A Mere Christian

Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos …Is Christ divided? 1 CORINTHIANS 1:12–13

In 1680, worn down by forty years of being told which party he belonged to, Baxter wrote a sentence that has outlived nearly everything else he published. He said he was a Christian — a mere Christian — of no other religion, and that he would not be labelled by any narrower name. Nearly three centuries later C. S. Lewis borrowed the phrase for a book, and acknowledged where he had found it. Most people who use it now have no idea it began with a persecuted Puritan who could not get anybody to believe he was not a party man.

A man nobody could place

Baxter’s difficulty was that he genuinely did not fit. He was called a Presbyterian, and he was not one in any strict sense; he believed in a moderate episcopacy of the kind Archbishop Ussher had proposed. He was ejected as a Nonconformist, and he wanted to remain in the national church and worked hard to make that possible. He served the parliamentary cause and then laboured for the king’s restoration. He was attacked by strict Calvinists for softening the doctrine of the atonement, and by Arminians for holding to election, and by Antinomians for insisting on obedience, and by the Quakers for practically everything. He was, in other words, in trouble with everyone, and it was not accidental. He held that the essentials of Christianity are fewer and clearer than controversialists suppose, and that most of what divides believers belongs to a second rank of matters on which good men will differ until the Lord returns.

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. EPHESIANS 4:4–6

Baxter’s method was to ask what a person must believe and do to be saved, and to treat that as the ground of fellowship — refusing to make agreement on anything further a condition of receiving a brother.

Necessary things, doubtful things

The formula usually attached to his name is worth quoting accurately, and also worth attributing accurately, since he is regularly given credit for it: in necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty, in all things charity. The saying did not originate with Baxter. It appears to come from a German Lutheran writer of the previous generation, Rupertus Meldenius, and has been misattributed to Augustine for centuries. What Baxter did was press it into English use and try to live by it, which is harder than coining it. The practical difficulty, as he knew perfectly well, is that everyone agrees with the formula and nobody agrees about which things go in which column. Baxter’s answer was to work from the apostolic summaries — the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments — and to argue that what the church had required of converts in the first centuries was a reasonable measure of what was strictly necessary now.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. PHILIPPIANS 3:15–16

That is Paul contemplating disagreement among mature believers, declining to force the issue, and telling them to get on together on the basis of what they already share.

Unity that was actually practised

Baxter’s irenicism was not merely a sentiment expressed in prefaces. At Kidderminster he organised the ministers of the county into an association that deliberately crossed the party lines — Presbyterians, Independents and Episcopalians agreeing to co-operate in discipline, catechising and mutual counsel, while leaving their disagreements unresolved. It worked, locally and for a time, and other counties copied it. That is more than most ecumenical schemes achieve, and it was achieved by a man who had strong opinions on every one of the questions being set aside.

Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. EPHESIANS 4:3

Note the verb. Not create the unity — keep it. It already exists; our task is to avoid destroying it.

The change he noticed in himself

The most valuable thing Baxter wrote on this subject is a passage of self-examination in his autobiography, in which he sets out how his mind had altered between youth and age. He had become, he said, less confident of his own judgment and more aware of how much he did not know. He was less impressed by clever men and more impressed by holy ones. He had come to think the differences between godly Christians smaller, and the difference between the godly and the ungodly larger, than he once supposed. He was slower to condemn, quicker to allow for honest error, and far more concerned with the few great truths than with the many disputed ones. It is a remarkable inventory from a man who had spent his working life in controversy, and it suggests that he learned something from all that arguing which the arguing itself could not teach him.

The limit

One caution, because breadth can become emptiness. Baxter was not indifferent to doctrine, and it would be a serious misunderstanding to enlist him for the view that beliefs do not much matter. He wrote enormous volumes defending positions he thought vital, and he went to prison rather than subscribe to terms he judged false. His charity was not vagueness; it was a considered judgment about which truths are load-bearing.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21

The test he leaves us is uncomfortably specific. Not do you approve of unity? — everyone does. But: name the group of Christians you find hardest to take seriously, and ask whether the thing dividing you belongs in the first column or the second.

A practical measure

The obvious objection to Baxter’s programme is that everyone claims to distinguish essentials from indifferent things, and no two people draw the line in the same place. He was aware of this, and he offered a working measure. His proposal was to look at what the church had actually required of converts in its earliest centuries. Before the great confessions, before the councils, before the divisions of the Reformation, a person was received on the basis of a short summary of faith, an undertaking of obedience, and baptism. From this he built his three-part standard: the Apostles’ Creed for what must be believed, the Ten Commandments for what must be obeyed, and the Lord’s Prayer for what must be desired. Believe, obey, desire — and if a person holds these sincerely, Baxter argued, we have no warrant to exclude him from Christian fellowship whatever else he may get wrong.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. ROMANS 10:9

It is not a perfect instrument, and Baxter did not claim it was. Heresies have been held by people who could recite the Creed. But it has one considerable virtue: it is short, it is ancient, and it belongs to no party. Nobody can accuse it of having been designed to include his friends and exclude his opponents. The discipline it imposes is worth attempting. Take the doctrine you are currently prepared to divide over, and ask where it appears in those three summaries. If it does not, it may still be true and important — but you have learned something about which column it belongs in.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write out what you consider genuinely necessary to be a Christian. Keep the list short. Then notice how much of what you argue about is not on it. 2. Name the group of believers you least respect. Ask honestly whether the disagreement is essential or merely tribal. 3. Do something practical this month with Christians outside your own tradition — pray, serve, or give together. 4. Review, as Baxter did, how your mind has changed in ten years. If it has not changed at all, that is worth examining. 5. Guard the limit. Breadth is not indifference; be able to say what you would go to prison for.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have taken a narrower name than Christian and defended it as though it were the gospel.

Show me which of my convictions are load-bearing and which are merely mine. Give me the honesty to tell the difference, and the courage to hold the first without contempt for those who differ on the second.

Make me less impressed by cleverness and more impressed by holiness. Slow me down before I condemn.

Let me keep the unity You have already made, and let me not be the one who breaks it. Amen.