John Mark Hicks

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).

2019 Christian Scholars Conference Presentation, Lubbock, Texas

Part of my academic work has sought to identify and characterize the theological dynamic that shaped students at the Nashville Bible School (now known as Lipscomb University) in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This dynamic has its roots in Barton W. Stone and Tolbert Fanning prior to the Civil War, and David Lipscomb and James A. Harding subsequent to the war. The latter two co-founded the Nashville Bible School in 1891. I have labeled this the “Nashville Bible School Tradition” or the “Tennessee Tradition” in contrast to traditions which arose in Texas (represented by Austin McGary and the Firm Foundation) and Indiana (represented by Daniel Sommer and the Octographic Review). These were competing ideologies engaged in a struggle for the soul of Churches of Christ who emerged as a distinct sect at the beginning of the 20^th century.

In 2006, Bobby Valentine and I published a book entitled Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding. We accentuated the positive in that book because we wanted to propose a way forward for Churches of Christ and highlight some positive dimensions of the Nashville Bible School Tradition. We did not critique the aspects of their legacy that hindered that way forward, and some of those hinderances are still present among Churches of Christ.  In this paper, I will briefly summarize what lies at the heart of the positive agenda in their theology, and then I will identify two critical dimensions that hinder its witness.

Central Convictions

“The chief end” of divine rule, according to Lipscomb, “is to reestablish the authority of God on earth as the rightful ruler of the world, to so bring the world back into harmonious relations with the universe that the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.”[1]

We might characterize this Tennessee theology as fundamentally an eschatological struggle for the full reign of God in the creation. In other words, we are, as Harding put it, “foreigners” living in our own home.[2] We are foreigners because we do not belong to the evil powers that presently reign over the creation, but the creation is still our home (both now and eschatologically), and it is worth the struggle to fill it with the glory of God. This is, on the one hand, a high view of creation—God created something good, will redeem it from evil, and renew its future. At the same time, this process of redemption and renewal is apocalyptic. This means the future is, in some sense, already present and in process but its fullness involves a future divine act of redemption. This apocalyptic vision is a form of inaugurated eschatology, which calls us to live in the present as if the kingdom of God has fully arrived in anticipation of that fullness. The looming shadows of the reign of God filled the Nashville Bible School with a powerful ethical vision. Biblical faith, according to Lipscomb and Harding, is lived as if the future is already present, as if the heavenly city has already been planted on the earth. And the present church on the earth is that heavenly city.

For Lipscomb and Harding this meant that there was an inherent conflict between the kingdom of God and the powers that currently rule the earth. According to Lipscomb, “the two are essentially antagonistic.”[3] Each has their role, but “they must forever remain distinct.”[4] They are mutually exclusive because the origins and spirit of each are radically different. The two cities, a divine polis and a human polis, are in perpetual conflict. “Who shall govern the world?” was the question that formed their ministry, ethics, and eschatology.[5]

This conflict is not between heaven and earth per se but between two kingdoms on the earth that seek sovereignty over the earth and the hearts of its peoples. Both kingdoms are earthy, that is, they exist upon the earth in order to rule the earth. The contrast lies in their origins, missions, weapons, spirits, and destinies.[6] History is the story of the conflict between these two kingdoms, these two cities. They serve different masters, imbibe different spirits, use different weapons, and one must come to an end for the other to fill the earth.

Consequently, the question “who governs” is really a question about allegiance or worship. “The Christian,” according to Lipscomb, “owes no allegiance” to the civil powers but only “to God.”[7] Just as Jesus responded to Satan’s offer of the kingdoms of this world, so the Christian must respond: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Matthew 4:10). The question “who shall govern the world” is more fundamentally the question “whom shall we worship?”

R. C. Bell, a student at the Nashville Bible School in the 1890s and a colleague of Harding at Potter Bible School in Bowling Green, Kentucky, taught in higher education among Churches of Christ for close to fifty years. In his 1951 autobiographical article he observed that Churches of Christ had lost this apocalyptic trajectory (though he did not call it that). He believed the church needed a strong infusion of that transformative perspective in order “to save [it] from changing divine dynamics to human mechanics.”[8] Bell not only saw the church increasingly align itself with patriotic nationalism and the cultural patterns of the nation, he also observed how the church now lived out its calling through the mechanical implementation of prescribed patterns within the New Testament. Faith was no longer a dynamic life empowered by the Spirit that envisioned the kingdom of God but conformity to an ecclesial blueprint. The loss of pacifism, kenotic service, kindness and gentleness as well as the opposition to evil cultural forms was due to the loss of Lipscomb and Harding’s apocalyptic vision.

Two Hindrances

While Bell saw the loss of this apocalyptic dynamic in his own day, and there was a time when it was vibrant and regularly articulated, there is also a sense in which it was hindered by other convictions that shaped the Nashville Bible School and Churches of Christ as a whole. If we are to recover this apocalyptic vision, something for which I advocate, we must also seek a corrective to what hindered it in the past.

Before I address the two hindrances I have in mind, I want to provide a specific context in which these hindrances emerged and essentially subverted the kingdom agenda. I have in mind, particularly, the problem of racial reconciliation. At one level, Lipscomb saw the mission clearly.  For example, he wrote:

The true mission of the Christian religion is to raise [humanity] above all these narrow, selfish, sectionalizing influences—to break down these middle walls of separation and strife erected by human selfishness, human ambition, and human wickedness, and to bind all the dissevered, broken, discordant and belligerent factions and fragments of Adam’s fallen and sinning family, irrespective of race, language or color, into one peaceable, fraternal and harmonious body in Christ.[9]

When it came to the church, Lipscomb had a strong, mostly consistent, voice and loudly opposed the segregation of congregations along racial lines.

At another level, Lipscomb provided little, if any, social witness. The pages of the Gospel Advocate rarely (almost never) discuss racial injustice as a social question, and only occasionally refer to the frequent lynchings in the South.[10] Lipscomb thought that if the church would become what God intended as a witness to the kingdom of God, then social practices would gradually reform society through the church’s moral leavening. He believed over time a healthy “religious spirit and practice” would “gradually work out the social duties and relations.”[11] As Christians live out their witness and “cultivate kindly and Christian relations,” he believed “the social conditions will adjust themselves.”[12]

What, however, generates this lack of social witness? And, particularly, why is Lipscomb so socially vocal about war and political relations but is virtually silent about social relations, especially on racial questions? I suggest there are at least two dimensions to this, though most certainly others could be named as well.

First, Lipscomb and Harding, as well as Churches of Christ as a whole, were too ecclesiocentric and anti-institutional. Their ecclesial vision excluded participation in or cooperation with any non-ecclesial institution. Consequently, churches did not partner with social movements or political agendas, even where Lipscomb’s ethics fully supported the agenda, including the Temperance Movement as well as movements toward racial equality. In other words, Lipscomb’s other-worldliness and his conflict with the world excluded any cooperative partnership, including those he thought were doing good work in the social arena. Lipscomb had little sense of how the relative good in which government participates or the good that social institutions promote might contribute to the fullness of the kingdom of God.  His radical separation from all institutions, whether governmental or otherwise, isolated the church from any sort of participation in any kind of Civil Rights Movement.

Second, the historic pneumatology of Churches of Christ has limited our vision for God’s work in the world. While Harding, and to some degree Lipscomb, embraced a robust theology of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual believer, they did not appreciate how the presence of the Spirit empowered the mission of church for corporate action within the world. For example, though Harding helpfully articulated a vision of the Spirit’s work in guiding, leading, and empowering believers in their daily life, he did not see how the Spirit also called the church as a corporate body into the mission of Jesus to liberate the oppressed and speak for the powerless. Their ecclesiology has little social vision, and this is due, in part, to their limited pneumatology.

For example, the work of the Spirit, according to John 16, is to “prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment,” which are social realities as well as personal ones. However, both Lipscomb and Harding, along with the vast majority of Churches of Christ, limited this empowerment to the apostles. The Spirit gave these truths to the apostles, and the apostles passed them to the church, and thus the church understands its relation to, for example, social justice through the teachings of the apostles or, as we have it now, the New Testament. The New Testament, then, prescribed the limits of social action, which, in their view, was ecclesiocentric and non-institutional.

These ecclesiological and pneumatological hindrances empowered Lipscomb to sincerely, though naively, affirm: “The Christian religion did not break up social or political relations. It laid down the principles of religious duty, and left them to gradually conform the social and political relations to the principles of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[13]

I think we need to enlarge Lipscomb’s vision without subverting his basic theological insight. We do not expect the kingdoms of this world to serve their peoples as the kingdom of our Lord, but we do hope that the kingdom of our Lord will subvert the evils of these worldly kingdoms both now and in the future.

[1] David Lipscomb, “Difficulties in Religion” in Salvation from Sin, by J. W. Shepherd, ed. (Nashville, Tennessee: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1913) 341.

[2] Harding, “The Kingdom of Christ Vs. the Kingdom of Satan,” The Christian Leader and the Way 5 (15 October 1903) 931.

[3] Lipscomb, “Questions for the Editor,” Gospel Advocate 10.2 (January 14, 1869) 30.

[4] Lipscomb, “Church of Christ and World-Powers, NO. 6,” Gospel Advocate 8.10 (March 6, 1866) 146.

[5] Lipscomb, “The Church of Christ and World-Powers, NO. 5,” GA 8.9 (February 27, 1866) 129.

[6] This is the burden of David Lipscomb, On Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation To It (Nashville: McQuiddy Printing Co., 1913).

[7] Lipscomb, “Reply to Bro. Lipscomb’s Long Article on Politics and Voting,” Gospel Advocate 18.32 (August 17, 1876) 799.

[8] R. C. Bell, “Honor to Whom Honor is Due,” Firm Foundation 68 (6 November 1951), 6.

[9] Lipscomb, “The Advocate and Sectionalism,” Gospel Advocate 8.18 (May 1, 1866) 275 (emphasis added).

[10] This is one of a few examples.  David Lipscomb, “General News,” Gospel Advocate 34.52 (December 29, 1892) 828: “Another stone was toppled from the wall of good order, Dec. 19, by the lynching of a negro at Guthrie, Ky., charged with attempting to assault a woman in that vicinity.”

[11] Lipscomb, “The Negro in the Worship—A Correspondence,” Gospel Advocate 49.31 (August 1, 1907) 489 (emphasis mine).

[12] Lipscomb, “Are the Negroes Neglected?” Gospel Advocate 68.24 (June 14, 1906) 377 (emphasis mine).

[13] Lipscomb, “The Negro in the Worship—A Correspondence,” Gospel Advocate 49.27 (July 4, 1907) 425 (emphasis mine).

Keith D. Stanglin, The Letter and Spirit of Biblical Interpretation: From the Early Church to Modern Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018). 274 pages.

Presentation at the 2019 Christian Scholars Conference in Lubbock, Texas.

I welcome this book on several levels.

For me, and for others who have worked vocationally in historical theology, it is a welcome reacquaintance with past figures. I found myself renewing friendships with Gregory of Nyssa, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Calvin of Geneva, and even the Dutch Remonstrants whose influence was much greater than their numbers.

In addition, the purpose of this nostalgic journey is the rehabilitation of the spiritual sense of Scripture or theological hermeneutics. Stanglin, following Paul, calls it the “letter” and the “spirit,” or the literal and spiritual, senses of Scripture. The spiritual sense seeks theological understanding beyond, though not irrespective of, the literal sense, especially where the literal sense is equated with the authorial intent of the human writer.

Both of these concerns are germane to my own work, and I noted a kinship between Keith’s interest and my teaching over the past thirty-seven years.  This interest commits Stanglin to an exercise in “retrieval exegesis” (211) or “retrieval theology” (11). By this, he intends to “provide critical understanding of and appreciation for both premodern and modern exegesis” in search of “a balanced and fruitful interaction between the letter and the spirit” (11).

I applaud this goal, and in pursuing it, Stanglin highlights the spiritual while not vacating the literal sense. In other words, one agenda of the book is to sanction theological interpretation and propose it as a healing balm for the woes of the splintered and chaotic practice of modern historical-critical exegesis.

My old friends appear one after another in Stanglin’s analysis. Such a survey is, of course, selective and Keith acknowledges this. I have no significant misgiving about his choices. Irenaeus, Origen, Aquinas, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, and Lessing are obvious and important, even necessary, choices. I found three particularly significant because they intersect with my own interests.

First, Irenaeus is foundational to Stanglin’s reading of the patristic tradition. A central conviction, which lies at the heart of a theological hermeneutic, is present in the bishop. Keith characterizes it in this way: “the Scriptures display a fundamental unity that allows this kind of typological and intertextual play within the bounds of this grand story of redemption” (31). Irenaeus knew that everyone reads the text against the background of a hypothesis, which norms what the text can mean or gives boundaries to the meaning of a text. Received through catechism, baptism, and liturgy, the church wears the Regula Fidei as a set of glasses through which Scripture is read, and with this lens even the illiterate are able to discern between the illegitimacy of the Gnostic hypothesis and the truth of the received narrative (34). Irenaeus, then, establishes two key principles that are part of Stanglin’s ultimate conclusion about theological hermeneutics: analogia scripturae and analogia fidei (206, 222-3).

Second, though seemingly a minor character in the narrative (three pages in the text, 141-144), Stanglin’s attention to William Perkins—arguably the primary influence on seventeenth century English Puritans—is important for several reasons. On the one hand, Perkins represents Reformed scholasticism, and, on the other hand, anticipates a modern reading of Scripture through a rational lens, though that rationality serves a different purpose than critical exegesis.  As Keith notes, Perkins believed there was only one sense of Scripture, the literal one, but he subsumed other traditional senses under that rubric. For Perkins, the literal sense, with his attendant use of typology and allegory, served the theological agenda of Scripture, that is, to deduce a system of theology. Perkins practiced a theological hermeneutic that accentuated the unity of Scripture through an eminently rational lens. Assuming a theological system as part of the text, Perkins employed positivistic distinctions between generic and specific, between explicit and implicit teachings of Scripture in order to deduce that system. Later, mid-20^th century leaders among Churches of Christ, as heirs of the Puritan Reformed tradition, would do the same with generic and specific, with explicit and implicit distinctions, though they sought an ecclesial pattern more than a systematic theology. In this way, Perkins is like a hinge upon which the church swings from premodern to modern exegesis but without being fully committed to either.

Third, I cannot fail to comment on Alexander Campbell, who takes up four pages in Stanglin’s narrative (169-172).  I think Keith is fundamentally correct. Campbell embraced nuda scriptura, which seems to undermine the Irenaean function of the Regula Fidei. Campbell does not have a regulated reading in the sense of a Rule of Faith external to the text of Scripture, but he does read Scripture with a hermeneutic regulated by an inductive sense of God’s narrative which Campbell thought was helpfully summarized in the Apostles Creed. For Campbell, the rule of faith is the internal dynamic of the narrative itself. This inscripturated narrative functions as a canon within the canon and renders the Rule of Faith as an external summary unnecessary, though it might be helpful as a rehearsal of facts.  In this sense, we might say, he read Scripture through his own inductively inferred rule of faith.

Also, Scripture, according to Campbell, is subject to “all the rules of interpretation which we apply to other books” (Millennial Harbinger, 1832, 111). He follows Moses Stuart on this point, who—more than any other writer—shaped Campbell’s historical-grammatical consciousness. Campbell published Stuart’s article entitled, “Are the same principles of interpretation to be applied to the Scriptures as to other Books?” (Millennial Harbinger, 1832, 64.) It was a rhetorical question. For Campbell this is rooted in the nature of language itself, and if one wants to understand the “doctrine of the New Testament,” one must understand the “proper meaning of words, whether literal, allegorical, typical, or parabolical.” In other words, as Campbell says, “The Bible means what it says.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1831, 490.) And, we might add, only what it says. This hermeneutical commitment, along with his linguistic and hermeneutical optimism, grounded his pursuit of the restoration of the ancient order towards the goal of ecclesial unity.

While Scripture’s proper meaning is singular, it is sometimes “literal” and sometimes “figurative” (parabolic, allegorical, typological). Campbell is willing to name this “figurative” meaning as “spiritual,” but he fears the word carried the baggage of “Origen” where “every word” in the Bible had “a spiritual sense.” This gave the term “spiritual” a negative appearance (a “malem partem”) and thus it was “discarded even where it might have been tolerable.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1831, 491.) Stanglin is correct. “Campbell takes the classic Protestant angle of folding the spiritual sense into the literal” (171). There is no “double sense” (Millennial Harbinger, 1832, 111), but every text has a particular sense, which may be literal or spiritual (figurative). “We object not,” Campbell wrote, “to the allegoric, parabolic, and typical sense; or, to express it in one word, the figurative sense. But we do not expect to find any other than the literal sense except where figures are used.” (Millennial Harbinger, 1831, 491-2.).  In other words, every text of Scripture has only one meaning or sense (he quotes both Luther and the Westminster Divines in support). If the literal does not yield that single sense, we look to the figurative (which is the spiritual sense). We can only move to the spiritual sense when the literal is non-sensical, or where there is a specific indication that a figurative meaning is in view. In other words, we cannot read the Old Testament the way the apostles read it. In this way, Campbell represented the rise of modern exegesis and expected to find no legitimate meaning in text other than what is accessible by its plain words.

Stanglin grounds the legitimacy of theological hermeneutics in the historic practice of the church that has lived under the Rule of Faith (analogia fidei) for almost two thousand years, the unity of Scripture (analogia scripturae), and the primacy of the literal sense to which any spiritual sense is tied. Keith also rejects several significant modern presuppositions, including (1) the neutrality of reader and (2) the single sense of the text limited to the intent of the human author. I wondered, however, whether he also rejected the modern assumption of the passivity of the reader. I don’t think so, but I want to press the point a bit.

For example, Stanglin suggests the spiritual sense of Scripture is not merely an application of the text but “in some sense meant to be found in the text” (217) and, at the same time, it is an interpretation or “appropriation” (217). I presume this meaning is intended by the divine author and discerned by the human reader. The reader is not passive but is the means by which God opens up new meaning so that a kind of “this is that” appears “when ’that’ is something new and apparently far removed from the original ‘this’” (217).

Theological hermeneutics, then, is where ecclesially-formed, believing readers co-create meaning with the text (1) within liturgical life of the church, (2) in the confidence of the sacramental function of Scripture, and (3) the transformative presence of the Holy Spirit. Such readers, inhabited by the indwelling Spirit, listen to hear how “this is that” and see what is not explicitly there. It seems to me that Stanglin’s proposal could use more emphasis on these three points, particularly the hermeneutical role of the Spirit. Though these three points are present in one form or another, his proposal is more epistemological than sacramental or liturgical. Nevertheless, the seeds of a fuller sacramental and liturgical picture are present in his work.

By way of illustration, permit me to probe one of Keith’s examples. Might “bread” in the Lord’s Prayer refer to Eucharistic bread? Tertullian thought so (On Prayer, 6).[1] In fact, Tertullian preferred what he called “the spiritual understanding”—Jesus is the bread of life who “authoritatively ranked” his body “as bread” when he said, “This is my body.”

Keith asks, “Did Jesus or Matthew intend” eucharistic bread? “Does it matter?” (240). I appreciate the controls Keith suggests on theological interpretation. They give theological interpretation a wide berth, perhaps too wide for modern historians. But I don’t think too wide for ecclesial theologians.  

In terms of the Lord’s prayer, “bread” is literally present, and Eucharistic bread does not subvert or contradict the literal meaning.  Further, “bread” is an important theme in redemptive history, which often has a double sense. Manna, for example, is both physical and spiritual nourishment since Christ is the spiritual food Israel consumed in the wilderness, according to Paul. Eucharistic bread in the Lord’s Prayer is not only consistent with the Rule of Faith but, given the liturgical context of its practice, points us toward the Eucharistic bread.

If we read the Lord’s Prayer in this way as part of the liturgy of the church where it is recited just prior to the distribution of the bread and wine, we see spiritual interpretation doing its good work. It illustrates how the church legitimately co-creates meaning that is beyond the explicit statements in the text. It illustrates how Scripture is multivalent and capable of new meaning in new situations irrespective of the human author’s intent.

But is the spiritual meaning in the text? In one sense, yes, because it is situated within a grand story that gives such meaning to bread. And we might surmise that the divine author intended it as a meaning inherent in the text. But in another sense, it is not, but that is okay. The church—as a faithful reader—is called to co-create meaning with the text for the sake of the formation of the people of God into the image of God. This is Scripture’s sacramental function within the liturgical life of the church. Given God’s history with God’s people and given the confession of the Rule of Faith and its practice within the church, the text itself gives rise to meaning beyond the human author’s intent.  The church hears the word of God, understands its depth and profundity, and performs it liturgically and ethically.

Stanglin’s contribution identifies an overlapping harmony between modern and premodern interpretation though differences remain. There is a common ground between the methods where they might mutually enrich each other. The exploration of this common ground while recognizing how the differences entail quite distinct hermeneutical practices will be an ongoing task of the contemporary church.

[1] E. Evans, Tertullian’s Tract on Prayer (London: S.P.C.K., 1953) 11-13.

This is one meditation from the published book by John Mark Hicks, Around the Bible in 80 Days: The Story of God from Creation to New Creation (Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2022).