Alexander Campbell's theology, its sources and historical setting

Front matter

Alexander Campbeirs Theolosfv

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Contents

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Introduction — The Historicai, Method 9

I. DEVEI.OPMENT OF THE PR0BI<EM OF

Chapter I The Development of the Problem of Unity

DKVKIvOPMENT OF THB PROBIvKM OF UNITY

I. The Probi^km — TO Combine) Soi^idarity

AND INDIVIDUAI<ISM I

1. Both elements not developed until end of

XVIIIth century.

2. Solidarity embodied in mediaeval Ro-

manism.

3. Individualism implicit in the Reformation.

II. Dogmatism oi^ First Rkformkrs :

1, I/uther — Augsburg Confession.

2. Calvin — the Latin Theology Protestantized.

III. Break-up oi^ Protestantism:

1. First great revolt — Arminianism.

2. Multiplication of sects.

IV. Reaction Against Sectarian Spirit :

1. Comprehension schemes — lycibnitz, Bos-

suet, Spinola, Stillingfleet.

2. Toleration — Baxter, Milton, l/ocke.

3. lyatitudinarianism — Cambridge Platonists.

V. INDIVIDUAI^ISM FUI,I.Y DEVEI.OPED :

1. Emotional and mystical — Pietism, Morav-

ianism, Methodism.

2. Intellectual— the ''Enlightenment.''

VI. Nineteenth Century Probi^em — ^To Tran-

scend INDIVIDUAI^ISM.

VII. Campbei/I<'s Soi^ution oi^ the Probi^em.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROBIvEM OF UNITY.

During the three centuries of Protestantism prior to the beginning of the nineteenth, century there had been many attempts to restore the unity of a divided and still dividing church. Many men of large soul and wide spiritual vision had reacted against the narrow partisanism, the hateful controversies and the bigoted exclusiveness which marred the peace of Christendom. Some of the most influential men in England and on the Continent had consulted and planned for the restoration of unity among Christians — between Catholics and Protestants, between lyUtherans and Reformed, between Anglicans and Dissenters, between Presbyterians and Independents. But none of these attempts made more than the faintest and most fleeting impression on the religious world. Not only did they

fail of the immediate accomplishment of their purpose, but they failed even to inaugurate any- important and lasting movement in that direction.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century a young man without reputation, living in a remote district, far from the centers of the world's thought, made an attempt, in many respects not unlike those which had preceded, to bring about the union of Christians. The result was not a spasmodic effort followed by relapse, but the beginning of an important religious movement which has had for its chief mission the advocacy of Christian union. Whether or not the formation of another party in the religious world is a legitimate method of advocating this reform, or one which is likely to advance the cause, is a question which does not call for discussion in this connection. The significant fact is that, whether effective or not, the attempt aroused enough interest to make it the starting-point of a movement which has continued and increased unto this day.

The explanation of this phenomenon can he found only in the fact that the problem of unity was not fully developed and ready for solution until about the time of Mr, Campbell's attempt.

The most important problem which confronted the religious world at the beginning of the nineteenth century was this: How is it possible to reconcile the individual's liberty of conscience and intellect, with that degree of unity of the church in spirit and organization which is demanded by the will of Christ and by the practical requirement for eificiency in his service? Dispensing with the idea of an unlimited ecclesiastical monarchy exercising absolute authority over its subjects in all matters of religious faith and observance, what power shall prevent the utter disintegration of Christendom into as many warring parties as there are free individuals?

Obviously the full significance of this tension between individual freedom and religious solidarity could not be appreciated until each of the conditions had

been fully developed. It was not until the end of tlie eighteentli century that the conception of the free individual was completely developed. The philosophy of the Enlightenment was the most important instrument in the development of this idea, and it became therefore the philosophical basis for those political movements at the close of the century which aimed to throw off all the restraints of organized government and allow untrammeled liberty to the individual. Outbreaks like the French Revolution were necessary before governments could know how uncompromising was the demand for popular liberty, which most modern governments have learned how to grant without precipitating themselves into anarchy. Equally necessary was the chaotic condition into which the church fell as the result of the extreme development of individualism in the eighteenth century, that it might be known that any future unity of the church must be based upon a recognition of the freedom of the individual. Not

until near the beginning of the nine-* teenth century was there an adequate apprehension of these two essential conditions of the problem — solidarity and individualism.

Mediaeval Romanism furnished a complete and consistent embodiment of the principle of solidarity. There were rebels, to be sure, who renounced the authority of the church. There were from time to time agitators whose work implied a demand for the recognition of the individual. But that demand was consistently ignored, and the church remained a thorough-going exponent of the idea of unity through absolutism. The theological system which had been formulated by the great Augustine in the fifth century had given the theoretical basis for this development. Man is totally depraved by his inheritance of original sin. He can do nothing to effect his own salvation, except to allow himself to be the passive recipient of divine saving grace. This grace is committed to the church for distribution and

is bestowed upon men through the sacraments. All that man has to do is to put himself in communication with this sole channel of divine grace — the Holy Catholic Church — and be saved. The individual, as defined by modern thought, did not exist. The perfect unity which that church aimed at was not a unity of individuals, but unity through the suppression of individualism. In its period of Scholasticism, Romanism departed from the theology of Augustine at many points, so that a part of the work of the Reformers was to restore some negkcted elements of Augustinianism. But Romanism never forgot that part of the doctrine of the great Bishop of Hippo which taught that man is but the incarnation of an atom of original sin, who is indebted to the church for all the means of his salvation, and is therefore subject to the absolute authority of the church all the days of his life.

The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was, in the very essence of its method, a revolution. As a repudiation of the absolute authority of the church, which had been the sole bond of unity in Christendom, it could justify itself only by an appeal to the right of revolution. The theory which is always implicit in revolution, furnishing at once its justification and its method of operation, is that the individuals who are governed are of more value than any fixed scheme of government. In political revolutions this normally takes the form of a declaration that the right to govern belongs to the people, but its most fundamental principle is a recognition of the worth of individuals. Revolution always marks the point where the value of individuals begins to outweigh the value of any arrangement for securing unity, either political or religious, at their expense.

Two hypotheses are involved, by implication at least, in every popular revolutionary movement: First, it implies that no unifying and controlling power is legitimate which is essentially external to the individual; this immediately

justifies the destructive work of repudiating the old despotic authority, thereby leaving the individual free and uncontrolled. Second, since no revolution contemplates either the establishment of a new despotism or the perpetuation of anarchy, it implies that there is within the individual the possibility of a synthetic and constructive force sufficient for the control and unification of the social body. It is this second implication which, though not apparent on the surface, is the real justification of popular rebellion against unity through absolutism. It is safe to destroy the external bulwarks of the established order, only on the supposition that there are, or may be developed, within the individuals themselves, all the restraints and unifying forces needed to maintain the common life of the social body.

The Renaissance in the fifteenth centuty was the discovery of the individual through the media of painting, sculpture, popular literature and revived classicism. After being for long centuries

a mere unit in the mass, the individual first came to himself by feeling as an individual in the realm of art. The aesthetic sensibilities first felt the thrill of the new life. The Reformation in the sixteenth century was the process by which that newly discovered individual began to assert himself as such in the sphere of religion. But the problem of individualism had as yet only been felt and its meaning groped after. It had been implied as the basis of important movements, but it had not yet been thought through. Its two implications mentioned above had not yet come to light.

When the Reformers proceeded upon their own responsibility as free men in revolting from Rome, they acted upon the principle that no external ecclesiastical authority is necessary. But they were not prepared to maintain this as a general principle, for they created other ecclesiastical authorities in place of that which they had discarded. Still less did they comprehend an individualism

which contained within itself the elements of order and unity. Therefore we are justified in saying that in the Reformation there was involved an zmplicit individualism. Because there was individualism, there could be a revolt against established ecclesiastical absolutism. Because it was only implicit, the revolution must be followed by a period of servitude under new masters (the dogmatism of the Reformation theologies), and that in turn by a period of anarchy and extreme disunion.

Of the great Reformers of the first generation, Zwingli was the only one who is free from the charge of arrant dogmatism. Both Luther and Calvin were temperamentally dogmatic, and to that fact is due much of their success in welding their followers into compact and effective bodies for the necessary war against Romanism. The Saxon reformer was endowed by nature with an impetuous spirit which could meet fearlessly the assaults of his enemies, but could not with equanimity endure

opposition from his friends. He would not hold fellowship with those whose interpretations of Scripture differed from his own. There were three principles, by no means co-ordinate, which L^uther made in different senses the basis of his movement. They were: the doctrine of justification by faith, the sole authority of Scripture, and the right of private judgment. To the first of these, which furnished the immediate occasion for the Reformation and the material content of its teaching, he clung consistently and tenaciously. The second can become effective for the liberation of men from ecclesiastical authority only in so far as it is accompanied by the third. This third he exercised to secure freedom from the control of the Roman hierarchy and its traditions, but did not grant to others who sought freedom from the yoke of dogmatic lyUtheranism by an appeal to their own interpretation of Scripture. The classic illustration of this temperament is Luther's refusal to grant Christian fellowship to Zwingli,

because the latter interpreted the words 3 33

^^hoc est meum corpus" as signifying the spiritual presence of the I^ord's body in the bread of the communion. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 was the first authoritative declaration of Protestant belief upon a few great doctrines. Its adoption formally ushered in the age of Protestant dogmatism and it became as authoritative for Protestantism in Germany as the decrees of the Council of Trent were for Romanism. When religious peace was reached in the Empire in 1555, toleration was granted, under certain restrictions, to Catholics on the one hand and to adherents of the Augsburg Confession on the other. There was no toleration for dissenting Protestants.

Calvin was by birth a Frenchman, by training a lawyer, and by nature a logician. With that singular combination of clearness of vision and limited range of vision which is the peculiar heritage of his race, he saw no problem to which he could not see the solution,

and was blind to every element of knowledge or experience whicli could not be incorporated harmoniously into his system of thought. This characteristic, united with a genius for systematization which has seldom if ever been equaled, produced a well-nigh perfect dogmatist. But whereas Luther's theology was not rigidly systematized, and left room for a time for individual differences on points not explicitly defined, Calvinism was from the first a completely organized system, claiming authority, it is true, in the name of the Scriptures rather than in its own name, but perfectly intolerant of any doctrinal deviation and exercising over its adherents the same intellectual tyranny which had been the mark of the Roman Church. By so much as the burning of Servetus at Geneva by the order of Calvin was a more flagrant act of intolerance than Luther's refusal to hold Christian fellowship with Zwingli, by so much was Calvinism the more rigidly

dogmatic and the more inconsistent with the principle of individualism ta which it owed its existence.

Henceforth the process of the enforcement of authority gradually lost its inquisitorial character, by the abolition of the ecclesiasitical machinery by which submission to authority had been enforced. Instead of forcing all men to accept the doctrinal formularies as laid down, Protestant dogmatism demanded the acceptance of them by all who sought entrance to the particular communion which had adopted them. Every man could accept them and come into the church, or reject them and stay out, at his option. This was true from the first of all non-established Protestant churches, but was arrived at by the established churches only through a gradual development which lasted through generations. The attainment of this stage marks the beginning of what may be called denominationalism in the modern sense. It is marked by a more or less reluctant acquiescence in

the divided condition which Protestantism begins to assume, and it indicates that the first half of the implicit individualism of the Reformation is becoming explicit. The cessation of persecution by Protestant churches which had it in their power to persecute, indicates a realization of the fact that the division of the church is preferable to a unity maintained by the exercise of external authority for the coercion of the individual. To be sure, each division long held that salvation was impossible outside of itself, but it was something of a gain for individual liberty to allow a man to be comfortably damned in the free exercise of his own judgment, rather than to force salvation upon him by going into the highways and byways and compelling him to come in.

Almost immediately upon the formulation of the great dogmatic systems of Protestantism, began those movements which led to the break-up of Protestantism into a multitude of warring factions. Passing by the disputes between

the two great parties, lyUtheran and Reformed ( Calvinistic ) — disputes whicli were spared mucli of the bitterness which might have characterized them, owing to the happy circumstance of their geographical separateness — there soon began to arise dissensions within each party. Lutheranism, owing to the comparative looseness of its organization, was the first to suffer. And as the tendency to individual doctrinal variations became more pronounced after the death of the great leader of the party, orthodox I^utheranism itself was vitiated by its attempt to brace itself against impending dissolution. In the lyUtheranism of the seventeenth century there is seen a lack of the nobility of spirit, the firmness of grasp, the practical earnestness which had characterized lyUther^ with all his dogmatism. The lyatin theology was substantially restored, the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith obscured, and the right of private judgment virtually abrogated in favor of

a narrow and legalistic interpretation of

Scripture in accordance with traditional rules of exegesis.

But the influences which were felt more largely in England and Scotland came from Calvinism and the systems which sprang up within and around and against it. The first great revolt against Calvinism as an authoritative and necessary compend of religious truth was the system of Arminianism. It was, to be sure, a system against a system, both fixed and carefully defined. Nevertheless, the rise of a combatant against the dominant Calvinism of the Reformed church, marks the real beginning of the exercise of the right of Protestant dissent. That men should dare to combat a system as rigid in its doctrines and as sulphurous in its maledictions upon all who rejected it as was Calvinism, was, without respect to the doctrinal merits of the two systems, a distinct advance in the history of the growth of individualism. It was Arminianism, says Tulloch, which ''revived the suppressed rational side of

the original Protestant movement and for the first time organized it into a definite power and assigned to it its due place both in theology and in the church." It represented, moreover, a moral, religious and emotional, as well as an intellectual, reaction, precipitating as it did a return to Bible study and a renewed declaration of allegiance to the Scriptures as the only source of religious authority. Both lyUther and Calvin had accepted the main outlines of Augustinianism as a presupposition, and it was through this medium that they looked at and interpreted the Scriptures. The exigencies of the times, the fierce struggle against Romanism, had so urgently demanded the formation of a system that there was no time for a thoroughly Bib^ lical reconstruction by the first generation of Reformers. Arminianism was, with whatever success, an attempt at an unbiased Biblical reconstruction of Christian doctrine. But Arminianism, as formulated in the Remonstrance of 1610, though historically the most important,

was not the only theological protest against Calvinism. In no factious spirit and with no desire or expectation of producing schism in the Reformed Church, theologians, who found themselves unable to acquiesce in the ethical and religious implications of Calvinism, exercised the right of dissent and formulated other statements of the nature of God and man and the process of man's salvation. In no case were these new systems drawn up deliberately as the constitutions of new sects, and in some cases they succeeded in remaining merely schools of thought within the church. Among such may be mentioned that modification of Calvinism which was held by several successive teachers of the school of Saumur, in France. These men, among whom the best known name is that of Amyraut, taught predestination conditioned on the divine foreknowledge of each individual's faith or unbelief. This teaching remained a phase of opinion in the Reformed Church in France

just as infralapsarian and supralapsarian

Calvinism were phases of opinion in the same church.

Much more important than the school of Saumur is the so-called Federal or Covenant Theology, which sprang up about one generation after Arminianism. It was, like the latter, an embodiment of the same ethical protest against the rigors of Calvinism, its fierce conception of God and its failure to recognize the freedom of the human individual; and it was, too, an attempt to establish and put in operation a reasonable method of Biblical exegesis. So conspicuous was this latter characteristic that Cocceius, the leader of this school, has been called *'the father of modern exegesis.'' Of this theology more will be said in a subsequent chapter, but in this connection it is noteworthy as a manifestation of dissent from Calvinism. No religious party ever crystallized about this system and it remained free to leaven the thought of the Dutch Reformed Church and to influence the development of doctrine in Scotland, whither its influence was carried in the eighteenth century.

The development as traced thus far exhibits an increasing divergence of theological opinion within the Reformed Church, but no fatal break in the external unity of the body. But at the same time movements were taking place which led to the separation of one after another sect. Most of these separating bodies represented distinct disruptive tendencies which had existed within Romanism before the Reformation, and now, feeling the loosening of the bond of authority, became, by the very law of their being, separatists from Protestantism as well as from Romanism.

Foremost among these essentially separative movements was that of the Anabaptists, who were from the beginning the representatives of a most intense individualism. Their most fundamental characteristic was not, as the name would indicate, opposition to infant baptism and the practice of re-baptizing those who came to them, but insistence on a * 'regenerate church membership. ' ' This phrase lent itself to various interpretations, as it does to-day, according to the meaning that is attached to the term regeneration; bnt in any case the fundamental conception is that the individual's salvation depends solely upon his own personal relation with God, and not in any degree upon his association with any body of people who may be called the church. In protesting against the institutionalism which they conceived to be the failing of Protestantism even in the hands of the Reformers, the Anabaptists entirely eliminated the idea of solidarity, the social side of Christianity, and developed an individualism which cheerfully acquiesced in the dissolution of Christendom into a multitude of sects, since they attached no value to unity. Protestantism, considered as the restoration of the long-obscured element of individualism in religion, finds its most extreme expression in the position of the Anabaptists. That they do not represent the highest type of Protestantism, is due not only to the fact that for a time they ran into various sorts of fanaticism, but to the much more significant fact that Protestantism, as we interpret it, means not the exclusion of the idea of solidarity, but a proper distribution of emphasis in the valuation of the individual and the united body.

The Schwenkfeldians, a sect founded by a contemporary and friend of Luther, illustrated this same tendency and that, too, without obscuring the main issue by laying special stress upon one ordinance. Schwenkfeld differed from the Anabaptists in not insisting upon immersion, but he contended that the Reformers, like the Romanists, made too much of the external and objective means of grace which are associated with the church. He appealed to the consciousness of the individual in a tone and spirit highly suggestive of the plea of the Quakers for reliance upon the '4nner light."

Socinianism, the rise of which was contemporary with the Protestant Reformation, not only involved an attack upon the most fundamental doctrines of the faith, as held by both Romanists and Reformers, bnt exhibited a restless and lawless spirit, an impatience of all restraints which seriously threatened the efficiency of the Protestant propaganda. The burning of the Socinian Michael Servetus at Geneva, by Calvin, has already been cited as the crowning exhibition of Protestant intolerance. Yet it was not alone his heresy, as such, which Calvin took such extreme measures to restrain. With all his theologic hatred of opposition, it is scarcely conceivable that Calvin would have burned James Arminius under similar circumstances. Servetus as a Socinian represented a disintegrating tendency in the ecclesiastico-political body.

The dogmatic, autocratic and inconsistent unity which Calvin maintained, carried the Reformation through its period of life and death struggle with Romanism, and then disintegrating individualism, which had been in abeyance for a season, resumed its work. A state of war demands

union, and even an army of rebels against constituted authority must place themselves under a new authority till their war for liberty is over. So Protestantism won its first victory by the maintenance of dogmatic unity under the leadership of the great reformers. But often the military leader of a successful struggle for liberty, intoxicated by the temporary authority which he has exercised, seeks to make himself perpetual dictator, and a new rebellion is necessary to liberate the people from the yoke of the liberator. So Protestant dogmatism tried to maintain its authority after the need of unity under it had passed. The new rebellion which thus arose raged through the seventeenth century and continued with waning intensity through the eighteenth.

It is not necessary here to enumerate the sects which sprang up under this impulse. Some of them subdivided so readily that they can scarcely be said to exhibit any regard for unity of any sort. In others, the inherited demand

ior unity was indicated by the constant tendency to systematize; but it was the unity of those like-minded in all points of doctrine and not unity of all Christians, or even all Protestants, in a single church. The idea was that there could be no ecclesiastical unity without uniformity of opinions. Yet every man had the right to make his opinions, to formulate them into a system and to exclude from fellowship all those who refused to comply with them. It was this condition, — the multitude of belligerent Protestant sects, each trying to bring the world within its fold and yet setting up its own individual fence as the boundary of the fold, — which aided in bringing to light more clearly that inherent contradiction which we have mentioned as furnishing the problem of Protestantism from the day when Luther nailed his theses until the present hour. In general it may be said that from our standpoint it was the function of the seventeeth century, ''that wretched century of strife," as Herder calls it, to develop this problem in its most conspicuous, because most disagreeable, form. Already, before the end of that century there had arisen in the more enlightened minds a loathing of the petty controversies about doctrine and polity between the various Protestant parties. Bossuet, in his work on The Variations of Protestantism^ had predicted that the inherent tendency to division must ultimately lead to its complete disintegration and disappearance, and there seemed to be good ground for that belief. The more thoughtful Protestants became alarmed, and now there began a series of notable attempts to find some method by which this strife of religious parties could be reconciled. The various movements in this direction may be classed under the heads of comprehension, toleration and latitudinarianism.

Perhaps the earliest form taken by this disgust at the pettiness of theological controversy is seen in the comprehension schemes which were formulated and promulgated in considerable number

both in England and upon the continent. 4 49

The best and broadest minds of tbat day turned readily in this direction. George Calixtus, who was a pioneer in the department of irenics, suggested that all Christians ought to be able to unite in the restoration of primitive Christianity, by which he, like Newman, meant the New Testament plus the interpretations of the first five centuries. Leibnitz and Bossuet carried on a correspondence with a view to finding a possible reconciliation between the Catholic and Protestant bodies and, when this was seen to be impracticable, Leibnitz turned his attention to the formulation of terms of peace between the Lutheran and Reformed branches of Protestantism with equally little avail. The Spanish monk, Spinola, labored with the same intent, zealously but ineffectually.

In England, Puritanism developed men whose breadth of charity and catholicity of sympathies present a curious and instructive contrast to our ordinary notions of Puritan austerity. Of these,

one of the most notable was Stillingfleet, who, in his Irenicum^ which was first published in 1659 and reprinted in 1662, uttered these sentiments, which need only to be compared with any theological writing contemporary with them, in order to see how free he was from the spirit of belligerent sectarianism which confronted him in England at the time of the Restoration: ''For the church to require more than Christ himself did, or make other conditions of her communion than our Saviour did of discipleship, is wholly unwarrantable. What possible reason can be assigned or given why such things should not be sufficient for the church which are sufficient for eternal salvation? And certainly these things are sufficient for that, which are laid down as necessary duties of Christianity by our I^ord and Saviour in his Word." The answer to this was the Act of Uniformity which went into effect in England in that same year, 1662, by which the Church of England cut off and cast out its most vital element — Puritanism.

Richard Baxter, who would be St. Richard if Puritanism canonized its saints, preached and pleaded for unity, early and late, in pulpit and pamphlet and prison. His treatise entitled T/ze True and Only Way of Concord of all the Christian Churches^ was only one of the many works which he wrote in similar vein. It was Baxter who gave currency to that slogan of true Christian unity, the phrase which had already been coined by Rupertus Meldenius: **In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." Naturally, these sentiments could not find official acceptation in England under the Stuart despotism, for the Stuart theory of church and State was as absolutely repressive of the individual as mediaeval Romanism had been. There could be no room for the comprehension of varying individual opinions within a state church with a Stuart at its head. The comprehension schemes therefore failed, and the next resort was a plea for toleration.

The development of the idea of religious toleration indicates a recognition of the place of individualism in religion, coupled with a scrupulous regard for the preservation of doctrinal uniformity within each sect. The established churches were not ready to take into themselves all manner of heterogeneous elements which were contained in the various dissenting bodies, but they at least came gradually to the recognition of the fact that these dissenting bodies, as the expression of religious life of sincere men, had a right to a more or less free existence.