This
article first appeared in the Criswell Theological Journal (Sp. 1989)
and is
reprinted by permission
It is ironic that the doctrine of
the priesthood of all believers has displaced biblical inerrancy as the hottest
item of dispute in the recent SBC controversy.[1]
Perhaps this is related to the fact that the term inerrancy has lost some of
its polemical punch as it has become more widely acceptable. Inerrancy, of
course, is not a term of recent vintage within the denomination. In a book
entitled, Baptist, Why and Why Not, published by the Sunday School Board
in 1900, J. M. Frost, then the Corresponding Secretary of the Board, wrote:
"We accept the Scriptures as an all-sufficient and infallible rule of
faith and practice, and insist upon the absolute inerrancy and sole authority
of the Word of God."[2]
Many, however, are still reluctant to use the term because of its political
connotations, or because of its presumed incompatibility with serious biblical
scholarship.
The irony of the ongoing dispute is
that no one denies the priesthood of believers! What is at stake is how this
principle is to be understood, and how it is related to other, equally valid,
doctrinal concerns. The squabble over pastoral authority, an important but
separable issue, has obscured what is--or ought to be--the central focus of the
debate, namely the quest for a proper balance between individual responsibility
and theological integrity. The strategy of the present essay is first to
examine the relation between the priesthood of believers and the historic
Baptist tenets of soul competency and religious liberty, then to probe the
tension between confessional identity and hermeneutical autonomy, the so-called
"right of private interpretation," and, finally, to recall the
original Reformation meaning of the priesthood of all believers in light of
subsequent developments and present applications.
I. Soul Competency and Religious Liberty
Soul competency and religious
liberty are important, historic Baptist principles, but they should not be
equated with the priesthood of all believers. Soul competency, as stated by E.
Y. Mullins, is based on the premise that all persons have an inalienable right
of direct access to God. Put otherwise, all persons created in the image of God
stand in a unique and inviolable relation to their Creator and, when quickened
by divine grace, are fully "competent" or capable of responding to
God directly.[3]
W. T. Conner spoke of "man's
capacity for God," and earlier theologians related this dimension of the
human self to one' ability to reason, make moral judgments, contemplate
immortality and be awed by the grandeur and mystery of the universe.[4]
Soul competency, in other words, is part of what it means for a human being to
be created in the image of God.
In Book One of his Institutes of
the Christian Religion, John Calvin gives a classic interpretation of the
innate knowledge of God which has been implanted in all persons. He refers to
it variously as "an awareness of divinity," "the seed of
religion" (semen religionis), and "the worm of
conscience."[5]
This natural capacity of the soul for God is the basis for the incurably
religious bent of all human beings. Given the devastating effects of the Fall,
however, human religiousness can only issue in idolatry and self-centeredness
apart from the interposition of God's grace. From the standpoint of
soteriology, then, we should speak more accurately of "soul incompetence."
However, as Paul declared in Romans 1 and 2, the awareness of God in every
conscience is sufficiently clear to render every human being utterly
inexcusable before the bar of divine judgment.
Soul competency means thus that every
individual is responsible to God. This principle undergirds our
evangelistic appeals for repentance and faith. There are no sponsors or proxies
in the relation of the individual to God. As B. H. Carroll put it, "This
is the first principle of New Testament law--to bring each naked soul face to
face with God . . . O soul, thou art alone before God!"[6]
Soul competency pertains universally
to all persons, not merely to Christians. Baptists, however, do not teach the 'priesthood
of all human beings." Priesthood applies only to those who, through
repentance and faith, have been admitted into the covenant of grace and,
consequently, have been made participants in the priestly ministry of their
Mediator, Jesus Christ, i.e., to believers only. As we shall see, priesthood of
believers is really a part of the doctrine of the church. It cannot be
stretched into an anthropological generalization without doing great violence
to its biblical and historic Reformation meaning.
Baptists have a splendid history as
champions of religious liberty and the separation of church and state. Since
God alone is Lord of the conscience, the temporal realm has no authority to
coerce religious commitments. Seventeenth-century English Baptists were among
the first advocates of absolute religious toleration. In his famous treatise, The
Mystery of Iniquity, Thomas Helwys addressed King James in 1612: "Let
them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly
power to punish them."[7]
The Baptist commitment to religious
liberty, however, has never been a pretext for doctrinal indifference or moral
laxity. In 1689 the London Baptists published a Second Confession to
show their hearty agreement with "that wholesome protestant doctrine . . .
in all the fundamental articles of the Christian religion."[8]
When, shortly thereafter, some Baptist abandoned their belief in the deity of
Christ and became Unitarians, there was a major split in Baptist ranks. Even
earlier, the Standard Confession of the General Baptists, published in
1660, had juxtaposed a clear call for liberty of conscience with the right of
each congregation to maintain its doctrinal integrity. Thus Article 24 asserts
"that it is the will and mind of God (in these Gospel times) that all men
should have the free liberty of their own consciences in matters of Religion,
or Worship, without the least oppression, or persecution." This follows
the admonition of Article 17 that the true church should "reject all
Hereticks" along with any others who teach "contrary to the Doctrine
(of Christ) which they have learned."[9]
In America the Baptist plea for
freedom of religion was furthered by Roger Williams who lambasted the
"soul-murdering" magistrates of Massachusetts for their efforts to
coerce religious persecution. Yet there was hardly a more stubborn religious
controversialist in all of New England than Roger Williams. He broke fellowship
with Separatists of Plymouth because their Separatism was less strict than his,
he refused to join the church in Boston because it would not publicly repent of
ever having had fellowship with the (false!) Church of England, he excoriated
the Quakers because of their doctrine of the "inner light" which, to
his mind, undermined the necessity of grace. E. Morgan has said of Williams,
"Most of his writings were demonstrations that other people were
wrong."[10]
The great apostle of religious liberty would be shocked to know that in some
circles he is touted today as the progenitor of modern theological liberalism!
Religious liberty guarantees the
ability of every congregation to order its own internal life, its doctrine and
discipline, in accordance with its own perception of divine truth. It requires
that there be no external political monitoring of the internal religious life
of voluntary associations. Practically, this means that heresy is always
possible and that spiritual vigilance is a constant necessity. Thus, priesthood
of believers does not mean, "I am a priest. I can believe anything I want
to." It means rather, "As a priest in a covenanted community of
believers, I must be alert to keep my congregation from departing from 'the
faith once and for all delivered unto the saints' " (Jude 3).
II. Individual Responsibility and Theological Integrity
One of the greatest advances in
Christian history was the translation and dissemination of Holy Scripture in
the language of the common people. The legacy of an open Bible means that every
believer has both the right and the responsibility to search the Scriptures
diligently and follow their counsel obediently.
While studying his NT, the young
Congregational missionary, Adoniram Judson, became convinced that infant
baptism was unscriptural. Forthwith he became a Baptist! We applaud Judson's
discovery, but the "right of private interpretation" can also lead in
the opposite direction. In the 19th century, not a few Baptists became
convinced, through their sincere study of the Bible, of the eventual salvation
of all persons. Many of them became in fact Universalists. More recently, a
Baptist leader in another country openly questioned the reality of the
Incarnation, comparing belief in the deity of Christ to a child's belief in the
tooth fairy.[11]
In neither of these examples did anyone deny outright the authority of the
Bible. In both cases, however, the conclusions arrived at could not be squared
with, to quote the preamble to the Baptist Faith and Message, "certain
definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have
been and are now closely identified."[12]
The issue is not the right of
every individual believer to worship God and interpret Scripture according to
the dictates of his own conscience. No one has spoken more eloquently to this
principle than George W. Truett in his 1939 address to the Baptist World
Alliance: "For any person or institution to dare to come between the soul
and God is a blasphemous impertinence."[13]
No true Baptist has ever denied that. What is at stake is the right of a
community of believer-priests, whether local congregation, association, state
or national convention, to define for itself, under the leadership of the Holy
Spirit, the acceptable doctrinal perimeters of its own fellowship.
Baptists have never been creedalistic
in the sense of placing man-made doctrinal constructs above Holy Scripture.
To my knowledge, no Baptist body has ever put forth a confession of faith which
claimed to be infallible or beyond revision. The preamble to the Baptist
Faith and Message states explicitly: "As in the past so in the future
Baptists should hold themselves free to revise their statements of faith as may
seem to them wise and expedient at any time."[14]
If we take seriously the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, we
must see our confessional standards as derivative documents. We must be ready
always to measure them by Holy Writ as by a touchstone.
Historically, Baptists have often
recoiled from the very word "creed" because of its association with
the ecclesiastico-political repression of religious dissent. Doubtless this is
what W. B. Johnson, the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, had
in mind when he referred in 1845 to "a Baptist aversion to all creeds but
the Bible."[15]
In fact, it was unnecessary for the nascent Convention to adopt a specific
theological standard because of the overwhelming doctrinal consensus which
prevailed among the messengers, most of whom belonged to congregations which
adhered to the Philadelphia Confession of Faith, an American adaptation
of the 1689 Second London Confession.
A few years later, however, James
Petigru Boyce, in setting forth the rationale for Southern Baptists' first
theological seminary, insisted that each professor subscribe to a set of
doctrinal principles. Moreover, Boyce insisted, "His agreement with the
standard should be exact. His declaration of it should be based upon no mental
reservation, upon no private understanding with those who immediately invest
him into office."[16]
Boyce was well aware that there were those who felt that such a policy of
strict subscription was a violation of academic freedom and liberty of
conscience, but he urged its adoption nonetheless:
You will infringe the rights of no man, and you will secure
the rights of those who have established here an instrumentality for the
production of a sound ministry. It is no hardship to those who teach here, to
be called upon to sign the declaration of their principles, for there are
fields of usefulness open elsewhere to every man, and none need accept your
call who cannot conscientiously sign your formulary.[17]
Boyce related the reluctance of some
Baptists to adopt a specific doctrinal standard to the influence of Alexander
Campbell whose slogan of "no creed but the Bible" had lured many
Baptists away from their traditional confessional moorings.[18]
Campbell had decried the use of confessions as an infringement upon the rights
of conscience. Boyce, however, in a brilliant rebuttal, traced the history of
confessional statements from NT times down to his own day. He showed that
Baptists in particular had been prolific in promulgating confessions, both as
public declarations of their own faith and as a means of testing the true faith
in others. He later recalled, "It was with great difficulty, at first,
that some of the members of the Convention were led to vote for what they
called a Creed. But it was manifest that some such provision ought to
exist."[19]
At strategic points in their
history, Baptists have not hesitated to identify themselves with the great
truths of historic evangelical theology, and to do so explicitly. In the first
decades of the 20th century, radical biblical criticism had led to an
undermining of the basic truths of the gospel itself. Aware of this
encroachment in many of the mainline denominations, E.Y. Mullins, who can
hardly be labeled a "fundamentalist," declared before the Southern
Baptist Convention in 1923:
We record again our unwavering adherence to the supernatural
elements in the Christian religion. The Bible is God's revelation of himself
through man moved by the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary
through the power of the Holy Spirit. He was the divine and eternal Son of God.
He wrought miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead. He
died as the vicarious atoning Savior of the world and was buried. The tomb was
emptied of its contents. In his risen body he appeared many times to his
disciples. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. He will come again in
person, the same Jesus who ascended from the Mount of Olives. We believe that
adherence to the above truths and facts is a necessary condition of service for
teachers in our Baptist schools.[20]
Mullins' call for conscientious
adherence to the "supernatural elements" of the Christian kerygma
does not violate the priesthood of believers, any more than the NT's
designation of the denial of the Incarnation as anti-Christian (1 John 4:3)
nullifies soul competency. Every Christian remains free to interpret the Bible
as he believes he is led by the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of religious liberty
declares that penal measures must not be used by the civil authorities to
enforce belief. But it also implies that the church must be free to define and
maintain the boundaries of its own fellowship. A church which is unable to do
this or, even worse, no longer thinks it is worth doing, is a church which has
lost its soul.
Where and how do we draw the
boundaries? Undoubtedly, this is one of the most delicate tasks the church
faces. We can err either by drawing the boundaries too tightly, or by refusing
to draw them at all. On the one hand, we lapse into legalism, on the other,
into relativism. For example, most Southern Baptists would not be willing to
make agreement on the details of a particular hermeneutic of eschatology, say,
pretribulational premillennialism, a binding test of fellowship. But can--or
should--we accept as tolerable the demythologization of the Parousia which
reduces the return of Christ to a non-event? Must we allow under the umbrella
of acceptable diversity a "process" view of God which denies His very
omnipotence, or a radical historicist reading of the Bible which minimizes the
miraculous, or a liberationist interpretation of salvation history which levels
the Lordship of Jesus Christ? It is the role of a proper and faithful theology,
that is to say, a biblical and evangelical theology, to help the church answer
these questions. The proclamation of the whole counsel of God involves
identifying, and saying "no" to those forms of teaching which if
carried out consistently would threaten the truth of divine revelation itself.
K. Barth was surely right when he said: "If we do not have the confidence
of damnamus, we ought to omit credimus, and go back to doing
theology as usual."[21]
While pastors and teachers have a special responsibility to guard with care
that which has been committed to their trust (1 Tim. 6:20), in the final
analysis this is the task of the entire community of faith and not merely one
segment of it. Indeed, this is one of the salient features of the Reformation
doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.
III. The Priesthood of Believers--The Reformation Model
The priesthood of all believers was
a cardinal principle of the Reformation of the 16th century. It was used by the
reformers to buttress an evangelical understanding of the church over against
the clericalism and sacerdotalism of medieval Catholicism. In modern theology,
however, the ecclesial context of this Reformation principle has been almost
totally eclipsed. For example, in the current SBC debate on the issue, both
sides have referred (uncritically) to the "priesthood of the
believer." The reformers talked instead of the "priesthood of all
believers" (plural). For them it was never a question of a lonely,
isolated seeker of truth, but rather of a band of faithful believers united in
a common confession as a local, visible congregatio sanctorum.
The modern reinterpretation of the
Reformation goes back to the philosopher Hegel who saw Luther as the great
champion of human freedom whose stand against medieval obscurantism signaled
the dawn of modern civilization. With F. Schleiermacher and "the turn to
the subject" in theology, Luther became more and more the hero of modern
rugged individualism.
Consequently, the doctrine of the priesthood of all
believers degenerated into the ideology of "every tub sitting on its own
bottom."
In this context the concepts of
priesthood of believers and soul competency were conflated, the one becoming
virtually interchangeable with the other. W. S. Hudson, one of the most
perceptive interpreters of Baptist history, has pointed to the devastating
impact of this development on Baptist ecclesiology:
To the extent that Baptists were to develop an apologetic
for their church life during the early decades of the twentieth century, it was
to be on the basis of this highly individualistic principle. It has become
increasingly apparent that this principle was derived from the general cultural
and religious climate of the nineteenth century rather than from any serious
study of the Bible . . . The practical effect of the stress upon "soul
competency" as the cardinal doctrine of Baptists was to make every man's
hat his own church.[22]
The appeal to individual experience
and private judgment--traditionally both suspect categories in Christian
theology!--corresponded to the shift away from biblical authority and the
dogmatic consensus of historic Christianity. It also produced a truncated and perverted
version of what Luther and the other reformers intended when they formulated
the doctrine of the spiritual priesthood of all believers.
P. Althaus, the great interpreter of
Luther's theology, explains the original Reformation meaning of this term:
Luther never understands the priesthood of all believers
merely in the sense of the Christian's freedom to stand in a direct
relationship to God without a human mediator. Rather he constantly emphasizes
the Christian's evangelical authority to come before God on behalf of the
brethren and also of the world. The universal priesthood expresses not
religious individualism but its exact opposite, the reality of the congregation
as a community.[23]
Of course, Luther did believe
that all Christians had direct access to God without recourse to "the tin
gods and buffoons of this world, the pope with his priests."[24]
But for Luther the Priesthood of all believers did not mean, "I am
my own Priest." It meant rather: in the community of saints, God has so
tempered the body that we are all priests to each other.[25]
We stand before God and intercede for one another, we proclaim God's Word to
one another and celebrate His presence among us in worship, praise and
fellowship. Moreover, our priestly ministry does not terminate upon ourselves.
It propels us into the world in service and witness. It constrains us to
"show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His
marvelous light" (I Pet. 2:9).
Priesthood of believers, then, has
more to do with the Christian's service than with his or her status. One
function Luther specifies as incumbent upon all believer-priests is that of
"a guardian or watchman on the tower" (warttman odder welcher auff
der Wart).
This is exactly what one calls someone who lives in a tower
to watch and to look out over the town so that fire or foe do not harm it.
Therefore, every minister . . . should be . . . an overseer or watchman, so
that in his town and among his people the gospel and faith in Christ are built
up and win out over foe, devil, and heresy.[26]
According to Luther, then, the
priesthood of all believers, far from providing a cover for individual
doctrinal error, is a stimulus for defending the church against those forces
which would weaken and destroy it.
John Calvin interpreted the
priesthood of all believers in terms of the church's threefold participation in
Christ's prophetic, kingly and priestly ministry. Specifically, every Christian
is mandated to be a representative of Christ in his redemptive outreach to the
world.
All believers . . . should seek to bring others [into the
church], should strive to lead the wanderers back to the road, should stretch
forth a hand to the fallen and should win over the outsiders.[27]
The priesthood of believers is not a
prerogative on which we can rest; it is a commission which sends us forth into
the world to exercise a priestly ministry not for ourselves, but for
others--"the outsiders," not instead of Christ, but for the sake of
Christ and at His behest.
For Calvin, the priesthood of all
believers was not only a spiritual privilege, it was also a moral obligation
and a personal vocation. C. Eastwood, the great Methodist scholar whose book on
the priesthood of believers is one of the few comprehensive treatments of the
theme, laments the distortion of this tremendous evangelical imperative:
The common error that the phrase "Priesthood of
Believers" is synonymous with "private judgment" is most
unfortunate and is certainly a misrepresentation . . . . Of course, the
Reformers emphasized "private judgment," but it was always
"informed" judgment, and it was always controlled, checked, and
corroborated by the corporate testimony of the congregation. Indeed Calvin
himself fully realized that uncontrolled private judgment means subjectivism,
eccentricity, anarchy, and chaos.[28]
Given our commitment to religious
liberty, Baptists cannot approve Calvin's method of dealing with the excesses
of uncontrolled private judgment, as evidenced by his acquiescence in the
execution of Michael Servetus who had repudiated the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. At the same time, we can and should recognize the danger which such
teaching poses to the life of the church. We should not invite Servetus to
become the pastor of our church or a professor in our seminary! To do so would
violate the integrity of our Christian faith. It would also be an abdication of
our responsibility in the priesthood of all believers.
No one should deny the importance of the
doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. It is a precious and irreducible
part of our Reformation heritage and our Baptist legacy. But let no one
trivialize its meaning by equating it with modern individualism or theological
minimalism. It is a call to ministry and service; it is a barometer of the
quality of our life together in the Body of Christ and of the coherence of our
witness in the world for which Christ died.
*
