A Reply to "A Failed Attempt at Unity - The Restoration Movement"

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John Nugent replied to my posts "A Failed Attempt At Unity - The Restoration Movement" (Part 1, Part 2).

You may disagree with Campbell that the "intellectual" project he launched is not viable today, nor was it ever. But you make it sound like he was an ivory tower guy who needed to pull his head out of the clouds. I don't get those same vibes. What we see Campbell NOT doing (during a day when every one else was) is importing a finely tuned philosophical system that is beyond the reach of the common man and making that a prerequisite for doing theology. THAT approach is intellectual unity at its purest. Instead, Campbell took habits of thinking and reading that were gaining widespread, indeed worldwide, acceptance by the masses and putting them to work with Scripture alone. This was theology for everyman, and the average Joe found Campbell a thinker he could finally relate to. Of course, when what one reads of Campbell is his most intellectual work, one is tempted to think his project was a purely intellectual one, but all it takes is a brief sit-down in front of the massive collection of Millennial Harbinger volumes to realize his project was a grassroots, church life focused project. In fact, I think our movement's primary contribution to ecumenical conversations is its ecclesial flexibility and openness. While others spend an excessive amount of time speculating about Trinity and transubstantiation, our people were saying "what would it look like if we did communion like this?"

You insist that unity is achieved through shared "actions" not intellectual processes. That's exactly what Campbell was doing. The Church had three major shared actions among all denominations: Lord's Supper, Baptism, and Bible Reading. Campbell focused on these. When it came to hermeneutics, Campbell sat down with average Joe who always felt unworthy to read the Bible because he could never understand the deep theological prerequisites necessary for a valid reading. Campbell's advice to him was: "You read the newspaper, right? Well, read your Bible that way. And another thing, be sure to humbly receive it as God's word and do what it says." Of course, when Campbell had to justify this approach intellectually before intellectuals he speaks to them on intellectual terms, but don’t mistake these contextual conversations for an intellectualist approach to the Bible because that is not what Campbell recommended.

Regarding the project of identifying interpretive methods today and using them to unite, I think there is plenty of helpful fodder out there. Obviously you don't begin with highly contested methods that have not gained unity. You begin with methods that are gaining unity. It is not clear to me that the watch-a-movie-and-read-whatever-you-want-into-it" approach is fostering widespread agreement. Those producers may be gaining widespread exposure and they may have groupies in every state, but the masses are not buying it. That is not the way they read the paper or want people to interpret their speech actions. It's not what their college profs teach and Hollywood hardly represents the heartbeat of America. It represents the heartbeat of the entertainment world. Campbell was building off of a much more widely popular approach.

Narrative theory, on the other hand, is gaining momentum today. We are beginning to agree that dissecting a text as if it was a corpse to get at the root of every jot and tittle intention of the author is no longer the best way to read a book, although it may be helpful in a supplemental way. Rather we find it much more appealing to enter into the narrative world of the project, to provisionally accept some of its borderline presuppositions, and to try to hear the message conveyed by the work as a whole. We are agreeing that the forest needs as much attention as each individual tree. Many people would hear that and say, duh, that's common sense. My response is: Exactly! But that's not how they read the Bible. They microanalyze every phrase and get stuck at every one-liner that is hard to swallow and they miss the story. They obsess about theories of inspiration, composition, and authorship. The Bible has become a book not to read and enjoy but to read and defend. This is partly because of how Scripture is taught in Colleges. I am calling for a shift away from obsessing about introductory issues toward entering the narrative world of the text. A hermeneutic of unity teaches our students that what matters about Scripture is the message God is communicating through it not who wrote it, when, and with what degree of divine influence.

I am not convinced Campbell is as easily defeated as the strawman he is set up to be. Campbell did not avoid all that was extra-biblical. He never sought to. He sought to marginalize what was extra-biblical. There is a big difference there that many people overlook. Campbell had a higher view of opinion than most people's brains today can handle. He could just as easily worship with a deist as a strict trinitarian because he refused to make their metaphysical speculations a matter of fellowship. What he sought to do was push extra-biblical topics out of the spotlight. They were not to be topics for preaching. We must preach the Gospel that unites. There will have to be conversations about what extra-biblical aspects of church life need to be dealt with (carpeting, A/C units, church camps, etc), but we do not pretend our ideas about these things are so strong that they should be the subject of our unity gatherings and Bible studies. It's not either we do extra-biblical things or not, but how much emphasis we place on them.

Similarly, Campbell did not believe that God stopped revealing himself in Deistic fashion. No one who's read him much accuses him of being deistic. Rather, he affirmed that what God has revealed to different individuals or even churches post-NT is not going to be the basis of worldwide Church unity. So God may convince Church X through a vision to start a homeless ministry on corner Y, but that revelation is binding on that Church alone, not all churches everywhere. What God revealed in Scripture is different, according to Campbell. What he revealed there is for all people everywhere. They will not apply it in the same way in an effort to be sensitive to their context, but it remains normative as a guide to their conduct. Campbell is willing to say, “God convicted you to do A, great! But be careful not assume that because he convicted you to do so that his will is for everyone to do likewise.” It does not surprise me that when God wants to get a Catholic’s attention, he gives them a vision of Mary. It does not surprise me that when he wants to grip a Pentecostal, he afflicts them with tongues. God meets people where they are. But Catholics are mistaken when they use such experiences to confirm the timeless validity of their Marian dogmas and Pentecostals are misguided to make tongue-speaking a necessary sign for genuine conversion. It is not clear to me that Campbell is saying anything more than don’t do this – if we make these mistakes our division will increase.