Historic Usage Of Doctrine Of “Spirituality of the Church” In USA

 I am currently reading Daniel G. Hummel’s, “The Rise And Fall Of Dispensationalism; How The Evangelical Battle Over The End Times Shaped A Nation.”

I’m learning that the “Spirituality of the Church” (a doctrine repeatedly appealed to by R2K) was pursued by men like Rev. James H. Brooks, Rev. J. H. Thornwell and others as a means to avoid having to answer the political question of slavery that was dividing the nation. Thornwell, originally did not want to secede, and as such, he appealed to the “Spirituality of the Church” doctrine in order to teach that the Church did not have to take a position on the matter. Brooks did much the same. Thornwell, eventually, made known his opposition to freeing slaves, after secession became a fait accompli designating slavery as key to maintaining social order. (See his, “To All The Churches Of Christ.”) However, before secession actually occurred Thornwell tried to evade the secession he opposed by saying that the Church did not need to speak on it given the doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church.

Brooks, though privately opposed to slavery, carried out his allegiance to the “Spirituality of the Church,” by refusing to pray for the success of the Union Armies while in the pulpit serving his St. Louis Presbyterian church. For this omission Brookes was eventually tossed from his pulpit though a split occurred that resulted in Brooks taking the new congregation who was good with his doctrine of the “Spirituality of the Church” and his refusal to pray for the success of the Union Armies.

The thing to note here is that this “Spirituality of the Church” doctrine while insisting that it wants to avoid politics, embraces politics firmly. Not taking a position on a moral issue that the Scripture speaks to is taking a position against the Scripture.

The putative doctrine of the “Spirituality of the Church” was and is not so much a doctrine as it is a tactic in order to evade controversy where controversy is inescapable. If God’s word speaks to all of life then the church is not an institution that can evade the pressing issues of the time like slavery (which Scripture clearly regulates and so allows), political plans that promote socialism as seen in confiscatory taxation (which per the 8th commandment is theft), legislation that works to the end of weakening the family, etc.

In the end the appeal to the doctrine of the “Spirituality of the Church” as defined so to rule out the Church speaking from the pulpit where God has clearly spoken is a doctrine for cowards who do not want to deny themselves and take up the Cross. I have heard of accounts in NAPARC Presbyteries of a refusal to condemn an prospective ordinates’ clearly articulated socialism because “God’s word doesn’t speak to socialism.” This is all about the “Spirituality of the Church.”

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

6 thoughts on “Historic Usage Of Doctrine Of “Spirituality of the Church” In USA”

  1. To not take a position is to take a position. It’s inescapable. Third wayism is nothing but cowardice and it hurts me to see Thornwell degrade and disgrace himself but I guess we all have feet of clay. It’s sad but true.

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  3. I’ll have to refer back to Thornwell’s work you cited, but in his “The Relation of the State to Christ” and “The Church and Slavery” I don’t get the impression that he was a fence-sitter on either slavery or the right (as opposed to the necessity) to secede.

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    1. Thornwell initially had a complex view on secession; while he later supported the Confederacy once established, before the Confederate Gov’t became a reality JHT expressed concerns about the implications of secession. His views evolved as he became a prominent supporter of the Southern cause during the Civil War.

      Touching slavery, before the war’s outbreak he merely said that the Church as the Church did not have to take a stand on the issue and he employed the doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church as the reason why.

      Let me know if your research contradicts my research.

      Reply

      1. I re-read “To All the Churches of Christ” in volume 4 of the SGCB publication of his works. You allude to an evasive doctrine of “the Spirituality of the Church” that evades controversy where it cannot be evaded, but I don’t see that. I don’t think he embraces a real dichotomy between the spiritual and the temporal. I believe he just recognizes that men will have differences on issues, and that those differences will have to be respected unless Scripture clearly settles them. His “The Church and Slavery” is probably the best apologetic for slavery I’ve read.

  4. One last observation on Thornwell: I’d suggest his comments in “To All the Churches of Christ” was a reaction to the Gardiner Spring Resolution and the back-and-forth salvos it provoked. Benjamin Morgan Palmer’s is (as so often) right on point.

    “Christians profess to base their actions upon truth and righteousness. … For our part, we are heartily tired of all this legislation which ‘palters in a double sense;’ which blows hot and cold with the same breath; which says and doesn’t say in the same words; which dead-letters where it ought to retract; which seeks its end by indirection, rather than by open declarations; which is diplomatic when it should be candid. … Friendship which deserves the name must be frank, open, and sincere. Everything short of this is hypocrisy before God. p. 452. We are of those who do not believe much in diplomacy in the affairs of Christ’s kingdom and amongst His people. p. 451.

    The South says to the North, ‘Hold what political opinions you please … for we ask you to recede from no principle.’ ‘Ah yes,’ replies the North, ‘but that it is not enough: it must be entered into the bond between us that these political utterances should have been made, without the recognition of which we will take back nothing.’ This is the significance of the Herrick Johnson Resolution; and it is a new offense against the Southern Church, re-enacting in cold blood all the violences and maledictions of years of intense excitement, rolling them up in one bolus which must be swallowed and inwardly digested as the condition of fraternity.” p. 454.

    Thomas Cary Johnson, ‘The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer’

    I’d have also refused to pray for a Union victory!

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