“Amazing Grace” is behind Disciples members’ relationship with God, according to Disciples Moderator and historian, Dr. Newell Williams.
He gave the first of three historical reflections on the denomination’s founders during the Thursday, July 29 morning session at the 2009 General Assembly. The Brite Divinity School president focused on the spirituality of Disciples founders Barton W. Stone, and Thomas and Alexander Campbell.
Williams defined spirituality as “our understanding and practice of relationship with God.” For Disciples founders the essence of that relationship is being in love with God.
Sin, he explained, is the failure to be in love with God. “To be in love with God is to love God for who God is.”
For early Disciples, broken relationships with God manifested themselves in searching for external happiness, “satisfying animal natures,” and the pursuit of material things. All of these are like “seeking after phantoms,” as expressed in foundational Disciples documents.
The consequence of sinful or broken relationships is hell or estrangement from God. For Disciples, hell was not so much a place as an experience for Stone’s and Campbell’s generation.
Salvation, on the other hand, is to be in a love relationship with God. The fullest expression of that love is the witness of Christ’s love and the invitation to the table.
Salvation, Williams said, is not a reward that begins at death. Salvation is relationship with God. It is a constant engagement with the divine presence.
He traced Stone’s early opposition to slavery to his interpretation of Scripture and examined the early journal, the Millennial Harbinger’s role in “consummating the ultimate improvement of humanity.”
Heaven, he suggests, is the continuation of the joy of salvation. How does one get from sin to salvation? Williams asks – by grace.
Our salvation is not something we accomplish. It’s something God accomplishes through Jesus the Christ.
Reinforcing what God accomplishes in humanity are the apostolic practices of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and other spiritual practices including prayer, meditation, fasting and praise.
Williams’ Friday lecture examined distortions of Stone Campbell spirituality.
By: Cliff Willis
# # #