration and Address, p. 4.

[14] Alexander Campbell, “Union of Christians—No. I.,” Millennial Harbinger 3.5 (2nd series; May 1839) 212.

[15] Brad East, “Churches of Christ: Once Catholic, Now Evangelical,” Restoration Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2024): 135-136.

[16] See my “Stone-Campbell Sacramental Theology,” Restoration Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2008) 35-48.

[17] Harrison, “Early Disciples,” 258.

[18] Brad East, “Churches of Christ,” 136.

[19] Alexander Campbell, “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. V. Order of Worship,” Christian Baptist 2, no. 12 (July 4, 1825): 164.

[20] Alexander Campbell, “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. IV.,” Christian Baptist 2, no. 11 (June 6, 1825): 158.

Psalm 26 is a plea for grace and a thanksgiving for God’s response. The heart that trusts God rather than the heart that devises evil is heard, and the people who meditate on the works of God rather than those who pursue their own evil works are heard.

God is not silent. God responds, evil self-destructs, and the people of God have a stronghold for their deliverance.

Blessed be the Lord!

Bobby Valentine and John Mark Hicks discuss the meaning and significance of Psalm 26.

Since the beginning of Hosea 4, the prophet’s oracles have alerted and warned the northern kingdom of Israel of their approaching devastation and exile. The Assyrian empire is predatorial and expansionistic. They will occupy and annex the territory of Israel, and God will permit this due to Israel’s sin.

While Hosea 4-10 has identified the sins of Israel and God’s intent that the nation will suffer the consequences of those sins, Hosea 11 strikes a different note. We hear the sound of hope and promise despite their exile into “Egypt.”

In fact, the movement of the oracle recalls the journey out of Egypt, their return to Egypt, and the hope of return from Egypt. Israel was liberated from Egypt, but now they are returning due to their rebellion. But God’s compassion and deep love for Israel means that ultimately God will bring them home and once again liberate them from Egypt. While the first use of Egypt is historical (referring to the Exodus), the other uses of “Egypt” are metaphorical—symbolic of Israel’s return to oppression under the Assyrian empire and their eventual deliverance from “Egyptian” oppression once again.

Jim Limburg, in his Interpretation commentary on Hosea, nicely outlines this section of chapter eleven: past (1-4), immediate future (5-7), present (8-9), and distant future (10-11). While some of Israel is already overrun by Assyria (v. 6) and some are experiencing deportation (v. 11), Samaria—the capital city—is not yet destroyed, and the people are awaiting the final Assyrian push to take over the whole nation (v. 6). As Limburg suggests, this fits the context of the reign of King Hoshea of Israel (732-722 BCE) who made a futile alliance with Egypt as a desperate last effort to save his nation (2 Kings 17:4).

The Past: Out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1-4)

The Exodus is described as an act of God’s kindness. Israel is birthed out of love as Yahweh’s own son. Israel is the “firstborn” among the nations (Exodus 4:22), and they were birthed as a nation when they were liberated from Egyptian oppression. They were baptized in the sea and the cloud, journeyed to Sinai, and entered into covenant with God.

Yahweh treated Israel as God’s own child and lovingly cared for him. God loved, nurtured, and protected Israel. Notice the “I” statements in this section; they are emphatic! God is the subject of these verbs.

• Taught Ephraim to walk
• Took Ephraim in his arms
• Led them with kindness and love
• Lifted them up as infants to God’s cheeks
• Bent down to them
• Fed them

Love appears prominently here. “I loved” Israel, Yahweh says, and Yahweh led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness with “bands of love.” This birthing in love is also a calling—Israel has a role to play in world history and the coming of the Messiah.

God took the initiative to bring Israel out of Egypt due to God’s own love. This is the language of Deuteronomy 7 and 9: God chose Israel because God loved Israel and not because Israel was so faithful, righteous, numerous, or great.

This is not only a parental metaphor—in addition to the spousal metaphor of Hosea 1-3—but a kenotic one: Yahweh bends over backwards to accommodate and care for Israel. The Creator of the universe condescends to live and walk with Israel like a parent with a child. Yahweh is the transcendent Holy One who gets dirty hands by trekking through the wilderness with Israel.

Israel’s response, however, was rebellion. Hosea 11:2 recognizes the centrifugal force of God’s call and Israel’s rebellion. “The more I called them, the more they went from me,” Yahweh says. They turned to other gods, the Baals, and offered sacrifices to them. They “did not know” that Yahweh had healed them—led them out of Egypt, led them through the wilderness, and gave them a land in which to dwell.

The Immediate Future: Back to Egypt (Hosea 11:5-7)

Because of their rebellion and their refusal to return to God through submission to the prophetic word, Israel will return to Egypt. Since Assyria will be their king, the reference to “Egypt” is symbolic of a return to oppression in Assyrian exile. Instead of returning to God, they will return to Egypt from which God had called them in the beginning.

This is not only their immediate future; it is already happening. Violence through the sword has already arrived in their cities, presumably in the northern regions of the country like Galilee. Israel’s “empty-talkers” or “oracle-priests” (NRSV) have no impact; their oracles are consumed by the fires of the Assyrian empire. Their schemes will not save Israel but contribute to its destruction. The leaders of Israel did not listen to Hosea but listened to their false prophets and priests. Consequently, they will experience the ravages of war.

At some point in the process, it becomes too late to reverse it. Even if they call at this late moment, the consequences of their sins must play out because Israel has habitually and consistently turned away from God at every point. They may call to God in the midst of their trauma, but their hearts are actually far from God as their past demonstrates.

The Present: The Loving Parent (Hosea 11:8-9)

Nevertheless, God’s heart burns with compassion for them. God is not heartless. Neither does God take pleasure in the horror that is about to fall on the whole nation of Israel.

God addresses Israel with heart in hand; it is a soliloquy—a dramatic monologue—that expresses Yahweh’s depth of emotion. Yahweh is an anguished parent over the plight of Israel. Like many anguished parents, Yahweh asks, “What can I do?” or “How will I respond?”

The one thing Yahweh knows, it seems, is that God’s steadfast love will not give up on Israel. Though Israel rejected Yahweh over and over again, Yahweh will not finally and ultimately reject Israel.

Yahweh will not treat them like Admah and Zeboiim. These two cities were associated with Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 10:19; 14:2, 8), and they were destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah (Deuteronomy 29:23). They were annihilated; they no longer existed.

But Yahweh will not do that to Israel. God will not fully vent his anger against Israel or destroy Ephraim altogether. Yes, they will suffer violence and war; they will go into exile, and they will lose their national existence. But God’s compassionate and tender heart mitigates, even controls, his “fierce anger.” God, unlike human beings, is not controlled by anger. Rather, God is the “Holy One”—the transcendent one, whose anger neither dictates nor compels God’s response. Ultimately, God will not act in wrath. 

At one and the same time, God is both “Other” (transcendent) and also draws near (“bends down”). God is, at one and the same time, both transcendent and immanent; both the Holy One and the one who self-empties to be near beloved children.

The Distant Future: Home from Egypt (Hosea 11:10-11)

Rather, God will come, and Israel will respond. The dispersed Israelites—whether in Assyria, Egypt, or other nations—will return once God roars like a lion again. God’s children will come in fear and trembling back home. Israel will experience a new exodus, a deliverance from oppression and exile.

Though they roar like lions, they shall return as doves—birds that return to their home nest. The children of Israel will return “to their homes.” This is the promise of a restoration; a return to their houses. Their exile will come to an end. This is Israel’s hope, and it is grounded in the love and compassion of Yahweh who calls Israel “my son.”

The end of the exile and their resettlement in their homes is not explained. There is no timeline, nor is there any full description of what that means or entails. There is, however, no return of the northern kingdom in the descriptions of Chronicles, Ezra, or Nehemiah. Judah returns to the land, but Ephraim does not. Ultimately, according to Romans 9-11, Israel returns through the Messiah of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth.

Matthew’s Use of Hosea 11:1: A Christological Reading

After the birth of Jesus, Herod the Great sought to kill the newborn king, but Joseph was told to flee to Egypt. The family remained there until Herod’s death. This happened, according to Matthew, “to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’” (Matthew 2:15).

As we read Hosea, it seems clear that Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction. On the contrary, it describes a past event; it describes the Exodus. There is no hint that it refers to anything in the future.

The Gospel writer in Matthew employs a theological (typological) hermeneutic that sees the analogy, parallel, and even the type-antiype of the story of Israel and the story of Jesus. Just as Israel was called out of Egypt, so Jesus was called out of Egypt. The fulfillment is not one of prediction-fulfillment but of type-fulfillment.

Jesus acts as the new Israel. Just like Israel, he comes to the promised land from Egypt. He travels by the grace and compassion of God. He settles in Galilee, the area of the northern kingdom of Israel first annexed by Assyria. He relives the story of Israel.

Except this time, Jesus is the faithful son rather than a rebellious one like Ephraim had been. He is the true Israellite, the true son of God—he represents the whole nation, both Israel and Judah. Israel gets a “do-over” in the life of Jesus.

When Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1, he intends for us to read the whole story of Hosea 11:1-11 in the light of God’s work in Jesus by the Spirit. Jesus has stepped into the story of Israel and reoriented it to faithfulness, and Jesus repeats the story of Israel but in faithfulness. And Jesus, who came to save his people from their sins, will liberate Israel by a new Exodus.

Thanks be to God!

Delivered at the Restoration Collective in Dallas, TX, on April 21, 2026.

“But a devotional and sanctifying reading of that sacred Book, is essentially different from the readings of the theologian, the moralist, the sectary, and the virtuoso of every caste and school. The man of God reads the Book of God to commune with God, “to feel after him, and find him,” to feel his power and his divinity stirring within him; to have his soul fired, quickened, animated by the spirit of grace and truth. He reads the Bible to enjoy the God of the Bible; that the majesty, purity, excellency, and glory of its Author may overshadow him, inspire him, transform him, and new-create him in the image of God. . . God speaks; he listens. Occasionally, and almost unconsciously, at intervals he forgets that he reads, he speaks to God, and his reading thus often terminates in a devotional conversation with God.”

Alexander Campbell, Millennial Harbinger (January 1839) 38

“We don’t understand the words of a person we love by first dissecting them, but rather by simply receiving such words and letting them echo within us all day long. . . This is how we should treat the words of the Bible. Only when we dare to deal with the Bible in this way, as if here God is really speaking to us, loving us, and does not want to leave us alone with our questions–only then will we find joy in the Bible.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live these Days with You, 289

Reading Scripture is a means to an end, but not the end in itself. Both Campbell and Bonhoeffer understood this. We read to enjoy God and commune with God so that the glory of God might transform us and create us anew. Reading Scripture becomes a means by which God stirs our minds, hearts, and souls that we might be animated by the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of grace and truth. Reading Scripture is a means of grace; the spoken words become an explosive and transformative encounter.

Discipleship, though often couched in individualistic terms, is a communal process because disciples belong to a community. The invitation to “follow me” is a shared call, not an isolated one.  As a communal reality, discipleship stands upon and under Scripture as the primary word that identifies and shapes what it means to follow Jesus. Therefore, we do not read Scripture, according to Stanely Hauerwas, “as democratic citizens who think their common sense is sufficient for understanding Scripture” who “feel no need to stand under the authority of the truthful community to be told how to read.” Many “assume,” he writes, “that they have all the ‘religious experience’ necessary to know what the Bible is about. As a result,” Hauerwas continues, “the Bible inherently becomes the ideology for a politics quite different from the politics of the church” (Unleashing the Scriptures [1993] 15).

While a democratic common sense leads to the dominance of political ideology, reading Scripture in a community of disciples is artegenic, as Ellen T. Charry put it (By the Renewing of Your Minds [1977] 19). The purpose of theology—grounded in Scripture as its primary source and shaped by communal engagement—is character or spiritual formation. Theology should give the people of God an identity (a sense of calling and status) and equip them with values that form them into the image of Christ.

We read, embrace, and teach the story of God given to us in Scripture so that, as Titus 3:8 puts it, when we “stress things . . . those who trusted God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.” The goal is a beloved community that does good.

An Encounter

Reading Scripture, then, is a means of grace which serves the goal of renewal or transformation into the image of God by participating in communities of faith that seek to embody that image. The aim is transformation (a community devoted to good works) by entering the story of God as believers seeking understanding. To place this reading of Scripture as an act of discipleship and formative for discipleship into a larger frame, consider these four bullet points.

• Reading Scripture is an act of piety; a liturgical act of listening to God. It is a word about God from God heard through God who inhabits us.
• Reading Scripture is a transformative encounter with God; it is experiential, an existential communion with God.
• Reading Scripture is an act of loving God and loving neighbor as the foundation of life with God in the world.
• Reading Scripture nourishes the community of faith through divine habitation.

Scripture is living and active, a means of grace by which God encounters us in the Spirit. God actively encounters and transforms. Thus, the act of reading Scripture is a sacramental one, a means of divine presence and action.  Reading Scripture is a pneumatological event—God acts and shapes us through reading.

When we encounter God through Scripture, the authority of God calls us, disciples us, and forms us into the image of God. We encounter authority as we encounter God’s own self. To be sure, it is a loving encounter but can also be confrontational as we are called to repentance and embrace a new allegiance as we enter the kingdom of God.

A Contrast

Over the years I have slowly shifted from reading Scripture as a legal brief designed to provide a specific blueprint for organizing a church to reading Scripture as a story into which we are invited in order to participate in the mission of God by imitating God.

Growing up in Churches of Christ, I embraced and practiced a hermeneutic that sought an implicit blueprint for the work and worship of the church in Acts and the Epistles. Through a filter of generic/specific distinctions, coordinate associations, the law of silence, and expediency (among other rules for authorization), I shifted through the commands, examples, and inferences within the New Testament to deduce a blueprint, which then became the standard of faithfulness and a mark of the true church. And if everyone agreed upon and practiced the blueprint, we would be united!

The problem is the location of the pattern. The pattern is not found in an implied blueprint in Acts and the Epistles. Paul does not call people to obedience based on a blueprint identified by the practices of the church. Instead, he calls them to obedience based on the pattern manifested in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus. This is the gospel we obey—the story of Jesus—rather than a blueprint we have inferred from the text. This gospel story is the narrative air we breathe. The pattern of God’s work through Christ in the power of the Spirit is explicit, objective, and formative.

We will discover unity when we confess the same pattern, and the shame of our past divisions is that we already confess the same pattern. Our pattern is God acting in Jesus through the Spirit, or the gospel itself. Here we are united, and our hermeneutic must not undermine that unity but provide ways to embody it. This past shame, however, may become our authentic hope—to embody the pattern of Jesus in our lives and communities.

This involves a hermeneutical shift that entails a different understanding of the authority of the Bible. Whereas the blueprint hermeneutic located God’s authority in the blueprint—what God authorized, specified, and excluded, a theological reading locates the authority in God’s acts—the pattern of God’s activity. Scripture mediates God’s authority not by a specified blueprint but by witnessing to the acts of God for our salvation. The authority of God is meditated through the story of God where we encounter God’s own self.

For blueprint patternism, the authority of the Bible is found in what it authorizes and excludes. It is a legal search for the boundaries, specifics, and rituals of ecclesial life. But a more story-formed approach hears God’s speaking through Scripture, but authority does not reside in Scripture per se but in the God who self-discloses in the story.

A Story

A Hindu friend of Lesslie Newbigin, a long term missionary in India a generation ago, told him this (from A Walk Through the Bible, 4): “I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion–and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it.”

Scripture offers an interpretation of human existence in relation to God within God’s good creation. This interpretation is fundamentally a narrative into which we are invited—not as religionists but as human beings.

A healthy reading of the Scripture assumes a Triune understanding of the basic story to which the text bears witness, that is, God creating, revealing, and redeeming the world as the Father sends the Son and then sends the Spirit through the Son for the sake of recreating humanity in the image of God. The story—the canonical world—is the world in which the church reads, understands, and applies Scripture for formation as disciples of Jesus. It equips us for participation in the mission of God.

Scripture bears witness to God’s redemptive acts, interprets them and appropriates their significance for the people of God in their particular circumstances. Our task to understand the meaning of God’s redemptive acts through Scripture’s own witness, and then to interpret and appropriate its significance in our own particular circumstance. We recognize the occasionality of Scripture, but we perceive its narrative theological unity and embrace those values in our contemporary setting.

A Call

The language of Scripture privileges the vocative rather than the descriptive. Words are not merely signs for things but a call from the God. The God of Israel and Jesus invite us to participate in this redemptive drama. This prioritizes the relational over predication within Scripture. It prioritizes the personal over propositional reality. The function of Scripture is to make us wise unto wholeness (salvation)—sapiential rather than primarily or fundamentally propositional.

The Christian faith is not so much defined in terms of a set of beliefs as it is characterized by the story it performs (e.g., “Rule of Faith”)—practicing the kingdom of God in the created though broken world.  It is not the doctrinal affirmations that define Christianity but how the drama is enacted.  Truth is being and doing rather than mere propositional affirmations.  Truth is fundamentally performative; it is lived.  Truth is evidenced in the practice of the kingdom.  Praxis in community precedes maturation of faith and knowledge—communal practices shape faith and knowledge. Theology functions as dramatic direction for our participation in the story.

This leads to missional interpretation. This means that we indwell the story driven by the mission of God so that we are enabled to perform the drama and participate in that mission. Consequently, we locate every text of Scripture within the drama, view it through the lens of the mission of God, and read it as participants in the mission. And we do so in dialogue with each other, both within and without our own faith communities. At the same time, our own missional praxis and practices are a resource for new meaning within the story we indwell.

Missional interpretation focuses on praxis as participation in God’s mission. Interpretation is no mere mental exercise but embodied so that the church’s participation is always already shaping how we interpret reality. In this sense, while theological hermeneutics is “faith seeking understanding,” missional hermeneutics is “works seeking understanding” (as per our friend, Greg McKinzie).

Just as missional theology and practice prioritize the question, “What is God doing in this situation?” So, the missional reading of Scripture prioritizes the question, “What is God doing in this text?” Or, what is the word God speaks through this text? Or more fully, how does this text not only participate in the mission of God, but also how does it bear witness to the mission of God? But this is incomplete without appropriation.

An Appropriation

This language comes from Paul Riceour. To appropriate what is in a text is to “make what was alien become one’s own.” The “matter of the text” is what is appropriated. “But,” Riceour says, “the matter of the text becomes my own only if I disappropriate myself, in order to let the matter of the text be. So I exchange the me, master of itself, for the self, disciple of the text” (Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 113).

As we think about inhabiting the story, what we appropriate is a “proposed world”—a world that the text through appropriation “unfolds, discovers, reveals.” This happens as we expose ourselves to the text and receive from it an “enlarged self.” This proposed existence fits the proposed world, lives coherently within it, and lives out the trajectory of the text. Discipled by the text “as a reader,” Riceour writes, “I find myself only by losing myself” (Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 143).

Interpretation—or the hermeneutical event—is not complete without appropriation where reading becomes an existential “event in the present moment.” It is an event because the text is addressed to a person, and the person appropriates the proposed world of the text. In this way, “as appropriation, interpretation becomes an event” (Interpretation Theory, 92).

Interpretation as appropriation has at least two moves. First, it seeks “the internal dynamic” of the text “that governs the structuring of the world,” that is, the dynamic that creates the proposed world. Second, the text has the power to “project itself” and “give birth to a world that would truly be the ‘thing’ referred to by the text” (From Text to Antion, 17). Hermeneutics both reconstructs the “internal dynamic of the text” and “restore[s] to the work its ability to project itself outside itself in the representation of a world that the reader could inhabit” (From Text to Action, 113). That is the “world of the text” readers are invited to inhabit.

When we read Scripture, we seek to be discipled by the world that Scripture proposes, the kingdom of God. We submit to that world, embody it, and practice it. Theological interpretation may help us discern that world in terms of Scripture’s inner dynamic, but missional interpretation illuminates the reality of that world through praxis, that is, by actually acting as disciples in the world.

A Theological Summary of the Hermeneutical Event

A reader (within and with the present traditioned community) inhabited by the author (pneuma of God—individually and communally), reads the text (the product of a pneumatic, traditioned community) in community (present, global, and historic) for the sake of wisdom (listening to God’s wisdom) to inhabit its world (the kingdom of God) and perform the drama and participate in that world (missio Dei), depending upon God’s active leading (pneumatology).

In Honor of Dr. Seth Fletcher (46 Years Old)

Memorial on April 25, 2026

The opening poem is beautifully crafted and memorable. It is probably the most well-known part of Ecclesiastes. It has a lyrical quality which The Byrds used in their 1965 hit, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”  

The poem articulates the extremes of human existence from birth to death, from love to hate, from mourning to dancing, from peace to war. Life “under the sun” is filled with both, and there is no escape from its reality.

Many find comfort in the words of the poem. By its very nature, poetry may have many levels of meaning, and it may be appropriated in different ways. The situation of the reader will shape how it is heard, and this is part of the point as poetry draws out and speaks our emotions.

What I find striking is that the Teacher (or Qoheleth) is frustrated by the poem. The teacher’s response is basically, “What’s the use?” or “What’s the point?” Life goes round and round, cycling from one extreme to another. There does not seem to be any profit in how life plays out. Qoheleth’s response to the poem is the same as the opening question of the book, “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” (1:3).

Life feels like a burden that makes no sense. It is frustrating.

Qoheleth expresses this frustration by recognizing that God has put “eternity” (הָעֹלָם֙) in our hearts. Whatever that may mean, God has given humanity a sense of time, “a sense of past and future” (NRSV), that in our present human experience is beyond our wisdom. We can’t figure it out. We “cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.”

Nevertheless, the Teacher believes God “has made everything suitable (or fitting) for its time.” I wish I knew exactly what that means. It does not seem to me that everything that happens is “suitable,” much less “beautiful” as some translations.

Today, as we remember Seth, we have many questions. We don’t understand how it is fitting for death to invade the life of the Fletchers when their son, husband, father, and brother passes suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of forty-six.

With Qoheleth, the poem does not offer much comfort but raises many questions. It seems to me that the poem is more like a protest and a submissive acknowledgement. Even The Byrds used it to protest the Vietnam War as the last line in the lyric is “A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.” It is not, in effect, a time for war.

Neither is 46 years a time for death. Seth’s death is a question mark. It does not make sense. Or, as Qoheleth would say, it is vanity (hebel, הֶ֖בֶל); it is an enigma, or perhaps even absurd. It is the brevity of life, and this it burden we must bear.

So, our lament, our pain and our hurt are shared by the Teacher, and it is shared by the Psalmists of Israel where almost half of the Psalms are lament. They are filled with questions like “How long?” (Psalm 13:1-2) or “Why?” (Psalm 88:14). The life of faith is filled with frustrations as life continuously cycles from birth to death, mourning to dancing, love to hate, and peace to war.

Nevertheless, the Teacher is resolute. His response to this frustration is determined and purposeful. The Teachers affirms some fundamental truths about life.

First, Qoheleth says, “I know there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.”

Today we have been immersed in Seth’s “toil.”  He was a musician, professor, and husband and father. We have listened to the music he loved and played. We have heard stories of his love for family, even to the point of letting go of his career to homeschool his son and empower his wife to pursue her musical career in a military band.

This was Seth’s joy, and it was God’s gift to him. Seth found pleasure in his toil, in his music. He created beauty, created joy in the hearts of his audiences, and encouraged others to pursue the creative art of music. Seth knew something of what our Teacher expresses here—to enjoy life with God’s gifts.

Second, Qoheleth says, “I know that whatever God does endures forever.”

Love lasts forever; it is God’s own identity. Joy also lasts forever; it is God’s intent for humanity.

God was at work in Seth’s life, and what Seth created and shared with the world will endure because his love and joy will overflow again and again in the hearts of those who knew him and through his mentorship, care, and love for others. The joy and beauty of his music as a gift of God will endure forever.

This is the root of hope. The cycles of life is often frustrating, but God is at work in those cycles. God is making, creating, and acting in ways that are beyond us, beyond our discovery.

Perhaps in faith we might confess, “Yes, it is ‘fitting’—perhaps even ‘beautiful’”—while, at the same time, we cry out, “I believe, Lord; help my unbelief.”

Today we embrace hope, as Seth himself did. As he wrote, hope last forever. It will work, if we give our hearts space for God’s own working of hope in our lives.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Spirit.” Romans 15:13

Whom shall I fear? There is only one thing that I want and that is to sit in the house of the Lord, inquire of the Lord, and wait to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Psalm 27 is a confidence song, a song of trust. Though surrounded by adversaries and assaulted on every side, we will not be afraid because we live in God’s presence with security.

Psalm 22 is the lament and confession of a righteous sufferer in the expectation of God’s righteous deliverance. The Psalmist identifies with the story of Israel, and Jesus himself appropriates this Psalm for his own lament and confession in the hope of his own vindication.

This is not a Psalm about divine wrath or punishment for sin. Rather, it is the world all believers enter when we face suffering and death. We lament (“Why?”), we confess (“my God”), and we praise because we know God’s righteousness and kingdom will prevail.