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Classic iMonk Post

by Michael Spencer

Originally posted February 8, 2006

We like the creedsâ€¦.except for the catholic parts.

â€œI believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saintsâ€¦â€ -The Apostleâ€™s Creed â€œAnd I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;â€¦ Amen.â€ â€“ The Nicene Creed

Iâ€™ve been in probably 3000+ Baptist led worship services. With the exception of seminary and two years that I was on staff at Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, I have almost never been in a Baptist church service or class where we used the Apostleâ€™s or Nicene Creeds for any reason. (OKâ€¦the Founderâ€™s Conference. You guys get some love.)

Thatâ€™s because we knew they were trouble. And I know why. Letâ€™s journey back to my youth among the Landmark version of Southern Baptists, a common variety in Kentucky in the 50â€²s and beyond, even to this day.

The anti-Roman Catholicism in my SBC upbringing extended to a general suspicion that â€œcreedsâ€ were instruments of Roman Catholic superstition. So while we were devoted to the King James Bible, the 1956 Baptist Hymnal and Southern Baptist Sunday School literature, the great creeds of the church could take a hike. A long hike.

If, however, by some strange circumstance, these two creeds were to somehow have found themselves used in worship or teaching, and our people had been able to hold them in their hands and see the words for themselvesâ€¦.they would have not been happy.

â€œCatholic.â€ That word. The â€œc-word.â€ The word that must be explained a thousand times. The word that is so much trouble, some have reworded those lines of the creeds to avoid the controversy.

Itâ€™s not just in Baptist circlesâ€¦or in conservative evangelical circles, for that matter. Iâ€™ve had to explain the term â€œcatholic churchâ€ to almost every visitor who has ever come to my church. (Yesâ€¦mostly Baptists.) They listen and nod, but I donâ€™t think my explanation does much good. Given the choice of â€œNo creed but Christ,â€ or â€œWe believe the Apostleâ€™s/Nicene Creeds,â€ the majority of Christians in my environment would have no trouble choosing door number one.

The Apostleâ€™s Creed and the Nicene Creed were never going to surface in my Baptist circles, because the language of those creeds defined the church in a way that opened all sorts of difficulties for people who believed that the church was their local congregation, and local congregations just like them.

The Campbellites (Church of Christ) and the Roman Catholics would engage us Baptists in debate about which church was the â€œone, trueâ€ church Jesus founded. Landmark theology allowed my church to give an answer: the true church was the church that had the New Testament marks of the church.

What were the marks of a true church?

â€œMARKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCHâ€

Its Head and Founderâ€“CHRIST. He is the law-giver; the Church is only the executive. (Matt. 16:18; Col. 1:18) Its only rule of faith and practiceâ€“THE BIBLE. (II Tim. 3:15-17) Its nameâ€“â€CHURCH,â€ â€œCHURCHES.â€ (Matt. 16:18; Rev. 22:16) Its polityâ€“CONGREGATIONALâ€“all members equal. (Matt. 20:24-28; Matt. 23:5-12) Its membersâ€“only saved people. (Eph. 2:21; I Peter 2:5) Its ordinancesâ€“BELIEVERSâ€™ BAPTISM, FOLLOWED BY THE LORDâ€™S SUPPER. (Matt. 28:19-20) Its officersâ€“PASTORS AND DEACONS. (I Tim. 3:1-16) Its workâ€“getting folks saved, baptizing them (with a baptism that meets all the requirements of Godâ€™s Word), teaching them (â€œto observe all things whatsoever I have commanded youâ€). (Matt. 28:16-20) Its financial planâ€“â€Even so (TITHES and OFFERINGS) hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel,â€ (I Cor. 9:14) Its weapons of warfareâ€“spiritual, not carnal. (II Cor. 10:4; Eph. 6:10-20) Its independenceâ€“separation of Church and State. (Matt. 22:21)

Or, from the same sourceâ€¦

A spiritual Church, Christ its founder, its only head and law giver. Its ordinances, only two, Baptism and the Lordâ€™s Supper. They are typical and memorial, not saving. Its officers, only two, bishops or pastors and deacons; they are servants of the church. Its Government, a pure Democracy, and that executive only, never legislative. Its laws and doctrines: The New Testament and that only. Its members. Believers only, they saved by grace, not works, through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Its requirements. Believers on entering the church to be baptized, that by immersion, then obedience and loyalty to all New Testament laws. The various churchesâ€“separate and independent in their execution of laws and discipline and in their responsibilities to Godâ€“but cooperative in work. Complete separation of Church and State. Absolute Religious liberty for all.

What these distinguishing marks did was very good. What they did not do, however, was address two issues raised in the creeds and in our interactions with other Christians.

First, what is the â€œuniversal,â€ or â€œcatholicâ€ church? The invisible, one body of Christ through all time and history? Is there such a thing?

How does this universal church relate to the local church? Are they identical? Particularly, how does membership in the universal church relate to membership in the local church?

It appeared quite possible to my Baptist friends that if one admitted that the Methodist pastor was a member of the true body of Christ, then the local Baptist churchâ€™s claim to being the â€œtrueâ€ church in the above list was compromised. Here was someone who was accepted by Christ, but unacceptable to our local congregation.

This caused a host of problems. As the idea of the â€œuniversalâ€ church was virtually eliminated from our way of thinking about the church (and even ridiculed), it became necessary to tell a host of people that they could not be members of our church unless they were rebaptized (or in most cases, reprofessed their faith in Christ from scratch, as if they had never been Christians.)

This eventually came to mean something else; something that was said, not loudly, but plainly: our church, the Baptist congregation, was the one, true church that Jesus founded, and other churches wereâ€¦wereâ€¦wellâ€¦.

This was the second issueâ€”What were other churches? The Roman Catholic Church was the whore of Rome and the home of the future anti-Christ. But what about the Methodists? Pentecostals? Presbyterians?

Our church was straightforward. These other congregations were not churches. They were â€œreligious societies,â€ and the persons in them were, generally, lost, or at least so confused and poorly taught that you should approach them as unbelievers and seek to get them saved.

One, holy, catholic, apostolic church? Such a concept played no part in our church at all. Our church was the church. Our denomination was not a church. There was no invisible, universal church. There was a New Testament list of the characteristics of local congregations, and our church had them all. No other church did.

(Non SBC Baptists really bugged us, by the way. Our church finally decided that if they didnâ€™t use Southern Baptist literature and participate in our denominational missions program, then there was good reason to assume they were not â€œrealâ€ Baptists.)

Now a majority of trustees of the IMB and an increasing number of conservative SBC leaders are ready to move the SBC back toward the atmosphere and claims of my youth among the Landmarkers, where you were about as likely to hear a sermon on the â€œcatholicâ€ church as you were to hear a list of the pastorâ€™s favorite beers.

Today, these advocates are prepared to say that those not baptized in a Baptist church that believes in â€œeternal securityâ€ (i.e. any Arminian/Charismatic/independent church) and ties that endorsement explicitly to baptism have not been baptized legitimately and must be rebaptized. They are prepared to say that baptism is an endorsement of an entire slate of conservative Baptist theological positions, and any church that falls short of those commitments is not providing a legitimate Baptism.

They are prepared to say that there is no legitimate Christian church, no Christian baptism and no Christian ministry outside of what is practiced by non-Arminian Baptists in local churches. They are prepared to, once again, emphasize an understanding of the church that will never be disturbed by the question of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church existing outside the distinctives of contemporary conservative Southern Baptists.

I will not roll call the names of the churches, ministers and fellow Christians whose legitimacy in the Body of Christ will be rejected by this shift. Most Baptists are not interested in a return to the catholic Christianity of the creeds. I am well aware of this. They will stand side by side with brothers and sisters in the cause of the contemporary culture war, but they have no interest in seeing the church itself in larger, more catholic terms.

What does this mean? It means that, for all intents and purposes, until someone comes to a Baptist congregation, walks a Baptist aisle, is immersed in Baptist water by a Baptist minister, they will not be accepted as one who is legitimately part of the Body of Christ. It may take a while for this to be revealed, but it is the case.

Those of us who believe in the catholicity of the church are also, generally, persons who value our denominational confessions and who understand the differences in our churches. We grieve over the divisions in the family/body, but we recognize that we cannot take the church seriously one one level (catholicity) and not on another level (local congregation/denomination.)

I have no quarrel with those who derive a â€œlistâ€ of New Testament church characteristics from the Bible and seek to live by those. But I do reject the notion that our churches are so right, so correct and so in conformity to scripture that we can pronounce other churches, baptisms and ministers as merely â€œreligious societies.â€ Rejecting those who profess faith in Christ and seek to follow him as I do is a serious business, and I am unsure why we seem to be relishing the opportunity to do more of it.

In other words, we need a â€œgenerous catholicity.â€ Not a competition where the winner plays the role of the brat, but a humble and sincere attempt to see Christ in his church, and not just in ours. It will not hurt us to say that Christâ€™s church is larger than our own, or to act like it.

We differ on Baptism. Can we agree that Baptism belongs to Christ, and is not dispensed by the church?

We differ on matters such as â€œeternal securityâ€ and speaking in tongues. Can we agree that the Holy Spirit manifests himself in his church according to his good pleasure, and not only within the bounds of our preferences (or nice theological conclusions?)

We differ on church government. Can we agree that Christ is the head of the church?

We differ on how we profess our faith. Can we agree that we receive a brother in Jesus nameâ€™ and not our own?

We differ on the Lordâ€™s Table. Can we agree that all of us read the same texts with the same passion to be connected to Christ through that table, and that even if we cannot share it together, we can agree that it is our table, and the table where our elder brother seats us all in places of honor?

We differ on much and always will. Can we agree that we are allâ€¦all of usâ€¦the church catholic? The one, holy, apostolic, blood-bought, inheritance of Jesus? That we are all the fruit of his incarnation and suffering, and that our divisions do not divide Christ (I Corinthians 1:13), but only ourselves from our family?

I am glad for all the Baptist tradition gave to me and to my family, but if my Southern Baptist brothers are going to all but erase the â€œcatholicâ€ church from our common faith, I will pray that the project fails and that God will raise up a better generation, with a deeper love for all the church.