64 Joseph Kinghorn
J. R. Graves
Graves’ theology was most influential during the nineteenth century among Baptists in the south.
222Although Graves wrote multiple works on ecclesiological issues,
Thomas White, “James Madison Pendleton and His Contributions to Baptist Ecclesiology” (PhD diss., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 179.
221 Although he is considered part of the Landmark Triumvirate, J. M. Pendleton held to close communion. Garrett Jr., Baptist Theology, 226. While Pendleton largely agreed with Graves, he made several qualifications. First, the prerogative to extend the invitation to the Lord’s Supper rests with the local church, local churches may welcome other Baptists as a matter of courtesy. Second, while Pendleton held that each church had the responsibility to guard the purity of the table, he maintained that close communion did no harm. Finally, Pendleton allowed close communion because it did not compromise the Landmark position that neither paedobaptist ministers nor alien immersions are valid. See White, “James Madison Pendleton and His Contributions to Baptist Ecclesiology,” 176–79. White notes helpfully that A. C. Dayton died before the communion debate ensued (186). Additionally, while not all Landmark theologians
hold/held closed communion, closed communion has been argued by those who did not identify with Landmark theology. See the section on B. H. Carroll below. Note also the following volume by Jeremiah Bell Jeter (1802-1880), whose ministry overlapped with Graves. Jeremiah Bell Jeter, Baptist Principles Reset: Consisting of Articles on Distinctive Baptist Principles, a Series, Baptist Distinctives 1 (Paris, AR:
Baptist Standard Bearer, 2004). Therefore, one might say that while Landmark theology lends itself to the closed communion view, it does not require it.
222 The page numbers for the subsequent biographical sketch refer to Patterson, James Robinson Graves. Graves is best known for his staunch articulation of Baptist identity as the editor of The Tennessee Baptist newspaper. Originally born in Vermont into a Congregationalist family, Graves was converted and baptized into the North Springfield Baptist Church in 1834. (7-11). Graves relocated to Kentucky in 1841 and was ordained in 1842 (7-11). Graves relocated to Kentucky in 1841 and was ordained in 1842 (23, 28). He married and moved to Nashville in 1845, where he joined the First Baptist Church, pastored by R. B. C. Howell (1801-1868; 34). Due to his connection with Howell, Graves assumed full control of the Tennessee Baptist in 1848, a post he maintained for the next forty years. A steady controversialist already, further conflict ensued between Graves and Howell upon the latter’s return to FBC Nashville in 1857. The controversy is complex (123-25). In October 1858, Graves was excluded from church membership on charges of divisiveness and unchristian conduct toward his pastor (141-44). By the end of his life, Graves served as a military chaplain in the Civil War and, after 1867, lived in Memphis, where he continued to work as a Baptist newspaper editor until his death in 1893 (184-88). For more on Graves, see Chad W. Hall, “When Orphans Became Heirs: J. R. Graves and the Landmark Baptists,”
Baptist History and Heritage 37, no. 1 (2002): 112–27; Harold S. Smith, “J. R. Graves,” in Baptist Theologians, ed. Timothy. George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 223–48.
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Intercommunion: Inconsistent, Unscriptural, and Productive of Evil (1881) is his most sustained argument for closed communion.
223Graves addresses a variety of connected issues, but this section focuses on two theological arguments for closed communion: (1) the relationship between the church and the kingdom and (2) the nature of the Lord’s Supper as a local church ordinance. Then, he answers scriptural objections and presents challenges to his opponents regarding the failures of intercommunion—anything besides local church member only communion.
Graves makes much of the relationship between the church and the kingdom.
He defines a local church as “a body of professed believers in Christ, scripturally baptized and organized, united in covenant to hold ‘the faith,’ and preserve the order of the gospel, and to be governed in all things by the laws of Christ.”
224While many Baptists of Graves’ day defined the universal church as “all existing denominations professing to be churches,”
225the New Testament’s focus is the local church.
226For Graves, because church means “assembly,”
227he is willing to speak of a collective of churches that compose the kingdom.
228While the kingdom has no officers (save Christ
223 Indeed, James Patterson describes this work as Graves’ “most definitive statement on the need for restricted communion.” Patterson, James Robinson Graves, 173. For clarity’s sake, Graves describes himself as a “close-communion Baptist,” meaning local church members only communion. Given the inconsistent usage of close and closed throughout the literature, this dissertation utilizes the term
“closed” to designate local church members only communion. J. R. Graves, Intercommunion: Inconsistent, Unscriptural, and Productive of Evil, 2nd ed., Baptist Distinctives 17 (Paris, AR: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2006), 320. Graves allowed for close or denominational communion through the 1850s according to Smith,
“J. R. Graves,” 241. However, Graves published his change of heart in the Tennessee Baptist in April of 1875 according to White, “James Madison Pendleton and His Contributions to Baptist Ecclesiology,” 172.
224 Graves, Intercommunion, 139. Harold Smith clarifies that for Graves, “While salvation does not depend on baptism, church and kingdom membership does. Therefore, in order to enter the kingdom of God, the subject must be a Christian who has been baptized into a local, visible Baptist church.” Smith, “J.
R. Graves,” 239. Understandably then, “Membership in the kingdom and redemption from sin are two entirely different relations. A person can be a Christian without being in the kingdom.”
225 He cites J. M. Pendleton, J. L. Dagg, et al. in Graves, Intercommunion, 109–11.
226 Graves, Intercommunion, 106.
227 Graves, Intercommunion, 112.
228 Graves, Intercommunion, 107.
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the King) or ordinances, kingdom implies organization and visibility.
229The kingdom is spoken of in future terms in Scripture until Christ’s advent. So, it follows that the while the kingdom did exist in heaven before Christ, it did not exist on earth before the
establishment of local churches.
230Given that all local, visible Baptist churches constitute the kingdom, Graves denies the existence of the kingdom in heaven during this age.
231Graves is unwilling to speak of all true Christians or all churches as the universal church, because this church never gathers. In this sense, he denies the existence of an invisible, universal church.
232Instead, those passages which some utilize to teach the universal church refer to local, visible assemblies.
233If the New Testament speaks exclusively of the local church rather than the universal church, the Lord’s Supper “could not have been delivered as a denomination ordinance, but as a local church ordinance only.”
234Therefore, Graves’ view of the local church negates the concept of intercommunion.
The fact that the Lord’s Supper is a local church ordinance serves as another argument for closed communion. Graves carefully delineates the essential qualities of a church ordinance: “(1) that it is a rite, the duty of perpetuating which is committed to the visible churches, as such; (2) the qualifications of its recipients must be decided by the members of the churches as such; (3) any rite which symbolizes church relations can only
229 For a similar take on Graves’ theology of church and the kingdom, see Garrett Jr., Baptist Theology, 217–23.
230 Graves, Intercommunion, 151.
231 Smith, “J. R. Graves,” 239.
232 On this point, see Jason G. Duesing, “A Denomination Always for the Church:
Ecclesiological Distinctives as a Basis for Confessional Cooperation,” in The SBC and the 21st Century:
Reflection, Renewal, and Recommitment, ed. Jason K. Allen (Nashville: B & H Academic, 2016), 116–17.
233 Graves, Intercommunion, 130. Graves has in mind Acts 9:31; 1 Cor 12:28; Matt 16:18; etc.
Graves’ interpretation of Matt 16:18, “upon this rock I will build my church,” is especially interesting. He claims, “the figure here is a metonymy, which means a change of terms, and church is used for kingdom and is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel 2:44” (134). He explains the use of ekklesia (church) in Ephesians as a “synecdoche, in which what is logically predicated of the whole may be predicated of each of its parts” (135).
234 Graves, Intercommunion, 139.
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be participated in by the members of the church celebrating, and is pre-eminently a church ordinance.”
235These marks entail that the Lord’s Supper cannot be given to any but a particular, local church without ceasing to be a local church ordinance. The significance of these claims is vast. Graves claims, “It is my conviction that
misapprehension of the true nature and limitations of a church ordinance has given rise to all the discussions, misunderstandings . . . and prejudices . . . against us by other
denominations, as well as the present disagreement among Baptists.”
236Therefore, Graves argues his point.
237He holds that the Lord’s Supper is a local church ordinance because (1) each church possesses “absolute independence” under Christ;
238(2) each church has sole guardianship of its ordinances (cf. 1 Cor 5:9-11);
239(3) “all who can be entitled to the Supper must be subject to its discipline;”
240and (4) the Lord’s Supper
“symbolizes church relations” since apostolic times.
241Opening the table beyond a local church’s membership causes the ordinance to no longer truly symbolize one body partaking of one bread; thus, the open table “vitiates and nullifies” the ordinance.
242235 Graves, Intercommunion, 166.
236 Graves, Intercommunion, 167.
237 Patterson recognizes the following points to be crucial to his argument as well. See Patterson, James Robinson Graves, 174.
238 Graves, Intercommunion, 168.
239 Graves, Intercommunion, 170. Regarding Christ’s unique authorization of local churches to administer the ordinances, Graves writes, “That to the church, as such, Christ delivered the ordinances, and constituted each one responsible for the purity of its administrations,” to the end that “a scriptural church cannot be constituted without them” (287).
240 Graves, Intercommunion, 174. He provides three points of explanation for this argument:
(1) Christ has not given anyone the right to commune with a church that does not have “watch and care”
over them; (2) Christ does not require that other churches open their tables to nonmembers, since participation in the meal itself “declares he is a member” (1 Cor 10:17); and (3) those churches that do invite nonmembers to commune “violate the command of Paul—to allow no disqualified person to participate,” given the moral certainty that such an occasion does arise when the table is opened.
241 Graves, Intercommunion, 174.
242 Graves, Intercommunion, 270.
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Clearly then, for Graves, no other group besides the gathered, local church members should receive the Lord’s Supper.
Next, Graves answers several objections to his view regarding breaking bread together (Acts 2:42) and from house to house (2:46), Graves responds, “[In Acts 2:42] the supper is undoubtedly referred to, while [in Acts 2:46] it is the noun without the definite article” combined with “the context also determines it to have been a common meal.”
243Although some churches invite Christians from outside their membership for the sake of courtesy, Graves concludes that such a practice “contravenes one of [Christ’s]
own appointments.”
244Graves charges those who receive the Lord’s Supper upon pastoral invitation when they visit a church with the error of eating and drinking
unworthily.
245With respect Paul’s so-called visiting communion at Troas (20:7), Graves claims that breaking bread in this instance was not a communion celebration because (1) Paul had not hitherto visited the city; (2) no church yet existed there; (3) no ministers are mentioned; and (4) Luke does not use an article before the phrase “break bread.”
246The meal shared in Acts 20 then should be understood as a normal meal in the context of pastoral training.
For Graves, anything other than closed communion suffers from several faults. Given the one loaf and one body image of 1 Corinthians 10:17, churches that allow non-members to participate do not practice or have church communion, but only denominational communion. Those who do not practice closed communion are not able to properly guard the table, which is their divinely appointed charge.
247Furthermore,
243 Graves, Intercommunion, 225.
244 Graves, Intercommunion, 183.
245 Graves, Intercommunion, 271.
246 Graves, Intercommunion, 341–52.
247 Graves, Intercommunion, 308.