Published as "Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience: Baptists and Disciples Part Company," in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by William Baker (Downer’s Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002).

Faith, Christian Experience and Baptism: Baptists and Disciples Part Company

John Mark Hicks

Historical Introduction

Brush Run church. On June 12, 1812, Alexander and Thomas Campbell, and five others were baptized in Buffalo Creek near the Brush Run church building near Bethany, VA. The next day thirteen others were immersed. More were immersed in subsequent days, but other members were uncomfortable with these events, and decided to remove themselves at this point from the reform movement taking place. When the Campbells, two of the principal founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement, and the Brush Run Church became practitioners of believer’s immersion, it created a rift in the fledgling movement which had begun in 1809with the publication of the Declaration and Address.1

Immersion, however, was not the only indication that Alexander Campbell had experienced a sort of theological rebirth. Even though as late as April 7, 1811, Campbell had described “faith” as “effect of Almighty power and regenerating grace,”2 in a letter to his father dated March 28, 1812, he rejects any idea that regeneration proceeds faith or that faith is the effect of regeneration. His definition of faith had shifted from an experientially based sense of assurance to a full and firm persuasion based on the testimony of Scripture that Jesus is the Christ.3

In 1812 Campbell came to reject the popular understanding of saving faith. It is no coincidence that Campbell was immersed that same year. Since he had already rejected the “conversion narrative” approach to church membership and baptism, Campbell asked Matthias Luce, a local Regular Baptist minister, to immerse him, and Luce accommodated him on June 12, 1812. Campbell, however, stipulated with Elder Luce

that the ceremony should be performed precisely according to the pattern given in the New Testament, and that, as there was no account of any of the first converts being called upon to give what is called a “religious experience,” this modern custom should be omitted, and that the candidates should be admitted on the simple confession that “Jesus is the Son of God”...There were not, therefore, on this occasion, any of the usual forms of receiving persons into the Church upon a detailed account of religious feelings and impressions...All were, therefore, admitted to immersion upon making the simple confession of Christ required of converts in the apostolic times. 4

1Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, n.d.), 1:396, 403-4.2Ibid., 1:376.3Ibid., 1:414-25.4Ibid., 1:398.

Campbell’s immersion reflected a significant theological shift. It was not simply that Campbell was now a baptist rather than a paedobaptist, but also that he had rejected the conversion narrative theology of his early training. He no longer sought a subjective religious experience to confirm his regeneration and assure him of the remission of his sins. On the contrary, he now regarded immersion as that objective moment which assured him of God’s forgiveness. Campbell’s theological shift from paedobaptist to Baptist was more than a conversation about whether to baptize infants, it was also a statement about the nature of faith and the role of Christian experience.

Redstone association. When the Campbells were immersed in 1812, they had no intention of joining the Baptists.5 In 1848, as he reflected on his history, Campbell remembered that he had “no idea of uniting with the Baptists more than with the Moravians or the mere Independents.”6 Campbell did not consider himself a Baptist simply because he was immersed. Nevertheless, the transformation of the Brush Run church from paedobaptism to believer’s immersion was a cause célèbre in that region of the frontier.

Matthew Luce was a member of the Redstone Baptist Association in western Pennsylvania. Apparently through his influence and in the light of the prominence of the Campbells, Alexander was invited as one of three to speak at the Association’s Sunday worship on September 6, 1812. His lesson, the minutes note, was “of very uncommon length.”7 Campbell then began to speak for Baptist congregations “for sixty miles around” and “they all pressed [him] to join their Redstone Association.”8

While neither Campbell nor Brush Run are mentioned in the minutes of the Association in 1813 or 1814, in 1815 the Brush Run Church presented itself for membership into the Redstone Baptist Association and was accepted. The Minutes of 1815 read succinctly: “Likewise a letter was received, making a similar request [for union to this Association], from a church at Brush Run; —which was also granted.”9 The next year the Brush Run church is listed as a member of the Association having baptized four, dismissed ten and comprising a total membership of twenty-six. Alexander Campbell delivered his controversial “Sermon on the Law” at this 1816 meeting,10 and Thomas Campbell penned the “circular letter” on the doctrine of the trinity that accompanied the minutes.11 It

5The history of the relationship between Baptists and Reformers has been pioneered by two researchers: Errett Gates, The Early Relation and Separation of Baptists and Disciples (Chicago: Christian Century, 1904), and E. Roberts-Thomson, Baptists and Disciples of Christ (London: Carey Kingsgate, n.d.).6Alexander Campbell, “Anecdotes, Incidents and Facts,” Millennial Harbinger (1848), p. 344. 7Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 4-6, 1812, p. 6.8Campbell, “Anecdotes,” p. 344.9Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 1-3, 1815, p. 5. 10The sermon was reprinted by Campbell in Millennial Harbinger (1846), pp. 493-521.11Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, August 30-September 1, 1816, pp. 3, 7.

appears, then, that despite Campbell’s original intention to remain aloof of Baptist associations,12 he nevertheless joined one.

However, his relationship with the Redstone Association was immediately strained by his “Sermon on the Law.” In fact, some brought charges against Campbell and the Brush Run church in the 1817 Association meeting (e.g., their undestanding of the relationship of Old and New Testaments). Yet, he not only functioned as the clerk of the 1817 Association meeting, but also authored the circular letter of the Redstone minutes for 1817. Though Campbell was questioned at the association meeting, the attendees were “fully satisfied” with his explanations and appointed him to preach the introductory sermon at the 1818 meeting.13 The names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell appear often in the minutes from 1819-1823.

Mahoning association. Over time, however, the tensions in the Redstone Association grew until it became necessary for Campbell to remove himself from the Brush Run church in order for him to save it and himself from embarrassment. In 1846, Campbell referred to his time with the Redstone Association as a “seven year’s war.”14 At the same time the Mahoning Baptist Association of the Western Reserve, formed in 1820, invited Campbell to address their 1822 meeting.15 He was well received and in the light of their evident theological harmony, Campbell decided to leave the Redstone Association and join the Mahoning.

The occasion of this decision was a move within the Redstone Association to oust Campbell and the Brush Run church at the September 1823 meeting. This would have been particularly embarrassing to Campbell because he intended to debate the Presbyterian MacCalla that fall. The debate assumed that both parties were representatives in good standing with their denominations.16 As a consequence, Alexander Campbell along with about thirty other members received permission from the Brush Run church to plant a church in Wellsburg and Thomas Campbell was appointed an elder in the Brush Run church. The Wellsburg church then joined the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.

Campbell had “checkmated his opponents in the [Redstone] Association,” and while he was present at the Redstone meeting of 1823, he was not a messenger of the Brush Run

12Alexander Campbell, “Address to the Public,” Christian Baptist, September 6, 1824, p. 37: “I did not at first contemplate forming any connection with the Regular Baptist Association called ‘the Redstone’ as the perfect independency of the church and the pernicious tendency of human creeds and terms of communion were subjects to me of great concern.”13Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, (September 2-4, 1817), pp. 5-16.14Millennial Harbinger (1846), p. 493.15Millennial Harbinger (1848), p. 523.16Campbell’s challenge in the 1820 Walker debate was “I feel disposed to meet any Pedo-baptist minister of any denomination, of good standing in his party.” Debate on Christian Baptism Between Mr. John Walker, A Minister of the Secession, and Alexander Campbell, 2nd ed. (Pittsburgh: Eichbaum and Johnston, 1822), p. 141.

church because he was no longer a member there. 17 The Brush Run church was received that year—and it was noted that they had dismissed thirty-two members during the past year. Alexander and Thomas Campbell, however, both preached that Sunday of the meeting, and Alexander Campbell was still chosen—among others—to conduct some “circular” meetings for the Redstone Association.18

During this time, while not in total agreement with all Baptist ideologies—not surprising since the Baptists themselves were not in total agreement with each other—Campbell saw himself as united with the Baptist denomination. As late as 1826 Campbell declared:

I and the church with which I am connected are in “full communion” with the Mahoning Baptist Association, Ohio; and, through them, with the whole Baptist society in the United States; and I do intend to continue in connexion with this people so long as they will permit me to say what I believe, to teach what I am assured of, and to censure what is amiss in their views and practices. I have no idea of adding to the catalogue of new sects.19

Nevertheless, in that same year (1826), the Redstone Baptist Association refused to receive the letter of the Brush Run church at their annual meeting.20 In 1824 they had resolved “that this Association have no fellowship with the Brush Run church.” Since 1824 the Brush Run church was not a received member of the association,21 and in 1825 the Brush Run church does not appear on the list of received churches in the association minutes. The 1826 minutes read that “a memorial from several persons at Brush Run, was presented for consideration which was postponed until next meeting of the Association.”22 The Redstone Association was clear that it did not wish to have any fellowship with the Campbells and the Brush Run church.

Separation from the Baptists. As a result of the action of the Redstone Baptist Association, we may date the initial separation of the Baptists from the self-stylled Reformers of the Stone-Campbell Movement in 1826, perhaps even 1824. But this was

17Richardson, Memoirs, 2:69-70n, provides a copy of the dismissal letter dated August 31, 1823: “Be it known to all whom it may concern, that we have dismissed the following brethren in good standing with us, to constitute a church of Christ at Wellsburg, namely: Alexander Campbell.”18Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 5-7, 1823, pp. 3-4.19Campbell, “Reply to ‘T. T.’,” Christian Baptist, February 6, 1826, p. 146. Also, see “To an Independent Baptist,” Christian Baptist, May 1, 1826, p. 202, where Campbell explains the meaning of “full communion”: “All that I intend by the phrase is, that I will unite with any Baptist society in the United States, in any act of social worship; such as prayer, praise, or breaking bread in commemoration of the Lord’s death, if they confess the one Lord, the one faith, the one hope, and the one baptism: provided always, that, as far as I can judge, they piously and morally conform to their profession.”20Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 1-3, 1826, p. 3: “This memorial demanded (in brief) a restoration to the fellowship of this Association.”21Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 3-5, 1824, p. 3.22Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 2-4, 1825, p. 3.

an action against a particular church and did not reflect a widespread disassociation of the Baptists from the Reformers.

It was the Beaver Baptist Association of Pennsylvania that initiated the first formal separation between Baptists and Reformers when they excluded both Campbell and the Mahoning Baptist Association from their fellowship because “the Mahoning Association disbelieve and deny many of the doctrines of Holy Scripture.”23 Four churches left the Mahoning Association and joined the Beaver Association because it was filled with “damnable heresy.”24 They listed eight errors:

1. They, the Reformers, maintain that there is no promise of salvation without baptism.

2. That baptism should be administered to all who say they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, without examination on any other point.

3. That there is no direct operation of the Holy Spirit on the mind prior to baptism.

4. That baptism procures the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

5. That the Scriptures are the only evidence of interest in Christ.

6. That obedience places it in God’s power to elect to salvation.

7. That no creed is necessary for the church but the Scriptures as they stand.

8. That all baptized persons have the right to administer the ordinance of baptism.

As Gates notes, “these resolutions against the Reformers were copied widely in Baptist papers with commendation.” 25 Tate’s Creek Baptist Association added four more charges:

1. That there is no special call to the ministry.

2. That the law given by God to Moses is abolished.

3. That experimental religion is enthusiasm. And,

23Alexander Campbell, “The Beaver Anathema,” Christian Baptist, March 1, 1830, p. 200.24Campbell, “Beaver Anathema,” p. 292. The four churches were Youngstown, Palmyra, Achor and Salem (total of sixty-two members). See also Minutes of the Beaver Baptist Association, August 20-22, 1829, 2: “We deeply deplore their state, and feel constrained to warn our brethren in other parts against them: believing that they have departed from the faith and order of the Gospel Church.”25Gates, Baptists and Disciples, p. 92.

4. That there is no mystery in the Scriptures. 26

The publication of the Beaver anathemas encouraged other Baptist Associations to imitate the Beaver Association. In 1830, the Kentucky Associations of Franklin, North District, Tate’s Creek, Boone’s Creek, Elkhorn, and Bracken reproduced the anathemas and excluded the Reformers from their fellowship. Between 1829-1831, Baptists in Kentucky lost 9,580 members to the Reformers27 and half their churches.28

In that same year, the Redstone Association was asked to supply some details concerning the exclusion of the Brush Run church from their fellowship. The minutes of 1830 date this exclusion as occurring in 1824 though those minutes note the “indefinite” character of that exclusion. Yet, it was unanimously resolved at the 1830 meeting:

we now farther state, that their exclusion was on account of being erroneous doctrine [sic], maintaining, namely, the essential derivation and inferiority of the true and proper Deity of Christ and the Spirit; that faith in Christ is only a belief of historical facts, recorded in the Scriptures, rejecting and deriding what is commonly called christian experience; that there is no operation of the Spirit on hearts of men, since the days of Pentecost, &c.” 29

While baptism was not an explicit issue in 1824, the nature of faith, Christian experience and the work of the Holy Spirit were intimately connected in Campbell’s theology, and his views were well publicized in the first editions of the Christian Baptist (begun in 1823). The theological reasons for the separation between Baptist Associations and the Reformers in 1830 may be reduced to a matrix of issues involving the nature of saving faith, the role of Christian experience and the function of baptism. This is the essence of the Redstone exclusion and the Beaver anathemas. Yet, the distinction between the Reformers and the Regular Baptists on this matrix was present from the time of Campbell’s immersion in 1812, and it led to their eventual separation in 1830. That same year the Mahoning Baptist Association dissolved itself despite Campbell’s objections so that Campbell now had no formal relationship with any Baptist society.

Campbell and the Virginia Baptists

The relationship between Alexander Campbell and the Virginia Baptists provides an illustration of the theological forces that produced their separation. In the fall of 1825, Campbell visited eastern Virginia and met two of Virginia’s most distinguished Baptist ministers: Robert B. Semple (1769-1831), the eminent historian of Virginia Baptists and President of Columbia College in Washington, D.C., and Andrew Broaddus (1770-1848), a prominent Virginia Baptist minister. While with them Campbell preached at several Baptist churches, gained a few subscriptions to the Christian Baptist and opened a

26Ibid., p. 93.27Robert G. Torbet, A History of the Baptists, 3rd ed. (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 1963), p. 275.28H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), p. 377.29Minutes of the Redstone Baptist Association, September 3-5, 1830, p. 5.

“channel of communication between” himself and these prominent Baptist ministers. While skeptical, Semple and Broaddus—as older ministers—hoped that “by paternal treatment, and a free, full and candid interchange of views, Mr. Campbell might be brought to harmonize cordially with the Baptist denomination—a consummation which they fervently desired.”30 Nevetheless, Semple and Broaddus both came to oppose him, and Broaddus moderated the Dover Association (Virginia) meeting which excluded the Reformers from their fellowship in 1832. What prompted this transition from openness and paternalistic forbearance to excommunication? I think the answer to this question may help us to understand the fundamental theological causes for the separation of Baptists from the Reformers.31

Campbell’s early essays on Christian experience. Besides his attacks on clericalism, nothing came under more severe criticism in the first volume of the Christian Baptist than the popular notion of “experimental religion” or “Christian experience.” In addition to initiating a nine essay series on the work of the Holy Spirit,32 Campbell directly attacked “experimental religion.” In one of his first “addresses” to the readers of the Christian Baptist he responds to the charge that he denies “experimental religion.”33 He came to discover, as he says later, “experimental religion” is “the very soul of the popular system.”34 Campbell, through the mouth of a friend, defined the popular notion of “experimental religion” as denoting: “amongst most of the populars, a certain mental experience to becoming a christian, an exercise of mind, a process through which a person must pass before he can esteem himself a true christian, and until we know from his recital of it that he has been the subject of it, we cannot esteem him a christian.”35

Experimental religion, then, refers to that experience of the sinner which assures him that he is regenerate and produces faith in him, and it is the testimony of this experience which assures others of his regenerate status. Thus, regeneration produces faith, and the testimony of that regenerate experience is the basis for one’s acceptance into the Christian community. Campbell believed that this “popular belief of a regeneration

30J. B. Jeter, Sermons and Other Writings of the Rev. Andrew Broaddus with a Memoir of His Life (New York: Lewis Colby, 1852), p. 25.31The Reformers did not separate from the Baptists, but the Baptists excluded the Reformers. Torbet, History of the Baptists, p. 274: “In the eventual separation of the ‘Reform’ element from the Baptist ranks, the latter were the agressors. It was they who initiated action to exclude the followers of Campbell. When the excluded body was the larger, the Baptists handled it by withdrawing fellowship from them, as in the case of the North District Association in Kentucky in 1829. The first association to take formal action against the Reformers was the Redstone of Pennsylvania in 1825-26.”32Campbell began his series with “Essays on the Work of the Holy Spirit in the Salvation of Men,” Christian Baptist, August 2, 1824, pp. 10-14. The last essay appeared in Christian Baptist, April 4, 1825, pp. 168-72.33Alexander Campbell, “Address to the Readers of the Christian Baptist, No. IV,” Christian Baptist, March 1, 1824, p. 144.34Alexander Campbell, “Our Essay on Experimental Religion,” Christian Baptist, May 3, 1824, p. 196.35Ibid., p. 146.

previous to faith...is replete with mischief” because it entails that “a man must become a desponding, trembling infidel, before he can become a believer.”36

Popular preachers, Campbell observed, utilize a kind of “descriptive preaching” which models the kind of testimony that will assure others of their regeneration. It is the kind of preaching where the preacher “tells the people his own story; that is, the history of his own regeneration.” This often included stories about “visions and revelations,” or voices heard in the dark night of despair. In response, Campbell pled for a return to the “written word” alone, “to open your Bibles and to hearken to the voice of God, which is the voice of reason. God now speaks to us only by his word.” 37

While Campbell was criticized, among other things, for denying the necessity of the spiritual birth, the critical issue regarding “experimental religion” was the source and basis of assurance. He was concerned that assurance should be rooted in the reading, examination and practice of the written word of God.38 Assurance, or good feelings, must arise from the conviction that the grace of God has appeared to all, and when the gospel is believed, that grace is received. The gospel is “glad tidings” because it proclaims the grace of God that Jesus is the Christ and to all who believe and submit to his Lordship.39 Consequently, the “apostles did not command men to be baptized into their own experience, but into the faith then delivered to the saints.”40

According to Campbell, the phrase “experimental religion” denotes “a religion founded upon experiment, or proved by experiment.” He does not intend to deny “Christian experience.” He believes “that every one that is born of God feels as well as believes, hopes and fears, loves and abhors, rejoices and trembles, and that they are conscious of all these. . . . And I contend that, without these, a man is blind and cannot see far, and dead while he lives.”41 However, this is not what is usually meant by “Christian experience.” Rather, the popular understanding is a regenerative experience that produces faith; it is an experience that produces a subjective sense of God’s forgiveness.

Campbell believed this was a dubious basis for assurance. This ground of assurance actually creates doubt because the believer is “distressed to know whether his faith is the fruit of regeneration, or whether it is mere ‘historic faith’,” or is “tormented” because “he has not found the infallible signs in himself of being a true believer.”42 He argued that Christian experience is the experience of a Christian, and that one is a Christian because he believes the testimony of Scripture and trusts in Jesus Christ as his Savior. Assurance,

36Ibid., p. 148.37Ibid., pp. 147, 149.38Ibid., p. 195.39Alexander Campbell, “Essay IX,” Christian Baptist, April 4, 1825, pp. 168-70.40Alexander Campbell, “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things.” No. IV,” Christian Baptist, June 6, 1825, p. 221.41Alexander Campbell, “The Baptist Recorder,” Christian Baptist, May 1, 1826, pp. 210-11.42Alexander Campbell, “Conscience—No. II,” Christian Baptist, February 6, 1826, p. 150.

then, has an objective basis in the witness of the written word of God. “The first christians,” Campbell writes, “derived their joys from an assurance that the gospel was true. Metaphysical christians derive theirs not from the truth of the gospel, but because they have been regenerated, or discover something in themselves that entitles them to thank God that they are not as the publican.”43

Campbell believed that the “experimental” approach to religion actually devalued the word and holiness of life. Instead of seeking the reformation of sinners, experimental religion only sought the narrative of one’s conversion. Consequently, popular religion produced experiences, but not reformed lives. Campbell was more interested in a method that would produce holy lives rather than exciting experiences. He made this point to Broaddus:

The greatest objection which I have to the present order of things is, because it so obviously fails in producing those joyful experiences of the love of God and the hope of heaven, which so universally and so forcibly appeared in all the sincere converts made by the first promulgers of the gospel. For unless the peace of God rule in the heart, and the love of God be diffused within us, I place no value in any profession of the religion of the Messiah. 44

In 1833, Campbell recalled his motives in attacking the popular understanding of “Christian experience” which produced the odium theolgicum. He attacked that “opinion” because he saw in it “an insuperable hindrance to spirituality, holiness and happiness.” The expectation of a “Christian experience” is a “cancer” which causes “thousands” to rely “upon some ‘work of grace’ experienced twenty years ago—upon some pangs, and fear, and calms, called regeneration” rather than a faith dedicated to a holy life before God.45 Feeling—the experience of the Spirit and his workings on the affections of the heart—is the “effect, not the cause of faith and of true religion,” so that Campbell calls upon “men first to believe, then to feel, and then to act.”46

Response of Semple and Broaddus. Semple’s first public response to Campbell came in the form of a letter to the Christian Baptist dated December 6, 1825. The letter would have been written shortly after their first acquaintance earlier that fall. Semple was most concerned about Campbell’s demeanor or tone, but he also believed that some of Campbell’s “opinions” were “dangerous.” Among other things, Semple specifically noted that Campbell’s views have the effect of “exploding experimental religion in its common acceptance.” Indeed, Semple feared that if Campbell’s principles were put “fully into practice” that “a new sect had sprung up, radically different from the Baptists, as they

43Ibid., p. 151.44Alexander Campbell, “Hints in Reply to Andrew Broaddus,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), p. 232.45Alexander Campbell, “Address to the Virginia Baptists: Part II,” Millennial Harbinger (1833), p. 84.46Alexander Campbell, “Incidents on a Tour to the South,” Millennial Harbinger (1839), p. 11.

now are.”47 Semple believed that there would be “much less ground for fellowship with such a sect, than with Presbyterians, Methodists, or even evangelical Episcopalians.”48

While Semple devoted significant attention to Campbell’s abrogation of the Old Testament,49 his greatest concern was what he called Campbell’s “new gospel” by which he meant Campbell’s rejection of experimental religion. Unlike Campbell, Semple was not taught in his youth to “seek for experimental religion, or the attainment of the Holy Spirit” because it was a “fanaticism inculcated by the enthusiasts of the day.” But Semple himself had an experience of the Spirit that changed his perspective. He offers his own testimony that the “the Holy Spirit begins, and carries on, and finally completes the work of salvation” in such a way that “without the Spirit the word would be a dead letter” and that “thousands” have gone to “glory without the word” because the “Spirit made direct revelations to their souls.” 50

Semple was concerned that Campbell had reduced faith and repentance to mere historic belief and external reformation, to a “simple act of the mind” rather than a trust in the Savior through the work of the Spirit directly on the human heart. Similarly, he thought Campbell had reduced repentance to external reformation as if repentance is not so much a matter of the heart as it was a matter of behavior. These perceptions came to critical mass when Campbell began to explain his understanding of “baptism for the remission of sins.” Campbell, according to Semple, had reduced the whole of conversion to an external act. Regeneration was no longer an inward change of the heart, but an external bodily act the believer performs for himself.51

While Semple was the elder statesman of the Virginia Baptists, it was Andrew Broaddus who took the lead in the discussion with Campbell. Indeed, he was at first sympathetic with Campbell’s reformatory concerns. Of all the Baptists in Virginia, his biographer notes, “none so sincerely and deeply sympathized” with Campbell’s reformation efforts than Broaddus.52 Broaddus himself wrote a twelve-article series from 1828 to 1830 entitled “Essays on Reformation” in the Viriginia Baptist periodical the Religious Herald. In those articles he criticized human titles for preachers, the necessity of an inward call for preaching authority, neglect of practical preaching, the excess of allegory among

47Robert B. Semple, “Letter,” Christian Baptist, April 3, 1826, p. 178.48Robert B. Semple, “To Silas M. Noel,” Christian Baptist, April 7, 1828, p. 208.49Robert B. Semple, “Bishop R. B. Semple to Alexander Campbell,” Millennial Harbinger (1831), pp. 8-10, and “Letter from R. B. Semple. No. III.,” Millennial Harbinger (1831), pp. 193-97. Broaddus, however, agreed with Campbell; see “Paulinus to the Editor of the ‘Christian Baptist,’ Wisheth Grace, Mercy, and Peace,” Christian Baptist, September 7, 1826, pp. 28-29, and “Paulinus to the Editor of the Christian Baptist,” Christian Baptist, October 1, 1827, pp. 60-61.50Robert B. Semple, “Letter,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), pp. 133-34.51These concerns are reflected in the seven questions he posed for Campbell as a way of clarifiying Campbell’s views; compare Robert B. Semple, “Letter,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), pp. 351-52.52Jeter, Memoirs, p. 25.

preachers, and the neglect of external means in bringing sinners to faith.53 It is this last point that Broaddus emphasized in several articles. For example, he defended the use of invitations and exhortations because divine sovereignty does not rule out human responsibility, and that the gospel was a “message of obligation” as well as “message of grace.”54 Further, religion, he argued, was “not chiefly in the excitement of passion (feelings).”55

Broaddus always recognized that many had taken the “conversion narrative” to an extreme. For example, in a letter to A. C. Dempsey in January 1843, Broaddus complains:

Some “preaching an experience,” have encumbered the subject with a mass of extraneous matter. There must be a “long spell...perhaps a state of despair...he catch not too soon at the promise of salvation...earnest praying...unwearied perseverance...This plan, it must be acknowledged, is discouraging enough!—moreover, it tends to cherish a legal spirit; and what is worse, it is contrary to the tenor of the gospel...Now, let us suppose a person anxiously inquiring, what he shall do to be saved? Shall we tell him to lie in the use of the means, and wait God’s time?—that is, a time when he shall hear some voice, or feel some impulse telling him that his sins are pardoned, and he is accepted?...Let him, indeed, not be told to wait yonder in the use of the means; let him be called to come straightway to the Redeemer.”56

Broaddus objected to any “plan which puts prayer in the place of a confiding faith in the Savior.”57 Moreover, he cautioned against the excess of some who have justifying faith, but yet do not claim that promise because they are “waiting for some manifestation.” Nevertheless, he rejected any idea that faith might be reduced to a historic belief of facts, and this was the heart of his difficulties with Campbell.

Broaddus could agree with Campbell that faith “signifies the believing of a fact or a statement upon testimony,” but he insisted, “the faith of the gospel includes more than this...It is not a mere assent of the mind, but an action of the heart; not only is the understanding exercised, but the affections are called forth.”.58

53Melanchton, “Essays on Reformation,” Religious Herald, July 11, 1828 through March 26, 1830. “Melanchton” is Broaddus (cf. “Paulinus Again,” Christian Baptist, July 6, 1829, pp. 279-83).54Melanchton, “Essays on Reformation—No. II,” Religious Herald, December 5, 1828, p. 189. Thus Broaddus encouraged the use of “external means” such as reading and hearing the Word and attending public worship because “God is the great agent, and usually works by means, but ties himself to none, and sometimes operates without them” (Memoirs, p. 250).55Broaddus, “Essays on Reformation—No. V,” Religious Herald, March 20, 1829, p. 41.56Broaddus, Memoirs, pp. 363-66.57Ibid., p. 367.58Ibid., pp. 342-45.

For Broaddus this meant that “there is a living, divine agent, giving life and energy to the word, and actually operating on the soul,” and this is one of the “glorious peculiarities of the religion of Jesus.”59 This was the critical point for Broaddus. It was a matter of “deep practical importance” as well as “the matter of deeper interest and greater importance” upon which Semple and Broaddus both agreed. There is a “necessity of a present divine influence from the Holy Spirit for the renewal of the soul of man in the image of Christ.”60 For Broaddus the critical question is from where do the “holy exercises” of the heart arise? Is it merely the belief of historical testimony or is it the “supernatural, regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit”? 61 Campbell’s reduction of faith to the former tended to deny the latter, and this was not acceptable to either Broaddus or Semple.

Broaddus, under the name “Christianos” in the Religious Herald, speaks plainly: “I think that in regard to baptism, and in regard to human ability independent of Divine influence, you have gone to a dangerous extreme...to make mere outside Christians.”62 Thus, in the aftermath of their controversy, Broaddus clearly connects Campbell’s view of baptism with his understanding of divine influence. The two are intertwined.

Extra on the remission of sins. On July 5, 1830, Campbell published his first Millennial Harbinger Extra entitled “Remission of Sins.”63 There Campbell fully displayed, much to the dismay of his Baptist friends, his understanding that baptism is the “Christian Institution for the remission of sins,” that is, “the forgiveness of sins through immersion into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, to every proper subject.” Campbell’s central point is that this institution offers the believer “the knowledge of the remission of sins” so that they may have “clear, and full, and perfect remission of sins.”64

The perspective’s importance lies in its rebuttal of experimental religion. The horror of experimental religion, according to Campbell, was that one had to seek a “special interest” in the grace of God, a sign that God had regenerated the seeker. Baptism, however, provides an answer to this search—it is God’s clear, objective testimony concerning the remission of sins. Responding to Semple’s passionate testimony of his own experience, Campbell writes:

Your faith in God’s favor was established before you bowed your knee! The difficulty with you was a special interest in it. This I know, for my experience was like yours in this particular. I desired to feel a special interest, and for this I prayed. But mark this, brother Semple, if you and I had been taught that God’s philanthropy equally embraced all, and that all to whom the word of this salvation was sent, were equally warranted to appropriate it to themselves, this concern for a special interest never could have

59Paulinus, “Paulinus to the Editor” (1826), p. 30.60Paulinus, “Paulinus to the Editor” (1827), p. 62.61Paulinus, “On the Influence of the Holy Spirit in the Salvation of Men,” Christian Baptist, February 5, 1828, pp. 154-56.62Christianos, “To the Ed. of the Millennial Harbinger,” Religious Herald, January 7, 1831, p. 1. Chistianos is identified as Broaddus in Campbell, “Hints,” p. 229.63Alexander Campbell, “Remission of Sins,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), pp. 1-31.64Ibid., pp. 1-2.

originated...No one in the primitive age ever made such a prayer as you and I were taught to make; no one languished then for a day or a week to be born again. All were commanded to reform, and instantly all who obeyed received forgiveness of sins.65

The only “special interest” that one needs is the “written word.”66 It offers us the testimony of God’s gospel facts, commands and promises. There is no need for any other “special interest.” Rather, in order to attain a “knowledge of the remission of sins,” the penitent believer simply needs to receive the Christian institution that was designed for that purpose.

The obedience to the command to be baptized, as an act of faith, “puts it in [the believer’s] power to have an assurance of their salvation from which they would necessarily be excluded if no such act of obedience was enjoined.”67 This act of faith is the means by which believers were pardoned and came into “actual possession” of the forgiveness of sins. In this sense, baptism has an instrumental function because it is rooted in the instrumental character of faith. Baptism is an objective, sensible act of faith through which God provides and assures us of the remission of sins.

Campbell, of course, does not mean to say that baptism is the fullness of conversion as if it is without a change of heart. His point is that while a change of heart is necessary it is not necessarily equivalent to a change of state. A changed heart leads to a changed state when the gospel is obeyed, and immersion is “that act by which our state is changed.”68

Up until the publication the “Extra” on the “Remission of Sins,” Broaddus was kindly disposed to Campbell’s reformation though he distrusted him on the nature of experimental religion. Indeed, it was the “Extra” that pushed Broaddus into the opposition camp and clarified for him Campbell’s peculiar understanding of the relationship between experimental religion and baptism. His biographer noted this change:

Mr. Broaddus was one of the last to relinquish the hope of reclaiming Mr. Campbell from what he deemed the path of error...but the appearance of the Millennial Harbinger Extra, in which his peculiar and objectionable views were more fully disclosed, put an end to all his hopes....when the gospel scheme of a sinner’s justification was set aside, and the influence of the Holy Spirit before baptism was denied, or treated of in an equivocal and unsatisfactory manner, he felt that the time of forbearance and fraternization had past. 69

Consequently, it was the relationship between the work of the Holy Spirit and baptism that demanded Broaddus’s opposition.

65Alexander Campbell, “Letter to R. B. Semple—No. II,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), p. 179.66Ibid., p. 180.67Campbell, “Remission of Sins,” p. 12.68Ibid., pp. 10-13.69Ibid., p. 28.

In a letter to John Leland, dated April 10, 1832, Broaddus identifies the same two critical points that generated his opposition to Campbell—though he had previously intended to assist him in his reform movement.

In the early part of Mr. C.’s career, I felt disposed to greet his labors, and, saving his asperity, to bring my little efforts to his aid. The idea of Reformation, as it regarded the whole Christian World, was pleasing...But alas! Mr. C., I thought, soon appeared to be engaged in digging up some of the foundation-stones of the spiritual temple; & I was obliged to stop and remonstrate and oppose. To his view of baptism, as the only medium of actual pardon, justification, sanctification, reconciliation, adoption and salvation from the guilt and power of sin—and to his view of divine influence as consisting merely in the moral influence of the word, I would not consent. 70

These two issues were the subject of a fifty-six page pamphlet which replied to Campbell’s Extra.71 Broaddus boiled Campbell’s problem down to a single sentence. “The great error” of Campbell’s baptismal theology, he wrote, consists in “an undervaluing of the exercises of the heart, and attaching to external conduct or action, the importance which really belongs to those exercises.” Campbell takes what belongs to a living faith, that is, “the office of justifying the soul [instrumentally] before God,” and “ascribes that privilege, and indeed, almost every other, appertaining to a believer, to the outward, bodily act of baptism.”72 Campbell, according to Broaddus, reduces conversion and regeneration to an external act and consequently undermines both the instrumentality of justifying faith and the work of the Holy Spirit which produces this living faith.

For Broaddus it is through a “living faith (not immersion nor any outward or bodily act)...by which we pass from a state of condemnation, into a state of favor and acceptance with God.” Indeed, the knowledge of this living faith is derived from “the existence of new exercises of heart.”73 Holiness is a matter of the heart, and is not achieved by an external act of immersion. While a believer is “declaratively” or “visibly sanctified” through that external act, the “moral change,” the “change of the heart, mind, or spirit” does not “depend for their existence on the act of immersion.” A person becomes Christ’s when his “heart is really given up to him” or “with a holy change of heart,” not when he is immersed, and this “change of heart” is the “effect of divine influence.”74

According to Broaddus, Campbell ascribes to baptism—an “outward bodily action”—what “essentially belongs to an exercise of the heart.”75 Campbell fails to distinguish between the internal and external aspects of religion, and confuses the benefits of an

70Broaddus, Memoirs, pp. 289-90.71Broaddus, A Reply to Mr. A. Campbell’s M. Harbinger, Extra on Remission of Sins, Etc. with an Appendix, Remarks on Mr. C.’s View of Divine Influence in the Salvation of Men (Richmond, Va.: Religious Herald, 1831).72Ibid., pp. 5-6.73Ibid., p. 8.74Ibid., pp. 11-15.75Ibid., p. 17.

internal living faith with the external act of baptism. This is the essential difference between Campbell and Broaddus:

Let me now take occasion to say, that on the point in question, there would probably be no material difference between us, were it not that Mr. Campbell, in his zeal for external conversion, or to make it only a thing by the by; or, in other words, that he appears almost to disregard the line of distinction between the visible kingdom of Christ, and the power of that kingdom (or reign) within us. Mark well! I do not wish to separate, but to distinguish between them...’We come to Christ by baptism.’ Yes; but this is not the only way. We first come to him spiritually by a living faith; and then externally and visibly by being ‘baptized into this death.’76

For Broaddus, the act of faith itself, as an effect of the work of the Spirit known through the exercises of the heart, is the “instrument of our justification.”77 The “act of faith itself, without the aid of any adjunct, is that which places us upon the ground of justification with God . . . no external act is interposed between the act of believing and the imputation of righteousness” Baptism does not function in an instrumental role in justification, but it does function declaratively. It is a “declarative justification.” It is an “outward sign and declaration that the believer has experienced” the blessing of the remission of sins.78

However, what is the evidence of this “living faith” as an instrument of justification? Baptism is an external declaration of this blessing, but it only offers an external assurance of something that is actually known internally. Baptism itself is insufficient as a means of assurance. Rather, assurance is drawn from examining oneself “through the influence of the Holy Spirit, by comparing the exercises of the heart, and the fruits of the life, with the truths exhibited in the word of God.” But Campbell, according to Broaddus, believes that no matter what “change [believers] may have experienced,” they are “unpardoned, unjustified, unsanctified...and that only baptism can” change their state.79 There is a

spiritual regeneration—a divine birth—a real change of principles—effected by Divine influence, through the instrumentality of the word...that internally we “put on Christ” by faith as well as by the cultivation of every gracious temper of heart; and are in Christ” by a living union...while externally we put him on by baptism, and a conformity of life to his holy example and injunctions: and thus, a person is really Christ’s, when his heart is yielded up to him; though not formally recognized as his, till he has been “baptized into Christ.80

Broaddus boils the dispute down to a definition of saving faith, and offers this description:

76Christianos, “Criticism Again,” Religious Herald, June 25, 1830, pp. 97-98. This article is reproduced in Campbell, “Remission of Sins,” pp. 18-22.77Broaddus, Reply, p. 17.78Ibid., pp. 19-24.79Ibid., pp. 35,43.80 Ibid., p. 43.

this evangelic faith consists in a hearty belief of the gospel method of salvation, —involving a cordial reception of Christ, and an unreserved dependence on him, as the appointed Saviour....This faith, however is accompanied, by certain exercises of mind, which, in the nature of the case, are necessary to its existence. We cannot perceive the fitness and glory of Christ’s character as the Savior, without a conviction of our own sinful and needy condition. We cannot cordially receive the Saviour, without repentance and abhorrence of sin; nor shall we ever trust in him, until we renounce all vain dependence. Hence the necessity of these exercises of mind as inculcated in the Scriptures; exercises (I may add) which are witnessed by the experience of every vital christian.81

Sometimes these “exercises” are evidenced gradually, sometimes instantaneously; sometimes gently, sometimes almost violently, but their “circumstances” do not “affect the essence of the matter.” Broaddus fears, however, that many, through a “mistaken calculation,” delay their dependence upon God because they wait for a “Divine influence.” Rather than “waiting for Divine influence,” they are “resisting that force of truth which they already feel.” Broaddus’s advice is: “Awake and repent! Bow down and pray. Arise and believe!” Though they do not possess “saving faith,” they have a measure of “incipient faith” and God can give them effectual faith as they submit to him. “Then,” Broaddus declares, “we would say, ‘Arise and be baptized;’ and in the liquid, emblematic grave of Jesus, ‘wash away thy sins’.”82

Campbell’s response to Broaddus’ Reply was friendly but forceful. While still “benevolently disposed to him, and still willing to fraternize with him under Jesus Christ,”83 he rejected the idea that the Baptist concern about “living faith” was primarily a matter of “heart” versus “head” religion. He recalled that twenty years ago (1811) he would have agreed with every word of Broaddus’ pamphlet, but it was the “cold heartedness” of Christians who had once offered the testimony of “Christian experience” that created doubts in his mind.

Our greatest objection to the systems which we oppose is their impotency on the heart—Alas! what multitudes of prayerless, saintless, Christless, joyless hearts, have crowded christianity out of the congregations by their experiences before baptism! They seem to have had all their religion before they professed it. They can relate no experience since baptism comparable to that professed before this “mutual pledge” was tendered and received.

It was the indubitable proofs of the superabundance of this fruit which caused me first to suspicion the far famed tree of evangelical orthodoxy. That cold heartedness; that stiff and mercenary formality; that tithing of min, anise, and dill; that negligence of mercy, justice, truth, and the love of God, which stalked through the communions of sectarian altars; that apathy and indifference about

81Ibid., p. 46.82Ibid., pp. 46-47.83Campbell, “The Extra Defended: Being an Examination of Mr. A. Broaddus’ ‘Extra Examined,’” Millennial Harbinger Extra 2 (October 10, 1831), p. 2.

‘thus saith the Lord;’ that zeal for human prescriptions; and above all, that willing ignorance of the sayings and doings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, which so generally appeared, first of all created, fostered, and matured my distrust in the reformed systems of evangelical sectaries. 84

Campbell had seen the effect of “Christian experience” and was not pleased with the outcome. But while he rejected the “reformed systems,” he did not reject the “exercises of the hearts.” “We begin with the heart,” Campbell insists, and the heart is the “fons et principium, the fountain and origin of all piety and humanity.” True conversion is heart conversion, and no “mere mental converts” are Christians. A “change of heart necessarily precedes” a change of state.85 There must be a change of heart, but there must also be a devotion to God’s acts. “Immersion, therefore, only regenerates [changes the state of] the believer; but the Holy Spirit promised renews his spirit and temper, creates him anew in knowledge, righteousness and real holiness...Immersion is only the washing of regeneration...but ‘the renewal of the Holy Spirit’ is the entire purification of the heart.”86

Campbell’s complaint, however, is mainly that Broaddus reduces baptism to a “mere external bodily act”87 or a simple “mutual pledge” by which people are received into the visible church. In response, Campbell believes baptism is neither merely external nor merely a pledge. Rather, God is active in baptism accomplishing the promises he has attached to this institution. At bottom, Campbell’s main complaint against Broaddus is that he “gives to baptism no instrumentality at all in the work of salvation.”88 Campbell wants to give baptism the same instrumentality as faith because baptism is itself the exercise of faith.

Consequently, it is not faith as a principle—or as act to itself—that saves, but an exercised faith. “Either a man is justified by stark naked faith alone, or he is justified by faith with its concomitants, adjuncts, or acts.”89 In other words, it is exercised faith, not faith within itself as a mere principle, that justifies. Even Broaddus had defined a saved state as “inseparably connected...with a holy change of heart, or the exercise of that faith which works through love.”90 Campbell only desires that “the exercise of faith be according to the commandment.”91 Living faith is an exercised faith; it is not a “naked faith” for either Campbell or Broaddus. The difference between them is that Broaddus does not want to suspend such an exercise of faith on an “external act,” but Campbell wants to give to baptism the instrumentality of faith. What Broaddus believes must remain wholly “internal” because of the nature of the heart,92 Campbell wants to objectify

84Ibid., pp. 2-3.85Ibid., pp. 3-6.86Ibid., p. 33.87Ibid., p. 11.88Ibid., p. 1.89Ibid., p. 14.90Broaddus, Reply, p. 15.91Campbell, “Extra Defended,” p. 14.92Ibid., pp. 16-17.

in a bodily act of obedience. What Broaddus defines as the exercise of faith—”trusting in Christ, coming to him and receiving him—”93 Campbell locates in the act of immersion.94

Separation. Campbell, despite his disagreements with Semple and Broaddus, nevertheless, esteemed them as Christians and citizens of the kingdom of heaven because together they all “believe the same gospel facts.” They agree not only in the “one faith” of the gospel, that is, the death and resurrection of Jesus for our sins and salvation, but also “one immersion.”95 Campbell wanted to remain in union with them and did not desire a separation. Nevertheless, Semple and Broaddus, among others, led the Dover Baptist Association of Virginia to exclude Reformers from their fellowship. Yet, even in the aftermath of the Dover exclusions in 1832, Campbell pleaded for continued union because they were united on the fundamentals of the faith as represented by the seven ones of Ephesians 4:4-6.

On December 31, 1830, the messengers of eight Baptist churches in the Dover Association met and passed resolutions excluding the Reformers from their fellowship. They divided their accusations into two categories—errors of principle and errors of practice:

In principles, the errors alluded to may be classed under four heads, viz., the denial of the influence of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of man—the substitution of reformation for repentance—the substitution of baptism for conversion, regeneration, or the new birth—and the Pelagian doctrine of the sufficiency of man’s natural powers to effect his own salvation.

In practice, this party goes on to administer baptism in a way radically different from what has been usual among Baptists, and from what we conceive to be the New Testament usage—making no inquiry into the experience or the moral standing of the subjects, and going from church to church with, or without, pastors—urging persons to be immersed, and immersing them—in a manner contrary to good order and propriety96

These resolutions became the basis for the exclusion of the Reformers from the Dover Association in 1832. Indeed, Campbell regards the “Dover Decrees” of exclusion as the “Rubicon” of Baptist-Reformer relations. 97 The Virginia Baptist journal Religious Herald notes many of the “separations” that took place as a consequence of the “Dover Decrees.” For example, the First Baptist Church in Richmond “severed from its body,

93Ibid., p. 37.94Campbell, “Extra Defended,” p. 16.95Alexander Campbell, “Reply to Robert B. Semple,” Millennial Harbinger (1830), p. 135.96Alexander Campbell, “The Times—No. III: The Semple and Broaddus Decrees,” Millennial Harbinger (1831), p. 78.97Alexander Campbell, “The Dover Decree,” Millennial Harbinger (1832), pp. 572-75.

seventy-two of its members on account of their entertaining peculiar sentiments of Alexander Campbell”.98

The particulars of the Dover meeting clearly indicate that the two primary problems the Dover Baptists—Semple and Broaddus in particular—had with the Reformers were connected with the nature of experimental religion and its relationship to baptism. According to the Baptists, Campbell externalized religion through a historical understanding of faith and an objective definition of regeneration through baptism. According to Campbell, Baptists grounded their faith in subjective experience and gave the wrong advice to those who sought God’s mercy—they should say “repent and be baptized,” rather than “repent and pray.” “The whole matter,” Campbell wrote, commenting on the Dover resolutions, “is the denial of their mystic influences of the Holy Spirit, and immersion for the remission of sins.”99

Contemporary Theological Reflection

The question. The fundamental question that plagued frontier Christianity was this: “What is the proof that a believer has had his sins remitted?” Campbell and the Baptists gave two very different answers to that question. Campbell’s answer was faith exercised in immersion, and the Baptist answer was an experiential moment of faith within the subjectivity of the heart.

The Baptists believed Christian experience or experimental religion was that proof. In addition they saw the exercises of the heart” as sufficient proof of one’s pardon, and that a testimony to these spiritual exercises was required before baptism. The proof, then, of pardon came in the form of a “conversion narrative”—a testimony of spiritual experience. Only such a testimony entitled one to the waters of baptism. Baptism, then, was reduced to an external sign of an internal, experimental religion. Thus, baptism lost its urgency and its necessity because, as Henry Keeling, wrote, “the present and future blessings of the gospel are restricted not to the baptized, but to the believing and penitent.”100 Experimental religion assured forgiveness so that baptism was unnecessary for assurance and its meaning had essentially an external significance (e.g., entrance into the visible church).

Campbell, however, believed that baptism was that proof. In response to the question, “Is a believer in Christ not actually in a pardoned state, before he is baptized?” he answered:

Is a man clean before he is washed! When there is only an imaginary or artificial line between Virginia and Pennsylvania, I cannot often tell with ease whether I am in Virginia or in Pennsylvania; but I can always tell when I am in Ohio, however near the line—for I have crossed the Ohio river. And blessed be God! he

98“Of the State of Religion in the Dover Association,” Religious Herald, November 2, 1832, p. 169. Broaddus defends this separation in “Unfair Representation Exposed,” Religious Herald, December 14, 1832, pp. 194-95.99Campbell, “Times—No. III,” p. 82.100Henry Keeling, “Editorial,” Religious Herald, December 12, 1828, p. 195.

has not drawn a mere artificial line between the plantations of nature and of grace. No man has any proof that he is pardoned until he is baptized—And if men are conscious that their sins are forgiven and that they are pardoned before they are immersed, I advise them not to go into the water for they have no need of it. 101

For Campbell, baptism was God’s confirmation of our pardon. It was God’s assurance to us that he had forgiven our sins if we had submitted to baptism as an act of faith in Jesus.

Baptists, then, accused Campbell of undervaluing experimental religion and locating God’s forgiveness in the act of baptism rather than in a living faith. In the Religious Herald, Philander complained that, according to Campbell, a “man may have his views and his heart changed in relation to the Savior, and remain unpardoned . . . no matter how much he believes and loves.”102 Baptists, then, understood Campbell to say that faith and love do not count, but only baptism counts.

Campbell, on the other hand, understood Baptists to reduce baptism to a mere symbol. Indeed, some Baptists claimed exactly that. W. T. Brantly Sr., for example, stated, “immersion in the name of the Trinity, is regarded as nothing more than the figure, the symbol of salvation.”103 Epenetus in the Religious Herald, for example, located the value of baptism merely in its symbolism—it is a symbolic line of demarcation between the visible church and the world. He would not “admit [that] to represent it merely as a symbol is to ‘undervalue it.’ It is a ‘symbol’—a ‘mere symbol’.”104 Campbell, therefore, understood Baptists to say that baptism is a mere addendum to the Christian life, and only faith and love count. Baptism, according to Baptists—in Campbell’s view, counted for nothing.

The relationship between Christian experience and baptism, then, generated the separation of the Baptists from the Reformers. While the Reformers accused Baptists of grounding their assurance in their subjective experiences of the Spirit, the Baptists accused Reformers of reducing Christianity to the external ordinance of baptism. According to the Baptists, the Reformers denied the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the unimmersed, and according to the Reformers, the Baptists denied the work of God in baptism.

Regaining a usable past for the present. One of the significant reasons for studying history is to scour the past for useful strategies in the present. We listen to the past not only for self-understanding but also for guidance into the future. In the present there is a renewed discussion in Churches of Christ about the relationship between Christian

101Alexander Campbell, “Catalogue of Queries—Answered,” Christian Baptist, March 2, 1829, p.197.102Philander, “The Harbinger Extra,” Religious Herald, November 26, 1830, p. 186.103W. T. Brantly Sr., The Columbian Star and Christian Index, April 10, 1830, p. 236.104Epenetus, “Reply to Philander,” Religious Herald, March 25, 1831, p. 45. However, Broaddus rejected the idea that baptism was a “mere outward bodily act” though Campbell found it difficult to see in what way his view went beyond “mere.” Compare Campbell’s “Mr. Broaddus’ ‘Valedictory’,” Millennial Harbinger (1836), pp. 97-98.

experience and baptism, about the work of the Spirit in those not yet baptized, and the role of immersion itself. Much in this present discussion parallels the controversy between Campbell and Broaddus.

CHRISTIAN experience among the unimmersed is examined in three recent articles, all of them originally lectures or sermons delivered in Abilene, Texas during 1996. These have outlined a perspective that takes seriously the “Christian experience” of some unimmersed believers. Mike Cope, for example, related that his encounter with John Scott—a man whose “utter holiness” he could not deny and “full of God’s Spirit”—created a crisis of understanding in him. He came to the conclusion that despite a diverse understanding of baptism, that “these are God’s people, even though they’re not part of my little group.”105 Mark Henderson told how his encounter with an interdenominational prayer group in Boulder, Colorado generated his reassessment of “Christian experience” among the unimmersed. These believers, immersed or unimmersed, were “surrendering to the Lordship of Christ to the best of their ability and understanding.”106 William Banowsky, in a speech at the 1996 Abilene Lectureship, approvingly quoted Earnest Beam from the 1935 Abilene lectureship: “Whether we like it or not, whoever accepts Christ as Lord and gives evidence he is anxious to obey him is your brother in Christ. And happy are you if you have the Holy Spirit and its first fruit which is love, and exercise it toward that brother.”107

Each of these articles, while arguing for Christ-centeredness, gives a high value to the spiritual fruits that are produced in the lives of unimmersed believers. Their approach is primarily focused on receiving those who demonstrate a Christian experience, or a Christian lifestyle, along with a confession that Jesus is Lord as part of God’s family.

Campbell, I am convinced, would not disagree with the gist of these sentiments about the unimmersed.108 In fact, he clearly chooses Christian lifestyle on the part of the unimmersed over an unholy lifestyle on the part of the immersed, saying:

I cannot, therefore, make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven.

Should I find a Padobaptist more giving the preference of my heart is to him that loveth most. Still I will be asked, How do I know that any one loves my Master but by his obedience to his commandments? I answer, In no other way. But mark,

105Mike Cope, “Christians Only—Not the Only Christians,” Wineskins 3, no. 3 (1997): 7.106Mark Henderson, “Tearing Down the Walls,” Wineskins 2, no. 12 (1996): 8.107William S. Banowsky, “The Christ-Centered Church,” Image 12, no. 2 (1996): 27.108See my “Alexander Campbell on Christians Among the Sects,” in Baptism and the Remission of Sins, ed. By David Fletcher (Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1990), pp. 171-202, and Gary Holloway, “Not the Only Christians: Campbell on Exclusivism and Legalism,” Christian Studies 15 (1995-1996): 46-54.

I do not substitute obedience to one commandment, for universal or even for general obedience. And should I see a sectarian Baptist or a Pedobaptist more spiritually-minded, more generally conformed to the requisitions of the Messiah, than one who precisely acquiesces with me in the theory or practice of immersion as I teach, doubtless the former rather than the latter, would have my cordial approbation and love as a Christian. So I judge, and so I feel. It is the image of Christ the Christian looks for and loves and this does not consist in being exact in a few items, but in general devotion to the whole truth as far as known.109

However, Campbell does qualify his statements. First, he emphasizes that his views concerning the unimmersed fall into the category of “opinion.”110 Because there is nothing in Scripture about unimmersed believers, Campbell is not willing to teach authoritatively about destiny of the unimmersed. Yet, he is willing to attribute the fruits of the Spirit in the lives of the unimmersed to the work of God and through a form of theological reasoning conclude that he expects to see them in heavenly glory. Second, Campbell explains that he uses the term “Christian” in an accommodating manner regarding the unimmersed. He calls them “Christians” in the sense that though they may “make the profession wrong” (unimmersed), they nevertheless “live right.”111 The wrong profession puts them at a disadvantage. For example, the unimmersed cannot have the “same certainty” that the immersed have because they have not participated in this ordinance, which God gave to believers for their assurance. Nevertheless, although they do “not enter into all the blessings of the kingdom on earth,” Campbell writes, “ I do fondly expect they may participate in the resurrection of the just.” But Campbell does not refer to the unimmersed as “Christians” in the “strictest biblical import.” 112 Third, Campbell is quite clear that he cannot count the unimmersed as members of the visible church, the kingdom on earth. One of Campbell’s problems with Stone was that he admitted the unimmersed into the fellowship of the visible church. Campbell explains:

It was not through design, but I think through oversight, that our worthy brother then turns the attention of his reader from this practice to the meaning of baptism for the remission of sins: for it is not because of our views of the meaning of immersion, (in which he seems to agree with us,) but because the “Christians” (Stonites, JMH) now make immersion of non-effect by receiving persons into the kingdom of Jesus, so called, irrespective of their being legitimately born; or, in brief, regardless of the command, “Be baptized every one of you.” 113

Thus, Campbell’ expects to see in heaven unimmersed believers whose lives reflect the work of the Spirit and he calls them “Christians” in an accommodative sense. However,

109Alexander Campbell, “Any Christians Among Protestant Parties,” Millennial Harbinger (1837), p. 412.110Alexander Campbell, “Any Christians Among the Sects?,” Millennial Harbinger (1837), p. 561.111Ibid., p. 567.112Ibid., pp. 565-67.113Alexander Campbell, “Reply on Union, Communion, and the Name Christian,” Millennial Harbinger (1831), p. 392.

he is not willing to unite with them in one visible church because that would entail the devaluing of immersion (setting aside a command of God) and it would deprive the saints of God’s own witness to the remission of sins.

DEVALUING immersion may be seen in Campbell’s understanding that there was something about baptism easily forgotten. In particular, I will comment on the Oak Hill’s teaching document on baptism which appears in an Appendix at the end of this paper.114 The document is well worded, readable and has a positive presentation. It is a wonderful statement of the significance of baptism that even an unchurched or “unschooled” person could understand. I think there is much that is positive here, and I would agree with just about everything it says.

However, I have three particular problems with the document. These problems are based not on what is said, but what is unsaid. First, the language concerning baptism is androcentric, or man-centered. Baptism, the document consistently emphasizes, is our act, our obedience, our declaration of faith, our response by which we prove and pledge our faith. It is our vow. It displays our faith. It is our initial step. It is an initial test of faith. Baptism is matriculation. I do not have any problem with this kind of language. My problem is the overall androcentricity of the document. It is focused on what “we do” rather than what God does in baptism. I do not think this is the emphasis of New Testament baptismal language. I think the document ought to reflect a more God-centered theology of baptism.

Second, as a flip side to the previous point, there is no language of divine working in baptism, except for the final paragraph where the document states: “In baptism God signs and seals our conversion to him.” Another section may hint at it; it says: “Baptism effectively seals our salvation uniting us to him and his body. Christ’s death becomes my death. Christ’s resurrection becomes my resurrection.” This paragraph comes close, but its meaning is contextualized by the “sign” language and “symbol” terminology. What does becomes mean here? Does it mean “become” as a visual dramatization or as a genuine means? Further, the document seems to say that God seals our conversion to him when we pledge our faith in the symbolic act of baptism. What does seal mean here? Does it simply mean confirm or assure? The document clearly steers clear of any language about what God does through baptism.

Third, as Campbell remarked to Broaddus, no means or instrumental language appears in the document. It is rather that baptism signifies our admission that we are sinners, and our willingness to die to sin and self. It is a visible dramatization. It symbolizes how we are saved. I do not have any problem with the language of “signification.” Baptism is not the thing signified; it is a sign. However, it is also a means of grace in biblical language. The instrumental dia (through) of Romans 6:4 and Titus 3:5 are the most compelling illustrations of that language. The document’s language, on the other hand, is more Zwinglian than Calvinian. Is baptism a means of grace? Is baptism an instrument of

114Oak Hill’s is where Max Lucado preaches. His understanding of unimmersed believers is evident in his famous “boat” analogy; see his In the Grip of Grace (Dallas: Word, 1996).

God’s gift of grace, salvation, remission of sins, gift of the Holy Spirit? I think baptism is the ordinary or normative instrument of this redemptive grace, but neither do I want to bind God’s sovereignty in the dispensing of grace.

It is telling that in the document believers are more the subjects of the verbs than God is. Is baptism a instrumental moment? That is, does God actually do something in baptism that is more than symbolic? In essence, I think the document reflects a high baptistic and Zwinglian view of baptism. It represents the view of Broaddus rather than Campbell. Its androcentricity and symbolic emphasis are consistent with the best of Baptist theology. But it does not represent the fullness of biblical teaching on baptism.

Theological foundations. First, a theology of grace is foundational. All theological thought must begin with God’s gracious initiative in creation and redemption. A theology of grace must saturate all our thinking since it is by grace that God saves. We must not lose sight of God’s goal, that is, his intent to redeem all that is fallen and to have a people for himself. The history of redemption is a history of God’s relentless pursuit of this goal.

Second, faith, as a principle of action, is more fundamental and foundational than any action itself. Faith is the disposition of submission that trusts in and depends on God’s saving work in Christ. Faith trusts in Jesus Christ and submits to his will in all that it knows. We are saved by faith only at least in the sense that faith is the only principle by which we are saved.

It must be acknowledged that this principle of submissive faith is at work in many unimmersed people (just as it is lacking in some immersed people), whether they are unimmersed due to ignorance, mistaken presuppositions or unsound reasoning.115 “Christian experience” occurs among the unimmersed—if that phrase is understood to mean lives lived out of the principle of submissive faith. The evidence of this is difficult to deny.

However, this admission should not vacuum all the theological meaning from Christian immersion. Acknowledgement that the principle of faith is operative in unimmersed believers in no way suggests an obligation to devalue the soteriological significance of baptism. But this is exactly what happens in the minds of many people, whether it is from the side of those who wish to devalue the subjective faith of the unimmersed, or devalue the external means of grace in baptism. Those who recognize the principle of faith operative in the unimmersed tend to undermine the significance of immersion, and those who exalt the significance of baptism tend to devalue the faith of the unimmersed.

It is preferable to see baptism as a “sacramental” moment where God gives his Spirit to believers through faith in God’s work at the cross. It is not sacramental in a Roman Catholic sense but sacramental in that it is a “holy moment” where God acts to unite us to himself in the baptismal symbolism of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a divine means of grace. God truly does something gracious in the moment of baptism.

115Willful neglect and rebellious rejection of what one knows to be true would be an entirely different matter.

The principle of submissive faith undergirds that act of baptism. It prompts it and seeks the application of God’s work in that context. Where misunderstanding, ignorance, and immaturity occur, God’s grace may act according to his own mercy. It is best to retain what one could call a high biblical understanding of baptism.

A theology of grace is foundational. God accepts those who seek him out of a sincere heart that depends on him. A theology of faith is built on that understanding of grace. Faith is trusting in Christ, depending upon God’s work and showing a willingness to submit to God’s lordship. Baptism assumes both grace and faith, and is the ordinary means by which God acts to fill his people with his Spirit. Baptism is that visible, communal moment when God sanctifies his people and makes them one holy community.

The principle of submissive faith observable in the lives of the unimmersed should not be discounted. Campbell himself recognized the “inward baptism” of some of the unimmersed evidenced by their holy lives.

The case is this: When I see a person who would die for Christ; whose brotherly kindness, sympathy, and active benevolence know no bounds but his circumstances; whose seat in the Christian assembly is never empty; whose inward piety and devotion are attested by punctual obedience to every known duty; whose family is educated in the fear of the Lord; whose constant companion is the Bible: I say, when I see such a one ranked amongst heathen men and publicans, because he never happened to inquire, but always took it for granted that he had been scripturally baptized; and that, too, by one great destitute of all these public and private virtues, whose chief or exclusive recommendation is that he has been immersed, and that he holds a scriptural theory of the gospel: I feel no disposition to flatter such a one; but rather to disabuse him of his error. And while I would not lead the most excellent professor of any sect to disparage the least of all of the commandments of Jesus, I would say to my immersed brother as Paul said to his Jewish brother who gloried in a system which he did not adorn: “Sir, will not his uncircumcision, or unbaptism, be counted to him for baptism? and will he not condemn you, who, though having the literal and true baptism, yet dost transgress or neglect the statutes of your King?”116

Holiness is God’s work, and we must glorify God for the holy lives we see. On the other hand, this recognition should not undermine the significance of Christian immersion.

Is there a way to acknowledge the “Christian experience” (the effects of the principle of faith in their lives) of the unimmersed while at the same time proclaiming the soteriological significance of baptism? Campbell points in the right direction when he distinguishes the importance of an external or objective “proof” of the remission of sins. He notes that a subjective assurance is subject to doubt, deceit and instability. Baptism is God’s gift to his people as a concrete, empirical “proof” of his forgiveness. It is an

116Campbell, “Any Christians Among the Sects?” p. 565.

external means through which God works in the hearts and minds of believers. Lifestyle and the fruit of the Spirit are also evidence of God’s work in the hearts of believers. God works through faith to produce the fruit of his Spirit in the lives of believers. These fruits themselves become external evidences of a holy life.

The question then becomes: what is the “proof” of the remission of sins? Is it lifestyle (Christian experience) or immersion? One is subjective and the other is objective. There is no need to choose between them. Rather, both should be affirmed. Immersion without lifestyle is clearly condemned in Scripture, and lifestyle without immersion is unknown in Scripture. We must not force a choice here, but proclaim both. While we may glorify God for the work he does in the submissive lives of unimmersed believers, we must not permit the devaluing of God’s work in immersion.

Nevertheless, immersion has a “sacramental” quality to it. It has the promise of God attached to it so that it is unlike any other concrete act of faith. Immersion has a concrete, divine character. It is the gospel embodied in a concrete historical moment to which the promises of God are attached for whoever receives it in faith. It is a moment of assurance that reaches beyond a holy life because people can always doubt the holiness of their lives. However, the promise of God—his promise of the remission of sins—is certified to a believer in immersion. Believers look away from their own holy or unholy life and put their faith in the work of God in the gospel. Baptism is that concrete moment when God himself testifies to our salvation, rather than us testifying to our own through the subjective assessment of our own lives.

Consequently, Campbell was correct to argue that baptism is God’s gift to believers for assurance. It is an objective assurance that testifies to believing hearts that God has redeemed them no matter how uncertain they may be about the sufficiency of their holiness.

As Luther advised, “when our sins or consciences oppress us,” we may retort: “But I am baptized! And if I am baptized, I have the promise that I shall be saved and have eternal life, both in soul and body.”117

Appendix: Oak Hills’ Teaching Position on Baptism

The Purpose of a Teaching Position

A teaching position serves to articulate the convictions of the Oak Hills leadership on a particular doctrine or practice. Such a statement is useful for:

Those interested in being members at Oak Hills. Potential members are urged to read the teaching position and discuss any questions you may have before applying for membership. You can then decide if you’re in agreement with the doctrine and practices

117Martin Luther, “Large Catechism,” 4th part, “Baptism,” in Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadephia: Fortress, 1959), p. 442.

outlined in the teaching statement. Oak Hills will not judge your status or compliance, but we ask, however, that you respect the leadership by not being divisive.

Those desiring leadership positions. Members serving in instructional capacities such areas as Bible class teachers, L.I.F.E. group leaders, ministry leaders, elders, and staff ministers need to be in agreement with the teaching position and to have complied with the practices and doctrines.

Baptism: The Demonstration of Devotion

As Christians we participate in two God-ordained sacraments that celebrate what God has done for us: communion and baptism. Communion is celebrated on a regular basis and baptism is a one-time declaration of a lifetime of devotion to God. This study will consider the second of these two events: baptism.

The human mind explaining baptism is like a harmonica interpreting Beethoven: the music is too majestic for the instrument. No scholar or saint can fully appreciate what this moment means in heaven. Any words on baptism, including these, must be seen as human efforts to understand a holy event. Our danger is to swing to one of two extremes: we make baptism either too important or too commonplace. Either we deify it or we trivialize it. One can see baptism as either the essence of the gospel or as irrelevant to the gospel. Both sides are equally perilous. One person says, “I am saved because I was baptized.” The other says, “I am saved so I don’t need to be baptized.” The challenge is to let the pendulum stop somewhere between the two viewpoints. This is done by placing the issue where it should be: at the foot of the cross.

Baptism is like a precious jewel—Set apart by itself, it is nice and appealing but has nothing within it to compel. But place baptism against the backdrop of our sin and turn on the light of the cross and the jewel explodes with significance. Baptism at once reveals the beauty of the cross and the darkness of sin. As a stone has many facets, baptism has many sides: cleansing, burial, resurrection, the death of the old, and the birth of the new. Just as the stone has no light within it, baptism has no inherent power. But just as the stone prisms the light into many colors, so baptism reveals the many facets of God’s grace.

Once a person admits his or her sin and turns to Christ for salvation, a step must be taken to proclaim to heaven and earth that one is a follower of Christ. Baptism is that step. Baptism is the initial and immediate act of obedience by one who has declared his faith to others. So important was this step that, so far as we know, every single convert in the New Testament was baptized. With the exception of the thief on the cross, there is no example of an unbaptized believer. Note: There is also the case of the disciples of John the Baptist in Acts 19:1-6. They had been baptized by John but were unacquainted with the role of the Holy Spirit. Upon receiving instruction, they sought to be baptized in the name of Jesus.

The thief on the cross, however, is a crucial exception. His conversion drives dogmatists crazy. It is no accident that the first one to accept the invitation of the crucified Christ has no creed, confirmation, christening, or catechism. How disturbing to theologians to ascend the mountain of doctrine only to be greeted by an uneducated thief who cast his lot with Christ. Here is a man who never went to church, never gave an offering, never was baptized, and said only one prayer. But that prayer was enough. He has a crucial role in the gospel drama. The thief reminds us that though our dogma may be airtight and our doctrine dead center, in the end it is Jesus who saves. Does his story negate the importance of obedience? No, It simply puts obedience in proper perspective. Any step taken is a response to a salvation offered, not an effort at salvation earned. In the end God has the right to save any heart, for he and only he sees the heart.

A helpful verse to understanding baptism is 1 Peter 3:21: “And that water is like the baptism which now saves you—not the washing of dirt from the body, but the promise made to God from a good conscience. And this is because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead” (emphasis mine). This promise is vital. Baptism separates the tire kickers from the car buyers. Would you feel comfortable marrying someone who wanted to keep the marriage a secret? Neither does God. It’s one thing to say in the privacy of your own heart that you are a sinner in need of a Savior. But it’s quite another to walk out of the shadows and stand before family, friends, and colleagues to state publicly that Christ is your forgiver and master. This step raises the ante. Jesus commanded all his followers to prove it, to make the pledge, by public demonstration in baptism. Among his final words was the universal command to “go and make followers of all people in all the world, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). In the New Testament, baptism was no casual custom, no ho-hum ritual. Baptism was, and is, “a pledge made to God from a good conscience” (1 Pet 3:21 TJB).

The Apostle Paul’s high regard for baptism is demonstrated in the fact that he knows all of his readers have been instructed in its importance. “You have been taught that when we were baptized into Christ we were baptized into his death” (Rom 6:2 TJB). Indeed, baptism is a vow, a sacred vow of the believer to follow Christ. Just as a wedding celebrates the fusion of two hearts, baptism celebrates the union of sinner with Savior. We “became part of Christ when we were baptized” (v 2).

Do the bride and groom understand all of the implications of the wedding? No. Do they know every challenge or threat they will face? No. But they know they love each other and they vow to be faithful to the end.

When a willing believer enters the waters of baptism, does he know the implications of the vow? No. Does she know every temptation or challenge? No. But both know the love of God and are responding to him.

Please understand, it is not the act that saves us. But it is the act that symbolizes how we are saved! The invisible work of the Holy Spirit is visibly dramatized in the water.

That plunge beneath the running waters was like a death; the moment’s pause while they swept overhead was like a burial; the standing erect once more in air and sunlight was a species of resurrection. (Sanday and Headlam, “A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,” in The International Commentary.)

Remove your shoes, bow your head, and bend your knees: this is a holy event. Baptism is not to be taken lightly. The event is a willing plunge of the body and soul into the promise and power of Christ. The ritual of washing signifies our admission that apart from Christ we are dirty, but in Christ we are pure. The ritual of burial signifies that we are willing to die to sin and self and that we can be made alive again because of him. (Luther referred to baptism as death by drowning.) Baptism effectively seals our salvation, uniting us to him and his body. Christ’s death becomes my death. Christ’s resurrection becomes my resurrection. There is no indication of an unbaptized believer in the New Testament church. Let us now turn our attention to specific questions that have been raised in regard to baptism.

Is it more appropriate to baptize babies or people who are old enough to make a personal decision? Obviously there are bright, godly people of both persuasions. But it seems clear that in the New Testament baptism is a willing pledge made by those who are old enough to recognize their sin, mature enough to comprehend the significance of the death of Christ, and independent enough to commit themselves to him.

It’s important to note that there isn’t a clear reference to a baby being baptized in the whole of the Bible. Almost every time baptism is mentioned, it is preceded by some command for belief. A good example is Acts 2:38 — “Change your hearts and lives and be baptized, each one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.”

We are never told to be baptized and then believe, but to come to belief, to trusting faith, and then display that decision by associating ourselves with Christ in baptism. Baptism is the initial step of a faithful heart. This decision requires significant levels of maturity. It is appropriate to dedicate a baby (though more appropriate to dedicate the parents.) At Oak Hills we do this. On a regular basis we offer parents of newborns an opportunity to come forward with their children for prayer and consecration. But these are dedication ceremonies, not baptisms.

What if I was baptized as an infant? What should I do? I have been baptized, but not by immersion. First, you should be grateful that you had parents who cared enough about you to set you apart for God. Because of their devotion, you have an opportunity to complete their prayer by willingly submitting to adult baptism. Adult baptism is not a sign of disrespect for what your parents did. In fact, it can be seen as a fulfillment of their prayers. Be thankful for the heritage of concerned parents, but don’t be negligent of your responsibility as an adult to make your personal pledge toward God in baptism. Several who are now members of this church were baptized as infants and then, upon coming to a personal faith, were baptized as adults. God has led you to this point and we pray that you will take this important step as soon as possible.

All the Greek dictionaries of the New Testament define the Greek word baptizo[Gk] as immersion. The symbolism of immersion is compelling: just as a person lowers you into the water, Christ lowers you into the pool of his grace until every inch of your self is clean. Buried in a watery grave, covered from head to foot with God’s love, you are washed clean by the blood of Jesus. If you have any questions or concerns about this aspect of baptism we would welcome the opportunity to visit with you.

How much do I need to know in order to be baptized? You need to realize only that you are a sinner and that Jesus is your Savior. As you grow in Christ you’ll learn more about baptism. You’ll learn that embodied and represented in baptism is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38); commitment to the church (I Cor 12:1), being clothed with Christ (Gal 3:26), to name a few.

It is helpful to read the book of Acts and try to determine what the candidates in the first century knew before they were baptized: the three thousand baptized on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2; the Ethiopian Official in Acts 8; the jailer in Acts 16; and the conversion of Paul in Acts 22:16. In each case there was an innocent faith and an immediate response. Let’s take a quick look at each of the events:

WHAT did they understand at Pentecost? “God has made Jesus—the man you nailed to the cross—both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:38).

HOW did they respond? “Those who accepted the message were baptized and about three thousand people were added to the number of believers that day” (Acts 2:41).

WHAT was the message of Philip to the Ethopian? “Philip began to speak and....told him the good news about Jesus” (Acts 8:35).

WHAT was his response? “The officer said, ‘Look, here is water. What is stopping me from being baptized?’. . . . Both Philip and the officer went down into the water and Philip baptized him” (Acts 8:38).

WHAT did the jailer understand? “(Paul and Silas) said to him, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved- you and all the people in your house”’ (Acts 16:31).

HOW did he respond? “At that hour of the night the jailer took Paul and Silas and washed their wounds. Then he and all his people were baptized immediately” (Acts 16:33).

WHAT did Saul know before he was baptized? “(Annanias) stood by me and said, ‘Brother Saul ... the God of our ancestors chose you long ago to know his plan, to see the Righteous One, and to hear words from him. ..Now why wait any longer? Get up be baptized, and wash your sins away, trusting in him to save you” (Acts 22:14-16). “Then Saul got up and was baptized” (Acts 9:18).

Do you see some similarities? The message and the response are consistent. The message is Jesus and the response is voluntary—a simple faith in Christ and an immediate response of faith to be baptized.

Could it be possible for someone to be baptized with no knowledge of Christ? Absolutely. Some may be baptized out of peer pressure, parent pressure, or even as a good luck charm. There is the extreme case of Emperor Constantine marching his troops through a river and claiming that they were all Christians. There are those who, upon reflection, decide that they had no idea what they were doing the first time, But now that they understand what God did for them, they want to say thank you to him in baptism. Such a decision is personal, for only you know your heart.

Does it matter where I was baptized? No. If you were baptized in a Baptist church or Pentecostal camp or in the lake at a family reunion, that doesn’t matter. What is important is that you knew that you were a sinner and Jesus was your Savior.

Does baptism, itself, have the power to save people? The answer to this is a resounding “No!” Scripture is abundantly clear that only Jesus saves. The work of salvation is a finished work by Christ on the cross. Baptism has no redemptive powers of its own. There is nothing special about the water, nothing holy about the river or pond or baptistry.

Tragically, some people believe they are going to heaven when they die just because a few drops of water were sprinkled over their head a few weeks after their birth. They have no personal faith, have never made a personal decision, and are banking on a hollow ceremony to save them. How absurd! If baptism were a redemptive work, why did Jesus die on the cross? If we could be saved by being sprinkled or dunked, do you think Jesus would have died for our sins? If your faith is in the sacrament and not the Savior, you are trusting in a powerless ritual. This leads to another question.

What if a person is not baptized? Can he be saved? This question is best answered with a question. Why isn’t the person baptized? There are three possible answers:

I NEVER understood baptism. Perhaps you were never instructed to be baptized. Maybe you’ve never been challenged to consider the issue. That’s entirely possible. If this is the case, we urge you to give thought to what God says about baptism. This doesn’t negate your faith up to this point. Part of maturity is an openness to understand new areas of the Christian walk.

A SECOND reason for not being baptized is, I don’t want to. Let’s analyze this response for a moment. God humbles himself by leaving heaven and being born in a feed-trough. The God of the universe eats human food, feels human feelings, and dies a sinner’s death. He is spat upon, beaten and stripped naked, and nailed to a cross. He takes our eternal condemnation on himself in our place. He then offers salvation as a free gift and asks that we say yes to him in baptism and someone responds, “I don’t want to.” Such logic does not add up. Such resistance doesn’t reveal a problem with baptism. Such resistance spells

trouble of the soul, It reveals a problem of the heart. Such a person does not need a study of the sacrament. He needs a long, hard examination of the soul, The incongruity puzzled even Jesus. “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do the things I ask?” (Mt 7:21)

True believers not only offer their sins, they yield their wills to Christ. Baptism is the initial test of the believing heart. If one won’t obey Christ in baptism, what will they do when he calls them to obey him in prayer? Or evangelism? Or service? The highest motive for doing anything is because God asks you to do it. The heart of the saved says, “If you want me to be baptized in a pile of leaves, I’ll do it, I may not understand every reason, but neither do I understand how you could save a sinner like me.” If one is resistant to the first command, one might wonder if there has been a true conversion experience.

BUT there are those who are not baptized for a third reason. What of the ones who die before they have a chance? What if I entrust my soul to Christ, and before I can tell anyone or arrange to be baptized, a swarm of killer bees attacks me and I die? [level C?] The answer to this question is found in the character of God. Would a God of love reject an honest heart? No way. Would a God of mercy and kindness condemn any seeking soul? Absolutely not. Having called you and died for you would he cast you away because of a curious sequence of events? Inconceivable.

Is it possible for an unbaptized believer be saved? Yes, definitely. Should every believer be baptized? Yes, definitely.

Baptism is bowing before the Father and letting him do his work. The moment is like that of the young child entering the first grade. The young student does not enroll by virtue of his knowledge or merits. He simply requests, “I’m here to learn, will you teach me?” Baptism is like that, not graduation but matriculation—the presentation of the willing pupil before the master teacher. “I’m here to learn. Will you teach me?”

Conclusion

Don’t allow baptism to be something it is not. Apart from the cross it has no significance. If you are trusting a dunk in the water to save you, you have missed the message of grace. Beware of dogmatism. No one this side of heaven can fully understand the majesty of baptism. Watch out for the one who claims to have a corner on the issue, especially if that person is in your mirror.

Don’t prevent baptism from being what God intended. This is no optional command. This is no trivial issue. It is a willing plunge into the power and promise of Christ. Baptism is the first step of a believer. If it was important enough for Jesus to command, isn’t it important enough for you to obey? And if it was important enough for Jesus to do, isn’t it important enough for you to follow?

In baptism God signs and seals our conversion to him. For all we may not understand about baptism, we can be sure of one thing: it is a holy moment.