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[Note: <\/strong>This MS is available in larger font on our Manuscripts<\/strong> page.]<\/span><\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The following quotations tell the reader all he needs to know about the theological agenda of the book under review:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n To confine themselves to Bible words without explanation would be to speak where the Bible speaks and to be silent where the Bible is silent and, in so doing, to identify with the Christian primordium in the fullest sense possible. Or so it seemed. But in accepting this seductive posture, the \u201cChristians\u201d engaged in a profound but subtle transformation that would have lasting and even devastating effects. In the first place, restoration became no longer a means to an end\u2014that end being freedom\u2014but rather an end in itself\u2026. At this point, it perhaps was inevitable that some would claim that the Church of Christ had fully restored the ancient order and now was the one true church outside of which there was no salvation. These claims would come in due time. (Hughes and Allen, 118\u201319 [all subsequent citations are from the same source, unless otherwise indicated]).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [Speaking of those influenced by Campbell]: Their church belonged to the first age, not to time or tradition. Those who adopted this posture turned a critical corner in their movement as they relinquished the original ideal of restoration as process. Instead, restoration became for them an accomplished fact. In this way the \u201cChristians\u201d developed a tradition whose very substance was a denial of their tradition and a history that, ironically, would be characterized for many years by a keen sense of having no history at all (125).<\/span><\/p>\n Some continued to struggle against the forces of history to keep alive the original ideal of restoration as process, grounded in hope. But for many \u201cChristians,\u201d restoration became an accomplished fact. For them, history emerged victorious, leaving only the rhetorical husks of a grand vision of liberty and union for all (132).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Illusions of Innocence<\/span><\/em> is the title of a book written by Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen. It is subtitled, Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630\u00ad\u2013<\/em>1875, and was originally published and copyrighted in 1988 by University of Chicago Press. In 2008, the copyright and publication rights were assigned to Abilene Christian University (ACU) Press for the paperback edition.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Dr. Hughes is the Boyer Fellow\/Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College (\u201crooted in the Anabaptist, Pietist, and Wesleyan traditions of the Christian Church\u201d [Messiah College]) in Grantham, Pennsylvania. Before assuming his post at Messiah, he was a Distinguished Professor in the Religion Division at Pepperdine University and directed its Center for Faith and Learning. He has authored and\/or co-authored several other books, including Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America<\/em> (1996) and The American Origins of Churches of Christ<\/em> (2002).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Dr. C. Leonard Allen has held professorial posts at Biola University (an interdenominational, faith-only, dispensational premillennial, \u201cEvangelical\u201d school that requires its faculty to adhere to its doctrinal platform [see Biola]), at Fuller Theological Seminary (an almost doctrinal twin of Biola University, which requires the same [see Fuller]1<\/sup><\/span>and at Abilene Christian University (which is not far behind either of the above).2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 He has authored and\/or co-authored several books besides the one under review, including The Cruciform Church <\/em>(1990) and Distant Voices: Uncovering a Forgotten Past for a Changing Church<\/em> (1993). Dr. Allen is Editorial Director of Leafwood Publishers, which is apparently a close ally with ACU Press. He presides over an advisory board that includes such notable liberals as Lynn Anderson, Max Lucado, Darryl Tippens, John Allen Chalk, and Leroy Garrett.<\/span><\/p>\n Some Preliminary Impressions<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both Hughes and Allen are obviously intelligent and scholarly men, and both are able wordsmiths. They bear well-earned reputations as doctrinal apostates, not \u201cliberal\u201d in the \u201cclassic theological\u201d sense of \u201cmodernism,\u201d but most certainly in the Biblical sense. They appear to be historians who have read and researched widely. The titles of most of their books demonstrate their penchant for \u201crestoration\u201d history. If Illusions of Innocence<\/em> is exemplary of the others, their persistent agenda is evident: to so interpret and\/or revise history as to depict the Lord\u2019s church as just one more man-originated denomination in the larger religious cesspool of denominationalism.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The authors lay out the subject matter of this book in the following divisions:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The book contains a considerable amount of American church history, from colonial times and well into the nineteenth century, as the subtitle indicates. While I find this history interesting, I do not at all agree with some of the interpretations placed upon it or the conclusions drawn from it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Hughes and Allen express themselves in clear and readable style.3<\/sup> The authors copiously annotated the 296-page book with 698 endnotes (55 pages), many of which are information\/comment notes besides the documentation notes. A thorough index completes the volume.<\/span><\/p>\n The Thesis of the Book <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The aim of the authors is to convince the reader that men can never achieve<\/strong> restoration<\/strong> of any original entity that has been abandoned or corrupted with the passing of time. To Allen and Hughes, all such efforts must be ever in process<\/strong>, impossible of realization<\/strong>. All restorers who claim their efforts as a fait accompli<\/em> are doomed thereby to become that which they set out to oppose and escape\u2014the shackles and barnacles of religious creedalism and self-righteousness. As one would expect such liberals to do, they principally aim their postulation at the early nineteenth-century endeavors in our nation to restore the New Testament church\u2014and to those who continue to herald that plea and who believe the church has been restored.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The book title implies both their thesis and their conclusion: Restoration is a mere illusion, and only the innocent (read \u201dna\u00efve\u201d) attempt it or believe they can accomplish it. They thus sit upon their thrones of superior knowledge and wisdom, and from elitist ivory towers of academe look with condescension on those of us who deny both their thesis and conclusion. To them, we are the simple, gullible, benighted hoi polloi, striving in vain for an unattainable goal (in this attitude they echo the \u201cruling class\u201d that holds the reins of government in Washington, DC). How they must shake their heads from side to side and cluck with their tongues as they view the sad spectacle of members of the restored church Jesus established, still showing ourselves willing to defend her against assaults from without and (as in the case of Hughes and Allen) from within.<\/span><\/p>\n Some Major Emphases of the Authors<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Two Puritans Provide \u201cParadigms\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Early in the book, the authors review some history of seventeenth-century New England Puritanism, especially through the careers of John Cotton and Roger Williams. Cotton, even before fleeing from church authorities across the Atlantic to Boston in 1634, eschewed the ceremonies, polity, and oppression of the Church of England and vowed to follow a course of restoration of the primitive church (33\u201337). Cotton, failing to distinguish between the covenants, mistakenly sought to combine civil and sacred authority in his approach, largely after the model of the Hebrew theocracy (40\u201346). Despite teaching several Scriptural concepts for the church, the application Hughes and Allen disparagingly make of Cotton\u2019s restoration effort is that the restoration impulse causes one to be blinded to his own finitude and leads to \u201cdenying legitimacy to others\u201d (i.e., recognizing Scriptural boundaries of fellowship) (52). Cotton\u2019s opposition to instrumental music in worship would likely have been enough to cause Hughes and Allen to disavow his yearning for primitive purity, had nothing else done so (39\u201340).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Contrariwise, they laud Roger Williams\u2019 (Cotton\u2019s contemporary) approach to \u201cprimitivism\u201d (i.e., restoration), which involved incessant calls for toleration and freedom of conscience (54). He believed that all human attempts at reformation in religion are fallible and that his contemporaries who sought such reformation were as subject to errors and judgment limitations as their predecessors (70\u201371). Hughes and Allen agree with Williams\u2019 opinion that men often naively and inflexibly claim a smug \u201ccertitude in religious matters,\u201d which often becomes a \u201ccloak for self-serving ends and a justification for mistreating others\u201d (77). Compared to the rigid and narrow Cotton, Williams\u2019 belief that restoration must ever be \u201can open-ended concept\u201d (as Hughes and Cotton judged it) make him the authors\u2019 hero (77).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cotton admittedly \u201cdid not get it right\u201d in failing to distinguish between the Old and New Testaments, combining church and civil functions, and perhaps in other ways, but it does not follow that all men who pursue restoration must fail to \u201cget it right.\u201d In discrediting Cotton\u2019s efforts, they violated a basic hermeneutical principle: One cannot justly use the abuse or misapplication of a principle to oppose the principle itself. To attempt such is to employ the Fallacy of Diversion. The principle of restoration must be judged on its actual merits, rather than upon abuses or misapplications of it. Cotton\u2019s aim<\/strong> of restoration was not at fault, but his misapplication of it was.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was Roger Williams (not Jesus or Paul) who declared, based on his observations, that all restoration attempts must be flawed because all men are fallible. While all men are fallible (Rom. 3:23), it does not necessarily follow that all efforts in the grand work of restoration must thereby be flawed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not surprisingly, our authors praise Williams\u2019 criticism of those who evince \u201ccertitude in religious matters,\u201d for they are of the liberal, relativist, perhaps even postmodern set that despises doctrinal \u201ccertitude,\u201d despite incessant Scriptural emphasis upon it (Mat. 7:15\u201323; 15:6\u20139; Luke 8:11; Acts 20:28\u201331; Rom. 6:17\u201318; 16:17\u201318;1 Cor. 1:10; 4:17; Gal. 1:6\u20139; Eph. 4:4\u20136; Phi. 1:16\u201317; 1 Tim. 1:3\u20134; et al.). It appears that they agree with one of their fellow-liberals (and Allen\u2019s former fellow professor at Abilene Christian University), Carroll D. Osburn, and his brand of doctrinal \u201ccertitude\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n There should be room in the Christian fellowship for those who differ on whether more than one cup in communion is acceptable, whether the communion bread is to be pinched or snapped, whether one can eat in the church building, whether funds can be used from the church treasury to support orphan homes, whether the Lord\u2019s Supper must be taken every Sunday, or whether instrumental music is used in worship. There should be room in the Christian fellowship for those who believe that Christ is the Son of God, but who differ on eschatological theories such as premillennialism, ecclesiological matters such as congregational organization, or soteriological matters such as whether baptism is \u201cfor\u201d or \u201cbecause of\u201d the remission of sins (90\u201391).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Likely, Hughes, Allen, and Osburn (and many of their associates) would all have fit in well with Roger Williams had they lived in colonial times.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our authors manifestly agree with Williams\u2019 idea that \u201cdoctrinal certitude\u201d often covers self-justifying agendas that sanction mistreating others. First, we see in this statement the accusation of self-righteousness. Second, we see the charge of mistreating others, likely a reference to refusing to fellowship those who are not in fellowship with Deity. Hughes and Allen just cannot imagine that there might be some folk who seek only to be righteous (not self-righteous) as the New Testament definesrighteousness<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neither can they abide the idea that to be righteous by New Testament definition involves honoring the limits of fellowship set by the Holy Spirit. Not everyone who merely claims or wishes to be in the church of Christ is in it, but only those whom the Lord adds to it when they are saved (Acts 2:47). Those who are in the church are not to be \u201cunequally yoked\u201d (i.e., involved in fellowship) with unbelievers, those in iniquity, or those in darkness, but we are to be separate from them (2 Cor. 6:14\u201317). We are not to partake of or have any fellowship with \u201cunfruitful works of darkness\u201d (Eph. 5:7, 11). Righteousness involves our refusing fellowship even to brethren who cause division through false doctrine (Rom. 16:17\u201318) or who become involved in immorality (1 Cor. 5:1\u201311). We cannot remain righteous while bidding Godspeed to false teachers, for their error then becomes our error (2 John 9\u201311).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hughes and Allen represent a large coterie of \u201cprogressive\u201d brethren who disdain and ignore such heavenly mandates, thereby allowing them to embrace denominational associates in their irenic ecumenism. They clearly feel far more affinity with them than they do with us. Outright liberals are by no means alone in disdaining and disrespecting these and similar Biblical injunctions.4<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n Identifying Original Aims of Campbell and Stone<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 According to Hughes and Allen, the principal aim of the early nineteenth-century restorers was not the restoration of the original church (as if this were an untoward ambition), but it was the pruning of human creeds and practices that burdened Protestantism and the unification of all the churches (107). The \u201crestoration\u201d idea developed only as a means of reaching that two-fold goal, they proffer. Only later, they aver, did restoration become the end, rather than a means to the end (119). The factors that produced this new priority had \u201clasting and even devastating effects,\u201d according to Hughes and Allen (118).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Admittedly, Alexander Campbell\u2019s writings in the 1820s and early 1830s reveal that his expectation of the millennium involved the denominations\u2019 disavowing their sectarian creeds and names and uniting in a \u201cpurified\u201d church to preach the Gospel. The resultant conversion of most of mankind would be the dominance of the Lord\u2019s law among men for a thousand years. Campbell apparently believed that through his unification effort\u2014by means of restoration\u2014the Gospel would eventually end civil governments and the millennial rule of Christ would prevail (172\u201373). This millennial concept explains the name of the second periodical he founded\u2014The Millennial Harbinger<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let us grant that the original aims of these men were purification (i.e., freedom from creedalism) and unification of religion. Let us grant also that the restoration concept was originally secondary. Granting both invalidates neither the restoration aim nor principle. Those early pioneers did not abruptly recognize and depart from all the errors that had so long bound them and generations before them. As they studied the Bible, they arrived bit by bit at true conclusions regarding New Testament doctrine and practice. They were as men in the deep darkness of a cavern who only gradually begin to see their way illuminated as they approach its entrance. We should then not be surprised that the concept of restoration as an end did not occur to those spiritual trailblazers immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nor should it surprise us that the dual aims of purification of and unity in religion would naturally produce in these men the ideal and pursuit of restoration. After all, peeling away all the layers of unauthorized, man-produced names, creeds, and practices would (and did and still does) render restored New Testament churches. Likewise, only when congregations are content to exist apart from man-imposed dogmas can they enjoy Biblical unity (1 Cor. 1:10; Eph. 4:1\u20136). The significant point is that, wherever these men began in their spiritual pilgrimage, they ended with the noble and Scriptural plea to restore primitive Christianity.<\/span><\/p>\n Hermeneutics and the Restorers<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As one would expect of liberals, Hughes and Allen are not big fans of the hermeneutical principles the restorers so laboriously hammered out\u2014particularly those influentially enunciated by Campbell. He viewed the New Testament alone as the law or \u201cconstitution\u201d for the church (terms and concepts that infuriate liberals to this day). From this premise, our authors note, he logically deduced that its approved examples are as binding as its explicit commands and that Scriptural silence \u201cwas always prohibitive.\u201d Further, he declared that the Bible is a book of facts, rather than one of mere \u201copinions, theories, [or] abstract generalities.\u201d One therefore only need gather all the Bible says on a given subject inductively to ascertain completely what the Bible teaches thereon (117).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hughes and Allen aver that the inductive approach to arriving at Biblical Truth the restorers took, led by Campbell, came from two sources: (1) Scottish \u201cCommon Sense Realism\u201d (117, 153\u2013156, et al.) and (2) the \u201cBaconian Method\u201d of scientific investigation, named for the English philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon (1561\u20131626) (124, 153\u2013159). The former incorporated Baconian principles in its premise that all men are possessed of sufficient \u201ccommon sense,\u201d enabling them to deduce correct conclusions when they had inducted sufficient evidence. The application of these principles to Bible study proved almost revolutionary, particularly in breaking the shackles of Calvinism. By them, Walter Scott, the evangelist and close associate of Campbell, was able to deduce the Scriptural and logical progression of the elements of the \u201cplan of salvation\u201d (his so-called \u201cfive-finger\u201d plan) (159\u201360). Liberals of our time enjoy ridiculing as \u201cfive-steppers\u201d those who still preach this imminently Scriptural five-point plan. By the same logical and Biblical approach, those brethren deduced the five acts of worship in our assemblies.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When change agents began issuing the call in the 1980s for a \u201cnew hermeneutic,\u201d it was not because they had something better to offer\u2014as they still do not. No, their effort was only an assault on and effort to demolish the \u201cold hermeneutic.\u201d They knew they had to dispense with it to advance their agenda of moving the restored church into the fullness of denominational identity. Thus, they have steadily attacked, mainly through appeals to emotional factors and elitist scorn, the familiar Command, Example, Necessary Inference (CENI) approach to Bible hermeneutics, exegesis, and interpretation. In recent years, brethren have more precisely identified these same basic tools for arriving at authorized practices as Direct Statement, Accounts of Approved Action, and Implication (DSAAAI). Additionally, liberals hold especially repugnant the principle of the prohibitive nature of Scriptural silence, first voiced among the restorers in 1809 by Thomas Campbell in the western Pennsylvania farmhouse of Abraham Altars.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As we shall see, in despising and ridiculing the hermeneutics of the restorers, liberals such as Hughes and Allen (and their liberal cohorts) are deriding the Bible and its inspired writers themselves (not that it matters to them).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The inductive method: <\/strong>Perhaps 2,500 years before Bacon, the inspired psalmist stated the basis of the \u201cinductive method\u201d of Bible study: \u201cThe sum<\/strong> of thy word is truth; And every one<\/strong> of thy righteous ordinances endureth for ever\u201d (Psa. 119:160, emph. DM). Paul made essentially the same point when he wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n All scripture<\/strong> is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works (2 Tim. 3:16\u201317, KJV, emph. DM).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Paul further advocated the inductive\/deductive approach to Scripture in his admonition to the Thessalonian saints: \u201cProve all<\/strong> things; hold fast that which is good\u201d (1 The. 5:21, emph. DM). Only by examination of \u201call scripture\u201d is one able to possess its various facets that will provide the understanding and instruction to make him \u201cperfect\u201d (\u201ccomplete,\u201d ASV) before God. Only by the induction of the totality of the Word on a subject may one deduce the fullness of Scripture teaching on that subject. This rule is the essential preventive of arraying one passage against another and refusing to harmonize all of them on a given subject, resulting in \u201cproof texting\u201d and the consequent doctrinal errors of that practice. From this very failure have come such horrendous perversions as \u201cgrace-only\u201d and \u201cfaith-only\u201d salvation errors.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Direct statements and approved accounts of action: <\/strong>Neither Campbell nor his fellow-restorers \u201cinvented\u201d or \u201cborrowed\u201d the concept of heeding New Testament commands or responding properly to its direct statements, for its words clearly require such of us (e.g., Mat. 7:1\u20134, 15, 28:19\u201320; Acts 2:38; 10:48; 22:16; 1 Cor. 16:1\u20132; Phi. 2:12; et al.). Nor was the need to follow examples or accounts of approved action that span the ages in their application part of a man-made system of interpretation (e.g., John 13:14\u201315; Acts 5:29; Acts 20:35; 1 Cor. 10:1; 2 Cor. 9:1\u20132; Phi. 2:5\u20137; Jam. 5:10; 1 Pet. 2:21; 1 John 2:6; et al.).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Implication: <\/strong>Moreover, if Biblical obligations are not established by implication as well as by explication, then none of the Bible\u2019s explicit statements applies to us today. This statement is true because none of the Bible\u2019s statements were spoken or written explicitly to us, but only to those who lived when they were spoken or written. Only by implication <\/strong>are we able to know that such things as the following (among many others) apply through the age:<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Those who insist upon explicit statements alone for Biblical authority fall into a trap of their own creation: There is no explicit statement that says those living since the first century are accountable only to explicit statements in the Bible.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saul of Tarsus doubtless understood by implication<\/strong> from the words of Ananias that his sins had not been forgiven before he was baptized to wash them away, although Ananias did not say so explicitly<\/strong> (Acts 22:16).<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hebrews 8:4 correctly concludes that Jesus Christ, our High Priest in Heaven, could not be a priest on earth. However, the writer did not thus conclude from an explicit iteration of Scripture, but he inferred as much from the fact he had earlier noted: \u201cFor it is evident that our Lord hath sprung out of Judah; as to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests\u201d (7:14).Campbell and his cohorts correctly concluded that Jesus words, \u201cHe that believeth and is baptized shall be saved\u201d (Mark 16:16), excluded by implication<\/strong> infant \u201cbaptism\u201d\u2014and they gave it up. So it went with various other human traditions and sectarian practices. The simple fact is that to deny the force of implication is to advocate irrationality.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Speaking out on Scriptural silence: <\/strong>Change agent liberals seem all but obsessed with their detestation of the \u201csilence principle\u201d involved in Biblical hermeneutics. The Bible authorizes only by what it says, never by what it does not say\u2014by its statement, not by its silence. Therefore, Biblical silence has a prohibitive force. Liberal brethren have turned this principle on its head, joining the denominations in their cry that Biblical silence grants permission and freedom to speak and act in religion: \u201cLiberty begins where Scripture stops.\u201d Their credo is, \u201cIf the Bible doesn\u2019t explicitly forbid it, we can teach or practice it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The same liberals who wish us all to abandon this rational and Biblical principle in our study of the Bible expect their doctor to employ it when he writes them a prescription and their pharmacist to use it every time he fills a prescription. A liberal, after listing his book order by phone, would judge the phone-order person to be irrational if then asked, \u201cPlease list all of the books you are not<\/strong> ordering.\u201d The liberal\u2019s judgment of that person would be right, and we are right thus to judge liberals as \u201cirrational\u201d who demand of God that He explicitly list everything He has not <\/strong>ordered or authorized.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Inspired writers revered the silence of the Bible, even as they did its statement. At the conclusion of the Jerusalem confrontation of faithful brethren with the Judaizers, the apostles and Jerusalem elders composed an inspired letter to go to the Gentile churches. In that letter they stated that those who had gone forth, binding circumcision on Gentile saints, did so without authority. The ground upon which they so stated was not \u201cbecause we forbade them to thus go forth and teach,\u201d but because \u201cwe gave them no commandment\u201d (Acts 15:24). Their silence was neither liberating nor permissive, but constituted a forceful prohibition.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jehovah apparently expected Aaron and his sons to understand the significance of His silence. When He rained fire upon Nadab and Abihu because they \u201coffered strange fire\u201d before Him, it was not because they violated an explicit injunction against that sort or source of fire. Their sin was in offering fire \u201cwhich he had not commanded them\u201d (Lev. 10:1\u20132). It was a fire unauthorized because God had not spoken<\/strong> concerning it. These men presumed upon God\u2019s silence, and He was not pleased.<\/span><\/p>\n The Hebrews letter argues from silence in more than one instance. In its first chapter, the writer used God\u2019s silence twice to establish the superiority of the Christ to any of the angels (vv. 5, 13). The passages referring to the Lord\u2019s tribal membership and His lack of qualification for earthly priesthood (7:14; 8:4) mentioned earlier illustrate not only the principle of implication as noted. They also forcefully demonstrate the significance inspired men attributed to the prohibitive force of Biblical silence.5<\/sup>Jesus\u2019 lack of qualification for the earthly Aaronic high priesthood (8:4) lay not in any explicit proscription by the Holy Spirit. Contrariwise, He was disqualified on the simple ground of Mosaical silence. Note it again: \u201cFor it is evident that our Lord hath sprung out of Judah; as to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests<\/strong>\u201d (7:14, emph. DM). Silence most certainly equals interdiction in this case.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If God expected men to respect His silence (as seen in the case of Nadab and Abihu), if inspired men respected the prohibitive force of Scriptural silence, and if they established obligatory prohibitions based on that silence, we ignore this emphasis in our approach to the Bible at our own eternal peril. The dirty little secret is that liberals well know that only when men respect the silence of the Bible as much as they do its statement can the church of our Lord be reproduced in its purity when it becomes corrupt. They further know that it can it be maintained in its purity of doctrine and practice once it is restored only by continued adherence to this principle. By destroying respect for Biblical silence, liberals know they will be getting rid of the principal key to any restoration. Herein lies the concerted assault of liberals against this Scripture-based principle of hermeneutics over the years.<\/span><\/p>\n Is Restoration Possible? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As earlier discussed, the Hughes-Allen thesis affirms that restoration of pristine Christianity is an exercise in futility (they and their liberal comrades apparently do not even believe it is desirable, much less possible). They mock the idea that \u201crestoration\u201d can ever be anything more than a process or a pursuit\u2014always an unattainable ideal at best. (Their averment in this regard parallels their contention that the Truth of God\u2019s Word is something for which we must always be searching, but at which we can never arrive. To claim otherwise is \u201cpresumptuous\u201d in their view.) They assert, therefore, that those who are not only confident that the church can be restored, but that it has been restored and continues in a restored state, labor under an illusion. To all such \u201cprogressives,\u201d the moment men avow the attainment of restoration, they thereupon degenerate into a judgmental, self-righteous, narrow, exclusivist, creed-bound sect. Hughes and Allen are by no means alone in this sentiment, as all who follow to any degree the liberal network of the numerous speechmakers and writers can testify. Were one to poll the change agent elitist liberals in the church, I aver that the results would reveal that all of them condescendingly judge in the same way all of us who still diligently contend for the \u201cold paths.\u201d <\/strong>To them we are merely the na\u00efve, innocent, and unsophisticated religious proletariat that labors under a grand, but groundless dream.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Contrary to the anti-restoration fulminations of the authors of Illusions of Innocence<\/em>, the Word of God not only affirms the desirability<\/strong> of restoration in the face of religious corruption, but the necessity<\/strong> of it. This Divine mandate implies the possibility<\/strong>of restoring the purity of doctrine and practice when men have abandoned it and of maintaining the pure state when men have restored it. Statements and\/or narratives in both Testaments demonstrate the certitude of the foregoing assertions.<\/span><\/p>\n The Function of the Mosaic Prophets<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When God gave the law to and through Moses, He demanded that Israel comply fully with it (He gave ten commandments, not ten recommendations or suggestions). Had He not so demanded, there would have been little or no purpose for delivering it. The following statement by Moses is representative of scores, if not hundreds of similar statements that illustrate the reverence God expected of Israel for His law:<\/span><\/p>\n Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of Jehovah your God which I command you (Deu. 4:2).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Moses strictly charged the Hebrew parents to constantly and diligently teach their children to obey the law of God (6:6\u20139). Moses warned Israel repeatedly concerning apostasy after they settled in Canaan. As Joshua neared his appointment with death, he warned God\u2019s people \u201cto keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left\u201d (Jos. 23:6). They followed Joshua\u2019s charge, but only for a while before apostasy became the norm:<\/span><\/p>\n And the people served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of Jehovah that he had wrought for Israel\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel (Jud. 2:7, 10)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Israel went through numerous cycles of apostasy, repentance, and rescue by God-ordained judges, until they demanded (and God gave them) a king. With few exceptions (none in the northern kingdom), either before or after the kingdom divided, the kings led the people deeper into idolatrous and immoral corruption.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God stated the following to Jeremiah:<\/span><\/p>\n Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day, I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them: yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff: they did worse than their fathers (Jer. 7:25\u201326).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n For what purpose did God send prophet upon prophet to His people, unless to call them back to His law\u2014to admonish them to restore<\/strong> God\u2019s way from which they had departed? It is evident that God believed in the desirability<\/strong>, essentiality<\/strong>, and therefore the attainability<\/strong> of restoring His Old Testament religion.<\/span><\/p>\n God Delighted in Josiah\u2019s Restoration (2 Kin. 21:24\u201323:30; 2 Chr. 34:1\u201335:27)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Had Hughes and Allen been alive in the reign of Josiah, the young restorer king of Judah, they would have had occasion to make great sport of his efforts, even as they and their ilk do concerning those who are determined to maintain the church in its purity at present. It is not difficult to imagine the way they would have ridiculed righteous Josiah:<\/span><\/p>\n Attack and destroy the false religions, publicly commit yourself to obeying God\u2019s Word, clean up and repair the temple, and reinstitute the passover? Who do you think you are to do what your fathers never attempted? Don\u2019t you know you will be opposing almost the whole nation? Don\u2019t you see how the religions around us will ridicule us as \u201cnarrow\u201d and \u201cjudgmental\u201d in your declaring that there is only one true religion? Don\u2019t you realize you cannot actually restore true religion in Judah, and that any restoration you think you accomplish will only be a mirage?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Josiah knew no better than to believe he could restore worship and service to God in Judah just as God had established His religion from the time He gave the law to Moses and strictly commanded their fathers to obey it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than seeking to dissuade Josiah, God delighted in the restoration he wrought, narrow and exclusive though his efforts were. At the beginning of his reign, inspiration provides the following preview assessment of his restoration efforts:<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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