Our History and Our Division

W. Carl Ketcherside

     We are bound together by the common ties of parentage and historical origin. We are children of the same Father. Jerusalem which is from above is the mother of us all. Thus, we are brothers, members of the same family. We are also heirs of the restoration movement launched by worthy sires in the latter part of the eighteenth and the dawn of the nineteenth century and to us has been thrown the torch from the failing hands of those who bore it aloft in other days to guide men to the path of peace.

     We have allowed ourselves to be rent by the winds of destiny and torn by the storms of strife. The sword which was to be directed against the enemy has been turned against brethren and has been bathed in fraternal gore. Our witness for unity has been negated by our disunity, our plea for oneness has often been stifled by our own schisms. It is time for us to see ourselves as others see us, or, what is more important, to see ourselves as God looks at us. In facing up realistically to our current status here are some guidelines which I suggest we may use as criteria.

     1. Division within the family of God is not a whim to indulge, nor is it a luxury we can afford to perpetuate. It is a sin, an offense against God and the majesty of heaven. Disguise it as we may, glamorize it as we can, it remains that it is still a matter for which we must give answer before the judgment seat of Christ. He who is indifferent to this problem or unconcerned about its existence is like the insensitive body which disregards the warnings of malignancy until the cancer has consumed his vitals.

     2. Our schisms are signs of immaturity and carnality. They betoken that we have not grown up in all things in Jesus Christ and that we are still childish and jealous. They prove that the old man of sin has not been wholly buried and that we still keep the putrefying corpse of our lower nature hidden in the inner closet of our hearts.

     3. The party programs which we indulge are a scandal in the far-flung mission areas of the world where the problems indigenous to one land and culture are transferred and transmitted to a soil not adapted to them, and are kept alive by forced growth, fertilized by open animosity and watered by unhealthy fear.

     4. The spirit of exclusivism sired by the "holier-than-thou" attitude which makes contact with each other a sin to be denounced, instead of a virtue to be enhanced, is still a smoke in God's nostrils as it was in the days of the prophet who cried out against it. It is a symptom of ingrown sectarianism and a snare of Satan intended to prolong the divisions which he has sponsored.

     5. The categorizing of brethren by our epithets of convenience, the branding of men with our own labels, in order better to offset and overthrow any witness they may wield, is uncharitable, unwarranted and unholy. We should respect the dignity of every individual who has pledged allegiance to our King and not seek to corral him in order to curtail his efforts or kill his influence for good.

     Our current status demonstrates beyond doubt that we have forsaken the ideal of the restoration movement and forged a body of traditional opinions and interpretations which we now equate with the faith once delivered to the saints. Each faction among us, with few exceptions, feels that it is the one holy, catholic and apostolic church of God, and beside it there is no other. Each such faction has its own test of fellowship, its own yardstick for measurement, its own criterion of party loyalty. One must measure up to that test regardless of what wide divergency may be allowed on other matters which can always be relegated to the realm of incidentals.

     It occurs to me that it would be well

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for us to think again of the foundation upon which this historical movement began and proceeded until it wrecked upon the rocks of digression and disagreement. No one is better equipped to define the goals than Alexander Campbell. We make no apology for introducing to you once again his fifteen point thesis entitled, "Synopsis of Reformation." Perhaps it will serve in orienting those of us who live in this generation and it may well be commended to a religious world fascinated by its own roseate dream of ecumenism.

     1. The restoration of a pure speech or the calling of Bible things by Bible names.

     2. The Bible must be proposed as a book of facts, not of doctrines, nor opinions; it must be understood and regarded as arranged upon the principle of cause and effect, or that action is to produce corresponding action.

     3. The Bible alone, instead of any human creed, as the only rational and solid foundation of Christian union and communion.

     4. The reading and expounding of the sacred scriptures in public assemblies instead of text preaching, sermonizing and philosophizing.

     5. The right of private opinion in all matters not revealed in contradistinction from the common faith, without the forfeiture of Christian character or Christian privilege.

     6. The church of Jesus Christ is constitutionally composed of those who have confessed their faith in the celestial proposition--that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, and the only Saviour of the world, and have put him on by a baptism into his death.

     7. The administration of the internal and external affairs of the church is placed in the hands of bishops, deacons and messengers extraordinary.

     8. The sanctification of the Lord's Day by meeting in honor of the resurrection of the Saviour, and especially with a reference to the celebration of the Lord's supper, is essential to the edification, to the spirituality, holiness, usefulness, and happiness of the Christian community.

     9. The church not being of this world, cannot levy any contribution on those without for any religious or political purpose, neither ought she to go a begging to the world for aid to support or extend Christianity.

     10. The gospel is the proclamation in the name of God of remission of sins and eternal life through the sacrifice and mediation of Jesus Christ to every one that obeys him in the instituted way. The gospel is not preaching about faith, repentance, baptism, regeneration, or any other word or phrase or thing in the Bible. It is rather the authoritative statement of pardon and eternal life from the philanthropy of God through the interposition of Jesus.

     11. Three things are essential to a Christian--a peculiar disposition, state, and character. These must be changed from a preternatural or fleshly state to that which is spiritual and heavenly.

     12. The resurrection of the just, the coming of the Lord Jesus in his own proper glorified person, and eternal life, constitute the grand objects of the Christian's hope.

     13. No theory of spiritual influence in conversion is the influence of the Spirit. Therefore, to deny any theory, is not to deny the influence of the Spirit.

     14. As personal intelligence, purity and happiness is the end of all public and private, theoretic or practical reformation, the present standard of personal knowledge, faith, piety, and morality being too low, must be greatly elevated.

     15. Family education and domestic religion must be greatly advanced.

     No ardent lover of revealed truth can peruse this noble declaration of the genius and aims of reformation without feeling his heart burn within his bosom. Their author lived in a simpler social structure than that in which we reside. His mode of transportation was antiquated in comparison with ours, his facilities for transmission of thought more restricted. Yet these thoughts which wrestled within his mighty intellect until they were born in the inky fluid flowing from his quill,

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come as a distinct challenge to those of us who live in this space age. What a difference it would make in those halls of debate where theologians gather to grapple with problems of religious controversy if they could be drawn from their speculations to address their hearts to these proposals which first saw the light of day, and brought a new day of light, among the tree clad hills of a verdant Virginia countryside.

     One could but long for the time to analyze and discuss them all with his brethren, applying minds filled with a desire for research to the hidden depths which beckon on to still unexplored lodes where rich treasures of intellect remain concealed. The limitations of such an occasion as this will not allow more than a casual stroll along the path leading to a cursory examination of the points as made. It is as if one ambled through a beautiful garden filled with brightest blooms, with but time to stoop and catch the fragrance of one or two while a clear voice signals to keep moving. Let me mention briefly the first principle enunciated for it was not by chance that Alexander Campbell placed it foremost in his list.

     When men sought to promote a unity project in the plains of Shinar contrary to the divine will, God chose confusion of tongues to enforce His demand that they scatter and populate the whole earth. Taking a cue from this, Satan has employed the same tactic to keep apart those whom God would have united. The entire religious spectrum of today is affected by virtue of the theological jargon which has developed and which makes the Christian system a mystery, unassociated with the life and thought of the average person.

     The revelation of divine truth was never given to an exclusive group, for truth like the atmosphere we breathe, belongs to us all. It is no more to be doled out by an upper echelon than the air is to be metered to us for a physical existence. When the language of truth is smothered beneath layers of ecclesiastical linguistics it ceases to be a revelation and reverts to a secret unattainable to the man on the street. It is to this sad state we have been brought by the creeds of men which are distilled from the controversy of centuries on matters of opinion and abstraction.

     It is true that Christianity suffers from the ignorance of the masses, yet its greatest foe is the wisdom of this world. It has endured more from philosophers than from others. When the apostle Paul came to ancient Corinth, it was not so much the ignorance of the populace which concerned him for light will penetrate dark recesses by its very nature. His challenge was, "Where is your wise man now, your man of learning, or your subtle debater--limited, all of them, to this passing age?" He declared, "As for me, brothers, when I came to you, I declared the attested truth of God without display of fine words or wisdom." He said, "The word I spoke, the gospel I proclaimed, did not sway you with subtle arguments; it carried conviction by spiritual power, so that your faith might be built not upon human wisdom but upon the power of God."

Just as the Russian overlords jam the "Voice of America" so our modern gnostics jam the voice of heaven. The message of grace is scrambled until men weary of trying to unravel it pass it by to follow the lure of the secularistic and materialistic age. Our first task is to recapture the vocabulary of the Holy Spirit. It is reasonable to assume that if men become divided when their languages are confused, they can hardly become united until they have one speech and can communicate simply and freely.

     The ideas of God were revealed in words which the Holy Spirit taught. If we grasp the ideas it will only be because we have attached ourselves to the vehicles in which they are conveyed. If there is no word in the revelation of God to express an idea, it is logical to conclude that the idea is not there. If I am to share in the thinking of God for my life I must understand the significance of the words of God. It is through my grasp of the words of God, that is, the testimony of heaven, that I am able to lay

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hold upon the Word of God who is eternal life. The place to begin in any reformatory or restorative attempt is with the word of revelation.

     To recapture the vocabulary of the Spirit means more than merely mouthing or pronouncing the words of the Spirit. Words are like the intelligent beings who use them--they possess both body and spirit. And the body without the spirit is dead. We must not only embrace the form but also the signification, and having done this, it must frame and formulate our conviction. Those who do not stand for something will fall for everything and the wishy-washy, languid, impotent and enfeebled lives of many who profess to be followers of the slain Lamb are a stern reminder of what happens when men have no rock to which they may fasten their trailing anchors.

     Alexander Campbell wrote: "The Bible is to the intellectual and moral world of man what the sun is to the planets in our system--the fountain and source of light and life, spiritual and eternal. There is not a spiritual idea in the whole human race that is not drawn from the Bible. As soon will the philosopher find an independent sunbeam in nature, as the theologian a spiritual conception in man independent of the one best book."

     It was on such a foundation of reverence and trust that the restoration movement was launched and its principles proclaimed. And it is because a chain of circumstances and their consequences have conspired to produce a generation quite ignorant of the spiritual values revealed in the sacred volume that we find ourselves in our current state. Perhaps no greater task could we perform in our generation than to aid in restoring the Bible to its proper place in the lives and affairs of men.

     This means more than reading the Book as literature, even as sacred literature. It means more than dissecting it in the laboratory of linguistic research to analyze its structure and forms. It means more than the circulation of the volume in modern speech. All of these have their place. All of them contain value. But it is only as we regard the word of God as food to sustain life and partake of it regularly and freely that we may digest and assimilate it and build spiritual character from it, that it will do the most good. It is not a book held in the hand but its principles enshrined in the heart that will transform.

     It is not enough to adapt the Bible to our needs. We need to adopt it to ourselves. We need to make it our guide, our staff and our strength. It is not a theory about the Bible, a philosophy based upon it, nor a creed distilled from it, which will ultimately satisfy--but the Bible itself, the word of God, appropriated and apprehended. If this seems naive and childlike, let us not forget that it is just such an attitude which is calculated to receive the blessing and bounty of heaven. It was not in vain that our Lord said, "Except you repent and become as a little child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."

     The place to begin a true reformation on earth is with the revelation from heaven. A correct attitude toward the word of God will pave the way toward settlement of most of our difficulties. It will mean but little gain indeed if we unite men only to separate them all from God.

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