by Jerry Locher
Now, the first thing I want to make clear is that I am not speaking for the Association, but rather to open up discussion on the subject of the Church.
I believe that the Dallas conferences on the subject of law and grace -- Old and New Covenant theology -- were a very important step toward a recovery of a Baptist ecclesiology. It brought some focus on the continuity and discontinuity of the two covenants. What should follow from that is the recognition that there was no church in the Old Covenant as the reformers taught. Israel was not a church, Israel was a theocracy. The church is distinctly new covenant. It is my conviction that an unsound Biblical concept of the church will compromise the church, and eventually the gospel. It is not just church autonomy that is at stake, but also the Lord's Supper, baptism -- and most of all, the gospel. Baptists at one time not only thought the ordinances were important, but so was the order in which they were taken. Great care was taken as to the prerequisites to baptism and the Lord's Supper, as well as the way members were received and discharged to and from other churches, and the discipline that might be involved. Our Anabaptist brethren understood what the reformers did not. The reason that the reformers reached back into the Old covenant for part of their ecclesiology is because they were in opposition to Baptist New Covenant ecclesiology. They were able to lay hold of the sword in the Old Covenant to persecute Baptists who stood in opposition to them.
There is another element in this equation as to why we need a recovery of a Baptist ecclesiology. With the recovery of the doctrines of God's sovereign grace, many Baptists who have embraced Calvinism have done so by reading the reformers and the Puritans. In doing so, they have swallowed the reformed and Puritan ecclesiology. The constant use of the word "reformed" by Baptists has no doubt led to many of our Baptist fathers turning over in their graves! To call a Baptist church reformed leads only to blur Baptist distinctness in ecclesiology. A Baptist cannot be reformed and be a Baptist!
Baptists should recover the doctrines of God's sovereign grace in the gospel, but at the same time reject any and all reformed ecclesiology that does not follow the pattern of the New Testament (and much of it does not). We continually read our Baptist history through jaundiced eyes of those who were no friends to Baptist ecclesiology. For example, there are repeated erroneous remarks against Anabaptism. There is no question in my mind that many Baptists who have discovered the doctrines of God's sovereign grace are embarrassed to be identified with Anabaptism. The reason, I gather, is that it is assumed they were all Arminian. I personally do not believe that is so. But for the sake of argument, even if it were so, it is clear that the connection between Anabaptism ecclesiology and Baptist ecclesiology is very apparent. Verduin has helped to bring Anabaptism into perspective in his two books: The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, and The Anatomy of a Hybrid. There is some historical evidence that there were some who did believe unconditional election and more. On page 16 of The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, Verduin states "Until comparatively recent times men were to speak of the stepchildren in the idioms of their foes. Men could do little but repeat the ancient vilifications that had been part of the psychological warfare raging at the Second Front. By then the court records, correspondence, confessions, testimonials, etc., were tucked away in ancient archives. There was not much historians could do but repeat the old legends." I still hear the same things being done -- not only by those who are no friend to Baptists, but by those who dare to call themselves Baptist.
The terminology that we have borrowed for the church from the reformation is faulty and does not belong in our vocabulary. One example of such terminology is the term "Invisible Church." Professor John Murray, who certainly was a reformed theologian, saw the problem with the term, and comes very close to what I think the New Testament is teaching on the matter of the church. You can find this in his Collected Works Vol. 1. The invisible church was clearly an invention of the Reformation to counter Rome. I believe this is substantiated in a footnote in Harold Hershberger's book, The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision. page 122. Hershberger writes, "I agree wholeheartedly with Robert Freidman's denunciation of the doctrine of 'the invisible church' as alien to Anabaptism. This teaching, which is spiritualizing in effect and perhaps in origin, has been from the 16th century to the present day the major underground tunnel by which leaders of established Protestant churches have been able to escape from the position to which their Biblical insurgency at first has led them."
In my remembrance of church history, Rome said to the reformers, "The church is universal and visible," and the reformers replied, "Our church is universal and invisible." The point is, the Reformed churches or most Protestant churches have never discovered a Biblical ecclesiology. And many Baptists have lost theirs by reading the Bible with Reformed glasses. Freidman, in his book The Theology of Anabaptism, writes, "The idea of the invisible church originated with Augustine ... For the Anabaptists nothing could be further from the truth than that. Theirs was always a visible church, the living brotherhood- congregation which they regarded, at least in part, as the nucleus of God's kingdom on earth, or its attempted realization. In this sense Littell speaks correctly of 'realized eschatology'. If that has been the basic feeling of the brethren, then ideal and reality are not too far apart, and no theology of an invisible church could have meaning for them." In The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, Hershberger quotes Lindsay on page 120: "The Anabaptist would have nothing to do with a state church; this was the main point in their separation from the Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists. It was perhaps the one conception on which all parties among them were in absolute accord. The real Church, which might be small or great, was for them an association of believing people." I for one believe the Anabaptists had it right when it came to ecclesiology, and I also believe that most Baptists for a large part of our history agreed with them.
The next point I wish to make is this: some would lead us to believe that the New Testament is vague on the subject of ecclesiology, and that it is impossible to find a monolith of instruction on the church. I personally believe there is more said in the New Testament about the church then there is on soteriology. I cannot detail this for the sake of space. But with the loss of Baptist ecclesiology, there follows the removal of the name. The name Baptist at one time meant a distinct ecclesiology. Many are apologizing for the name instead of offering a Baptist apology, as Abraham Booth and others did.
I believe that a correct ecclesiology and soteriology rise and fall together. The doctrines of God's sovereign grace in the gospel assures a regenerate church membership as much as anything can, with the proper practice of the ordinances in their proper places. Just think for a moment of a believing gathered church of scripturally baptised people, sitting at the Lord's table. There is a circular connection in this setting between ecclesiology and soteriology. No one has the right to sit down to remember Him who has not obeyed that "form of doctrine to which you were delivered."
When we rise from that water-grave, we rise to walk in newness of the New Covenant relationship of life that only can be done in the assembling of ourselves together. To suggest as some have that the ordinances are not important is open rebellion against an imperative command, given by the Head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ. Mt. 28:18-20.
I believe that many Baptists who have embraced the sovereign grace of God in the gospel need to make a recovery of Baptist ecclesiology. If it follows the New Testament teaching on what the church is, it will fall in line with the ecclesiology of those dear people wrongly call Anabaptists. As Verduin has proven, and as Spurgeon and others have stated, "Baptists were reformers long before the reformation." I have purposely used the word "recover" instead of reform; it is a better word to describe what Baptists do when they find wrong in their churches. The Roman Catholic church was never reformed by the reformers; they went out from it to start all over, but in doing so they took a lot of Rome with them. Parts of Rome remain with all Protestant churches to this day, although I don't include Baptists in the name Protestant in the same historical way.