Mirrors and Microscopes by Weaver C. Douglas;

Author:Weaver, C. Douglas;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authentic Media
Published: 2015-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

In sum, Baptists of this era relied on a belief in a common commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord, to the final authority of the Scriptures and to a common personal experience of grace, all affirmed symbolically in believer’s baptism. Individuals with these common commitments might express some diversity, but they could achieve spiritual unity.102

Whatever the creative or disruptive tensions between the relationship between Scripture, personal faith and the attempt to restore the New Testament church, Baptists did not abandon freedom of conscience. Dissenters might be rejected by a local church but dissent was not silenced. Why? Because Baptist Christian identity was ultimately eschatological. Each and every person must have freedom of conscience because each must meet Christ face to face and be accountable to him in the Last Judgment. No church, no church leaders and no civil magistrate would be there or be accountable in place of him or her.

This self-perception, which I have called an eschatologically formed ecclesiology, had been present among Baptists throughout their history and continued for many Baptists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.103 Francis Wayland testified concerning access to the Scriptures: ‘they were given to every individual that he might understand them for himself, and the word that is given him will judge him at the great day. It is hence evident that we can have no standards which claim to be of any authority over us.’104 In exhorting Baptists who might be hesitant to obey God’s command to do mission work, B.H. Carroll declared that the church could not absolve anyone from individual duty because ‘they do not stand before the great white throne of judgment. But thy soul shall appear before the Judge. Well did our Lord know that there could be no evangelization of the world if ancestors, families, customs, government, commerce, and priests could stand between the individual soul and God.’105 With rhetorical flair, A.E. Dickenson concluded that ‘soul freedom comes with the adoption of Baptist principles as day comes with the rising sun. It is the inevitable, local out-growth of the doctrine that each must hear from himself, repent for himself, believe for himself, confess Christ for himself, and be baptized for himself that as we come one by one into the world, so we must go to Christ one by one for mercy, and at least go one by one out of the world, to be judged according to the deeds done in the body.’106 Belief in the Last Judgment, Baptist identity affirmed, required freedom of conscience. Thus, these Baptists practiced an eschatological ecclesiology that preserved and allowed conscience for authentic voluntary Christian identity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.