THEODICY IN EARLY STONE-CAMPBELL PERSPECTIVES
JOHN MARK HICKS
“Every theological system,” B. U. Watkins wrote in 1867, “has, by implication, a
corresponding theory of theodicy.”1 Deism, Optimism,2 Universalism, and Calvinism each have
their distinctive theodicies. Since the “reformation of the nineteenth century has obtained sounder
theological sentiments than any of our contemporaries,” according to Watkins, “the world has a
right to expect of us a corresponding sound and lucid theodicy.”3 Watkins embedded his critique
in fourteen articles published in 1867,4 and although they contain principles that, in part, form his
own theodicy, he offered no distinctive alternative to the four theodicy systems. The question,
then, is whether the “sounder” theology of the Stone-Campbell “reformation of the nineteenth
century” actually did produce a correspondingly “sound and lucid theodicy.”5
Watkins believed that the shift from deductive, metaphysical idealism to inductive
Baconianism touted by Campbell’s approach provided hope for a sound theodicy. “The only
foundation for a popular Theodicy—one that can be understood by the masses—is God’s
providential and verbal revelations.”6 The biblical narrative must have precedence over speculative
theories. According to Alexander Campbell, philosophy is impotent “in all matters and things
pertaining to a spiritual system.” Scripture provides “no explanations” or “speculations” but only a
“narrative.”7 Theology, in Campbell’s view, is a system of “facts” rather than of theories.
Antebellum Arminianism: Alexander Campbell
B. U. Watkins, “Essays on Theodicy—No. 1.,” Christian Standard 2 (February 2, 1867): 38.
Optimism, the least familiar term in this list of four, is (according to Watkins, “Essays on Theodicy—No.
3,” Christian Standard 2 [February 16, 1867]: 54), the theological view that “the universe is the very best that
could be made,” so that “moral evil” is “an essential element of the universe.” God created the best of all
possible worlds, and though he did not create sin, he does overrule it “for some good purpose.”
Philosophically and historically, optimism is associated with Leibniz’s The Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of
God (1710).
3 Watkins, No. 1 (1867): 38.
4 The fourteen articles ran from February 2 to May 11, 1867.
5 No scholarly treatment of this question in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement has been written;
correspondingly, no entry for “Evil” or “Theodicy” appears in the recently published Encyclopedia of the
Stone-Campbell Movement, Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell
Williams, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
6 Watkins, No. 1(1867): 38.
7 Alexander Campbell and Robert Owen, The Evidences of Christianity: A Debate Between Robert Owen, of New
Lanark, Scot and Alexander Campbell, President of Bethany College, Va. containing an Examination of the “Social
System” and all the Systems of Skepticism of Ancient and Modern Times, Held in the City of Cincinnati, Ohio, in
April, 1829 (Nashville: McQuiddy Printing Co., 1946; reprint of 1829 edition ), 90.
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
Reared in the context of Scottish Presbyterianism, Campbell’s basic theological structure is
Protestant and Reformed. Within this Reformed frame, however, his Arminian soteriology is an
emphasis on human freedom. The emphasis on freedom shapes his understanding of providence
and ultimately his theodic postulates.
High View of Providence
In 1833, Campbell published substantial extracts from William Sherlock’s A Discourse
Concerning the Divine Providence.8 First published in 1694,9 it had been reprinted for the Methodist
Episcopal Church in 1823.10 Dean of St. Paul’s Church in London in the late seventeenth century,
Sherlock represented a moderate Anglican Arminianism with a rather traditional theology of
meticulous providence. Sherlock attempted to steer a middle course between Deism and
Calvinism. Campbell endorsed Sherlock’s views:11
Your commendations of Sherlock I think are well deserved. They are not exaggerated. He
is a writer of good sense, and has chosen a very interesting subject. As far as I have
perused his work, it appears to be well adapted to refute the scepticism of some professors
on the doctrine of special providence. It would be well if our philosophists, who disbelieve
the superintending care of the Almighty Father, would give Sherlock a candid hearing.12
Campbell’s traditional understanding is clear when he speaks of “special providence”:
“They who admit a general providence, and, at the same time deny a special providence, are
feeble and perverted reasoners and thinkers.”13 In the face of deists and rationalistic speculators,
Campbell advises us to “place our hand upon our lips and be still.”14
Campbell’s pedagogical example is the story of Joseph, which is filled with “apparent
contingencies.”15 While Campbell spoke of “chance,” he used it only accomodatively, that is,
“Whatever occurs, the cause or instrument of which we do not perceive, is said to happen, or to
come by chance.” But “in the strict sense of the word chance, as respects God, there is no such
thing.”16 “Blind fortune” and “good luck” are the “creatures of Pagan imagination” and are
“wholly incompatible with Christian sentiment and style.”17 Our histories, like Joseph’s, are filled
Alexander Campbell,“Sherlock on Providence,” Millennial Harbinger 4/5 (May 1833): 205-12, 4/6 (June
1833): 247-51, 4/7(July 1833): 296-300, 4/8 (August 1833): 389-95, 4/9 (September 1833): 435-9.
9 William Sherlock, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence, 2nd edition (London: William Rogers, 1694).
10 William Sherlock, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence (Cincinnati: M. Ruter, 1823; reprint of 2nd
edition, 1694).
11 Likewise, Robert Richardson, Campbell’s son-in-law, endorsed Sherlock and followed the extracts with
his own complementary series on providence, “The Providence of God,“ Millennial Harbinger 7/5 (May
1836): 219-224, 7/6, (June 1836): 246-51, 7/7 (July 1836): 305-7, 7/8 (August 1836): 360-364, 7/9 (September
1836): 385-89; 7/10 (October 1836): 441-48.
12 Alexander Campbell, “Reply to J. A. Waterman,” Millennial Harbinger 4 (June 1833): 243.
13 Alexander Campbell, “Providence, General and Special,” Millennial Harbinger (New Series) 5 (November
1855): 602.
14 Ibid.: 603.
15 Ibid.: 604.
16 Alexander Campbell, “Chance,” Millennial Harbinger (New Series) 1 (November 1851): 617.
17 Ibid.: 617-8.
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with “links of chain of designs” which terminate “in the eternal destiny of the world.”18 Indeed,
“in this life many of our so-called misfortunes are the choicest blessings, and all things do work
together for good to them who love God and keep his commandments.”19 Providence is
benevolent, Campbell believed, even in misfortunes; he was careful to note, however, that none of
this undermines human moral freedom. Special providence does not conflict with the “freedom of
thought, of speech, or of action, in any issue involving or controlling the moral character or the
eternal destiny of any man.”20
Campbell’s understanding of special providence includes the death of infants and good
men. In 1847, Campbell wrote on the mystery of providence in response to the death of several
young ministers. He opined that God has a role for the “disembodied spirits of men” after death—
they are his ministers, like angels.21 Indeed, he surmised that “the Lord may need the services of
infants and adults, and that for this purpose he often selects the purest and the best of our race and
calls them hence to minister in his hosts of light, in other fields of labor, according to the wants of his
vast dominions.”22 God’s special providence includes the time of death, at least for some.
Campbell was explicit about the role of angels in special providence. While God’s ministry
is not carried out “exclusively” by angels, Campbell nevertheless affirmed, “I do believe that much
has been done, and still is done by them.”23 Campbell’s Lockean epistemology meant that angels
could influence human beings only through the five senses. Hence angels take on empirical form in
order to influence events and persuade human thinking. He supposed that angels, whether good or
bad, influence human beings to good or evil. They do this in a variety of ways:
…assuming a form of some sort—the form of a man—of any creature—of a thought—of a
word, and by presenting it to the outward senses; or by an acquaintance with our
associations of ideas, our modes of reasoning, our passions, our appetites, our
propensities—and by approaching us through these avenues, they lead us backwards or
forwards, to the right or to the left, as their designs may require….It is more than
possible—it is probable.24
Campbell extended this influence not only to angels but also to natural evils:
I limit not human agency, nor angelic agency, nor divine agency in the government of the
world; in providence, general or special; nor in the power of circumstances to arrest the
attention and to fix the mind upon the arguments and motives which give to the gospel its
potency over the mind of man. Men, good and bad, evil spirits, angels, dreams,
Ibid.: 619.
Ibid.: 620-1.
20 Alexander Campbell (1855): 608.
21 Alexander Campbell, “Mysteries of Providence,” Millennial Harbinger 18 (1847): 707. In his “Address on
Demonology,” Popular Lectures and Addresses (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: James Challen and Son, 1866):
379-402, Campbell defended the thesis that demons (both good and bad) are the spirits of the dead. See
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/acampbell/pla/PLA17.HTM.
22 Alexander Campbell (1847): 708.
23 Alexander Campbell (1833): 244.
24 Ibid.: 245.
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
pestilences, earthquakes, sudden deaths, personal and family afflictions, may become
occasions of conversions to God.25
Through these direct and indirect means, God manages the world, including its evil,
toward its destiny, and he uses his means to awaken humanity to his redemptive presence. Robert
Richardson, Campbell’s son-in-law, expressed a similar understanding of both special and
meticulous providence in his lengthy 1836 series on providence.26
Theodicy
Consistent with a traditional Arminian understanding of special providence, Campbell
emphasized human freedom as his primary theodicy. While hesitant to engage in speculative
discussion, human freedom is the origin of human evil. The following extended quotations
highlight this significance for him:
It may, then, in the spirit of true devotion, and genuine humility be affirmed that God
could not, with a reference to all final results, give birth to a more perfect system of things
than the present. In other words, God could not make an infallible fallible creature. Now
before your difficulty becomes too heavy for the strength of an ordinary mind, it must be
proved that God could have given birth to a system in which moral evil could find no
place, and in which there would be no need of a governor, and that he did not…. [I]f God
had given birth to a system which in its very nature excluded the possibility of evil, it
would have also excluded the possibility of his being a governor.27
Some talk of his preventing moral evil by an exertion of Almighty power; of his having
‘greater power to prevent it than the immediate cause;’ of his being stronger than Satan.
But all such notions, if they have any foundation at all, are built upon the most palpable
inattention to rational nature. And here I would affirm that it is impossible to conceive of a
rational creation of an infallible nature. But in affirming this I am brought to the shore of
an immense ocean where weak heads are sure to be drowned. Let us try whether we can
swim a short distance in sight of land…. None of them could have been capable of moral
good. For it is essential to moral good that the agent act freely according to the last dictate,
or the best dictate of his understanding….Please consider that if a rational being was
created incapable of disobeying, he must, on that very account, be incapable of obeying.
He then acts like a mill wheel, in the motions of which there is no choice; no virtue, no
vice, no moral good, no moral evil….There are some things impossible to
Omnipotence….It is impossible to create a being that shall be capable of obeying, and at
the same time incapable of disobeying.28
Campbell’s theodicy is a version of the “free-will defense,” yet Campbell was
uncomfortable with this sort of metaphysical reasoning. He pursued it only as a negative
apologetic.
Alexander Campbell, “Editor’s Reply,” Millennial Harbinger 4 (July 1833): 333-6.
See especially Robert Richardson, “The Providence of God---No. 7.,” Millennial Harbinger 7/10 (October
1836): 441-8, on the divine government of evil.
27 Alexander Campbell, “Replication.—No. 1.,” The Christian Baptist 4/1 (August 7, 1826): 14.
28 Alexander Campbell, “To Mr. D.—A Skeptic.—Replication.—No. III,” Christian Baptist 4/4 (November 6,
1826): 23-24.
25
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To launch out into the development of views purely metaphysical, in order to correct
metaphysical errors, is at best only calculated to create a distrust in those visionary
problems on which some build as firmly as if on the Rock of Ages. I never wish to
establish any one point in this way; but I desire to throw a caveat in the way of those who
are willing to risk eternity itself upon a visionary problem.29
Consequently, Campbell rarely spoke of theodicy. Apparently, it was not a focus in his
setting since providence overruled evil in the progress of the world. Theodicy was not even raised
as a polemical argument pro or con in his 1829 debate with the skeptic, Owen.
This “free-will defense,” however, is combined with an Augustinian understanding of
natural evil. Thomas Campbell, for example, had affirmed that natural evils are the “just and proper
results and consequences of” moral evil. They “are ordained by God as punishments, preventives,
or correctives.”30 Alexander Campbell concurred: “Before the rebellion in Eden,” Alexander wrote,
“all was good.” There was “no gloom, no pain, no sorrow any where. But the instant man
rebelled…[n]ature was immediately diseased in all her members.”31 The original sin “is the root of
all this bitterness and grief. This brought death into the world, and all our woe.”32 Consequently,
“all the sins of all the word, and all the evils attendant on them, are developments of the sin of
Adam (or of Eve,) and must be all taken into view with all the train of natural evils consequent
upon them, before we can think aright of what sin is.”33 Humanity inherits a “fallen, consequently
sinful nature” from Adam; human nature was “corrupted by the fall of Adam.”34 Moral evil, then,
according to Campbell, is the result of human freedom. Natural evil is the consequence of that evil,
as sin corrupted the cosmos. This is a fairly traditional, classic Arminian theodicy.35
Postbellum Rationalism: Thinking about Evil
Despite the traditional character of Campbell’s theology of providence, the primary
antagonist in Stone-Campbell theodicy was Calvinism. While Campbell primarily opposed
Deism, most thinkers in the Stone-Campbell Movement were responding to Calvinism. Eight of
Watkins’s fourteen “Essays on Theodicy” focused on Calvinism. Both Wilkes and Christopher,
the two authors considered below, also had Calvinism in their crosshairs. The two most extended
attempts at theodicy in the late nineteenth century were written by two significant leaders from
the ultimately Disciples North. One concerns moral evil and the other natural evil.
Moral Evil
Loc. cit.
Thomas Campbell, “To Mr. D.—A Skeptic.—Replication—No. V.,” Christian Baptist 4/6 (January 1, 1827): 39.
31 Alexander Campbell, “History of Sin, Including the Outlines of Ancient History—No. I.,” Millennial
Harbinger 1 (March 1830): 108.
32 Loc. cit.
33 Ibid.: 110.
34 Alexander Campbell, The Christian System (Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1970; reprint of 1839 edition): 15.
35 Robert Richardson added an Ireanean “soul-making” dimension to his theodic thinking, even to the extent
of affirming, to some degree, what is traditionally known as the “Happy Fall.” See Richardson’s “Sin—A
Dialogue,” Millennial Harbinger (New Series) 3 (September 1839): 406, and (October 1839): 443, 445-6.
29
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
Lanceford B. Wilkes (1824-1901) authored a 200-page volume entitled Moral Evil: Its Nature
and Origin.36 J. H. Garrison, editor of the Christian-Evangelist, introduced the book with
considerable praise. As a former writer for Lard’s Quarterly; co-editor of the Apostolic Times with J.
W. McGarvey; onetime President of Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri; and co-editor of the
Pacific Church News in California, Wilkes’s views are representative of late-nineteenth-century
Disciples.37 McGarvey commended Wilkes’s “national reputation” as well as his talent as a
“logician” whose “preaching was characterized by close and severe argumentation.”38
While building on biblical axioms, Wilkes approached the task with methodical, rational
inquisition as he proposed and answered questions that built a cumulative and deductive
understanding of the origin of moral evil. He began by stating the classic problem of evil. If God is
omnipotent, why does he not rid the world of evil, and if he is willing, why is evil still here?39
Wilkes did not get hung upon either horn of the dilemma. He limited the definition of
omnipotence to those things “of a purely physical character” that God cannot do, but “preventing
or removing sin” is not “the exertion of physical power. Hence God’s omnipotence has nothing to
do with the question of the original or continued existence of sin.”40
But could not have God made humanity without the capacity to sin? Wilkes retorted:
“God could not have made man different from what he did make him. If he had made him so he
could not have sinned, he would not have been man.”41 Humanity is no longer human if humans
have no capacity for moral evil. Further, if the capacity for moral evil be lacking, then capacity for
moral good would also be absent. Thus, the capacity to choose good or evil is part of humanity
qua humanity. As “free moral” agents, our nature “excludes, ex necessitate rei, the idea of moral
necessity.”42
God, however, neither intended nor “designed [moral evil’s] existence.”43 God does not
design what he forbids. Indeed, Wilkes argued, God did not even permit sin since “it ought not to
be said that one permits what he could not prevent.”44 That God did not prevent sin is “proof,
entirely satisfactory, that he could not do so” since a loving God would certainly prevent whatever
evil he could. 45 God did not permit sin because he cannot prevent it. The sanctity of human choice is
Lanceford B. Wilkes, Moral Evil: Its Nature and Origin (St. Louis: Christian Publishing Co., 1892). Unless he
was a plagiarist, Wilkes is the author of the essay “Moral Evil,” Lard’s Quarterly 5.2 (April 1868): 132-143,
signed “L.” That article is fundamentally focused on rebutting a Calvinist understanding of “moral evil.”
37 These biographical data are taken from Mary K. Dains, Partners with God: Biographical Sketches of Our
Ministers, 1832-1982 (Columbia, Missouri: First Christian Church, n.d.).
38 J. W. McGarvey, The Autobiography of J. W. McGarvey (Lexington, Kentucky: The College of the Bible,
1960): 76.
39 Wilkes (1892): 23.
40 Ibid.: 24.
41 Ibid.: 25.
42 Ibid.: 27.
43 Ibid.: 28.
44 Ibid.: 31.
45 Loc. cit.
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absolute by God’s own design. Every human act is their “own act” and is without any divine
“resisting, restraining, or controlling force.”46 Such a force is not a “moral possibility.”47
The origin of moral evil, then, lies within the creature, not the Creator. Ultimately, it
originated in the will of angels. We have no knowledge of how the desire for evil arose within
them, but “our ignorance is no premise for the conclusion that it did not.”48 The sin of Adam and
Eve originated within their own wills, as well, though they were tempted by the angelic evil one.49
God created the world with moral meaning, which entails that humanity could create evil out of
their moral capacity.
Wilkes’s moral theodicy is rooted in the nature of moral agency. God created moral
capacity that entails the capacity for good or evil. Moral capacity is concreated, but human evil
acts are the sole responsibility of the human actor. God cannot create moral life without moral
capacity, and he cannot prevent the exercise of that moral power for evil without subverting his
own creative work. Where it concerns moral evil, however, we cannot doubt that “God has done,
is now doing and will ever do all he can to put an end to moral evil.”50 In other words, God is
doing the best he can with the world he made.
Natural Evil
Hiram Christopher, a St. Louis physician, authored one of two nineteenth-century
redemptive-historical systematic theologies in the Stone-Campbell Movement, entitled The
Remedial System.51 His understanding of the “irruption of sin” (or moral evil) in the cosmos is
essentially the same as Wilkes’s. Due to the nature of rational finite beings (both human and
angelic), they are “necessarily and unavoidably peccable.”52 It “was impossible for God to create a
universe in which the disaster of sin was not possible” because God cannot accomplish “selfcontradictory things.”53 The nature of finite rationality is inherently peccable. Consequently, it is
improper to say that God “permits” sin since it is not within his power to prevent it. “God has
done all in his power to prevent it” consistent with finite rationality, and having “exerted all the
psychical powers of his being to prevent it, which alone was capable of effecting any good results,
and if these failed, the failure cannot be attributed to him or the powers exercised; but to the
perverse will of the creature.”54 Christopher’s theodicy agrees with Wilkes’s.
Ibid.: 44.
Ibid.: 53.
48 Ibid.: 86.
49 Ibid.: 87.
50 Ibid.: 181.
51 Hiram Christopher, The Remedial System; or, Man and His Redeemer (Lexington, Kentucky: Transylvanian
Printing and Publishing Co., 1876); the other redemptive-historical systematic theology is by Robert
Milligan, The Scheme of Redemption (Cincinnati, Ohio: Carroll, 1868).
52 Christopher (1876): 36.
53 Ibid.: 35.
54 Ibid.: 37.
46
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In 1900, Christopher published a meticulously argued theory of providence and miracle,
entitled The Relations of God to the World by 1. Immanency. 2. Intervention. 3. Incarnation.55 In the first
part of the book, Christopher explored the idea of divine providence in the relation of force and
matter, but in the second and third parts, he addressed the miraculous work of God through
historic interventions in redemptive history and climactically in the kenosis of the Logos.
According to Christopher, God, by the creative act, correlated force and matter, establishing
a divine government over the cosmos. As the history of this government unfolded, divine
“interventions were necessary as emergencies arose in the progress of the race.” It was “necessary in
order to assure the race of the reality of a divine government.”56 All “intervention” is “essentially
and necessarily miraculous.”57 Whatever is not a matter of intervention (miracle), is natural and
embedded in the nature of creation itself. Providence, then, relates to what is natural, but miracle is
interventionist.
To explain God’s relationship to his natural creation, Christopher employed the scientific
distinction between force and matter. Matter is inert and is, therefore, “wholly passive under the
influence of force.”58 Force is immanent within matter when it moves it. This force is ultimately
God’s own creative power, but God placed it in matter as a reality, embedded his own power in
creation itself as part of his orderly creation. The “force is God,” but it is immanent within
matter.59 It operates in an immanent way according to the laws of nature. Consequently, what is
natural is orderly and is only interrupted by miraculous interventions. Providence, then, is simply
another name for the ongoing function of natural laws by the energy immanent within matter—
ultimately traceable to God, but now embedded in the natural order with regularity and
predictability. God is distinct from that order; therefore, Christopher is not a panentheist, but the
natural has such independent status that his understanding entails a functional Deism.
Christopher developed his argument by noting that this “force” became “vital force” in
living organisms. The life force is God’s own power, but now it is part of the natural order.60 The
climactic event in creation was the investment of “psychic personality” in human beings.61 The
“psychic” force is the moral and religious ground of humanity.62 Humans, of course, exist as free
moral agents. Though the “psychic” force is rooted in God’s creative act, it now exists in human
beings as their own capacity to live out God’s law in community with others.63
God, then, has embedded force in matter in such a way that it sustains, moves, preserves,
and regulates nature, and he has embedded psychic force in humanity in such a way that grants
Hiram Christopher, The Relations of God to the World by 1. Immanency. 2. Intervention. 3. Incarnation
(Nashville, Tennessee: Gospel Advocate Publishing Co., 1900).
56 Ibid.: 91.
57 Ibid.: 119.
58 Ibid.: 17.
59 Ibid.: 7.
60 Ibid.: 40.
61 Ibid.: 48.
62 Ibid.: 55.
63 Ibid.: 54.
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them freedom and religiosity. Just as God is not blameworthy for the moral evil of free human
actions, so God is not blameworthy for the natural acts of force in matter as part of the natural
order. Nature will sustain its order, whether humans get in the way or not. This is not evil; it is
simply the nature of the cosmos. Consequently, there is no natural evil; tragic events within the
cosmos are merely natural, not moral. We call them “evil” only in an accommodative sense
because they describe the effects of natural events upon the human condition, but the events
themselves have no moral meaning.64
When moral evil was introduced by Adam and Eve, nature was not changed. Indeed,
nature had spent ages developing into a place specifically prepared for humanity. Christopher
did not see any contradiction between Darwinian geology and the biblical account of Moses in
Genesis 1.65 What changed with the introduction of moral evil was the loss of the Tree of Life. The
Adamic sin entailed no further consequence, even to the point that our present “moral nature” at
birth is no more depraved than Adam’s was at his creation.66 The loss of the Tree of Life meant
that humanity was left unprotected from the natural forces in the universe such that humanity
became subject to nature’s orderly processes.67
Accordingly, evil is a property that is potential only for moral actions and agents. God
does not intervene to deliver his people from nature except in redemptive-historical events such
as the Flood, the Exodus, etc., but guides them through miraculous revelation and delivers them
from evil by his redemptive power. His ultimate redemptive-historical intervention is the kenosis
and incarnation of the Logos, but his providence is the force he embedded in the cosmos, which
he does not interrupt or against which he does not intervene except for redemptive-historical
purposes (i.e., miracles of redemption and revelation).
Postbellum Conclusion
The combination of Wilkes and Christopher constitutes a rationally driven theodicy. God
is not the actor in moral evil, and there is nothing he can do to prevent it other than to have
refused to create moral capacity in the first place. God cannot prevent moral evil. “Natural evil,”
not really evil, is but the result of the natural order operating in a material universe absent of the
Tree of Life.
This emerging view generated discussions about the nature of general and special
providence within the Stone-Campbell Movement. Some denied any kind of special providence at
all other than miracles,68 while others (such as Isaac Errett) limited special providence only to
This understanding of moral and natural evil is evident in Thomas B. Warren, Have Atheists Proved There Is
No God? (Jonesboro, Arkansas: National Christian Press, 1972).
65 Christopher (1876): 61-75.
66 Ibid.: 104.
67 Ibid.: 97.
68 George T. Smith, “Is There a Special Providence?” Christian Standard 15 (February 28, 1880): 65. Everything
is regulated by law so that even suffering lacks mystery because there are laws that govern suffering. Prayer
is not a matter of special providence because “there are as many conditions of successful prayer as for
raising corn” according to the “laws of the Spirit.” Another example is S. H. Brown, “Sickness and Death
Governed by Law, not Providence,” Christian Standard 49 (May 31, 1913): 890.
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
spiritual ends in relation to the soul and the gospel.69 Others clung to belief in a kind of special
providence, which earlier Reformers (such as Campbell and Richardson) had articulated.70 The
legacy of a more rational theodicy in the Stone-Campbell Movement, however, was the
development of a modified Deism according to which God had intervened in the past with
miracles, but now works only through the mediation of the created order and its natural laws and
through scripture.
The soteriological counterpart to this theodicy, evidenced in the rise of a “through the
word only”—that is, through scripture only—approach to spiritual influence, is the exclusion of
the Holy Spirit from any direct work on the human heart. Indeed, those who adopted a “word
only” pneumatology were inclined to a modified Deism much like Christopher. James A.
Harding, whose perspectives are similar to those of David Lipscomb’s (described below), battled
those who equated Spirit and word, and he correlated a “word only” theology of the Spirit with
their deficient understanding of providence. In the context of opposing a deistic understanding of
prayer, Harding asked: “Does the Holy Spirit do anything now except what the Word does? Do
we get any help, of any kind or in any way, from God except what we get by studying the Bible?...
Does God answer our prayers by saying, 'Study the Bible…’?”71 Harding conducted a discussion
with L. S. White of Dallas, Texas, on this very point. White advocated a practical Deism, while
Harding, sharing the same milieu as David Lipscomb, defended a version of special providence.72
Postbellum Two-Kingdom Theology: David Lipscomb
One might expect a rather different conception of providence in the war-torn South after
the 1860s. Theodicy looks different to people who have lost a war than it does to the victors. Even
though this perspective is a generalization that could die the death of several qualifications, it is a
useful generalization, for late-nineteenth-century Southern theodicy differs remarkably from its
Northern counterparts. While Wilkes and Christopher were pursuing a rational and scientific
understanding of moral and natural evil, David Lipscomb, who lived in Nashville, Tennessee,
articulated a dynamic understanding of moral and natural evil under God’s meticulous
sovereignty. Lipscomb believed that God’s role in the world was sadly underestimated and that
“no question” needed more study “than the principles of God’s dealing with men.”73 Lipscomb
located the problem of evil in the context of a cosmic spiritual war.74
Isaac Errett, “Prayer and Providence,” Christian Standard 15 (January 17, 1880): 20; (January 24, 1880): 28.
In one discussion, for example, Joseph Lowe denied any kind of special providence other than what is
consistent with embedded laws, while R. P. Anderson defended more traditional notions of special
providence. See Lowe’s articles and Anderson’s responses in Christian Standard 31 (September 21, 1895): 902,
(October 12, 1895): 975, and (November 16, 1895): 1094. For other traditional perspectives, see Joseph H. Fox,
Special and General Providence (St. Louis: John Burns, 1880) and J. S. Lamar, “What Most Interests Me Now,”
Christian-Evangelist 38 (March 28, 1901): 393-4.
71 James A. Harding, “Questions and Answers,” The Way 4/16 (17 July 1902): 123.
72 James A. Harding and L. S. White, The Harding-White Discussion (Cincinnati, Ohio: F. L. Rowe, 1910): see
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/jharding/hw.htm.
73 David Lipscomb, “God Uses the Evil as Well as the Good,” Gospel Advocate 22 (September 30, 1880): 634.
74 Lipscomb’s most thorough articulation of this spiritual conflict is Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission and
Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It (Nashville: McQuiddy Publishing Co., 1913): see
http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/dlipscomb/civgov.html.
69
70
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Two Kingdoms
Lipscomb’s fundamental understanding of God is that of “ruler” or “governor.” While
love is a function of that government, it is not his core conception of God. “First and highest to
him and the world,” according to Lipscomb, “is the recognition that he is Ruler.”75 God’s
“fundamental relationship to the universe” and “the first highest truth” is that God is the “ruler of
the world.”76 This is the ground of providence and ultimately of theodicy.
Lipscomb’s theodicy is Augustinian. Prior to sin, humanity “knew no toil, no weariness,
no care, no anxiety, no pain, no sickness, no sorrow. The Spirit of God brooded over it all and
impregnated every breath of air with his own life-giving, life-perpetuating and health-inspiring
elixir.”77 When humanity rebelled, the cosmos fell. Humanity transferred its allegiance to the Evil
One. “By this treason the evil one became the ruler”78 of the cosmos. Humanity “chose the devil to
be his god and the god of his kingdom instead of the Lord God.”79 God left his dwelling place
upon the earth and “with grief withdrew to heaven.”80
[God] cannot dwell in a defiled and sin-polluted temple. He has since dwelt on this earth
only in sanctified altars and temples separated from the world and consecrated to his
service. He will again make this earth his dwelling place, but it will be only when sin has
been purged out and it has been consecrated anew as the new heaven and earth in which
dwelleth righteousness.81
The earth, once “the paradise of God,” now “became a dried and parched wilderness. Toil, pain,
sickness, anxiety, care, sorrow, mortality, and death became the heritage of humanity.”82
Hence the cosmos was divided into two kingdoms. The kingdom of God withdrew to
heaven, but the earth was left to the vicissitudes of sin and Satan. The “earth was cursed for man’s
sin.”83 Humanity was enslaved to sin and Satan. The “act of Adam, the ruler, supplanted the reign
of God’s Spirit in the world with the rule or inspiration of the spirit of the evil one, [and] caused
man to be born into this kingdom of the evil one.”84 Satan reigns over humanity and its kingdoms,
but God seeks to restore his original reign. “The mission of Christ is to root up all the briers,
thistles, and thorns that grow in the material, moral, and spiritual world, and so restore this home
of man to its primitive and pristine relations to God, its Maker and rightful Ruler.”85
“The chief end” of the divine rule, according to Lipscomb, “is to reestablish the authority of
God on earth as the rightful ruler of the world, to so bring the world back into harmonious relations with the
Lipscomb, “God—Who and What is He?” in Salvation from Sin, by J. W. Shepherd, ed. (Nashville,
Tennessee: McQuiddy Printing Company, 1913): 32.
76 Ibid. (1913), “Difficulties in Religion”: 340.
77 Idem, “The Ruin and Redemption of the World”: 110.
78 Ibid.: 111.
79 Idem, “The Blood of Christ”: 159.
80 Idem, “Ruin”: 111.
81 Idem, “God”: 36.
82 Idem, “Ruin”: 111.
83 Ibid.: 113.
84 Idem, “Rewards and Punishments”: 379.
85 Idem., “Ruin”: 115.
75
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
universe that the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.”86 Thus the whole cosmos is
engaged in a spiritual conflict. God is sovereign, and God shall win; however, God invests
humanity with the freedom to choose and respond to his work in the world. “He must serve God
or the evil one; he can make a choice.” But humanity’s “liberty is not very wide,” though it is
“broad enough to show his character.” 87 Humans are not autonomous, but they are free. They are
free to develop their chosen characters, but they may do so only under God’s sovereignty.
Consequently, though human beings are free to choose their character, “God has the right to rule
and direct all persons and all things for his own ends and purposes.” God “is able to direct and
control them so as to bring about his desires and purposes.”88 Human freedom, then, does not
obstruct God’s purposes or undermine his sovereignty. On the contrary, human freedom
ultimately serves God’s purposes, whether they choose either evil or good.
The central question of human history is this: “Who shall rule in the world—God or the
devil?” Human history will unveil the victorious kingdom of God. God will win over evil.
Humanity, however, must choose which ruler it will serve. Everyone has and makes this choice,
but God is so sovereign over those choices that he uses them for his own purposes.
89
Humanity lives in this present fallen world as a moment of trial or probation. “The idea is
plainly set forth in the sacred Scriptures,” Lipscomb wrote. “This is a life of preparation, of
probation, of trial or choice, in which we make our choice, undergo our schooling, develop the
character that will decide our destiny and work out our fate in the world to come.”90 Humanity
lives under the dominion of Satan but under this dominion still has a choice. Through this choice,
God develops character, trains disciples, and prepares people for the coming reign of God. God
“tries all spirits, tempts them so they can fully prove each his character, and by the rule of the
eternal fitness of things each will find his own congenial home.”91 God is at work in the fallen
world to prepare for his full reign. “God’s aim in creating” humanity “is to prove and test men
and see who is worthy to stand in his everlasting kingdom.”92
Lipscomb complained that humanity swings like a pendulum between two extremes: One
excessive conclusion is the theological affirmation of total depravity according to which humans
are not able to “understand or know or desire to do the will of God or to do any good thing.”93
The other excess is that humans are supposed to be “in need of no guidance, no rule of right from
without. He needs not God to guide and direct.”94 Between total depravity (Calvinism) and total
autonomy (deistic rationalism), Lipscomb postulated a human freedom that is circumscribed by
God’s sovereignty. God gives human beings enough freedom to choose under whose dominion
Idem, “Difficulties”: 341.
Idem, “God”: 47.
88 Loc. cit.
89 Idem, “Rewards”: 375.
90 Ibid.: 403-4.
91 Ibid., “Foreknow, Did God, That He Would Punish Certain Men,” in Questions and Answers by Lipscomb
and Sewell, M. C. Kurfees, ed. (Nashville: McQuiddy, 1921): 256.
92 Idem : 257.
93 Lipscomb (1913), “Difficulties”: 335.
94 Loc. cit.
86
87
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they will live, but whichever way they choose, they nevertheless live subject to God’s providential
government.
God’s Reign Over Evil
God actively blesses the world through his loving care. “All his provisions are for good to
his creatures; none for evil to any.” But “evil comes” when they violate the laws and pervert the
provisions which he has made to bestow good.”95 When either these provisions are perverted or
the laws violated, his creatures “pervert their own characters” and the “laws ordained for good
bring evil to them.”96 A legal order embedded in the universe terminates in either good or ill, for
either blessing or punishment, according to God’s intended purpose.
God’s power is not, however, merely immanent within the embedded order; rather, God
is actively permitting and directing events in the world for both blessing and punishment. For
example, as Lipscomb contemplated the Civil War, he discerned a divine purpose in the conflict
similar to the purpose expressed by Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Addres. “Since the end of the
war,” Lipscomb wrote, “we have never had a doubt but that it was the purpose of the great
Father of the universe to destroy slavery. For purposes known to himself he tolerates and ordains
such relationships.”97 God raised up a people to overcome the sinfulness the South should have
relinquished on its own. If the South “from Christian principles” had willingly “freed the slaves,”
then “they would have been blessed.” Instead, “for a time, at least, a desolating and destroying
scourge was visited upon them.”98 God accomplished “his end by the hand of violence.” That the
Northern army was God’s battle-axe, Lipscomb wrote, “we have no doubt.”99 Yet, the North
should not think of itself as a righteous avenger. “We believe that every man that God used as a
battle-axe he used because he was a sinful man and needed punishment.”100 The North, Lipscomb
prophesied, would also experience its divine judgment. “It is folly and deception for a people to
think that because they are used to punish other nations and are successful in war, therefore they
are better or more favored of God than the nations they conquer. The wicked are the sword of the
Lord.”101
Lipscomb also commented on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. While “rationalistic
philosophy” believes that “God has nothing to do” with human wars and conflicts, Lipscomb
countered by attributing the European war to “God’s overruling the wickedness of these
nations.”102 God functions through “direct imposition,” just as he did between Judah and Babylon.
“We believe the same laws that governed in the punishment of Judea, the destruction of Babylon,
Chaldea, and all the nations of antiquity are now in full force and vigor with reference to the
Idem, “God”: 33.
Loc. cit.
97 Lipscomb, “God Uses the Evil as Well as the Good,” Gospel Advocate 22 (September 30, 1880): 634.
98 Loc. cit.
99 Loc. cit.
100 Ibid. (1913), “God Uses the Evil”: 634.
101 Idem, “God”: 47.
102 Ibid., “The Visitations of Providence: The War of Prussia and France,” Gospel Advocate 12 (October 27,
1870): 1,001.
95
96
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church of Christ and the nations of earth.”103 In particular, France “has been the nursing mother of
infidelity, scoffing atheism and fashionable licentiousness,” and though “France has long been an
avenging rod in the hand of God to punish surrounding nations,” now “God is punishing
wickedness with the wicked.”104 “Prussia,” according to Lipscomb, “is the rod in the hand of God
to punish her own seducer,” and “when the days of her power are accomplished, then some other
power in turn must visit even a more fearful destruction of her people.”105 This is how God deals
with nations, and “so will it continue until all the institutions of earth will be destroyed save the
kingdom of God through which God proposes to rule the world in peace and righteousness.”106
God’s reign over evil extends to human freedom though without violating it. Genuine
freedom means real choice, but God’s providence means that those choices are used and
overruled toward divine ends. God’s goal is to conform us to his image, and he uses all his
resources for that goal. “We are thus gradually trained through successive stages, and molded in
character into the likeness of God, and so fitted to stand beside his Son, to bear his likeness, and,
with him, share all the blessings and glories of the Father’s throne.”107 He intends “to train him
into fitness to dwell with God and the spirits around his throne forever.”108 When we respond in
humility to this training, God gives “life and hope again to the heart that is bruised and crushed
with a sense of its own guilt and helplessness. This heart is sustained and guided now by the
Spirit of God.”109 God’s purpose is to dwell with his people. He abides now to prepare them for
the future dwelling with God in the new heaven and new earth.
Not everyone, however, responds with humility. Many respond with arrogance and
defiance. When the heart is corrupt and perverted, “God permits” it “to believe a lie that he may
work out his own ruin and accomplish his destruction.”110 God uses human freedom to serve his
own purposes. “When they make themselves wicked, he appoints them to do evil work and then
to destruction for the evil done. I have no doubt Jesus selected Judas because he knew his
character and that he was fitted to do the work of treason. God did not make him bad; he chose
him to do a wicked work because he found in him the character fitted to do it.”111 Thus, “God
never sends an evil spirit or a delusion upon a good man, or upon those willing to obey him; but
he sends these upon the wicked and disobedient that they may go down to ruin. All spirits are
subject to God, the evil as well as the good. He sends the evil spirits to afflict the wicked and lead
them to deeper ruin.”112
Evil, therefore, is not autonomous. It serves divine purposes. God reigns over it so that he
uses it to carry out his ends and achieve his goals. Evil will not hinder the kingdom of God. God
Ibid.: 1,002.
Ibid.: 1,002-3.
105 Ibid.: 1,003.
106 Loc. cit..
107 Lipscomb (1913), “God”: 42.
108 Idem: 50.
109 Idem: 42.
110 Idem: 33-34.
111 Ibid. (1921), “Foreknowledge and Predestination, God’s”: 254.
112 Idem, “‘Evil Spirit,’ How ‘From God’?”: 219.
103
104
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permits evil because he values authentic human decisions; he permits everyone to choose whom
they will serve. At the same time, he nonetheless circumscribes that freedom so that it serves his
purposes and ends. That ultimate end is the reign of God over the new heaven and new earth.
This present probationary period is a time of training and discipline when the character of the
people of God is to be educated and shaped in preparation for their role in that coming kingdom.
Conclusions
Several factors shaped the history of theodicy in the beginnings of the Stone-Campbell
Movement. First, the movement was born in the context of Baconian induction. The earliest
“Reformers” rebelled against metaphysical and theological speculation. Instead of pursuing
rigorous logical deduction as a theological method, they embraced the historical induction of
“facts” within the biblical narrative. Consequently, the narrative took precedence over theological
metaphysics. Theodicy in the Stone-Campbell Movement was initially shaped by biblical
induction rather than theological deduction.
Second, the Movement participated in the new nation’s cultural optimism. Most
thoughtful 19th-century century Americans assumed progress and anticipated a millennial utopia;
indeed, Campbell believed the American frontier was the cutting edge of that millennial dawn.
Consequently, theodicy was not a particularly significant topic because, in the optimistic
perception of the age, the evils of human experience were being progressively overcome.
Providence, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was perceived fundamentally as divine
benevolence. In the early 1820s and 1830s, for example, most were optimistic that even slavery
would end through governmental compromise and action. In fact, Barton W. Stone’s
disappointment with governmental intervention on this point helped move him towards a
premillennial eschatology.113 Stone’s move from postmillennialism to premillennialism certainly
affected his theodicy, but on this, Stone wrote too little for us to be certain of his theodic moorings.
Third, the earliest frontier “Reformers” were influenced by classical Arminianism, a postCalvinist theology of providence tempered by the affirmation of human freedom. Campbell and
Richardson, for example, held a high view of providence that was both special and meticulous;
the idea of “chance” they viewed as more pagan than Christian.
While these three points characterized theodicy of the antebellum Movement, postbellum
Restorationist theology shifted significantly. In the face of the horror and evil of the Civil War, the
problem of evil became existentially compelling. The North—particularly in circles whose
perspectives would characterize the Disciples of Christ in the 20th century—turned toward a more
rational and metaphysical understanding of the problem. In the South—particularly in circles
whose perspectives would characterize the Churches of Christ early in the 20th century—the
biblical story was radicalized through the perception of cosmic conflict. The earlier, more
rationalist tradition, a classic Arminian theology of providence, continued in both sections of the
country, but these other alternatives also emerged within the Movement.
D. Newell Williams, “From Trusting Congress to Renouncing Human Governments: The Millennial
Odyssey of Barton W. Stone,” Discipliana 61 (fall 2001): 67-81.
113
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Restoring the First-century Church in the Twenty-first Century
The Northern emphasis tended towards a rational theodicy focused on the origin of moral
evil through human freedom; Northern Disciples explained natural evil in the light of natural law.
The Northern emphasis tended toward a modified Deism and a denial of special providence. The
Southern emphasis saw evil in more radical terms. Without denying the origin of moral evil in
human freedom, the Southerners emphasized the role of God and Satan in the human drama.
Human history is a cosmic conflict concerning who will reign over the world. This high view of
providence was accompanied by a coequal radicalization of evil.
The Northern victory in the War enriched a cultural context in which one could explain
evil in terms of human choices, and developing scientific theories pointed to the regularity and
order of natural law, requiring no theory of angelic or human fall to explain harmful natural
events. When humans make ignorant choices, harmful natural consequences result; when
humans make morally bad choices, evil moral consequences result. The Northern victory enabled
a continued optimism in the North that explained evil through rationalistic means well into the
early 20th century.
The Southern defeat and the attending experience of suffering radicalized evil. The
Northern victory gave evidence of the reign of Satan in the world. In the eyes of David Lipscomb,
God nonetheless controls both Satan’s reign and the South’s defeat; he had used the North to
punish the South for the evil of slavery. Lipscomb had lost the earlier frontier-American, cultural
optimism; he saw no end to the reign of Satan except through the progress of the kingdom of
God, identified as the church, and God’s ultimate creation of a new heaven and new earth.
At the end of the 19th century, then, three broad theodic views were operative in the StoneCampbell Movement. Some continued the optimistic, high view of providence that Campbell and
Richardson articulated consistent with classic Arminianism, including the strong sense of special
or meticulous providence. Others embraced a modified Deism and defended God’s righteousness
through a form of theological rationalism and scientific naturalism. Some, such as conservatives
in Texas, did not embrace the Darwinianism of Christopher but nonetheless absolutized the
natural order after the New Testament period in Newtonian fashion, so that post-biblical divine
interventions were denied (e.g., L. S. White). The net effect of both is a practical Deism. A third
group, however, reframed the problem of evil in the context of a cosmic conflict between God and
Satan, affirming that God is absolutely sovereign over Satanic and human evil. The Southern
view—primarily located in the Deep South—retained a high view of providence, but saw
providence in a fallen world as disciplinary, pedagogical, and preparatory for better things to
come.
Despite their differences, all three strands assumed two fundamental theodic positions.
First, they affirmed a form of the “free will defense.” Human freedom is the origin of human evil.
Humanity qua humanity has moral capacity for good or evil. Second, they affirmed an
Augustinian understanding of natural evil. Natural evil is the result of Adam’s sin (even if it is
only entailed the removal of the Tree of Life). Sin introduced human death into the cosmos along
with all its attendant curses (disease, pain, grief, et al.) In these two points, the theodicy of the
Stone-Campbell Movement was not fundamentally dissimilar from other Arminian nineteenthcentury theodicies.
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While Campbell had promised a narratival reading of scripture rather than metaphysical
speculations, he did not produce a narrative theodicy. Instead, he restated Arminian principles
that had congealed in late-seventeenth-century Latitudinarian England. Given his cultural
circumstances and lack of engagement with theodicy, perhaps Campbell simply went into
“default mode” on this topic. Wilkes and Christopher significantly abandoned the narrative
reading of scripture for philosophical and scientific models of theodicy. Their theodicies are
substantially extra-Biblical and reflect new methodological approaches to theology emerging in
the northern regions of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Ultimately, this tendency betrayed the
primal impulse of the Movement by moving away from narrative to metaphysics.
Lipscomb’s theodicy, however, is a narrative reading of scripture. In Civil Government, he
followed the redemptive-historical flow of Creation, Fall, Israel, Church, and Eschatological
Kingdom. He affirmed the text: God is an actor in the tragic events of history (the Flood,
destruction of Canaanites, the Exile, etc.). God ordains and orders these events for his own
purposes—not only for redemption but also for punishment. And God still acts in history in
similar ways for similar purposes. In Civil Government, Lipscomb’s reading of history is at times
naïve and uncritical, but his theodicy in narrative form is powerful. Lipscomb was faithful to the
Movement’s original vision of scripture: inductive Bible study, not deductive theology.
Given contemporary theology’s orientation to narrative and the reality of evil in the
modern world (e.g., the Jewish Holocaust), the restoration of first-century Christianity in the
twenty-first century is ripe for the development of a narrative theodicy by a God-conscious mind
that seriously reads scripture in all of its diversity.114 Theodicy is too often encumbered by
metaphysical assumptions, too driven by hermeneutical harmonization, and too distant from the
affirmations and particularities of the text. A Stone-Campbell theodicy, consistent with the
originating principles of the Movement, will be heavy on the text (speaking where the Bible
speaks) and light on metaphysics (being silent where the Bible is silent). However, the promise
that Watkins made on behalf of the nineteenth-century Reformation—“a sound and lucid
theodicy”—remains as yet unfulfilled.
E. Frank Tupper, A Scandalous Providence: The Jesus Story of the Compassionate God (Macon, Georgia: Mercer
University Press, 1995), is one such attempt in the Baptist tradition, though it fails to account for God as
actor in the tragic events of human life. In fact, Tupper’s theodicy is fundamentally a narrative presentation
consistent with that of Christopher and Wilkes.
114
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