I was first introduced to Jesus in a church that is associated with the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (or Disciples or Restoration Movement) or any other name there may be for it, when I was 15 years old. I then went to Bible College at a school of the same non-denominational denomination. I'm extremely thankful to God for my first church experience and my Bible College education. I'm not sure I would change any of that.
It wasn't until I was living in New York City that I realized that almost no one outside of the Midwest where this small movement began had any idea what this movement was. I was led to believe it was much larger and more prominent than it really is. That was a first wake-up call in this re-learning process.
The second wake-up call was when I was a church-planter in New York City and one of the Restoration Movement publications ripped apart the church planting organization that I was working for because they were funding me to work for a Southern Baptist Church (evil of all evils!). This led, surprisingly to my mission organization losing several thousand dollars. It also led me to some disillusionment with my church planting network and I was honestly not all that sad to leave it behind after I left New York City.
The more I have been thinking and reading about the "Restoration Movement" and frontier Christianity in general, especially from those outside of the movement I have realized once again, that there are some good reasons to leave it behind.
The naivete that comes along with thinking you can read scripture apart from any cultural or historical presumptions. That it is possible to just read your Bible and leave church history with it's rich creeds behind is preposterous. Church history along with it's creeds are a safeguard to our own cultural bias and unfortunately when the Restoration Movement left those behind, they left a full picture of Jesus behind as well (as you can see displayed in any Max Lucado book). They were not able to see that although Jesus isn't just an abstract Jesus of the creeds, he was also more than a best friend, able to see us through lonely times on the frontier.
Church history and creeds are not infallible but we can look back at them and develop an awareness of how our current surroundings influence us about how we perceive Jesus and help us make corrections along the way. But what happens when you disregard creeds and history? You get a less than par Jesus. Or as Barton Stone did, you end up rejecting the idea of the trinity because the language is not "biblical" and become a subordinationist!
No Creeds but Christ? No thank you.
11 comments:
Curious where you went to school?
I'm an Ozark guy myself...and actually I'm currently living in San Antonio, attending a campus of Oak Hills Church (Max Lucado).
I agree with your post...I suppose the struggle with to what degree we confirm the creeds according to the scripture is our task...and I'm okay with that.
Thanks for your blog.
I went to Lincoln Christian College.
Yeah, I think that is a challenge. I know creeds aren't infallible and I know Scripture is our guide, I guess what I'm against is just throwing them out altogether as unimportant when they are really helpful in seeing where we may go wrong. We can look at the great creeds throughout history and I think it serves as a counterbalance for what our culture would like to make Jesus out to be.
"going by the pages of the New Testament alone" sounds spiritual but it's really arrogance. That we can understand what we read in the Bible, separated from our surroundings without the aid of church history which serves as a counterbalance seems a little bizarre.
i'm with you dustin.
another reason i don't like a flat rejection of historical creeds is that it opens the doors for all kinds of implicit creeds. these implicit creeds can exclude others just as effectively as explicit creeds can. moreover, the content of these implicit creeds are often "written" by the most charismatic or moneyed leader in a church or region and often the creeds are biblically, historically or missiologically suspect.
for these reasons as well as many others, i think it makes a whole lot of sense to recite, engage and utilize the traditional creeds of the Christian faith.
the other pithy statement that i can't stand is "where the Bible speaks, we speak and where the Bible is silent we are silent." that's a catchy little ditty, i suppose, but i'd like to think that fifteen minutes of serious reflection on the potential implications of that statement should have stopped the (anonymous) author's quill.
and yet, for all of this, i still consider myself a part of the CCOC tradition. since they are my family and tribe we've got to learn to live with one another.
That "where the Bible speaks" deal is definitely the mantra of the old church of christ folk - my heritage.
Good post.
Let me just add this. I think that if Alex Campbell, or his dad, or others with the last name of Stone, if they were to see the state of what is known (well known or not) as the Restoration movement, they would be grossly dissapointed. All too often once you get a generation or two away from reformers, a lot of what they envisioned is lost. Church history has many examples of that, just ask Mr. Luther. What we have made the RM is much more of an intellectual excersize than I think (and I can be wrong) that the original RM "fathers" would have meant it.
I'm not sure that you can regard those 4 main RM figures as those who left the RM churches in the state they are in.
I should mention that creeds were being used as a test of fellowship, which is where the "no creeds but christ" came from. Since then, we have interpreted it differently. It makes you think.
good thoughts Dave. That raises a huge question, what is "the test of fellowship"? Is it personal experience with Jesus? Is it a cognitive belief about Jesus?
or maybe the problem is in "testing" people's fellowship in the first place.
these are just random thoughts by the way, i don't really have a solid answer, but i would love some feedback.
You make a good point. There is so much "theology" out there that people swear is the "right" theology and some of it doesn't agree. So what should be believe. Wow! Don't know where to land on that one on some subjects. Others are easier.
I've been thinking about this "personal relationship" and I don't know if I like it. Maybe it would be better to say "becoming like Jesus?" The closer we get to him, the more we should be like him right? What if instead of thinking of it as having a better relationship with him, we were to say we need to be more like him. REAlly like him. But I still can't use that as a test of fellowship. Even Jesus didn't "test" fellowship. Maybe that's the problem and not the creeds.
I think you're on to something here dustin. They treated the symptom and not the problem.
I don't have it figured out either.
Here's a side thought, or question . . . is "relationship with Jesus" a biblical concept, or something we have once again derived. I'd love more thoughts on that one.
I even have a theory that using the relationship model only sets us up for failure and disappointment. But I won't get into that right now. Again, I'd love your thoughts.
"I've been thinking about this "personal relationship" and I don't know if I like it. Maybe it would be better to say "becoming like Jesus?" The closer we get to him, the more we should be like him right? What if instead of thinking of it as having a better relationship with him, we were to say we need to be more like him. REAlly like him. But I still can't use that as a test of fellowship. Even Jesus didn't "test" fellowship. Maybe that's the problem and not the creeds."
I think that would be fair. I guess Jesus said we would be known for our fruit, which are all traits and virtues of Jesus. But at the same time there are some people who show the fruit of the Spirit who have been heretical in the eyes of evangelicals so it's hard to know what to do with that.
"Here's a side thought, or question . . . is "relationship with Jesus" a biblical concept, or something we have once again derived. I'd love more thoughts on that one."
Yeah, I'm not sure. That is one of the questions that this book I just read called "Jesus: Made in America" addresses slightly. It's a fascinating study of how our view of Jesus has changed from the Puritans, to the early Politicians, to our more current pop culture. That is really what has gotten me thinking about this whole thing. It wasn't until after the Puritans that as sort of a backlash to the hypocrisy that was displayed by the Puritans that we went away from creeds and started saying, it's not about that, it's about a personal relationship with Jesus which was developed by frontier Christianity, and more specifically the Restoration Movement. It's hard to tell how much of that is a good thing and how much of the "personal relationship with Jesus" idea does just set us up for disappointment. I mean if I were to ask you, "what does it mean that you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" what would you say to that?"
You know, I think it's an incredibly important discussion.
All too often trends are set in reaction to something else. Maybe, and I think I'm right about this, but could once again be wrong, the "personal relationship" was to combat the seemingly impersonal God that was being communicated through our Catholic brothers and sisters. If (a big if) in fact they were wrong and impersonal, we may have tried to swing the pendulum too far the other way with the relationship concept. We need to be right inbetween in my opinion. That's really all it is though, an opinion.
I'm not sure how to answer your final question. Maybe it is unanswerable.
I have had this conversation several times with a dear friend about what it means to be faithful. Using the parables, he argued, it's the one who does, not claims (the vinyard owner with 2 sons). His point was that we put too much relationship on feeling. Is it only being faithful when we feel it. Perhaps it's more faithful when we don't feel it and continue to do it. Maybe that's the problem I'm having with the "relationship" concept. It implicates "feeling" close to God.
Or maybe I just think too much.
thanks for the conversation!
"But at the same time there are some people who show the fruit of the Spirit who have been heretical in the eyes of evangelicals so it's hard to know what to do with that."
I think this is why I appreciate how Brian McClaren Challenges my thinking. I am certainly evangelical (if you were to quiz me I would certainly land in this camp more than any other), but I wouldn't say that I am exclusively so.
hey guys, after giving my previous comment some more thought, i think i'd like to tone down my perspective a bit.
i don't think that the problems of the restorationist churches are necessarily rooted in pithy theological statements of thomas and alexander campbell. rather, i think that a number of our problems arise from our tradition's tendency to consider the campbell's contextualized theology as normative for all times.
thus, as jarret mentioned, thomas campbell's perspective on creeds probably made a lot of sense in the radically sectarian socio-religious culture of 19th century scotland. however, in 21st century america, where christianity is more focused on inter-religious dialogue than it is on parsing distinctions between Christian sects, a disavowal of the historic creeds might make little sense.
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