Collected, edited, and annotated by Reg Carr, paperback 268 pages. Published by The Testimony 2022.
The Letters of Dr. John Thomas to Alexander Campbell 1833-47.
 
Book Review
 
In Search of a Biblical Faith: the letters of John Thomas to Alexander Campbell (1833-47) by Brother Reg Carr.
 
BROTHER Reg sets out the purpose of the book with a question, “How did the Christadelphian faith come into existence? That, in a nutshell, is the question this book sets out to answer, through the letters of John Thomas to Alexander Campbell”.
 
There are already a number of publications that deal with the life of Brother John Thomas, including his understanding of the unique biblical doctrines now generally believed by the Christadelphians. So it might be asked, ‘Why publish yet another such work?’; but here, for the very first time, the reader can hear Brother Thomas’ voice through his personal letters, rather than by selected quotations from his articles, pamphlets or full-length books.
 
Looked at through the lens of Brother Thomas’ correspondence with Alexander Campbell, this book enables us to appreciate at first hand the way in which Brother Thomas, subsequent to his 1832 baptism by the Campbellite
preacher Walter Scott, discovered, from his own Bible reading, the unscriptural errors of the Campbellite gospel which he had initially espoused. While Brother Thomas’ letters to Campbell bear all the signs of having been written in an earlier age when, some would say, verbosity reigned(!), it is fascinating to see how the doctrinal positions of Brother Thomas on a growing range of issues come to move away from Alexander Campbell’s over a period of fourteen years.
 
Whilst publishing the letters in full may seem a somewhat dry and academic approach, the reviewer sees the correspondence as a helpfully different way of highlighting the origins of Christadelphianism in the exhaustive doctrinal reasoning of Brother Thomas, now almost two centuries ago.
 
Brother Reg summarises the main doctrinal differences between the two men in this way:
 
“These key areas of disagreement began on the subject of the true meaning and function of baptism; they progressed to include the mortality of man, the return of Christ to rule on earth as King over Israel, the resurrection and judgment of the responsible, the destruction of the wicked, and the literal fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; and they culminated in Dr. Thomas’ realisation that God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the Hope of Israel – lie at the very heart of the Christian gospel”.
 
A summary of Brother Thomas’ conclusions about baptism might serve, in this brief review, as an illustration of his conclusions on other key subjects. For example, in Letter 4 he expresses the view that belief in correct doctrines is essential before baptism; and this point is developed further in Letter 5 in response to those (including Campbell) who argued erroneously against this idea. In Letter 6 Brother Thomas highlights his understanding that belief must be correctly “founded upon the testimony of Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ [himself ] being the chief corner stone”.
 
In Letter 7, he explains his understanding of the things that make a baptism valid; and he gives a detailed list of such items in Letter 8.
 
In this way, his view of what constitutes a valid baptism becomes clear to the reader just as it was being clarified by Brother Thomas himself.
 
And so it is with the other basic doctrines on which Brother Thomas took issue with Alexander Campbell, as Brother Thomas read his Bible and moved towards points of view which became more recognisably ‘Christadelphian’ as the great watershed of 1847-8 approached.
 
While the book may not appeal to everyone, due to the verbosity of the letters published here, the precision of Brother Thomas’ identification of error, and its impact on salvation, makes the book an important witness to our
community’s early (and sustained) emphasis on right doctrine.
 As such, the book is a worthwhile addition to the library of all who rejoice in the clarity and biblical foundation of Christadelphian teaching.
Peter Forbes
 
This review was first published in The Christadelphan for December 2022