Scripture and the Stone-Campbell Movement

As I wrote last week, The Stone-Campbell Movement emerged in the United States in the 19th century as a plea for unity among Christians.  Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, separately came to the conclusion that followers of Jesus could come together under the banner of (1) The Bible is the Word of God and (2) Jesus is Lord. 

Unfortunately, the unity movement split largely because of various interpretations on how to replicate the first century New Testament church, an effort that I maintain was doomed to failure from the beginning (more on that in another blog post).  If the effort had simply focused on the two principles alone, I think it may have had sustained success. 

While the successors of Stone and Campbell splintered over whether to include instruments in worship or to have Sunday school or create and join societies, etc. another controversy was brewing over the nature of Scripture.

Campbell, Stone and the gifted leaders around them such as Walter Scott and the colorfully nicknamed “Raccoon” John Smith assumed the Bible is inspired and without error.  Yet, liberal theology had trickled into American universities mainly from Germany and as the movement grew, people holding these views began to join the fledgling unity effort.  The first Stone-Campbell pastor who questioned the inerrancy of Scripture seems to have been Dr. Lewis Pinkerton.  He wasn’t alone for long and the question boiled over in the twentieth century leading to a split producing the Disciples of Christ as the liberal wing of the movement and the independent Christian Church as the conservative wing.  

Like most “mainline denominations” that adopted a low view of Scripture, the Disciples are slowly dying.  This is ironic because part of the impetus for adopting liberal theology and its skeptical attitude toward the supernatural, was so that Christianity could survive in the midst of the growth of secularism.  With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that the adoption of liberal theology is poison for churches attempting to expand the Kingdom of God.  

Yet, many professors within every wing of the Stone-Campbell Movement champion the same doctrines that are killing denominations.  I have often stated that I don’t understand why professors within independent Christian church institutions don’t just join the Disciples of Christ.  They can then speak as loudly and often as they want about contradictions in scripture albeit doing so like the band playing on while the Titanic sank!

I’ll write more on this later but one of the reasons why Calvinism has experienced such resurgence throughout out the world is that it stands firmly on base of an infallible work of God that can be trusted.  The Stone-Campbell movement spread like wildfire through the frontier based on the simple preaching of a simple Gospel steeped in belief that God Himself had spoken through the authors of the Bible.  It can do so again but the temptation to go the disastrous route of the Disciples of Christ must be thoroughly rejected.  

I am not advocating sectarian fundamentalism but careful evangelical scholarship in the vein of academics such as F.F. Bruce, Grant Osborne, Craig Keener, Darrell Bock, etc.  While at the same time, I am also advocating tolerance on debatable issues outside the two principles that Scripture is the Word of God and Jesus is Lord and, therefore, the only path to salvation.  Debates on topics such as Calvinism vs. Arminianism, the age of creation, eschatology and so on should be had but in the spirit of grace and a commitment not to divide over them.  After all, Barton Stone had an unorthodox view of the trinity that troubled Alexander Campbell but, in the spirit of unity, let it go.  

Tune back in tomorrow for a review of the book The State of New Testament Studies edited by Scot McKnight and Nijay Gupta.