For my brothers and sisters in the Restoration Movement churches, the following statement may seem fundamentally contradictory and nonsensical: It is the Restoration Movement Plea itself that directed me to the Orthodox Church.
The Restoration Movement Plea has never been officially formulated. Its end is, as Thomas Campbell put it, “simple Evangelical Christianity.” Of course, he did not mean by that what we know usually mean by evangelical. Rather, “simple Evangelical Christianity” is “that original simple form of Christianity expressly exhibited upon the sacred page.” The means to attaining that end are variously expressed as the reform of the present churches toward or the restoration to them of the apostolic beliefs and practices of the New Testament Church.
The Restoration Movement churches arose historically out of the primitivist and revivalist trends of the then-frontier lands of Ohio and Kentucky. And many of the original leaders, particularly Barton Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell, were Presbyterians. These early Stone-Campbell Movement (as the churches are also known) leaders stressed two things: unity and purity of doctrine. Stone and his followers tended to emphasize unity. The Campbells and their followers tended to emphasize purity of doctrine. Whether by accident or design, those who sought unity through apostolic doctrine gained the printing presses, and thus the minds and imaginations of the young movement.
As the Movement leaders put it: they sought the common denominator all churches had, the New Testament Scriptures. As Thomas Campbell put it, “[T]he New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the New Testament Church, and as perfect a rule for the particular duties of its members, as the Old Testament was for the worship, discipline and government of the Old Testament Church, and the particular duties of its members” (Declaration and Address). But what rule were Christians to follow in using the New Testament to restore apostolic belief and practice? That which is “expressly enjoined by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles upon the New Testament Church; either in expressed terms or approved precedent” (ibid).
Many of these sentiments and principles can be found online in the fundamental texts of the Restoration Movement:
- “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery”
- Alexander Campbell, The Christian System
- Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address
It is here, in these principles, of course, that we begin to see the problem. Not all Christians agree as to what is “expressly enjoined.” The Stones and the Campbells lived at a time in European and American history that gave great weight and authority to human reason. There was a certain naivete as to the ability of reason to go straight as an arrow to the truth, if one could but eliminate subjective prejudices. In this atmosphere, the Res