Hi John

Thanks for your comment. As you may be able to tell, I am not that active these days on my blog. I am glad you found some help from the site. I am not sure how to answer all your questions as I am not a local-church only man myself. I think there are some mistakes made by them, though I think most people who hold the view are generally sincere Bible believers. I don’t know anyone who holds their view who is liberal in their approach. So there is that.

Nevertheless, I still think we have to let the Scriptures speak. We don’t interpret by majority vote or by what my favorite preacher says, or what have you. We interpret the Bible by the normal, grammatical, historical method. As such I don’t see how one can argue for a local church only viewpoint.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Thanks for the comments. I’m always hopeful that Don will make sure I stay on topic. As many of you know, I really like Don and defend him normally. If we talk, I think we have good talks, mainly because his gristle doesn’t bother me. He hasn’t yet been emasculated by modern culture. It seems he did a pretty good job of parenting too, from my limited ability to see. Unfortunately, he’s a dinosaur in fundamentalism. I think I gave a pretty substantive dealing to Moritz at least in my blogposts, because what he wrote was very similar to Duncan’s stuff. I’ll be writing more though and it will dovetail with something Don wanted from me in the first place, the dangers of UC ecclesiology and the motives for LO ecclesiology, etc. However, I’ll answer some questions here later, maybe when the conference is over, maybe earlier. I’m trying to be a good host here in the real world.

Ken, your second syllogism is laughable. The first premise is highly questionable, for starters.

And you miss the point of the article entirely. Early Landmarkers were strong proponents of a local only theory. Is this the source of the theory? It is simple to disprove. Find the theory proposed prior to the Landmarkers by those who were not landmarkers.

Otherwise, where else did it come from?

So far none of you have dealt with the substance of either Duncan’s post or mine. The arguments would still stand if this were a formal debate.

~~~

To all. I will be away from the computer for long stretches over the next couple of days, so delays in posting comments may occur. Sorry about that, it is unavoidable.

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Don,

Here is the difficulty for me in providing a substantive reply to the post. The logic of the argument is this:

A – Spiritual Kinship View proponents believe in Local Church Only position
B – Local Church Only position is found in Landmarkism
C – Therefore, Spiritual Kinship View proponents take their position from Landmarkism

This argument is faulty. Let me provide another example to show the folly of this line of reasoning.

A – Mormons are dispensationsists
B – Some Baptists are dispensationalists
C – Some Baptists must be Mormons.

I think Kent has provided enough of a substantial reply, so no more needs to be said on my part. Again, I did not appreciate the linking of Landmarkism to my beliefs on the local church, and it was unfortunate that the logic presented provided no real insight into the discussion, but only served as a point of derision to the view of others.

Thanks,
Ken

Hi Kent,

The primary source for the quotations I cited is Graves’ work “Old Landmarkism: What is It?” (McBeth includes citations that reference this source.)

That source is available here:
http://www.landmarkbaptist.org/documents/Old_Landmarkism_What_is_it.pdf

In that document, you may find the quotations I referenced on pages 32 and 38. After reviewing this source, don’t you have to agree that McBeth provides us with a fair representation of Graves’ antipathy toward the universal church? Can you identify any passage in Graves’ writing that supports a universal church position? Unless Graves changed his position later in life, I believe the evidence demonstrates that a significant feature of his Landmarkism was his belief in the local-only view.

Thanks Kent, appreciate your thoughts.

Well, Kent, of course it’s secondary sources. But we all don’t have access to primary sources, and we all use secondary sources, including you!

But that’s not much of a point, is it? If you. can refute the argument, please do. Use primary, secondary, tertiary or what have you. Doesn’t matter. But do please post a substantive reply!

Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

We’re in the middle of a conference, but I’ve got more things to write about this issue, and the history does interest me a lot. I’m very familiar with the sources that Duncan is using, and quoting them doesn’t mean that much to me, with no disrespect to him. I think there is value to quoting people as a means of validating, for instance, that someone believed something. In the case of Duncan’s quotes, he’s quoting a modern and what he now thinks of people 150 years ago. I’m sure you can get some “atta-boys” from universal church folks, but it is quite unpersuasive as it relates to history. All it means to me is that the particular author thought that. It doesn’t prove it. Someone would do better to go to primary sources, instead of quoting people about people. Why not just quote the people in their context? I recently read Fred Moritz make basically the same point using the same source (http://more.mbbc.edu/journal/volume-two/the-landmark-controversy/). I dealt with it in these four parts:

http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/local-only-ecclesiology-baptist-history.html
http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2012/06/local-only-ecclesiology-baptist-history_27.html
http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2012/07/local-only-ecclesiology-baptist-history.html
http://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2012/07/local-only-ecclesiology-baptist-history_16.html

When someone says the universal church is obvious because of the plain meaning of Eph 1:22-23, and that’s all he writes, that isn’t enough for me. It’s not plain to me. It’s sort of like saying, IMO, that Acts 2:38 obviously teaches baptismal regeneration.