Acronymania: LCU and OCU join NCAA

Congratulations to Oklahoma Christian University and Lubbock Christian University. They're joining Abilene Christian, Harding, Lipscomb, Pepperdine, and Ohio Valley as Church of Christ affiliated universities competing athletically in the NCAA. It is interesting--a term intended to be without judgment--to see how far the Churches of Christ have come.

J. W. McGarvey: On Baptism

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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I have heard people say, "Bro. McGarvey, I would like your preaching better if you would just preach Christ crucified, and not speak of baptism so often. Well, I like to oblige my friends, but I can't go along that way.

While I, along with many of McGarvey's audience, would have preferred less time be dedicated to "that old hackneyed theme" of baptism, McGarvey makes a compelling argument that baptism is a part of the Gospels and, as such, the gospel cannot be preached without it. So, whether excessive or not, McGarvey devotes much of his following month of sermons to baptism, it purpose and proper method. McGarvey correctly notes that the necessity of baptism is not really the primary question; in his day, he insists, "you can not go into any church on earth except that of the Quakers, without being baptized." Whether or not that is technically true, there is great truth in the generalization both in his time and in our own when the overwhelming majority of Christians belong to churches which continue to emphasize baptism ("that is...an ordinance which the church calls baptism") as a rite of conversion and consecration. What is really up for debate is when, how, and why people are to be baptized, a subject which McGarvey treats with all the titillating rhetorical flourish of Common Sense induction:

If my mind were unsettled in regard to baptism, I would take this course:--I would take my own New Testament, and, beginning at the first chapter of Matthew, I would read it all the way through, watching for that word `baptism'; and everywhere I found it, I would examine carefully the passage in which I found it, and learn all I could about it; and when I got through I would put all of this together, and I would make up my mind on the whole subject of baptism that way. Then I would feel sure that it was God teaching me, and that he would approve my decision.

As riveting as it would be to follow McGarvey on this journey on which he dutifully leads his audience, it is perhaps more productive to consider the ways in which his sermons do not conform to our contemporary expectations. The debate surrounding baptism has been raging for centuries; McGarvey points out that it even antedates the Stone-Campbell Movement, shockingly. Yet, in a very real sense controversy surrounding baptism has played a crucial role in defining the Churches of Christ over and against all other denominations, perhaps even more so than other credo-baptist groups like the Baptists. The language which predominated the Church of Christ dogma until very recently is that "baptism is necessary for salvation." Rejection of the truth of this proposition defined all denominations against the truth of the "undenominational" Churches of Christ, and modifications or qualifications of it positioned those within relative to the core orthodox constituency.

McGarvey may or may not have agreed with that phrasing, though I imagine someone specializing in his work could quickly settle the question. Certainly he sees baptism as an essential part of the conversion process, a statement he supposes he makes unanimously with the rest of Christianity. More important, or at least more interesting, than what McGarvey may believe about that language, however, is the fact that he never uses it or any analogous language in his sermon on baptism. Rather than calling it a condition for salvation, he calls it "a most solemn, interesting and precious ordinance...the most solemn and significant ordinance ever appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ." He doesn't speak of it as a salvific work but calls it instead "a sacred and a blessed privileged." One moment he stridently argues, "We can not overestimate the value of it. We can not consent to speak of it as a mere external act." Immediately afterwards he calls it the next best thing to being able to go to Palestine and lie down in the tomb of Jesus. It is a spiritual act of communion with Christ which we are both commanded to do as an act of obedience and privileged to do as an act of worship. Whatever else may be said of it, this is certainly not the mechanistic soteriology which has been the fodder for caricatures of the Stone-Campbell Movement, stereotypes to which the Churches of Christ has lamentably conformed.

Even as McGarvey insists that to try to alienate baptism from conversion is to take a knife to the text of Scripture--and not without substantial merit--the remaining sermons play out a more nuanced view of the nature and efficacy of baptism which is distinct from but not necessarily irreconcilable with many understandings of baptism which continue to prevail. When he retells the story of Paul's conversion, he not so subtly critiques the endless spate of questions which dominate the controversy surrounding baptism:

This [vision of Jesus] caused him to believe, and when he believed, his faith was that which threw him into the agony of repentance. Then, when he heard the word, "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on His name," he does not stop to raise any questions. This thing of raising questions about the ordinance of the Lord--why is it necessary to be baptized? Is it absolutely essential to be baptized? Are our sins certainly washed away when we are baptized?--the time to raise such questions as these had not come yet. This was a time of simple faith. Men believed and accepted what the messengers of God said, just as they said it. That is faith. The very moment he heard the command, he arose from his prostrate position and was baptized. Now he is satisfied.

If not on the multitudinous trivialities surrounding baptism, what would McGarvey have us focus on? In the conversion of the Eunuch, McGarvey invites his audience to recast the narrative as if it were happening to them. In doing so he stresses as much the "special providence" at work in conversion and the faith by which he "began to see a great light" as there is on baptism. In all cases, the uniting theme is the "glorious Redeemer dying for the sins of men" and "the promise of the Lord" into which the eunuch is inaugurated. For Cornelius, McGarvey stresses that as great a man as he was on his own, he was insufficient; "he lacked something yet that was to be supplied." What was supplied, through the providence of God and the preaching of Peter, was a completion of Cornelius' faith so that it became an active faith, a faith productive of repentance and obedience.

These themes continue to express themselves in the conversion story of Lydia, and they are themes which ought to critique the way many in the Churches of Christ continue to focus on baptism as a polemical rather than a pastoral goal. First that baptism is not a work exclusively or even substantially of our own doing and that room for providence must be made at every step along the way:

I wonder if God ever does anything like this for you and me. It is the word of the Lord that conveys to our hearts the mind and power and will of heaven; but how did it happen that that particular preacher preached to us? How did he happen to be there, and how did I happen to be there, when my heart was opened? Oh, my friends, if you had an inspired writer, his mind enlightened by Him who sees all things, you might have as strange a story written about yourselves as was recorded about Lydia. I imagine that wherever in the broad earth there is a poor struggling soul, wrapt in darkness and struggling for light, sacrificing self in order to please God, God has an eye on that person; He hears those prayers, and He will over-rule and over-turn and direct, until the truth shall, some way or other, reach that soul.

Second that baptism is not some self-standing, independent rite but primarily the expression of an active, responsive, obedient faith:

Now then, when it is all through, when Lydia and those women accept the truth, and are baptized then and there without delay, showing how willing they were to walk in the way of the Lord, Luke looks back over the journey, the long, weary labor, the doubt and the uncertainty, and he sees it all explained. The Lord was hearing the prayers of these women, and in all of these strange movements He was simply reaching out toward the heart of Lydia and the others, that He might open their hearts to receive and obey the Lord.

And finally that faith along with repentance and baptism as consequences are all Christ-centered. It is Christ alone which may be appropriately said is necessary for salvation:

It was necessary, if Lydia...should be saved, that she should hear of Christ, that she should believe in Him, and that she should come to Him as the mediator between God and men, to obtain the forgiveness of her sins. This she did at once--as soon as she heard the Gospel message.

Rational or Spiritual Creatures?

We must believe that the Bible was addressed to rational creatures, and designed by God to be understood for their profit. When we open the Bible under the impression that it is a book of mysteries, understood only by a few learned ministers, we are at once discouraged from reading and investigating its contents. But believing it was written for our learning and profit, and therefore addressed to our understanding, we are encouraged to read and diligently search its sacred pages. - Barton Stone

I think Stone may have more closely approximated the truth if he had begun this thought with "We must believe that the Bible was addressed to spiritual creatures, and designed by God to be understood for their profit." The text of Scripture gives no indication that its contents are primarily rational, not in the way that Stone indicates, and it certainly gives just the opposite impression of divine truth. In 1 Corinthians 2:13:16, Paul writes:

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Paul explicitly denies that human wisdom can grasp the truth about God. He contrasts human discernment with a "spiritual discernment" that is rooted in our redeemed, indwelled state. Spiritual truth is expressed in spiritual words, words that presumably do not accord with human modes of thinking. For this reason the unspiritual man is incapable of accepting or even adequately grasping truth about God. It is, to him, foolishness.

Paul explains, so far as I can tell, that this is because of the radical otherness of God. Who can know the mind of God from which spiritual truth flows? It seems self-evident to Paul that humanity is incapable of knowing God apart from His spiritually discerned truths. Normal human methods, what he terms "human wisdom" earlier in the chapter and what Stone would call rationality, are inadequate because God ineffably transcends our standard modes of thinking. Only through the transformative work of the Spirit, conforming our minds to "the mind of Christ" can we begin to grasp God. Only when we teach ourselves to "think" as God "thinks" is truth made known.

It is amusing to me that if the first sentence of Stone's quote is corrected in the way I suggested, the remainder of the quote seems to follow Paul's thinking quite nicely. It becomes a critique of hyper-rationalism and the belief that the truth of the Bible rests in the hands of an intellectual elite rather than, as I think Paul would assert, in the hands of a spiritual elite. Read it again:

We must believe that the Bible was addressed to spiritual creatures, and designed by God to be understood for their profit. When we open the Bible under the impression that it is a book of mysteries, understood only by a few learned ministers, we are at once discouraged from reading and investigating its contents. But believing it was written for our learning and profit, and therefore addressed to our understanding, we are encouraged to read and diligently search its sacred pages. - Barton Stone, with revisions

The Wisdom of David Lipscomb

The following quotes derive almost exclusively from David Lipscomb's Civil Government which I have just finished reading for the first time. My general impression at the end was one of encouragement. I was grateful to see that so much of what I have believed and striven to put into practice has been pioneered so clearly before. That is certainly not to say that I buy wholesale into everything Lipscomb says. I am uneasy about the position and power that he gives to Satan, almost as an opposite but analogous authority to Christ. Some of his particular applications of the principle of non-participation (e.g. Christians cannot work for the post office) seem to me to carry things too far. Still, the reasoning and the ethical conclusions of his work in large served to bolster and further refine my own beliefs about non-participation. I particularly appreciated, when compared to the Mennonite Guy Hershberger who I also greatly respect for his views on the subject, Lipscomb's emphasis on the transient nature of human kingdoms when compared to God's kingdom, what is often styled his "apocalypticism." His stress on the fundamentally antagonistic stance of the church to the world as a means of self-defense articulates a sentiment that has been latent in me for some time, but which I have been unable to give adequate expression.

Thus, without further ado, here are what I consider some of the more compelling quotes from David Lipscomb on the question of Christian participation in civil government:

"The chief occupation of human governments from the beginning has been war...All the wars and strifes between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God."

"[The principles in the Sermon on the Mount] are diverse from and antagonistic to the principles that have obtained and must ever obtain in all human governments. No human government can possibly be maintained and conducted on these principles laid down for the government of Christ's subjects in his kingdom. The spirit that prompts the practice of the principles is opposed to the spirit needful for the maintenance of human governments. The two spirits cannot dwell in the same heart, nor the same temple, or institution. A man cannot be gentle, forgiving, doing good for evil, turning the other cheek when one is smitten, praying 'for them that despitefully use and persecute' him, and at the same time execute wrath and vengeance on the evil-doer, as the human government is ordained to do, and as it must do to sustain its authority and maintain its existence."

"Every act of alliance with or reliance for aid upon the human government on the part of the church or its members, is spiritual adultery."

"No violence, no sword, no bitterness or wrath can he use. The spread of the peaceful principles of the Savior will draw men out of the kingdoms of earth into the kingdom of God."

"The great weakness of the church today is that the children of God enter into the kingdoms of this world, imbibe the spirit of those kingdoms, bring that spirit into the church of God, defile the church and drive out he spirit of Christ. The spirit of self-aggrandizement, reliance upon human wisdom, human devices, and institutions, ambition for worldly honor and glory, bitterness and wrath are as prevalent in the church as in the world. The spirit of gentleness and meekness under trials, insults and persecutions, is as seldom found in the church as in this world. The reason is that Christians enter the human governments, imbibe their spirit, participate in their works, and bring this spirit into the church of God. The spirit of Christ is driven out of the church and the distinction between the church and the world is destroyed."

"Christ's subjects are in the world but not of it. His kingdom is not of this world; his subjects cannot fight with carnal weapons. Their citizenship is in heaven, the weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but might through God to the pulling down of strongholds. His children are pilgrims and strangers in the earthly kingdoms. They seek a city which hath foundations, whose make and builder is God."

"The effort of man to live without God, and to govern the world, resulted in confusion and strife from the beginning. It brings strife, war and desolation still...All the wars and conflicts of earth, all the desolation, ruin and blood-shed, between separated nations, or distinct peoples, are the fruits of human government. The government of God breaks down divisions among those who accept it, and brings peace and complete union to all who submit to his rule. Whatever tends to wean men from this government of God, and to substitute other governments for it, brings confusion and strife."

"The spirit of the Church of Christ and the spirit of civil government are different. The one is a spirit of force, as all history attests, that no civil government ever did arise except by force, violence, and the destruction of life. So they must maintain that existence by force. We suppose the future, with but slight variations, will repeat the history of the past. But Christianity permits not its subjects to use force or do violence, even in defence of its own existence; its guiding spirit is one of love, peace on earth and good will toward man."

"No church ever thought of force to repress error, or to uphold truth until it had first imbibed the spirit of the civil power. The civil power is founded on force, lives by it and it is its only weapon of offence or defence. Christians enter civil government, drink into its spirit, and carry that spirit with them into the church. All force in religious affairs is persecution. This spirit of force is antagonistic to the spirit of Christ. They cannot harmonize. They cannot dwell in the same bosom."

"The religious element in man is the permanent uncompromising enduring element of his nature. And the very qualities that make him a cruel and unrelenting despot with carnal weapons in his hand, make him the self-sacrificing, devoted servant of God, willing to endure all things to save his enemies when clothed with spiritual weapons."

"The consecration of all the powers of mind, body and soul, to the service of God on the part of every man, woman and child, was the rule of the church."

"And it may be set down as a truth that all reformations that propose to stop short of a full surrender of the soul, mind, and body up to God, are of the devil."

"To the claim that a Christian is bound to vote, when he has the privilege, for that which promotes morality, and to fail to vote for the restriction and suppression of evil is to vote for it, we have determined that, to vote or use the civil power is to use force and carnal weapons. Christians cannot use these. To do so is to do evil that good may come. This is specially forbidden to Christians. To do so is to fight God's battles with the weapons of the evil one. To do so is to distrust God. The effective way for Christians to promote morality in a community, is, to stand aloof from the political strifes and conflicts, and maintain a pure and true faith in God, which is the only basis of true morality, and is as a leaven in society, to keep alive an active sense of right. To go into political strife is to admit the leaven of evil into the church."

A Prayer for Loyalty to God

A prayer from James A. Harding, quoted in Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding:

O my father, deliver me from the domination of money. My heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, only though canst know the depth of it. Without realizing that it was so, I was on my way to become a professional. And now, Father, forgive thy penitent servant, and guide his wayward feet unto thy paths. Make me wholly free from the fear of men. May I by thy grace love thee, even thee alone and supremely, and because I love thee may I love thy truth, and the souls of men. Enable me to lay all my burdens and concerns as to this world's affairs upon the God who will in no wise fail nor in any wise forsake them that rest their trust on him; and then go forth to do all thy will, even thine, unto the end.

The Future of Homosexuals in the Churches of Christ

I wonder sometimes if and how the Churches of Christ will resist the incorporation of homosexuality into their churches. It seems to me almost completely self-evident that the counter-movement in American culture which has resisted the full enfranchisement of homosexuals is doomed to failure (and reasonably so, as far as I'm concerned). In a generation, I do not doubt that our children will look back on our parents as backward, foolish bigots. Gay marriage will become a reality, even a norm in American society, and, I am convinced, anyone who opposes it is fighting a self-deluded and futile battle against the dominant forces which drive our society.

I do not, however, really care what the American government decides on the issue of homosexuality. I have no problem admitting in the same breath that to deny civil rights to homosexuals is fundamentally un-American and that to deny that those "rights" are sinful is un-Christian. As I am an American by an accident of birth and a Christian by conviction of conscience and by the grace of God, I am inevitably only bothered with the latter of those two assertions. Thus, given what I consider to be the inevitable state of affairs in the secular world, I wonder what will become of the Churches of Christ? Will they accept homosexuality as acceptable? Will they put homosexuals in their pulpits?

I don't worry so much for Christendom as a whole. The majority of Christians belong to denominations with the kind of ecclesiastical machinery to combat social forces should that be their desire. More importantly, the Catholic and Orthodox churches (representing roughly 1.5 of the 2 billion Christians) are geographically diverse enough - and thus sufficiently divorced from any dependence on American culture - that whatever direction American goes, they may gladly continue on whatever course seems best to them.

Churches of Christ, however, have no ecclesiastical machinery through which to combat social forces. Thus, the history of the churches of Christ has long been characterized by a defense of the social status quo. When the social norms change, Churches of Christ are almost always somewhat slowly following right behind. Churches of Christ are, more significantly, very thoroughly American. They were founded in American, rooted in American values. It is a church that fosters patriotism as much as piety, and one that has long courted respectability in the American religious culture.

So what will happen when that culture adapts to incorporate homosexuality into its accepted worldview? Will it be, as it has been with so many other issues, that support will begin with a few dissenting voices (as perhaps it already has). Those voices may appear to be squashed by an overwhelming flood of criticism on the part of conservatives, but slowly the idea will take hold. With the younger generations, with the educated elite, will the church slowly conform itself yet again to cultural norms until the whole body has largely forgotten what it stood for to begin with?

The experience of the church with civil rights provides a good example of the metamorphosis that Churches of Christ can undergo in a generation, riding into the future on the coattails of dominant culture. Since the Civil War, Churches of Christ had largely capitulated to the social pressure for segregation. At the advent of the civil rights movement, the largely southern church championed the racist agenda of most southern whites. Only after the death of Martin Luther King, when the battle had already been won (at least in principle) did dissent from the party line begin. Less than thirty years later, that dissent has become the party line. (The purpose here is of course not to lament that the church eventually abandoned its racism. Clearly that was a positive outcome. My point is merely to demonstrate the tendency of the Churches of Christ to allow themselves to be shaped so thoroughly by the dominant mores of society.)

On the other hand, the Churches of Christ have resisted the move to "ordain" women with surprising vigor. There have certainly been capitulations. The early twentieth century saw the defection of churches who refused to allow Sunday School because they would need to staff women to teach them. In recent times, women have found positions as "ministers" in the church, but those roles are almost exclusively for ministering to women, children, and youth. The churches have resisted any incursion of women into the eldership or the pulpit of most congregations. While the ordination of women has largely become the assumed norm, at least in Protestantism, Churches of Christ have managed to resist the temptation to incorporate women more fully into their unofficial power structure.

So I wonder which path homosexuality will take. Will Churches of Christ change with culture, modify their moral code, admit their "bigotry," and incorporate homosexuals openly into their fellowship? Or will they resist change and represent a last counter-cultural stronghold against homosexuality in Christianity? For my part, I imagine that the former will be the case. As long as Churches of Christ identify themselves so readily with American culture, as long as they put their faith in the American government to be a "Christian government," and as long as they falsely conflate permitting something socially and supporting it ethically the force of cultural change will be irresistible.

James A. Harding and Christian Education

In reading Earl West's article, “James A. Harding and Christian Education,” I became increasingly bemused by the fact that there is a university (and not merely a university, but the largest Church of Christ university) that takes Harding as a namesake. Given what I have just learned about James A. Harding's beliefs about the way schools should be run - not merely as a matter of preference but as a matter of right and wrong, good and evil - I am quite certain that he would be disgusted to find his name attached to Harding University. Some quotes from Harding and from the Article should suffice to illustrate what I mean.

With reference to Lipscomb University, which Harding helped to found, West writes:

So, in the fall of 1899, tuition began to be charged in all courses except the Bible and all Bible teachers did their work without pay. Harding explained, "It seems to me that a teacher of the Bible should never charge anything for his services whether he teaches with pen or tongue. We ought not to put a price on the gospel. . . ."" Teachers, then, "will depend upon voluntary, unsolicited contributions, as they do in their work as preachers, to supply whatever they need."

Again of Lipscomb University, Harding says:

It is not an incorporated or chartered institution under the control of a Board of Trustees. I could not work as a teacher of the doctrine of Christ under such control. To my mind, such an institution is wrong to the same extent and in the same way that a missionary society is. In doing the work of Christ, a Christian should not submit himself to be directed and controlled by any other authority than that of Christ, nor should he belong to any other institution for the advance of the Lord's cause than the Church of God.

He makes the same point of a different school after he left Lipscomb University (coincidentally right after they formed a board of trustees and gained a charter):

No if our school had a Board of Trustees empowered to select and discharge teachers at their will, to direct the teachers as to what and how and when they should teach, and, in general, to control the school, with a set of by-laws of their own making for the regulation of themselves and of us, I could not continue in it.

West adds:

Not only did Harding object to a Board of Trustees to administer a Christian school, he was equally negative on an endowment. When the Christian Courier, a Texas Christian Church periodical, advocated an endowment as a means of financially supporting a faculty so they could "maintain that serenity of mind necessary to keep up their studies," Harding took exception.

So Harding - who opposed boards, charters, endowments, and salaried Bible faculty - lends his name (quite unwillingly, I imagine, if he were given the choice) to Harding University - which has a charter, a board, a large salaried Bible faculty, and an almost eighty-one million dollar endowment.

The best part for me, however, was the irony of the fact that the Harding University Graduate School of Religion will next year become the Harding University School of Theology in view of these words of Harding's: "Theological schools are wrong."

Primitive Christianity and Bison

What is the deal with the Restoration Movement and Bison? It just occured to my wife and I that not only is the mascot of Harding University and Lipscomb University a bison, but so is the mascot of Bethany College, the university Alexander Campbell himself founded. What is up with that?

The Way the Bible Reads the Bible

I am always delighted, though never surprised, to find serious flaws in the application of the supposed ideological presuppositions of the Churches of Christ. (It’s that immature, rebellious child in me that likes to lash out at my spiritual parentage.) It was a major turning point in my spiritual development when my wife asked the very innocent question, “Where does the Bible talk about selecting elders?” It took about two hours for us to finally conclude that the Bible not only never outlines the democratic selection process so popular in the Churches of Christ but actually speaks exclusively of an appointment process. Another month of posing my wife’s question to every professor I could lay hands on did little to impede my growing realization that the very framework of Restorationist belief and practice was in fact little more than a thin façade hiding rationalism and capitulation to a nineteenth century culture that is now obsolete. Calling Bible things by Bible names, doing Bible things in Bible ways, speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent - in short, restoring the first century church based only on what can be derived from Scripture - make for good slogans and bad founding principles.

My most recent reinforcement of this dismal perspective came during a course I took under Fr. John Behr at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. In the course, he addressed at length the importance of a person’s theological presuppositions in forming one’s hermeneutical presuppositions. In the context of juxtaposing Jewish and early Christian hermeneutics, Fr. Behr discussed some of the most basic beliefs about the character of Scripture in general which were shared by Jews and Christians as well as the theological disparities which yielded such radically different interpretations of the text. He made the point in passing that our own presuppositions have made it very difficult to conceive of Scripture in the way the early church did. Even simply understanding why it is certain fathers, or even the apostles, understood a text the way they did requires a complex harmony of history, theology, and exegesis. The modern person has no less a distinct starting point for biblical interpretation than did the Jews who rejected early Christian “misappropriation” of their Scriptures.

The Churches of Christ are no less guilty of this charge. In spite of claims to be restoring a first century church, a simplified Christianity with an authentic Christian mindset, Churches of Christ adopt the same basic hermeneutical launching point as most major Protestant denominations. They cling quite readily to principles of interpretation which locate relevant meaning first and foremost in a thorough and accurate exegesis of the text. Quite contrary to antique views of Scripture which held a text to be cryptic and perpetually speaking to the present, modern hermeneutics begin by stripping away any sense of mystery through scientific evaluation of what a text meant in the past. If that should happen to give insight in the present, all the better, but that is by no means an inherent characteristic of Scripture as such.

In fact, Churches of Christ may be guiltier than other groups. Their acceptance of historical-critical presuppositions is logically prior to their engagement of Scripture. The historical concept of a first century church in need of restoration and the critical belief that the plain sense of Scripture is readily accessible are the founding beliefs of the Restoration Movement which thus cloud every engagement with Scripture. Only by accepting fundamentally unbiblical ways of engaging the Bible a priori can the Churches of Christ uphold “key” beliefs, e.g. the plurality of elders, the radical autonomy of the local church, and a capella worship.

Were we to apply the “Bible things; Bible ways” principle to hermeneutics, the result would not be a historical-critical framework which locates meaning in right exegesis. That assertion ought to be self-evident, but a few simple examples should suffice to prove it nevertheless. Matthew 13:35, Mark 12:10, Luke 4:21, John 5:39, and Acts 2:16 serve as obvious illustrations of the primarily Christological interpretation of the Scriptures in the Gospels and Acts. The same basic hermeneutic continues in the epistles, e.g. 1 Cor 15:13 and 1 Pet 2:6. Other interpretations of the Scriptures include ecclesiastical (1 Tim 5:18) or theological (Gal 4:27) appropriation of Old Testament texts. The common thread, of course, is that none of these interpretations of Old Testament texts (and perhaps a New Testament one in 1 Tim 5:18) adopt the rationalistic interpretive strategy on which the Churches of Christ base everything from their ecclesiology to their deepest theology. There is little regard, if not positive disregard, for the historical context of a passage. Meaning, for the New Testament authors at least, comes not from human evaluation but only when God has “opened the Scriptures to us” (Luke 24:32).

As a closing disclaimer, let me clarify that my point is neither to undermine historical-critical hermeneutics nor to propose primarily Christological hermeneutics as an alternative. My purpose is only to illustrate a deficiency, even hypocrisy, in the way Stone-Campbell churches (of which I am a part) apply their hermeneutical presuppositions. There is a great deal of discord over a variety of issues based on whether or not the Bible approves of them. Can we have extra-congregational superstructures? Can we have instruments in worship? Can we have kitchens and gyms and fellowship halls in church buildings? What does the Bible say about this? This last question is often the first question posed. The original question, if consistency is to be maintained, would be “What does the Bible say about how to read the Bible?” Frankly, I am of the opinion that anyone honest enough to pursue that question first will be unsatisfied with the implications of the answer. I admit, however, that someone who genuinely undertakes to do Bible things in Bible ways is better than someone who only pretends to do so.