In one of my courses this semester, the first assignment was to read and respond to two articles by Alexander Campbell, one of the pioneers of the Restoration Movement. The first is his “Rules of Interpretation,” chapter 33 of the larger work “Christianity Restored” (1835). The second is an article titled “Bible Reading” from the Millennial Harbinger (1839), which was Campbell’s “magazine” promoting Restorationism in America.
I thought it might be interesting to share my take on some of Campbell’s work.
In the landscape of nineteenth-century American religion, and more specifically the American Restoration Movement, few men made a greater lasting impact as that of Alexander Campbell. Campbell sought to unify the fractured witness of the church by recovering the “ancient order of things” during a time of great religious fervor and disunion. His project was fundamentally hermeneutical: if Christians could only agree on how to read the Bible, they would inevitably agree on what it said. Two of his key texts, an excerpt from Christianity Restored on “Rules of Interpretation” and an article entitled “Bible Reading” from the Millennial Harbinger, outline a method that is at once rigorously scientific and deeply pious.
However, the tension between these two poles, the critical intellect and the humble heart, remains a central challenge in his work. While Alexander Campbell is correct in identifying humility as the necessary condition for spiritual sight, echoing the historic Christian affirmation that character shapes understanding, his reliance on a strictly “scientific” hermeneutic risks isolating the Bible from the community of faith. By rejecting “inherited” wisdom in favor of extreme individual investigation, Campbell may inadvertently reduce the living Word of God to a mere intellectual puzzle.
The Science of Scripture
Campbell’s approach operates on a radical leveling of the biblical text. In his “Rules of Interpretation,” he asserts that the Bible is to be interpreted by the same philological principles that govern the interpretation of any other book. This “Rule 3,” which requires applying the same dictionaries and grammatical standards in dealing with Scripture as with any other book, forms the very foundation for his rationalistic structure.[1] For Campbell, the Bible is a communicative act from God to man, clothed in human language, and therefore accessible to human reason.
To navigate this text, Campbell prescribes a set of historical checks. The interpreter must act as a historian, rigorously identifying the author, the date, the place, and the occasion of writing. More importantly, one must discern the “dispensation” under which a passage falls. Campbell insists that before one can have confidence in any interpretation, one must decide whether the passage belongs to the Jewish or Christian economy.[2] This dispensational framework becomes a hermeneutical filter that demands that the reader ask not only “What does God say?” but “To whom is He speaking?” This method effectively clears away the confusion of applying Levitical laws to Christians, ensuring that commands given to a Patriarch or a Jew are not mistakenly applied to a believer in the Christian age.[3]
However, Campbell is not a mere rationalist. In Christianity Restored, he introduces a concept that seemingly transcends his scientific rules: the “understanding distance.” Just as the eye must be at the proper distance to read a page, the soul must be at the proper moral distance to hear God. This distance is defined by the “circle of humility.”[4] He argues that while philology can make a man a critic, only humility can make him a Christian. Similarly, in his article “Bible Reading,” he contrasts “sectarian” or “polemic” reading with true “devotional reading.” He argues that the mere memorization of doctrine is insufficient; rather, the believer must engage in the “constant attrition” of the text upon the moral nature. For Campbell, the goal is not merely to learn the doctrine of the Bible, but to “catch the spirit” of its holy authors through constant companionship.[5]
The Necessity of Humility
There is much in Campbell’s project that merits deep appreciation, particularly for those weary of the subjective drifts in modern spirituality. His insistence on the “understanding distance” (Rule 7) is a profound theological insight. By arguing that “God resisteth the proud, but he giveth grace to the humble,” Campbell aligns himself with a deep current of classical Christian spirituality that has always maintained that theology is not a spectator sport. The mind is not a neutral processor of data; it is affected by the state of the heart. If the eye is not “single,” meaning the moral intent is not purified of pride and ambition, the intellect will inevitably distort the text it seeks to master. In an era when the Bible can serve as little more than a sourcebook for proof-texts and a playground for academic novelty, Campbell’s admonition that we must “sit with Mary at the Master’s feet” is a necessary corrective.[6]
Furthermore, Campbell’s insight into the “living” nature of the text in Bible Reading offers a robust counterbalance to his drier scientific rules. He astutely observes that, unlike other authors who are dead, the Author of the Bible is “forever present.” This transforms the act of reading from a historical investigation into a “sacred dialogue” where the reader listens to God.[7] This relational approach prevents the faith from becoming a system of abstract logic. By insisting that we cannot simply memorize a synopsis of doctrine but must let the text “wear” upon our souls to assimilate the Spirit of God,[8] Campbell points toward a sacramental understanding of Scripture that resonates with the deepest traditions of the church.
The Risk of Isolation
However, in his zeal to clear away the debris of human tradition, Campbell introduces a solitude that is foreign to the historic Christian experience. A significant area of disagreement lies in his stark rejection of “inherited orthodoxy.” In Bible Reading, he compares receiving doctrine from one’s parents to receiving a financial inheritance that ruins the character of the heir.[9] He insists that every man must “dig in the mines of faith and knowledge for his own fortune.”[10] While this sentiment appeals to the democratic spirit, it creates a dangerous theological individualism.
If every believer must reconstruct the Christian faith from scratch, bypassing the “wills of their ancestors,” we are left with a fragmented Christianity where every man is his own Pope. This “digging for oneself” ignores the reality that the Bible is the book of the church, preserved, canonized, and handed down by the very community Campbell treats with suspicion. By viewing the accumulated wisdom of the past merely as a burden of “earth-born pre-eminence,”[11] Campbell cuts the modern reader off from the “cloud of witnesses” who have wrestled with these same texts for centuries.
Scripture itself often challenges this radical autonomy. When the Ethiopian eunuch was reading the prophet Isaiah, Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:31). This narrative suggests that interpretation is not at all a solitary struggle with a dictionary but an endeavour carried out in community under the wisdom of our predecessors. Furthermore, the chaotic period of the Judges is characterized by the refrain, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Campbell’s rejection of “inherited” authority risks inviting a similar hermeneutical anarchy, where every reader becomes the ultimate arbiter of truth. As 2 Peter 1:20 reminds us, “no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation.” While the immediate context concerns the origin of prophecy, the principle that a text not born of human will cannot be mastered by the isolated, private intellect still applies.
This corporate nature of truth is perhaps best expressed in 1 Timothy 3:15, where Paul identifies the “household of God” not as a collection of radically self-determining readers, but as “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” The Gospel is not hanging on by the thread of the intellect of the solitary individual but is structurally upheld by the community of faith. Furthermore, Paul explicitly commands Timothy to entrust the things he heard “among many witnesses” to “faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). This apostolic model of transmission relies on a chain of faithful witnesses rather than independent reinvention.
Finally, Campbell’s emphasis on the “testimony” and “facts” of Scripture, while rational, can lead to a dry intellectualism, the very thing he sought to avoid with his “understanding distance.” If the Bible is reduced to a constitution of “precepts, promises, and exhortations,”[12] we miss the reality that it is also a vehicle of mystery. While distinguishing dispensations might offer some clarity, the practice can dissect the Scriptures so cleanly that the organic unity of God’s work is lost. The Old Testament is not merely a “precedent economy” to be superseded; it is the deep soil in which the roots of the Christian faith are inextricably tangled.[13]
Conclusion
Ultimately, Alexander Campbell’s work is both a vital instruction and a cautionary tale for the student of Scripture. His insistence on philological precision and historical context provides a necessary safeguard against subjectivity, ensuring that faith remains grounded in God’s objective testimony. Likewise, his emphasis on humility as the key virtue required for interpretation grounds theology in the moral character of the disciple. However, the path of the lonely investigator seeking truth apart from the maps inherited by previous generations introduces the danger of idiosyncrasy. While we must personally appropriate the truth of the Gospel, we cannot paradoxically detach the Scriptures from the church that birthed them. A holistic approach requires that we unite Campbell’s scientific rigor and devotional intensity with a renewed appreciation for the communal consensus of the faithful.
[1] Alexander Campbell, Christianity Restored (Bethany: M’Vay and Ewing, 1835), 97.
[2] Ibid., 95.
[3] Ibid., 97.
[4] Ibid., 98.
[5] Alexander Campbell, “Bible Reading,” Millennial Harbinger 10 (1839): 36.
[6] Campbell, Christianity Restored, 99.
[7] Campbell, “Bible Reading,” 38.
[8] Ibid., 36.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., 37.
[11] Campbell, Christianity Restored, 98.
[12] Ibid., 97.
[13] Ibid., 98.
