The Witness of the Spirit in the Early

"God's Sensible Pledge": The Witness of the Spirit in the Early Baptismal Theology of Alexander Campbell

Dr. John Mark Hicks Professor of Christian Doctrine Harding University Graduate School of Religion

In the first decades of the nineteenth century conversion narratives were an integral part of religious life on the American frontier. Candidates for admission to full church membership offered these narratives as evidence of their regeneration. The narrative usually included an account of God's work in their hearts through various stages (e.g., sorrow for sin to the peace of forgiveness) and through various means (e.g., prayer, Bible reading, hearing sermons) over an extended period of time. The narrators recounted their own gradual experience of God's regenerative grace. While originally a distinguishing mark of colonial New England church polity, this procedure was adopted by practically all the frontier denominations from the Presbyterians to the Baptists.1 During the Second Great Awakening, these narratives often included descriptions of how God had spoken to, or Jesus had appeared to the narrators, or how God had assured them in a dream or a vision that their sins were forgiven.2 Students of the Stone-Campbell Movement (the American Restoration Movement) know Barton W. Stone's account of his early experience with these conversion narratives. He recounts how he listened to these conversion stories with great interest and understood them as the work of God. Consequently, when in 1790 under the preaching of James McGready he "resolved...to seek religion at the sacrifice of every earthly good," he anticipated experiences like those described in the conversion narratives he had heard. He struggled through his search for religion but could find no peace or assurance. "For one year," he wrote, "I was tossed on the waves of uncertainty--laboring, praying, and striving to obtain saving faith--sometimes desponding, and almost despairing of ever getting it."3 Indeed, he never did get it until he heard the preaching of William Hodge in 1791 whose central theme was "God is love." In the wake of this message, Stone retired to the woods, confessed his sin to the Lord, prayed for forgiveness and accepted God's gracious gift. Never again would Stone doubt God's love for him because he now understood that God loves all sinners. He believed the truth that God loves sinners and rested his assurance on the knowledge that God saves believers.4 Stone was now convinced that God's love had a universal salvific intent. Consequently, he began to encourage sinners to "believe now, and receive salvation" instead of seeking some special grace from God according to the pattern of the conversion narratives.5 There is no need for the sinner to wait till God

1Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 45f, 163ff. Jerald C. Brauer, "Conversion: From Puritanism to Revivalism," Journal of Religion 58 (1978), 227-43, traces the development of these conversion narratives from early Puritanism to the revivalism of the Great Awakening. See also Bill T. Leonard, "Getting Saved in America: Conversion Event in a Pluralistic Culture," Review and Expositor 82 (1985), 111-27. For a convenient collection of conversion stories, see Hugh T. Kerr and John M. Mulder, eds., Conversions: The Christian Experience (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983). 2Barton W. Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone, written by himself with additions and reflections (Cincinnati: J. A. & U. P. James, 1847; reprint by Joplin: College Press, 1986), 5. The classic interpretation of the southern Second Great Awakening is J. B. Boles, The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1972). See also D. D. Bruce, Jr., And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp- Meeting Religion, 1800-1845 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974). 3Ibid., 9. 4Ibid., 10-11. 5Ibid, 45. 2 loves them in a special way because God has already loved them in Jesus Christ.6 Further, once Stone became an advocate of believer's immersion in 1807, he came to understand immersion as the assurance of God's love to the believer, an assurance that the sins of immersed believers had been forgiven.7 In fact, on several occasions Stone offered immersion to those who sat on the mourner's bench as a means of assurance.8 But his invitation was never accepted (as far as the accounts go). Stone concluded that people were not prepared for this approach because it tended to dampen the excitement of revival. The offer of immersion, it seemed, undermined the expectation of a gracious experience.9 While Stone's conversion narrative is relatively well known to students of the Stone-Campbell Movement, Alexander Campbell's own search for a conversion narrative is not. Among historians of the Movement Stone's struggle for conversion operates as a kind of paradigm witness against conversion narratives while Campbell's own struggle is unknown. For example, in his recent history of Churches of Christ, Richard Hughes seems to assume that it was only the Stoneites who had experienced the struggles of conversion.10 Hughes does not note Campbell's own personal struggle. The purpose of this paper is to understand Campbell's baptismal theology in the context of his rejection of a conversion narrative as a prerequisite for church membership. Fundamentally, he rejected conversion narratives as testimonies of regeneration because they were based on subjective experiences of God's supposed forgiveness. Instead, he substituted believer's immersion as a prerequisite for church membership because it is God's testimony of forgiveness. For Campbell, assurance is rooted in the objective promise of God rather than in a subjective experience. Consequently, Campbell substituted baptism for the mourner's bench. Instead of seeking God's communion through faithful prayer ("praying through"), the sinner should seek God's forgiveness through faithful obedience in baptism. Instead of listening for the voice of God in the wilderness, the sinner should hear the promise of God in baptism. The beginning point of this baptismal theology was Campbell's own pursuit of a conversion narrative. Like Stone, Campbell was bitterly disappointed with his search.

Campbell's Search for Conversion

Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) received his early religious education in the Anti-Burgher Old Light Seceder Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Church. He knew the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Catechisms well and was trained to expect a conversion experience.11 He was taught an "evangelical"

6See D. Newell Williams, "The Theology of the Great Revival in the West as seen through the Life and Thought of Barton Warren Stone," (Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1979). 7Barton W. Stone, "Remarks," Christian Messenger 8 (January 1834), 27-8. For a discussion of the development of Stone's baptismal theology, see Michael D. Green, "Barton W. Stone and Baptism for the Remission of Sins," in Baptism and the Remission of Sins, ed. David W. Fletcher (Joplin: College Press, 1990), 241-95. 8One such occasion was during a meeting at Concord, Kentucky in 1807. Here is his account, Biography, 61: "Mourners were invited every day to collect before the stand, in order for prayers, (this being the custom of the times.) The brethren were praying daily for the same people, and none seemed to be comforted. I was considering in my mind, what could be the cause. The words of Peter, at Pentecost, rolled through my mind. 'Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.' I thought, were Peter here, he would thus address these mourners. I quickly arose, and addressed them in the same language, and urged them to comply." Another example from Millersbug, Ohio in 1821 is recounted in John I. Rogers, ed., Toils and Struggles of the Olden Times: Autobiography of Elder Samuel Rogers (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1880), 55-60. 9Rogers, Toils and Struggles, 56: "At length, he concluded that the people were by no means prepared for his doctrine, and gave it up." Also, Stone had told B. F. Hall that "he had preached it early in the present century, and that it was like ice-water thrown on the audience; it chilled them, and came very near driving vital religion out of the church; and that, in consequence of its chilling effect, he had abandoned it altogether" (Rogers, Toils and Struggles, 59). 10Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 113-114. Hughes sets the rise of Campbell's baptismal theology in the context of legalism and rationalism rather than in the context of his personal struggle for a conversion narrative (see his discussion of Walter Scott, 48-54). For Walter Scott's role in this transition and a similar interpretation, see also L. Edward Hicks, "Rational Religion in the Ohio Western Reserve (1827- 1830): Walter Scott and the Restoration Appeal of Baptism for the Remission of Sins," Restoration Quarterly 34.4 (1992), 207- 222. 3 faith which included the search for an experience of special grace.12 He expected "an interposition" of divine aid without which he was "taught" he "could derive no assurance of the favor of God."13 Consequently, he sought such an experience as evidence of his own regeneration. At the age of sixteen, while still living in Northern Ireland, Campbell began an intense study of the Holy Spirit. After he had noted every biblical passage which mentioned the Spirit, he began reading the best evangelical writers. For example, he read Richard Baxter's Call to the Unconverted "that he might be converted" since it had been "highly commened by the pious." In addition he read Arms, Boston, Bunyan, Newton and Hallburton and every other "converting" book he could find. He was especially fond of John Owen. He "ate up" Owen's two books on the Holy Spirit as well as reading his Christo Logia, The Person and Glory of Christ and Death of Deaths in the Death of Christ. He was so enamored with Owen's work on the Spirit that he copied it by hand. It became his "text-book." By the age of twenty Campbell says that he was "perfectly indoctrinated into the right faith, as the evangelical christians called it."14 This "system" into which he had been indoctrinated had taught him to "look for a divine interposition of a peculiar character at a certain crisis, and as the drowning man holds fast his straw, so we take hold of a dream, or a conceit, or an impression, or an impulse, or a voice, or a particular occurrence, and by a favorable interpretation imagine it a sign or token for good, and console ourselves that Heaven has now lent its long withheld aid."15 Consequently, Campbell began his search for heaven's sign that he was among the converted. "I desired to feel a special interest," he wrote, "and for this I prayed."16 In 1827, he described his earlier search for experience:17

I well remember what pains and conflicts I endured under a fearful apprehension that my convictions and my sorrows for sin were not deep enough. I even envied Newton of his long agony, I envied Bunyan of his despair. I could have wished, and did wish, that the Spirit of God would bring me down to the very verge of suffering the pains of the damned that I might be raised to share the joys of the genuine converts. I feared that I had not sufficiently found the depravity of my heart, and had not yet proved that I was utterly without strength. Sometimes I thought that I felt as sensibly, as the ground under my feet, that I had gone just as far as human nature could go without supernatural aid, and that one step more would place me safe among the regenerated of the Lord; and yet Heaven refused its aid. This, too, I concealed from all the living. I found no comfort in all the declarations of the gospel, because I wanted one thing to enable me to appropriate them to myself. Lacking this, I could only envy the happy favorites of Heaven who enjoyed it, and all my refuge was in a faint hope that I one day might receive that aid which would place my feet upon the rock.

Whoever seeks this kind of experience, Campbell believed, "has been taught" to look within themselves for the "true signs of regeneration." But when they cannot find these authentic markers, they despair and agonize over their uncertainty. Nevertheless, others tell them that these are the "pangs of the new birth," and while drawing comfort from such counsel, they are still "tossed to and fro in awful

11The British tradition of conversion stories is well documented by F. W. B. Bullock, Evangelical Conversion in Great Britain 1516-1695 (St. Leonards on Sea: Budd & Gillatt, 1966) and Evangelical Conversion in Great Britain 1696-1845 (St. Leonards on Sea: Budd & Gillatt, 1959). 12Alexander Campbell, "Reply to Robert B. Semple," Millennial Harbinger 1 (March 1830), 137. 13Alexander Campbell, "Reply to the Above," Christian Baptist 4 (4 June 1827), 229. 14Campbell, "Semple I," Millennial Harbinger 1 (March 1830), 137. 15Campbell, "Reply to the Above," Christian Baptist 4 (4 June 1827), 228. 16Alexander Campbell, "Letter to R. B. Semple--No. II," Millennial Harbinger 1 (April 1830), 179. 17Alexander Campbell, "Conscience," Christian Baptist 3 (6 February 1826), 150-51. 4 uncertainties." If there are no "infallible signs" of regeneration, then the believer despairs, is tormented and "concludes he is one of the reprobates." The effect of this search was the shipwreck of the faith of thousands.18 Campbell believed that people search for this kind of experience because they have been taught to seek it and they have witnessed the testimony of others to it. They have been socialized to expect it. He blames not only the education of the "systems of divinity" which he had studied so thoroughly in his youth, but also the pervasive style of "descriptive preaching." This style of preaching is basically personal testimony where the preacher "tells the people his own story;" he tells "the history of his own regeneration." Whenever the preacher speaks of his own "visions and revelations," the "preacher's spirit," Campbell wrote, "speaks of himself and not of Christ."19 It is the "gospel of their own conversion."20 Though some respond to this preaching with their own visions in the night, or they hear the voice of the Saviour as he descends to the top of the trees, "ten thousand are waiting in anxiety for a power from on high to descend upon their souls."21 In fact, such anxiety is the "genuine offspring of the theological schools. It is the experience of a bad education."22 "I blame my religious education," Campbell wrote, "for all the darkness, and gloom, and uncertainty, of which I have been conscious."23

Campbell's Baptismal Theology

At the age of twenty-four Campbell explicitly rejected this popular understanding of conversion. When he began to read Scripture as "naked text ," "followed common sense," and began to utilize "ordinary rules of interpretation," he "lost [his] orthodoxy."24 It is not coincidental that Campbell was immersed in that same year. The circumstances of his immersion indicate that 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. However, Campbell25

had 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.

18Ibid., 150. 19Alexander Campbell, "Address to the Readers of the Christian Baptist. No. IV," Christian Baptist 1 (1 March 1824), 147. 20Alexander Campbell, "Answer to Paulinus," Christian Baptist 6 (6 October 1828), 57-59. 21Campbell, "Address," 149. 22Campbell, "Conscience," Christian Baptist 3 (6 February 1826), 150. 23Campbell, "Reply," Christian Baptist 4 (4 June 1827), 229. 24Campbell, "Semple I," Millennial Harbinger 1 (March 1830), 138. Here Campbell adopts a more modern way of reading the Bible. He advocated a scientific reading of the Bible according to the grammatical-historical principles within a Baconian framework. See his "Principles of Interpretation," in Christianity Restored (Indianapolis: Faith and Facts Press, reprint of 1835 edition), esp. 15-17, 22-27, and Thomas H. Olbricht, "Alexander Campbell in the Context of American Biblical Studies, 1810- 1874," Restoration Quarterly 33 (1991), 13-28. For a survey of this approach to the Bible through the eyes of one Campbell's students, see C. Leonard Allen, "Baconianism and the Bible in the Disciples of Christ: James S. Lamar and The Organon of Scripture, " Church History 55 (March 1986), 65-80. 25Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, Embracing a View of the Origin, Progress and Principles of the Religious Reformation which he Advocated (Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, reprint n.d.), 1:398. 5

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. According to his biographer, Campbell gave an "extended defence" of his actions on that day. Only believer's baptism was authorized he argued, and he urged the necessity of submitting to all of God's commands as one came into a clear understanding of them. In particular, Richardson notes that "in his remarks, he had quoted, among other Scriptures, the command of Peter to the believers on the day of Pentecost: 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit;' and had dwelt at length upon the gracious promises of God to all who should obey him."26 Clearly, Campbell believed at the time of his immersion that his obedience involved God's testimony to him, God's promise, that all his sins had been remitted. Campbell found the answer to his adolescent struggles with special grace in the gracious promises which God had attached to baptism. Baptism, as an expression of obedient faith in Jesus Christ, offered him the assurance of God's forgiveness. However, Campbell had not yet reached his most mature understanding of baptism. For him "baptism for the remission of sins" was still figurative or symbolic in character. In addition, baptism was unnecessary for the full enjoyment of assurance. This is illustrated in his debate with the Presbyterian John Walker in 1820. There Campbell argued that baptism was a emblem or sign of something that had already taken place.27 In his appendix to the debate, Campbell staked out his position in clear terms. Any believer may enjoy the "full blessings" of the new covenant without baptism. Baptism merely symbolizes the spiritual blessings they have already received and confirms their faith in the promises of God.28 Indeed, Campbell resisted even calling baptism a "seal of the new covenant" because this presumes too much for baptism since "no external ordinance" is able to "perfect" the seal of the Spirit. Rather, baptism "is an ordinance by which we formally profess Christianity," by which we profess what we already possess.29 However, by the time of his 1823 debate with the Presbyterian William Maccalla, Campbell had become convinced that the assurance of forgiveness and the rite of baptism were inseparable.30 Campbell pressed the connection between baptism and the remission of sins during the debate.31

The blood of Christ, then, really cleanses us who believe from all sin. Behold the goodness of God in giving us a formal proof and token of it, by ordaining baptism

26Ibid., 1:397. 27Alexander Campbell, Debate on Christian Baptism Between Mr. John Walker, a Minister of the Secession, and Alexander Campbell. To Which is Added a Large Appendix by Alexander Campbell. Second Edition Enlarged with Strictures on THREE LETTERS Respecting Said Debate, Published by Mr. Samuel Ralston, a Presbyterian Minister (Pittsburgh: Eichbaum and Johnston, 1822), 56, 119-20, 136-38. 28Ibid., 168-71. 29Ibid., 170-71, 207. 30Sometime in late 1821 Campbell read a small pamphlet by Henry Errett, a Scotch Baptist in New York City. This tract strongly connected baptism and the remission of sins. It rejected the well-known Baptist language of "mere ordinance" for the baptismal rite. Instead, baptism is that moment where believers "profess" their faith in "deed" as well as in word. Baptism is an empirical confession and an objective assurance that one's sins have been remitted. It is the profession by which the disciples of Christ are recognized or acknowledged as believers. This tract deepened Campbell's understanding of baptism and opened up an opportunity for dialogue with Baptists. See William Baxter, Life of Walter Scott with Sketches of his Fellow-Laborers, William Hayden, Adamson Bentley, John Henry, and Others (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Co., reprint n.d.), 47-51. For a fuller discussion of this tract and development of Alexander Campbell's understanding of baptism for the remission of sins, see my "The Recovery of the Ancient Gospel: Alexander Campbell and the Design of Baptism," in Baptism and the Remission of Sins, ed. David W. Fletcher (Joplin: College Press, 1990), 111-70. 31Alexander Campbell and W. L. Mccalla, A Public Debate on Christian Baptism Between the Rev. W.L. Maccalla, a Presbyterian Teacher and Alexander Campbell to which is added An Essay on the Christian Religion by Alexander Campbell (Kansas City: Old Paths Book Club, reprint n.d.), 116. 6

expressly "for the remission of sins!" The water of baptism, then, formally washes away our sins. Paul's sins were really pardoned when he believed, yet he had no solemn pledge of that fact, no formal acquittal, no formal purgation of his sins, until he washed them away in the water of baptism. To every believer, therefore, baptism is a formal and personal remission, or purgation of sins. The believer never has his sins formally washed away or remitted until he is baptized. The water has no efficacy but what God's appointment gives it, and he has made it sufficient for this purpose. The value and importance of baptism appears from this view of it.

Campbell called upon his Baptist brothers to assert this connection more forcefully in their own preaching. He admonished them for hesitating when they should urge "an immediate submission to this sacred and gracious ordinance." He called upon them to proclaim the "grand import of baptism."32

Tell them you make nothing essential to salvation but the blood of Christ, but that God has made baptism essential to their formal forgiveness in this life, to their admission into his kingdom on earth. Tell them that God has made it essential to their happiness that they should have a pledge on his part in this life, an assurance in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, of their actual pardon, of the remission of all their sins, and that this assurance is baptism. Tell the disciples to rise in haste and be baptized and wash away their sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

Baptism, then, is no mere church ordinance, moral example or moral precept as some Baptists had described it. Rather, it is the "formal remission" of sin. Baptism, not an experience of the Holy Spirit at the mourning bench, is "God's formal pledge on his part of that believer's personal acquittal or pardon."33 Campbell urged them to call the mourners to salvation by calling them down to the baptismal waters. Further, baptism is not intended as a church ordinance, as if it were to be administered to members of the church. On the contrary, "except a man be born of water he could not constitutionally enter it." No one is recognized as a member of the church, God's kingdom on earth, until he is immersed.34 The Maccalla debate signaled a significant shift in the baptismal theology of Alexander Campbell. The importance of this position is seen when it is contrasted with the mourner's bench scenario so common in the early nineteenth century. Thomas Campbell, following the steps of his son, decried the fact that many are "indiscriminately urged to pray, as a means of salvation, that they may escape hell, without any immediate respect either to the altar (symbolizing the blood of Christ, JMH) or the laver (symbolizing baptism, JMH)." The apostolic order was: believe the gospel, be baptized and then pray. With this order the one who seeks salvation can be assured that he has received it when he is immersed. Instead, many seek salvation at the mourner's bench through "inward impressions, exercises, and feelings" which are "predicated upon some peculiar inward work of the Spirit." Once the believing community is satisfied with the "feelings" of the subject, once they are satisfied with the conversion narrative, then they admit the subject to baptism as a mere ordinance. Thus, baptism is "sunk to the dead level of a mere moral duty" rather than as God's formal pledge to the believer that his sins are forgiven.35 The Campbells, therefore, urged a reevaluation of the role of baptism in conversion narratives. They sought to substitute baptism for the mourner's bench.36 If one has a enough faith to come to the mourner's bench, one has enough faith to be immersed. Everyone who is immersed upon their faith in the Son of God has God's formal pledge that their sins are forgiven. There is no more need for the mourning

32Ibid., 125. 33Ibid., 118. 34Ibid., 170-71. 35Thomas Campbell, "Essay on the Religion of Christianity [Concluded]," Christian Baptist 2 (1 November 1824), 72-73. 36Walter Scott, "'Migrati Coloni'," Christian Baptist 6 (2 March 1829), 178, complained that "some have substituted sprinkling, some the mourning bench for the baptism of remission." 7 bench. Baptism is God's mourning bench, or better, it is God's formal pledge by which believers are assured that God's love for them has forgiven their sins through faith.37 Whoever believes the one fact that Jesus is the Christ and submits to the one institution which gives expression to this faith is admitted into the church. "Every such person is a christian in the fullest sense of the word, the moment he has believed this one fact, upon the above evidence, and has submitted to the above mentioned institution." No account of an experience is required for admittance into the church, but "whosoever confesses that Jesus is the Christ, and is baptized, should be received into the church; and not an instance can be produced of any person being asked for any other faith, in order to admission, in the whole New Testament."38

Interpreting Campbell's Theological Shift

The great question of the revivalist frontier was: how can I know that I am saved? Conversion narratives were intended to give evidence of this knowledge so that persons might be admitted to full membership in the church. Campbell bypassed the conversion narrative by offering assurance through baptismal obedience. Or, it might be better to say, Campbell reinterpreted the conversion narrative so that it climaxed in immersion. Campbell rejected the traditional conversion narrative because it was rooted in a mistaken theological premise. It assumed that God would work a special grace in the heart of his elect, and that the believer could only be assured of forgiveness if God's electing grace was felt there. The frontier conversion narrative assumed that the Spirit must witness to the heart of the individual before one could be assured of their regeneration. Consequently, believers sat anxiously on the mourner's bench as they sought to "pray through" and receive that special work of God's grace. The mourner's bench created despair rather than assurance for those who did not discover this special work in their hearts.39 Campbell discovered that the assurance of God's love needs no special work of grace, but that God has already assured the world of his love through the work of Christ in the gospel. Campbell found comfort in the gospel proclamation of "whosoever will" where he had previously only known anxiety on the mourner's bench.40

37Later development within Campbell's baptismal theology moved him to the position that baptism is not only a formal pledge of God's pardon, but that it is the actual or real means of God's pardon. Baptism is a sign of God's remission of sin, but it is not a sign of what God has already done. Rather, it is an accompanying or "concomitant" sign. Cf. Alexander Campbell, "Review of Archippus--No. VI," Millennial Harbinger 2 (September 1831), 404-405: "Hence the question is, Is baptism a sign and seal of past remission? "Of past remission," says Archippus; of accompanying remission say we....If, then, baptism be a seal or remission, or a promise or covenant concerning remission, that promise, or blessing, or covenant cannot be received, nor secured, nor enjoyed until it be sealed. And just in the act of signing and sealing it is confirmed. If, then, baptism be a seal of remission, then no person is in fact pardoned until baptized." Also, Alexander Campbell, "Remarks on Rev. Dr. Cleland on Campbellism," Millennial Harbinger 3 (November 1832), 541-42: "The question is, "Whether at, before, or after the sign, the thing signified is to be expected...If, then, Paul's baptism was only a sign the thing signified was the actual and personal remission of his sins; of which his immersion was a concomitant sign. It was neither commemorative of a previous remission, nor prophetic of a future remission." 38Alexander Campbell, "The Foundation of Hope and of Christian Union," Christian Baptist 1 (5 April 1824), 176-7. 39See, for example, James Fishback, "Extract from Letters," Christian Baptist 2 (1 November 1824), 82-83: "It sets the gospel ground of hope at a distance from the self-condemned, who cannot find such good dispositions in themselves, and puts them upon striving to attain them, or to exert some act in order to be justified. The consequence is that they either, discouraged, sink into despondency, or fall into despair after much fruitless labor; or, if they obtain some fluctuating peace in this way, it is not founded on what they believe concerning Christ, but upon a better opinion of themselves, or of the dispositions and actions of their minds towards him; and in this case, it signifies little whether the call these things acts of faith or works of law; or whether they thank God or themselves what they are not as other men are. There is surely a wide difference between believing 'that God will justify only such as are well disposed and properly qualified,' and believing 'that he justifies the ungodly freely, by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.' Rom. iii.24, ch. v.5. and the effects of these two faiths are equally different. The former leads a man to seek relief to his guilty conscience, and peace with God from something to be wrought in him or done by him. The latter leads a man directly to the character and work of Christ, as the sole foundation of his justification, and of his hope and peace with God." 40Campbell, "Reply," 229-230. 8

I reasoned thus, "I was most certainly willing, and God was most certainly a God of truth, and had most assuredly invited me to partake of his favor, and why should I not?....I found ultimately that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth it, and the divine aid was vouchsafed in a way which I had not expected. I had looked for it independent of all the grace revealed in the gospel, but found it inseparably connected therewith. My experience hitherto was the experience of a misguided education, and indeed the experience of unbelief. My present peace and joy and hope arise form a firm persuasion that in the Lord Jesus through the love of God, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, I have acceptance, and am adopted into the family of God. Of this I have assurance from the spirit of adoption which I have received, and from the love I have to all the saints.

Sinners, therefore, ought not to agonize over whether they are loved by God, but rather they should trust God's loving work in the gospel, believe that God has loved them in Christ, and obey God's command to be immersed. Instead of agonizing for months, they should trust God's promises in the gospel. The "philanthropy of God" is the "foundation" of all joy and assurance.41 The search for a special grace through an oppressive experience detracts from the "simplicity of the gospel." Campbell testified that if "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 originated."42 Further, Campbell rejected the traditional conversion narrative because he understood that all narratives are interpreted narratives. Individual subjective experiences are interpreted within larger community narratives. Campbell argued that "throughout christendom every man's religious experience corresponds with his religious education."43 In contemporary terms, narrative theologians and the sociologists of knowledge have taught us that the community narrative creates and interprets our experience. Individuals find their identity in community and they interpret their experience through the social matrix they have appropriated from their community. Subjective experience, therefore, is community-dependent and personal identity is formed within community. The dynamic of conversion involves the role of community. Conversion does not occur in isolation but within the context of a particular community. The community provides the story in which one's experience is interpreted. As Stanley Grenz appropriately comments, "the experience of encountering God together with the conceptual framework which facilitates it are mediated to us by a religious community--the church--through its symbols, narratives, and sacred documents."44 The community proclamation, for Campbell, is the gospel, the community response is faith, and the community initiation is baptism. In both good Lockean and Baconian fashion, Campbell stressed the objective character of the Christian faith.45 The facts of the gospel are proclaimed, the testimony is believed, and faith submits to immersion as evidence of its authenticity. Assurance, then, rests upon the objective facts of the gospel and this assurance is personally appropriated through the willingness of faith to obey. The subjective aspect of faith is expressed in the objective act of baptism. The subjective and objective grounds of assurance together offer an awareness of forgiveness in one instantaneous moment. Campbell decried the common attitude among the Regular Baptists that assurance was based

41Campbell, "Conscience," 151. 42Alexander Campbell, "Letter to R. B. Semple--No. II," Millennial Harbinger 1 (April 1830), 179. 43Campbell, "Conscience," 151. See also "Reply to the Above," 228: "It is not the result of apostolic but systematic teaching. But few are able to trace their mental exercises and excitements to the proper cause. Hence divine and human causes are so completely blended together that few can discriminate the one from the other." 44Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 9. 45See Carisse Mickey Berryhill, "Alexander Campbell's Natural Rhetoric of Evangelism," Restoration Quarterly 30 (1988), 111-24 and Michael Casey, "The Origins of the Hermeneutics of the Churches of Christ Part Two: The Philosophical Background," Restoration Quarterly 31 (1989), 193-206. 9 upon subjective feelings and is only gradually perceived by the believer. "The ancient christians," he argued, "had not to gather the conviction of the pardon of their sins from internal sensations or feelings." Those feelings were "derived from the divine testimony" that God had promised them that if they would submit to immersion (objective event), he would remit their sins through faith.46 In response to a querist on this point, Campbell summarized his thinking:

But our consciousness of forgiveness is not made to proceed from any inward impulses, voices, or operations, either instantaneous or gradual, but from a sure and more certain foundation--the testimony of God addressed to our ears. If operations, impulses or feelings, were to be the basis of our conviction, it would be founding the most important of all knowledge upon the most uncertain of all foundations. 'The heart of man is deceitful above all things,' and 'He that trusts in his own heart, is a fool.'

Consequently, Campbell approached the moment of baptism as the moment of objective assurance. It is an assurance based upon faith in the gospel promises rather than upon precariously interpreted subjective feelings.47

For example, I believe the testimony concerning Jesus of Nazareth in the apostolic import of it. I then feel myself commanded to be immersed for the forgiveness of sins. I arise and obey. I then receive it, and am assured of it, because God cannot deceive. Thus I walk by faith--not by feeling.

Campbell saw baptism as that event which could give the believer objective assurance instead of the subjective assurance sought at the anxious seat. Thus, baptism gives the believer, what Campbell called, a "sensible pledge." Campbell used "sensible" in the sense of the external senses of the body, that is, the "five senses." Baptism is an objective event. It is visible to the eye and performed by the body. It is "sensible" as opposed to mental. Baptism, then, "gives the convert a sensible pledge that God, through the blood of Christ, has washed away his sins, has adopted him into his family, and made him an heir of all things through Christ." By this objective testimony, immersed believers are assured that they have become "a habitation of God through the Holy Spirit," and God thereby "dwells" in them and they "in God by the Spirit which is imparted" to them."48 The witness of the Spirit is received through baptism where the heart is renewed and the gift of the Spirit for sanctification is given as a baptismal promise.49 Since it is a "sensible" (objective) event, it is tied to a particular time and place. The believer can look back to a specific point in time as the precise moment he was saved. This is a key point for Campbell.50

There is an instant of time, and a medium through which the forgiveness of sins is imparted as well as the other blessings growing out of adoption into the family of God. This point is worthy of much investigation, and capable of the clearest demonstration. That there is a definite instant of time in which all former sins are absolved, is generally admitted; but that there is a sensible means ordained by which this blessing is conveyed, is not so generally apprehended.... Faith, indeed, is the grand medium through which forgiveness is accessible, but

46Alexander Campbell, "A Catalogue of Queries--Answered," Christian Baptist 6 (2 February 1829), 166. 47Ibid., 165-6. 48Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel--No. VII," Christian Baptist 5 (7 July 1828), 279. 49Campbell, "Catalogue," 164. Campbell is not opposed to understanding "faith, love, hope of the gospel, with the gift of the Holy Spirit" as "proofs of our individual personal adoption." He does not reject subjectivity, but he rejects mere subjectivity in "experimental religion" as the ground of assurance. See "Experimental Religion," Christian Baptist 4 (5 Feburary 1827), 143. 50Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel--No. VI," Christian Baptist 5 (2 June 1828), 254-5. 10

something more is necessary to the actual enjoyment of the blessing than a conviction that it is derived through the blood of Jesus. Hence those who had obtained this belief were commanded to be immersed for the remission of sins, or to arise and be immersed and wash away their sins, invoking the name of the Lord.

Baptism is a "sensible" moment of assurance. God has graciously appointed this "act of ours as a medium of remission, that we might have the assurance of forgiveness, and know when we are forgiven." Baptism is a much more satisfactory assurance than that which arises "through confession and prayer." Baptism "heightens the grace by making us sensible when we need it, and when receive it."51 Believers can look at the objective event of their immersion and enjoy the full assurance of their pardon because they believed the testimony of God and obeyed it in a specific act. Baptism, then, is God's work. Baptism is God's pledge that the sins of the believer have been remitted. In this way, Campbell wrote, disciples are baptized "into the faith" rather than "into their own experience." The testimony of baptism, as God's testimony to the believer, is worth more than all the testimony about "the workings of unbelief, or all the conflicts of conscience, or all the agonies of despair, all the calms and storms of the experience of John Bunyan, or any other man."52 When the believer is immersed, however, it is an act of faith in God's promises. It is not a moment of subjective introspection. Rather, baptism objectivizes faith; it externalizes faith in a sensible moment. It is the moment when faith acts and the believer is assured.53

"...and therefore, as was said of old, "According to thy faith, so be it unto thee," so say we of immersion. He that goeth down into the water to put on Christ, in the faith that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and that he has appointed immersion as the medium, and the act of ours, through and in which he actually and formally remits our sins, has, when immersed, the actual remission of his sins."

Consequently, despair ends in the baptismal waters. There is no more agony. There is no more doubt. There is no more search for the personal evidence of divine election. On the contrary, the one who believes the promises of God in the gospel and who though faith is immersed is fully assured by the witness of the Spirit in the gospel. Rather than an "experimental religion" where assurance is based upon personal subjective experiences, Campbell advocated a "sensible" religion where assurance was rooted in the promises of God attached to baptism. Campbell's theological point was not that far from the witness of the Protestant Reformers themselves who attached more significance to baptism than contemporary evangelicals.54 Campbell himself cited a section out of Calvin's Institutes as containing "much clear and unequivocal testimony in favor of the true intent and meaning of Peter's opening speech in Jerusalem."55 While he cited the whole

51Alexander Campbell, "Reply to C. F.," Christian Baptist 7 (1 February 1830), 181. 52Alexander Campbell, "Dear Brother," Christian Baptist 4 (4 December 1826), 99-100. 53Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel--No. IV," Christian Baptist 5 (7 April 1828), 222. 54To justify the plural, in addition to Calvin, I offer Martin Luthers' comments in his "Large Catechism," in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. and ed. by Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 440, 442: "Our know-it-alls, the new spirits, assert that faith alone saves and that works and external things contribute nothing to this end. We answer: It is true, nothing that is in us does it but faith, as we shall hear later on. But these leaders of the blind are unwilling to see that faith must have something to believe--something to which it may cling and upon which it may stand. Thus faith clings to the water and believes it to be Baptism in which there is sheer salvation and life, not through the water, as we have sufficiently stated, but through its incorporation with God's Word and ordinance and the joining of his name to it. When I believe this, what else is it but believing in God as the one who has implanted his Word in this external ordinance and offered it to us so that we may grasp the treasure it contains?...Yes, it must be external so that it can be perceived and grasped by the senses and thus brought into the heart, just as the entire Gospel is an external, oral proclamation. In short, whatever God effects in us he does through such external ordinances...To appreciate and use Baptism aright, we must draw strength and comfort from it when our sins or conscience oppress us, and we must 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'." 11 of Book 15, chapter 4, paragraphs 1-5, he emphasized the following section:56

Baptism is a sign of initiation, by which we are admitted into the society of the church, in order that being incorporated into Christ, we may be numbered among the children of God. Now it is has been given to us by God for these ends, which I have shown to be common to all sacraments:--First, to promote our faith towards him; secondly, to testify our confession before men. We shall treat both these ends of its institution in order. To begin with the first: from baptism our faith derives three advantages which require to be distinctly considered. The first is, that it is proposed to us by the Lord as a symbol and token of purification; or, to express my meaning more fully, it resembles a legal instrument, properly attested, by which he assures us that all our sins are canceled, effaced, and obliterated, so that they will never appear in his sight, or come into his remembrance, or be imputed to us: FOR HE COMMANDS ALL WHO BELIEVE TO BE BAPTIZED FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS. Therefore, those who have imagined that baptism is nothing more than a mark or sign by which we profess our religion before me, as soldiers wear the insignia of their sovereign, as a mark of their profession, have not considered that which was the principal thing in baptism--which is, that we ought to receive it with this promise, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."

Calvin also emphasized the visible character of baptism as that which offers us the "knowledge and assurance " of the remissions of sins "received in this sacrament."57 Campbell, therefore, asked his readers "how much more orthodox than ourselves was this celebrated reformer?" "We leave it to the good sense of the reader," Campbell wrote, "whether John Calvin ought not to be called a Campbellite as well as the Apostle Peter."58

Conclusion Alexander Campbell, the Baptist Reformer of the 1820s, developed a baptismal theology which responded to the "mourner's bench" theology of the Second Great Awakening. In contrast to seeking a "saving experience" through prayer, Campbell proclaimed baptism as God's objective offer of assurance to the believer. Instead of seeking assurance in an individualist subjective experience, Campbell argued that God offered assurance in a "sensible" (empirical) pledge through which one entered the community of faith. Baptism, then, became the communal and empirical seal of assurance for the believer based upon the promises of God. As God's pledge, baptism is the witness of the Spirit which resides not only in the individual's heart who believes God's promises in the gospel, but also in the communal and objective character of the action itself. Campbell's call, then, was not to "pray through," but to "be baptized." This form of the "altar call" became an identifying mark of the historical tradition known as the "Churches of Christ."59 Further, Campbell saw this as the moment when the believer was initiated into the community of

55Alexander Campbell, "Calvin on Baptism," Millennial Harbinger 4 (November 1833), 544. 56Ibid. 57Ibid. 58Ibid., 546-7. 59This may be illustrated with thousands of cases, but an interesting one is Henry Manning, The Great Revival and the Little Tent Meeting: Or, "Christian Experience" of To-day, Christian Tract Series, February 10, 1899, ed. J. S. Lamar (Chicago: Oracle Publishing Co, 1899), who recounts his conversion through a revival tent-meeting. He recounts his climactic moment of understanding (p. 25): "Then, by reading the great commission and other Scriptures, he showed what Christ meant by conversion, and how he detailed the whole process from its beginning in the thought and faith of the heart, to its final consummation in the consecration of the whole man, body, soul and spirit, to him in the ordinance of baptism. There the process of conversion was completed. The man had actually turned to the Lord; for the Lord met him there, and graciously welcomed and pardoned him....This was new entirely, and if true, exceedingly important." This would be a typical "conversion narrative" that one might find among contemporary Churches of Christ. 12

God, the church. Grenz seems to agree with this communitarian perspective. "In the final analysis," Grenz writes, "we know that we have encountered God in that we have been brought to share in community,"60 and our entrance into this community is experienced through baptism. According to Grenz,61

first century believers brought together personal faith and baptism as its public declaration into one undifferentiated reality both in practice and in their understanding of conversion. This composite view of conversion explains the otherwise difficult statements that seem to make baptism essential for salvation (Mark 16:16; 1 Peter 3:21).

John MacArthur has also called attention to this point. While stressing that conversion "is complete before baptism" and that it functions as an "external sign that testifies to what has occurred in the sinner's heart," MacArthur nevertheless describes baptism as the "initial step of obedience for the Christian." This initial act is a believer's testimony that they are committed to a "life of obedience and discipleship." Consequently, the early church "viewed baptism as a turning point. Only those who were baptized were considered Christians." Unfortunately, according to MacArthur, contemporary evangelicalism treats baptism too casually. While there are many unbaptized professing Christians in evangelical churches, "that was unheard of in the New Testament church."62 It appears that American evangelicalism's emphasis on conversion narratives and individualistic conversions has not only undermined a biblical baptismal theology but has also attacked the very foundations of biblical ecclesiology. The theological point at stake is the nature of the Spirit's witness as communal and objective as well as individual and subjective. These perspectives should not be disconnected. The communal and objective character of assurance has been overshadowed by American individualism and the overriding desire for the personal, self-interpreting experience of God. The sociology of knowledge underscores that our experience is communally dependent and not autonomously self-interpreting. The historical witness of Campbell calls us to a renewed appreciation of the visible community and sacramental objectivity. This has been traditionally known as the "sign and seal" of grace through the visible church without denying the reality of the personal subjective witness of the Spirit. The subjective witness of the Spirit must not be severed from the objectivity of God's promises in the Word and the visible community of faith in which the Spirit offers his witness. The baptism of believers is the "sensible" moment which unites all three: community, God's promises, and the Spirit's witness.

60Grenz, 66. 61Ibid., 560. 62John F. MacArthur, Jr., Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles (Dallas: Word, 1993), 207-8.