Christian
Unity

THE Good News in Christ is news about Unity--Unity between God and men, unity between men and men. In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one. That is why a Christianity without the Church is a contradiction in terms. The Church began as a Fellowship, and as one; and only as a united fellowship can she effectively do her work and bring peace into a distracted and divided world. But the Church did not remain united. First came the split between East and West. Then came the Reformation in the West, and the Church was further split into national and other groups. To-day the "One Church" is nowhere to be found in her completeness. But never was there greater need for the united Church to appear. Let us work and pray that our Lord's prayer be answered: "That they may all be one." [1]

Reformation
or
Restoration

SCHISM is sin: it is the breaking of fellowship. Whenever it has happened, the fault has never been wholly on one side, so we are all involved in this sin and it will not do to treat our Christian divisions lightly. It has often happened because error and corruption have crept into the historic Church. In the sixteenth century the Reformers tried to purge the Church of error. In some cases they purged out what was essential. In other cases they did not purge far enough. They left many things which were a standing contradiction of the Christian Gospel. In the early nineteenth century great leaders like Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone in America, and William Jones in England, began a movement for Restoration of New Testament Christianity. Churches of Christ (Disciples), who now number nearly 2,000,000 throughout the world, are the result of that movement--the last of the great Reformed Churches. [2]

New
Testament
Christianity

THE New Testament is the record of the creative experience of the Christian Church. And it is the only record. It did not create the Church, but was created by the Church. It therefore reflects the essential genius of Christianity in a unique way. It is a living book, produced by a living Society, out of a living experience. Therefore, if we wish to know what Christianity is, both in form and spirit, it is to this small, yet unparalleled group of documents, produced within the bosom of the early Church and within the Apostolic age, inspired by the Spirit of God, and by His providential guidance collected into a Canon, that we must go, interpreting them in the true spirit of history. This was what the fathers and pioneers of the Restoration Movement saw with a vision which, in its day, was remarkable for its clarity. It is the only way out from our unhappy divisions. [3]

Law
or
Grace?

THE Law was given by Moses. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Here is the contrast between Legalistic religion and religion which is based on a personal relationship between God as Father and ourselves. Judaism, as contrasted with the religion of the greatest Jewish prophets, had deteriorated into a legalistic system. Men and women were under law. Our Lord overthrew legalism, but the Church has constantly hankered after it. Paul fought a battle royal against it, and tried to show that where love and loyalty are, there is no need for law. Christianity has always been hampered by legalism, and one of the greatest works of the pioneers of the Restoration Movement was to set love and loyalty in the place of law, to abolish legalistic doctrines of grace, and to teach that the following of Christ was a personal matter, and therefore essentially moral. What is sub-personal is sub-Christian. [4]

Creeds
and
Liberty

IN the early Church "dogma" meant certain happenings in history. To believe was to accept certain facts as acts of God. Just as God had acted in creation, so now He had acted in redemption. These facts were the coming of Jesus, His holy life, His death, burial, and resurrection. Faith meant accepting Jesus as Lord and Christ, being faithful to Him and His revelation of God, risking everything to live by that revelation. It was a matter of trust and loyalty--something wholly personal. It did not mean assent to theological opinions such as are enshrined in the great creeds and confessions of the Churches, the walls which divide them and shut men out from liberty. This is why Churches of Christ reject creeds and confessions in making disciples, and require before Baptism only such personal affirmations as "I accept Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God." [5]

The
Church

LIBERTY sounds dangerously like individualism. But liberty within the corporate fellowship is never in danger of individualism. Churches of Christ, with their refusal to bind men's consciences with creeds, have not suffered from individualism, because from the beginning they have been "high-churchmen." They have never ceased to stress the visible and corporate character of the Church as the Divine Society, the Body of Christ. But they have preferred to rest their whole case for the unity of the Church on the Pauline basis of liberty and corporate loyalty. They have not felt that loyalty is best preserved in the Body by legalised methods and structural forms which are a contradiction of the living nature of the Church. Yet they are convinced that the visible Church is related to God in Christ, in a way that no human society can be, and that Christianity apart from the Church is meaningless. [6]

Church
Order

APOSTOLICAL Succession is rejected by Churches of Christ, not only because it has no sure foundation in history, but because it is a rigid, mechanical structure of the Church which is a contradiction of its nature as a living body. Continuity in faith and order there must be, but Apostolical Succession is of neither the faith nor the order of essential Christianity; and prelacy is contrary to its nature and spirit. All Christians are kings and priests unto God. Christianity is a priestly religion, but within the Church there can be no distinction between "priest" and "not priest." Nevertheless, there must be within the Body members with varying functions, Such are Bishops or Presbyters, who are ordained to pastoral charge of congregations; Deacons and Deaconesses, who are ordained to assist them and to minister in the congregations; and Evangelists or Missionaries, who are ordained to a wider charge, founding and nourishing Churches by preaching the Gospel. [7]

Faith:
A
Personal
Relationship

THE religion of Jesus was wholly personal. He called men into the relation of Sonship with the Divine Father. A personal relationship is a wholly moral relationship, calling for decision and responsibility on the part of those entering into it. The relationship between God and men has been broken by sin and disloyalty on our part. We have traduced a holy love. But love can never be defeated. We need to see ourselves truly, and in penitence accept God's offer of grace set forth in His self-giving in the life and death of Christ. Faith is the gift of God, for God our Father is such as to inspire trust and confidence and love in us; but it is, and must be, our own responsibility if we are to be sons and daughters in our Father's house. Faith and penitence, therefore, can never be exercised by proxy. They must be our own. [8]

Baptism

INFANT Baptism is the fundamental error of Christendom. It had no place in original Christianity. Jesus rejected the paterfamilias idea in religion. A man's religion was to be a matter for his own personal decision. Infant Baptism sets within the Christian system a standing contradiction of the essential moral and personal relationship on which discipleship is based. To address Baptism to an infant a few days old is to make of it a meaningless ceremony. But Baptism in the Christian system is not a meaningless ceremony. For penitent believers it is the significant action in which they make their response to God's Holy Act of Love, which is symbolically set forth in the immersion of the body in water. The penitent dies to sin, and is buried, and raised to a new life in the likeness of his Lord's burial and resurrection. He has the assurance that his sins are remitted, and he receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. [9]

The
Lord's
Supper

FROM the beginning Christianity had two redemption rites--Baptism and the Holy Supper. A religion wholly devoid of outward observances would be a religion fitted only for angels and spirits. Our Lord chose the common things of life--water, bread, and wine--to be the vehicles to set forth His redeeming acts. So, Churches of Christ always celebrate the Lord's own Service on the Lord's own Day. As the Lord's Supper sets forth His death, so the Lord's Day sets forth His glorious resurrection. Each Lord's Day the Bread is taken, blessed, broken, given; the Cup is taken, blessed, outpoured, given, so that we see "the crucifixion, the death, burial and resurrection, repeating themselves in the life and profession of the disciples, and proclaiming to the ages that He who was to come, is come." These are the Acts which have meaning for Eternity, and in this Communion we are united with them. [10]

Worship

WITH Churches of Christ, the service in which the Holy Communion is received, is an act of thanksgiving. The Lord's Supper is the great Churchly Service, in which the Royal Priesthood offers worship, but not of a pattern of its own designing. The priestly Church offers worship through her Great High Priest, who is here set forth in His Holy Redeeming Act. Upon His Sacrifice the Church spiritually feeds in fellowship, which is God's giving and our receiving--something essentially personal, and not metaphysical. The service, which is one great whole, is fully corporate and includes the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, the hearing of instruction, the offering of gifts and praise, and the Prayers of the Brethren. The service is corporate worship, free from dependence upon any one man or his message, dependent only on our Blessed Lord and the adoration which we bring to the place where, in reality, we stand within the heavenlies. [11]

Life
in
Christ

JESUS said that loving God and loving our fellow-men was the whole business of life. Humanitarianism which is not based on the love of God, cannot sustain itself. No one can bear the whole weight of human sin and suffering. Only God can do that. Social righteousness apart from religious conviction is mere patchwork. But the love of God apart from the love of man is sheer delusion. Mere piety, which seeks to evade the realities of life, has nothing to do with the religion of Christ. If a man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His; and the Spirit of Christ is that of self-giving. Moralism and social righteousness are nearer to Christ than pietism, but neither is able to stand alone. "Our hearts were made for God and they are restless until they find Him," but finding Him, they find all things and all men in Him, and the world becomes transformed. [12]

[NTC 1-12.]

      The electronic version of William Robinson's "New Testament Christianity" (Birmingham, England: The Berean Press, n. d.) has been produced from a copy of the pamphlet held by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society. Thanks to May Reed for providing a Xerox copy.

      Pagination in the electronic version has been represented by placing the page number in brackets following the last complete word on the printed page.

      Addenda and corrigenda are earnestly solicited.

Ernie Stefanik
373 Wilson Street
Derry, PA 15627-9770
stefanik@msn.com

Created 13 September 1999.