Discovering the Foundations for the Baptist Secessionist Movement

May 5th, 2020

Old Landmarkism: Its Forgotten Influence

            If one were to ask a Baptist in the Southeastern United States who is J. R. Graves or what is Landmarkism, the answer would most likely be a shrug and a bewildered look. Even though his name no longer graces the Baptist newsletters and only a few have heard the term “Landmarkism,” the legacy of this man and his teaching regarding the Baptist faith are still alive and well in many churches today. Graves was a major influence in the early days of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), but today his message has taken root in Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) churches across North America. His impact is most noticeable in the Southeast, but one can still hear his “strict Baptist”[1] teachings flow from the mouths of evangelists and pastors from New York to California.[2]

These “strict Baptist” teachings are primarily ecclesiological.[3] Graves emphasizes the exclusivity of the Baptist church, declaring that “Baptist churches are the churches of Christ, and that they alone hold, and have alone ever held, and preserved the doctrine of the gospel in all ages since the ascension of Christ.”[4] Graves would build the case for Old Landmarkism on the premise that all other denominations are not “true” churches.

Old Landmarkism was born out of a zeal for orthodox Christianity but founded upon a revivalist’s flawed hermeneutic. J. R. Graves, with a passionate desire to ensure the “strictly and consistently carrying out in our practice those principles which all true Baptists, in all ages, have professed to believe,”[5] could not or would not view the Scripture except through the lenses of his Baptist faith. It is this method of biblical interpretation on which this work will focus. The purpose here is not to defend nor to dismantle Graves’s positions, but to determine the underlying philosophy of Old Landmarkism by understanding the hermeneutic of its most vocal advocate.

Defining the Terms and Establishing Boundaries

            Dr. Anthony Thiselton, professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham, England, defines hermeneutics as the subject that “explores how we read, understand, and handle texts, especially those written in another time or in a context of life different from our own.”[6] This work will call attention to the method in which Graves handles the text of Scripture and attempt to understand why he uses the method he does. At first, this may sound as simple as reading his works and picking apart any Scripture references, but this would miss the psychological forces that help drive a particular hermeneutic.[7]

Friedrich Schleiermacher, one of the most influential thinkers in modern hermeneutics, says “one must already know a man in order to understand what he says, and yet one first becomes acquainted with him by what he says.”[8] This seemingly vicious circle serves to call attention the need to understand that which lies behind the words in order to fully understand the words. Whether this is correct as a hermeneutic or not, here it is a call to know the man behind the words of his sermons and books, to look past the words on the page, and to attempt to reason to the psychological nature of the man.

The process to “know [this] man” will involve an analysis of Graves as person, a survey of the historical and societal situation in which he lived, and a brief assessment of some theological presuppositions held by evangelicals during this timeframe (this will be limited to the scope of this topic). Once the framework of Graves’s psychological conditions has been addressed, then this work will turn to a review of his use of Scripture and attempt to determine the hermeneutic of J. R. Graves.

This work will not attempt to build a hermeneutical or philosophical history from pre-Enlightenment scholasticism up to Landmarkism. Building this bridge may be a beneficial undertaking and one that is needful for a full understanding, but the scope of this work is limited to Graves and his hermeneutical methodology that produced Old Landmarkism. 

Knowing the Man

            Graves was born in Chester, Vermont, on April 10, 1820. His father died within two or three weeks of Graves’s birth, leaving him, his mother, and two siblings to endure financial hardships during his early childhood.[9] Due to this hardship, he was required to work from an early age to help support the family and was unable to receive a formal education.

In Old Landmarkism Graves writes of witnessing his mother’s and sister’s baptism into a Congregationalist church in 1832. He does not say that it was a Congregationalist church, but does say that it was by a “Pedobaptist minister.”[10] He claims that this “made an indelible impression,”[11] and this event would later cause him to question the validity of a baptism by what he calls an “unbaptized man.”[12] Graves, himself, was baptized into the North Springfield Baptist Church only two years later.[13]

Harold Smith records that Graves was a “diligent student”[14] and that “on his own he pursued a program of individual study. Studying eight hours a day, he completed the equivalent of a college course in four years.”[15] Graves, at nineteen, became the principal of an academy in Kingsville, Ohio, and at twenty-two he moved to the Mount Freedom Community in Kentucky as the principal of Clear Creek Academy.[16]

It was while in Mount Freedom that Graves joined the church of Ryland Dillard. Pastor Dillard “animatedly opposed the Campbellite thought that was spreading through his region and splitting Baptist congregations and associations.”[17] Dillard became a mentor to Graves and forced “him to preach in his stead on one occasion.”[18] It was from this experience that Graves was eventually ordained by the Mt. Freedom Baptist Church in 1842.[19] After his ordination, Graves briefly went back to Ohio, but in 1845, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and founded a classical school.[20]

Once in Nashville, Graves joined the First Baptist Church which was pastored by R. B. C. Howell.[21] Howell was an early leader in the Southern Baptist Convention and was elected the second president of the convention.[22] Graves’s affiliation with Howell would open the doors that would solidify his place in Baptist history. A major part of this was when Howell made Graves the assistant editor of the Tennessee Baptist, a denominational newspaper, and it was this paper that would boost Graves into the forefront of Baptist politics.

Analyzing the Man

            Without the aid of training in psychology, this work will refrain from any attempt at an academic psychoanalysis of Graves based on the limited information that has been provided. That being said, it is reasonable to draw certain conclusions based on Graves’s own actions. One can discover that Graves was an unusually driven and extremely gifted individual. Working a full-time job and then devoting eight hours per day to self-study takes a great amount of dedication and drive. One may argue that it was his upbringing and lack of a formal education that drove Graves to such lengths to better himself. It was this same drive and tenacity that would define Graves in the denominational and intradenominational fights in which he would soon engage.

Graves, himself, admits that the experience of his mother’s and sister’s Congregationalist baptism caused concern for him regarding the validity of such a baptism. This became more pointed twenty-two years later when his mother applied for membership with the Church in Nashville, which he pastored.[23] His concern was that her prior baptism was not valid. So he explains, being “quite young and this my first pastorate, I referred the whole matter and responsibility to Dr. Howell.”[24] Dr. Howell advised that her baptism was valid, but Graves, upon further contemplation and study, determined that the earlier baptisms were “null and void”[25] and rebaptized both his mother and sister. This would also be a turning point in his relationship with Howell.

Prior to moving to Tennessee, Graves was heavily influenced by Dillard in Kentucky. This influence was against the Campbellites, a movement that had started in the Baptist churches that is known today as the Disciples of Christ and Church of Christ denominations. Graves, himself, had a brief personal encounter with the Campbellite movement in Ohio just before moving to Nashville. Now Graves, already with his mind concerned with the authority of the Pedobaptist, had his disposition against the Campbellites firmly set.

With the doggedness of one who tirelessly taught himself the equivalent of a college education, including multiple languages, Graves was convinced that the Baptist way was the only true faith. His will was now an indomitable force ready to be released for the defense of the faith, as he saw it. With his connection to Howell, he would be put in charge of the Tennessee Baptist and given a platform from which to wage war against all other denominations which he condemned as “human institutions”[26] and organizations that “assaulted his [Jesus’] kingdom and shed the blood of his [Jesus’] brethren.”[27]

Historical Situatedness

            One cannot take Graves’s personal experiences alone and develop an understanding of his psychological nature, as no man is raised in a vacuum. The events that are taking place in the world, in society, and within the confines of denominational associations make a large impact on one’s worldview. Graves is no exception. He was a man of his time, influenced by the socio-political events that were unfolding around him. To fill in the picture of Graves’s psychological nature, this work must address the social and political events as well as the leading theological views during the time period under evaluation and those limited to the relevant events and theories to the subject at hand.

Socio-Political Effects on Graves

            The first major event in Graves’s life would be one that had been going strong for about a twenty-five years by the time he was born. The Second Great Awakening had begun around 1775 and lasted until about 1835. One aspect of the Great Awakening that would become a focal point for Graves was the fact that during the “camp meetings” (where the revivalists would preach the Gospel) often times the pulpit would be shared by preachers from different denominations. In his work The Evangelist, Rev. Denison preserves the record of a Baptist preacher, Rev. Jabez Swan. Here one finds the record of just such an event. Rev. Swan remembers, “our Congregational friends also united with us in earnest efforts to save souls.”[28] Graves saw this implicit recognition of other denominations as legitimate churches as a serious error, and he would condemn this practice making it one of the five points of the “Cotton Grove Resolutions” which turned into the foundation of Landmarkism.[29]

The second major happening that would shape Graves’s future was his move to Tennessee. Middle Tennessee had become very prosperous. Nashville became the permanent capital of the State in 1826, and it seemed like a great time to be in Tennessee even with the rising tensions between the North and South. However, prior to the rise of the Confederacy and the outbreak of war, Nashville was becoming a prominent cultural center in the South. It was here Graves would make his mark, and it was here that Graves would be caught up in the rapture of secessionism. With the belief that one should separate oneself from that which is “un-Godly,” it is a small step to an isolationist mentality for the church, as well.[30]

In moving to Nashville, Graves would stumble into the next major cultural shift, the development of the SBC. With the cultural division between the industrial North and agricultural South, this disunion did not stop at the church doors. This divide drove a wedge between brothers, both physically and spiritually, thus leading to the development of the SBC. With his connection to Howell, Graves would have a front row seat with what was taking place in the Convention. Once he became editor of the Tennessee Baptist, he would be shaping the conversations of the Convention.

The final major worldview changing event was the Civil War. Once Nashville fell to the Union troops, Graves left and finally resettled in Memphis.[31] The extent to which the Civil War effected life in the South cannot be addressed in a work of this nature, but its importance in the life of Graves and the Landmark movement should be noted. In his theological appraisal of Landmarkism, Dr. James Tull, a professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary noted that “Landmarkism was arrested and subdued by the Civil War. When the war was over, Landmarkism appeared for a time to have succumbed in the general devastation and paralysis of Southern life and culture.”[32] It may have been just the break that the SBC needed in order to survive. Tull explains that “the convention of 1859 showed the Landmark movement in its most dramatic hour. The Landmark attack upon the Foreign Mission Board was actually an attack upon the Southern Baptist Convention, whose very life was threatened by the Landmark aggression.”[33] One of the leaders of the SBC that helped fend off the attack from Graves and the other Landmarkers was Graves’s former pastor R. B. C. Howell.[34] Paradoxically, that which caused so much death and destruction may have been life-saving for the SBC. However, “Landmarkism was only dormant for the time being; it was not dead.”[35] Smith remarks that after the war, “it was a more moderate Graves who sought to lead Baptists now.”[36] Tull’s assessment agrees with Smith’s, concluding “the J. R. Graves who emerged from the war was a man of more genial temper. But he was still the Landmarker par excellence. His change of temper made him perhaps even more influential.”[37]

Theological Understandings that Influenced Graves

Much of what one learns is “absorbed” rather than learned through a reasoned academic pursuit. Theology is no exception. If one were to be challenged on what one believes and forced to cite evidence for said beliefs, then one would find out just how much is believed without personal investigation. It is for this reason that the theological world in which Graves was immersed is important in understanding his worldview, which in turn impacts his hermeneutic.

In 1883 Milton Terry, a professor in Old Testament exegesis, published a work on biblical hermeneutics. It is in this work that one finds a detailed description of what is now called the historical-grammatical method of interpretation; however, at the time he identified it as “Grammatico-Historical.” Regarding this method he says:

we may name the Grammatico-Historical as the method which most fully commends itself to the judgment and conscience of Christian scholars. Its fundamental principle is to gather from the Scriptures themselves the precise meaning which the writers intended to convey. It applies to the sacred books the same principles, the same grammatical process and exercise of common sense and reason, which we apply to other books. The grammatico-historical exegete, furnished with suitable qualifications, intellectual, educational, and moral, will accept the claims of the Bible without prejudice or adverse prepossession, and, with no ambition to prove them true or false, will investigate the language and import of each book with fearless independence. He will master the language of the writer, the particular dialect which he used, and his peculiar style and manner of expression. He will inquire into the circumstances under which he wrote, the manners and customs of his age, and the purpose or object which he had in view.[38]

In that day, the “Grammatico-Historical” method had become, and still is, the method by which evangelicals interpreted Scripture. Jason Sexton, writing for the Southwestern Journal of Theology in 2011, says that “the historical-grammatical method is the established hermeneutical method of evangelicals.”[39] Following up this statement in a footnote, he continues, “this is not to say that the consistent application of the historical-grammatical method is the hallmark of evangelicals.”[40] This inconsistent application of the historical-grammatical method was also applicable in Graves’s time just as much as in Sexton’s. Despite Terry’s position of “accept[ing] the claims of the Bible without prejudice or adverse prepossession,”[41] it is said his specialty was “finding Jesus in every corner of the Old Testament.”[42] Espousing a rigid exegesis and yet still adopting a typological interpretive method by which he can “find Jesus” in all types of passages aligns Terry with an American biblical scholar of a previous generation. Jonathan Edwards, who predated Terry and Graves by almost 100 years, believed “all statements throughout the Scripture were to be construed as casting light upon Jesus Christ, Son of God.”[43] Understanding the defined historical-grammatical method yet its inconstant usage is critical in identifying Graves’s hermeneutic methodology and, thereby, the foundations of Landmarkism.

Terry’s “Grammatico-Historical” method of interpretation tells one how to interpret the Scripture, but not how one should view the Scripture. During Graves’s life, a higher criticism of Scripture was being widely discussed in Germany, and the significance of those studies was crossing the Atlantic via the American Universities. However, most “Americans in this era rejected much radical German biblical criticism,” but “they were well aware of it and occasionally published refutations.”[44] One such scholar was Charles Hodge, a contemporary of Graves and a professor at Princeton, who in his Systematic Theology defends the high view of Scripture saying “the infallibility and divine authority of the Scriptures are due to the fact that they are the word of God; and they are the word of God because they were given by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”[45] Another Princeton professor, Joseph Addison Alexander, also “maintained a high view of inspiration and argued that God spoke and revealed himself in manifold ways.”[46] Alexander took the “conventional positions on the controversial matters”[47] such as defending the traditional understanding of only one author for the book of Isaiah and supporting the translation “virgin” for העלמה (Isa. 7:14).[48] These traditional understandings being “conventional,” or what was generally accepted, supports the general understanding that the Bible was regarded as the “word of God” as Hodge taught, at least among evangelical believers in that day.

Knowing that Graves was raised in the Northeastern United States during the Second Great Awakening and that he was familiar enough with Christian principals to be concerned with a baptismal procedure at twelve years old, one can rightly assume that Graves also had embraced the conventional wisdom of the day, that wisdom being a high view of Scripture and the historical-grammatical method of interpreting it. This work will attempt to verify this assumption of Graves’s hermeneutic with an analysis of his books and sermons.

Graves’s Normal Use of Scripture

            Graves’s books, such as Old Landmarkism,[49] The Great Iron Wheel,[50] John’s Baptism: Was it From Moses or Christ?,[51] and The Tri-lemma; or, Death by Three Horns,[52] are much more polemical in nature than what one finds in his sermons. However, neither his sermons nor his books could be considered exegetical according to today’s standards. That being said, one must still evaluate these works to see if Graves’s hermeneutic is historical-grammatical as his historical situatedness would lead one to believe. This work will begin with Graves’s use of Scripture in his sermons and then proceed to his books.

One finds that Graves, early in his ministry, holds a high view of Scripture. In his sermon “The Sovereignty of God not Inconsistent with Free Moral Agency,” which he preached twice in 1847, one finds:

We read it in Genesis 15:13: “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a strange land, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years, and also that nation whom they serve will I judge, and afterwards they shall come out with great substance.” Now, this was God’s decree, made known hundreds of years before its accomplishment, and it must needs come to pass just as He determined it.[53]

Here Graves believes that God’s decree, His word, will take place because He “determined it.” This view of Scripture, as being the direct word of God, is compatible with the views of Jonathan Edwards and Milton Terry. Graves, later in life, preached a message “Satan Dethroned.”[54] It is recorded that he preached this message “soon after the evacuation of the city by the Federal troops,”[55] placing the timing of this message around 1877. One can tell that Graves has not changed his position regarding the authority of Scripture as God’s word. When desirous to make a point, he says “let us appeal to the teachings of God’s word” and proceeds to quote from Genesis, Isaiah, and 2 Thessalonians. With these two quotes, one can understand that Graves held a high view of Scripture and that for a man who spent his life dedicated to preserving the “true church,” it would be a waste of time filling pages with proof texts for the lesser of the important concerns, (lesser only in relation to the nature of this work). These two quotes also point to Graves holding a historical-grammatical interpretive method, as well. In both quotes Graves expected the words of Scripture to be taken in their grammatical sense and for at least the first quote he correctly applied the prophecy and its fulfillment in its appropriate historical context. Although Graves’s books are mostly dialectical and focus more on argumentation rather than biblical exegesis, one of the best examples of Graves’s reliance on the historical-grammatical hermeneutic is found in John’s Baptism: Was it From Moses or Christ? In chapter five, he is exegeting Acts 19:1-7. Here is a portion of this text as an example of Graves’s method:

It is not a verb in the Aorist tense, in the original, but a participle, and the conjunction, but, that is rendered in our version, “And when they heard this.” The literal rendering is, “but hearing this,” etc. The participle akousantes in the nominative plural, can not [sic] refer to laoo [λαω] which is in the dative singular, as its antecedent, but to autous, the representative of mathetas, disciples, in verse one. We think no Greek scholar will question this.[56]

Just in this brief passage, one will notice that Graves makes a distinction between the “original,” meaning the Greek texts and “our version,” the King James Version. This distinction is still lost on some in IFB churches today. Graves, although incorrectly so, attempts to make use of the grammar of the Greek texts in order to make his case. One may not agree with the conclusion he draws, but one cannot deny his reliance on the historical-grammatical method, at least in these passages.

 Almost any evangelical Christian of his day would have found Graves’s preaching to be agreeable. Even those Pedobaptist and Campbellites that he dedicated his life to refuting would have agreed with most of his positions. It is when one comes to the works and sermons that promote Landmarkism that one finds Graves changing course. Just as Sexton pointed out, evangelicals are not always constant in their historical-grammatical hermeneutic. This was found to be the case with Edwards and Terry, and it is true with Graves.

Graves’s Convictions

            When Edwards and Terry deviated from the historical-grammatical method, it was to a typological method with the purpose of finding Jesus in the Old Testament. Graves’s intent, however, was not as Christocentric. As it has been noted, Landmarkism is essentially an ecclesiology; so most of his works were with the purpose of defending the Baptist faith and denigrating all other denominations. In order to make his case, Graves left the historical-grammatical method and used what can only be described as an eisegetical hermeneutic.

A distinction is usually made between hermeneutics and exegesis.[57] Terry explains “exegesis is related to hermeneutics as preaching is to homiletics, or, in general, as practice is to theory.”[58] While this distinction is well founded and duly noted, eisegesis is still the best description in many cases for Graves’s hermeneutic. Merriam-Webster defines eisegesis as “the interpretation of a text (as of the Bible) by reading into it one’s own ideas.”[59]

In order to understand Graves’s interpretations, since they are based on his “own ideas,” one must have a basic understanding of his convictions. Graves is convinced that the Baptist church was founded by Jesus Christ and that John the Baptist was “Christ’s first gospel minister and apostle.”[60] In his opinion, the church is found only in the “visible”[61] and “local”[62] congregation of believers.  He believes that all other denominations are “human institutions”[63] and are derived from the Roman Catholic church which was established by Satan.[64] From these positions, he extrapolates that any “preacher” from any other denomination is “unbaptized”[65] and unqualified to perform the ordinances of the church. With these in mind, one can move fully into Graves’s polemics and find the basis of Landmarkism.

Graves’s Use of Scripture in His Polemics

            Graves’s positions will be laid out in reverse order starting with his views on the Catholic church back to his claim regarding John the Baptist. In Tri-lemma Graves goes after the Roman Catholic church and, specifically, the office of the Papacy. He cites 2 Thess. 2:4,9-10 as being:

The coming of the Papacy was after the working of Satan, [not of the apostles,] with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness, in them that perish. From the beginning, it was the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”[66]

If this passage of Paul’s letter were taken strictly in a historical-grammatical method, it would not be possible to draw this conclusion. But since Graves is already convinced that the office of the Pope is the Anti-Christ, then any time he reads a passage referring to the Anti-Christ, Graves will automatically read the Pope, the office of the Pope, or the Catholic church as whole into said passage. Another example of this eisegesis is in The Great Iron Wheel when he writes, “in the 13th chapter [of the book of the Revelation], we have the history of the seven headed and ten horned Beast, Papal Rome.”[67]

Graves’s condemnation is not exhausted on the Catholic church, but he has as much if not more to say about the Reformers. In Tri-lemma, he poses a dialogue between the church of Rome and her Protestant “children:”[68]

Will Protestants charge the Church of Rome with being ” mystical Babylon” and that ” scarlet woman” drunken with the blood of the saints? May not Rome reply: “If I am Babylon, because I have persecuted and shed the blood of the heretical Anabaptists, then do you also belong to Babylon, for which one of you all have not imbued your hands in their blood? Your own garments are scarlet and blood-dyed, as well as my own! It becomes us to keep these family matters among ourselves, and not charge each other before our enemies.[69]

In The Great Iron Wheel, Graves turns his attention on the Methodists, in particular. A brief example of his eisegesis is once again revealed. Using Dan. 2:44, he makes his case against the church founded by Wesley:

Dan. ii. 44. ” In the days of these kings;” kings of the fourth universal empire, not of England—the Caesars—not the Georges, “Shall the God of Heaven, (not Luther or Calvin, Wesley or Campbell,) set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed”—this kingdom must have been something visible and tangible—a distinct organization—otherwise it could not have been seen or assaulted, or been liable to destruction—”but it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and stand forever.” Unless it had a visible organization, it could not oppose visible and literal organizations. If the kingdoms broken were visible, so is the “stone” or kingdom set up by the God of heaven. It was a kingdom that was set up, and there can be no kingdom without some sort of government and organization—it would be an anarchy. But the God of Heaven was to ” set it up,” not man, and therefore not Calvin or Wesley. Do you say ” he did it through man’s instrumentality’?” I deny it.[70]

Here the eisegesis employed is that which claims that the “kingdom which shall never be destroyed” is a visible kingdom and not a representation of the “universal (or invisible) church,” which Graves denies exists.[71] The goal here is not to confirm or refute Graves’s position, but to point out his preconceived ideas that he “reads into” the text rather than “extracting” meaning solely out of the text. With this interpretation, Graves is able flatly to reject any and all denominations that cannot prove a lineage back to the apostolic churches. Of course, he rejects the Catholic and Greek Orthodox claims to just such a heritage. He teaches, “The faith of these two ‘churches,’ that constitute the apostate part of Christendom, from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries, are very similar. The perversion of the primitive faith . . . put the water before the blood, and made it necessary to reach the blood through the water.”[72] He continues, stating, “this simple change corrupted the whole gospel, perverted the whole plan of salvation, and made regeneration depend upon the will of men—the priesthood.”[73]

One may question how, then, does Graves save the Baptists from the same fate of being cast aside as a “human institution?” Graves takes Dan. 2:44 (see above), Matt. 16:18,[74] and Heb. 12:28[75] to “prove” that Christ established His church, the kingdom, and it will not fall. If one takes this information and combines it with the visible church model that Graves demands, then one is forced to conclude that there has been and always will be a church from the time of Christ until His return that is faithful to the original churches established by the apostles. If these precepts are given, for the sake of argument, and one excludes the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox on the basis of an “unscriptural baptism” and a “perverting of the Gospel” as previously discussed, then where does one turn? To Graves, the obvious answer is to those churches that were condemned as heretics by the Catholic church, the logic being, the Catholic church was founded by Satan; therefore, whoever they oppose must be Godly. Graves was not the first or only Baptist to conclude that Baptists are not Protestant and never had any part in the Catholic church. G. H. Orchard published a work in England in 1838 called A Concise History of Foreign Baptist. In this work, he traces a line from the early church through the “Novatians, Montanists, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldensians, and even St. Patrick of Ireland as some of the forerunners to the German Anabaptist, who in turn gave rise to the modern Baptist churches.”[76] This work ended up in the hands of Graves, and it was just the “resource” he needed to legitimize his claims, regardless of the historical accuracy of Orchard’s claims. In 1855, he had Orchard’s book republished to distribute among his followers.[77] Much of Orchard’s thoughts also make an appearance in Old Landmarkism.[78] The result of these works is still making waves among Baptists today in J. M. Carroll’s The Trail of Blood[79]and A. A. Davis’s The Baptist Story: Sermons on the Trail of Blood.[80]

Having traced Graves’s commitments starting with his rejection of the Catholic church, back to his perceived necessity for a continuance of faithful churches (Baptist only in different names throughout history), now the claim of John the Baptist being the “first gospel minister and apostle”[81] can be addressed. One of Graves’s proofs found in John’s Baptism is as follows:

The apostles recognized the baptism of John and his ministry as belonging to the gospel economy, when they consulted for candidates to the apostolic office. Read Acts i, 21, 22: “Wherefore of these men who have companied with us all the time that the Lord went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John,” etc. They considered, unless they began with John’s ministry, they would not cover all the period of Christ’s ministry— His prophetic week. What stronger proof than this can be adduced? The entire membership of the first Church, embracing as it did, at this time, all the apostles themselves, considered that John’s ministry was a part of the gospel dispensation. They proceeded upon the fact, the one chosen could not witness to all that ministry of Christ unless he could begin with the ministry of John the Baptist.[82]

How could the man who took so much care in exegeting the Scripture in Acts 19, as noted earlier, be so careless with this verse, not taking into consideration that ἀρξάμενος, having begun, is in the nominative, masculine, singular, connecting it to the preceding Κύριος Ἰησοῦς, Lord Jesus, which is also nominative, masculine, singular. Nor did he consider that the preposition ἕως in verse 22 links the assumed subject in ἀνελήμφθη, “He was taken up” (He being Jesus), with the one who received the βαπτίσματος Ἰωάννου, baptism of John.[83] The NET translates this verse “beginning from his baptism by John until the day he was taken up from us . . .” (Acts 1:22 NET).[84] Ignoring this understanding of the verse as a possible option, Graves sees this as “proof” that all of Jesus’ disciples had first been baptized by John. This would, by practice, make John the predominate apostle (maybe elder) in that he performed the rite of admittance into the church for all of the other apostles. Graves does not state up front that John the Baptist was the first Baptist, although that conclusion could be extrapolated from his writings, and some have done just that. Dr. Ryan McGuire, in his The History of the Church, questions “why did Jesus go to John the Baptist to be baptized (Matthew 3:13 . . .)? Would this display a connection between Jesus and the Baptists?”[85] Notice Baptists is plural; he is not asking about a connection between Jesus and the Baptist (John), but the Baptists (the Baptist church). He makes his point clear when he reminds his readers to “keep in mind that it was not John the Methodist, John the Presbyterian, or John the Pope, but it was John the Baptist.”[86]

Although not comprehensive, this brief review of Graves’s use of Scripture clearly shows that he does not always adhere to a historical-grammatical hermeneutic. In fact, quite often he views Scripture through his Baptist glasses. Sadly, it is these interpretations that remain as his legacy and are still creating conflict in Baptist churches today.

Graves’s Hermeneutic and the Foundation
of Landmarkism

            Having reviewed Graves as a man, his historical situatedness, and his use of Scripture, both in sermons and in books, the focus now broadens in an attempt to see past the details and understand the man, thereby, understanding the philosophy of Landmarkism. As Schleiermacher says, “one must already know a man in order to understand what he says;”[87] one had first to get to know Graves before one could understand him.

In J. R. Graves, one finds a man who with great discipline and determination grew up in an economically depressed situation and without the guidance of a father. As a child, he was in an environment surrounded by a religious fervor, but without much direction. Disturbed at a young age by what he viewed as inconsistencies and possibly insincerity by a Pedobaptist minister, he rejected the church of his mother and two years later joined the Baptist church. Graves continued to work to support his family and still managed to self-educate to the level equivalent to a four-year college degree. In doing so, he learned multiple languages which he would use to study Scripture. After he moved to Kentucky, he was influenced by his new pastor to reject the teachings of the Campbellites, and it was here that Graves was ordained as a Baptist minister. With a passion developed for the Baptist faith and practice, Graves joined the Baptist church in Nashville and came under another devout Baptist thinker, Dr. Howell. Here Graves took over the Tennessee Baptist and became familiar with the newly organized SBC. It was also here that Graves adopted the Southern attitude for secession. This political view crossed over into his life philosophy as he developed the desire to separate from all things ungodly. In 1851, Graves organized the Cotton Grove meetings that approved the “Cotton Grove Resolutions.” It was these five resolutions that when presented, by Graves, in tract form would be called “An Old Landmark Reset.”[88] The name Landmarkism was born. Once he was introduced to Orchard’s presentation of Baptist history, Graves’s writings began to teach as a fact that the Baptist church had a verifiable lineage back to the church that Jesus Christ established. With this belief firmly cemented in his brilliant mind and a will forged from a hard-lived youth, Graves was molded perfectly to wage war against all that he viewed as heresy. Heresy was anything other than the “Baptist onlyism” philosophy that Graves had cultivated, either intentionally, unconsciously, or some of both.

It was not Graves’s historical-grammatical hermeneutic that led to Landmarkism; it was when he deviated from this method and fell into the trap of eisegesis that Landmarkism could be said to have any Biblical support. The entire philosophy of a Landmarkism ecclesiology hangs on one point and that is the assertion that Baptist churches are the only true churches. It is Graves’s eisegesis of Dan. 2:44, Matt. 16:18, and Heb. 12:28 that allows him to teach that Christ established a physical, local body (not an invisible, universal church) and, therefore, there must be a consistent church from the time of Christ. Since all others are heretical, the true church must be the Baptist church. If this one premise is false, then the whole movement falls.

This work points out on occasion that Landmarkism is still alive today. The fact that it is still being taught despite no historical, biblical, or scholarly support is due to the nature of the beast that is eisegesis. Once one determines the truth of the meaning of Scripture based on reading one’s own view back into the text, it is difficult to admit that one is wrong and to change. This is even more difficult for a pastor or elder of a church who has taught these views for years or sometimes decades. It is easier to close ranks, demonize scholars and seminaries, and further isolate into an echo chamber of like-minded believers. This is the reality of many, if not all, churches that hold to any aspect of Landmarkism. The name may not be on the door, and the congregants may never have heard of J. R. Graves, but within those walls, one will hear Graves’s hermeneutics in their declarations that Baptists are not Protestant, that the Catholic church is the “Whore” of Revelation[89], and that Baptists trace their history back to John the Baptist (yes, some really make this claim). What began with a zeal for orthodox Christianity by a man who valued an education, sadly has devolved into anti-intellectualism that has hindered the growth of the church and the spreading of the Gospel. To this, Graves would not be happy. One can tell he truly had a passion for Christ and His church, but that which is built on bad foundations, in this case an eisegetical hermeneutic, can never be expected to produce good results.

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[1] J. R. Graves, Old Landmarkism: What is It? (Memphis, TN: Graves, Mahaffy & Co., 1880), xiii.

[2] See Pastor John Koletas at Grace Baptist Church in Troy, NY and Dr. Jack Trieber at North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, CA for examples. 

[3] Louis Keith Harper, “Old Landmarkism: A Historiographical Appraisal,” Baptist History and Heritage 25, no 2 (April 1990): 34.

[4] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 25. Emphasis is in the original.  

[5] Graves, Old Landmarkism, xiv.

[6] Anthony C. Thiselton, Hermeneutics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 1.

[7] Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 89.

 [8] Friedrich Schleiermacher, “The Aphorisms of 1805 and 1809–10,” in Hermeneutics: ThebHandwritten Manuscripts, ed. Heinz Kimmerle (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1977), 56. “Man muß den Menschen schon kennen um die Rede zu verstehen und doch soll man ihn erst aus der Rede kennen lernen.” Fr. D. E. Schleiermacher, “I. Die Aphorismen von 1805 und 1809,” in Hermeneutik: Nach den Handschriften neu herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Heinz Kimmerle (Heidelberg: Carl Winter • Universitätsverlag, 1959), 44. A special thanks to Dr. Tom Howe for providing this resource.

[9] Harold S. Smith, “The Life and Work of J. R. Graves (1820-1893),” Baptist History and Heritage 10, no.1 (January 1975): 19.

[10] Graves, Old Landmarkism, ix.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., x.

[13] Smith, 20.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Chad W. Hall, “When Orphans Became Heirs: J. R. Graves and the Landmark Baptists,” Baptist History and Heritage 25, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 114.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Hall, 114.

[21] Ibid.

[22] “SBC Presidents,” SBCLIFE, last modified September 1, 2014, accessed May 5, 2020,  http://www.sbclife.net/article/2312/sbc-presidents.

[23] Graves, Old Landmarkism, x.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., 31.

[27] Ibid.

[28] F. Denison, The Evangelist, 2^nd ed. (Waterford, CT: William L. Peckham, 1873), 185.

[29] Graves, Old Landmarkism, xi-xii.

[30] For an understanding of Graves’s opinion on worldly governments one need only read his sermon “Satan Dethroned.” It is his position that all worldly governments are under the control of Satan, who is the “prince of this world.”

[31] Hall, 124.

[32] James E. Tull, “The Landmark Movement: An Historical and Theological Appraisal,” Baptist History and Heritage 10, no. 1 (January 1975): 13.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Smith, 23.

[37] Tull, 14.

[38] Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1883), 173.

[39] Jason S. Sexton, “Emerging Church Hermeneutics and the Historical-Grammatical Method,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 53, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 158.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Terry, 173.                           

[42] “Overview of Milton Spenser Terry,” Logos Bible Software, last modified unknown, accessed May 6, 2020,  https://www.logos.com/product/25334/milton-spenser-terry-collection.

[43] Thomas H. Olbricht, “Biblical Interpretation in North America Through the Nineteen Century,” in A History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 3, The Enlightenment Through the Nineteenth Century, ed. Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 353.

[44] Olbricht, 363.

[45] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Theology (1871; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018), 158.

[46] Olbricht, 364.

[47] Ibid., 365.

[48] Ibid. The Hebrew word העלמֹה (almah) was translated in the KJV as “virgin,” but some modern translations such as the RSV and NET translate it as “young woman.”

[49] Graves, Old Landmarkism.

[50] J. R. Graves, The Great Iron Wheel (Nashville, TN: Graves and Marks, 1855).

[51] J. R. Graves, John’s Baptism: Was it From Moses or Christ? (Memphis, TN: Southern Baptist Book House, 1891).

[52] J. R. Graves, The Tri-lemma; or, Death by Three Horns (Nashville, TN: South-Western Publishing House, 1860).

[53] J. R. Graves, “The Sovereignty of God not Inconsistent with Free Moral Agency,” Baptist History Homepage, last modified unknown, accessed April 30, 2020,  http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/graves.j.r.sermon.sov.god.html.

[54] J. R. Graves, “Satan Dethroned,” Baptist History Homepage, last modified unknown, accessed April 30, 2020, http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/graves.j.r.satan.dethrond.html. 

[55] Graves, “Satan Dethroned.”

[56] Graves, John’s Baptism, 43.

[57] Exegesis and Eisegesis are generally considered as opposite methods of practicing hermeneutics. This quote is used to show that exegesis and eisegesis are usually separated from hermeneutics, as opposed to how this author is using it.

[58] Terry, 19.

[59] Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “eisegesis,” accessed May 6, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eisegesis.

[60] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 60.

[61] Ibid., 32.

[62] Ibid., 34.

[63] Ibid., 31.

[64] Graves, Tri-lemma, 35.

[65] Graves, Old Landmarkism, x.

[66] Graves, Tri-lemma, 35.

[67] Graves, The Great Iron Wheel, 29.

[68] Graves, Tri-Lemma, 84-85.

[69] Ibid., 85-86.

[70] Graves, The Great Iron Wheel, 48.

[71] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 32.

[72] Ibid., 70.         

[73] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 70. 

[74]  “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18)

[75] “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved.” (Heb. 12:28a)

[76] Hall, 119.

[77] Hall, 118-119.        

[78] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 128,168.

[79] J. M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood (1931; repr., Emmaus, PA: Challenge Press, 2013). One can trace the title of this work directly back to Graves’s work The Tri-lemma page 119.

[80] A. A. Davis, The Baptist Story: Sermons on the Trail of Blood (1952; repr., Shelbyville, TN: Bible and Literature Missionary Foundation, 2004.

[81] Graves, Old Landmarkism, 60.

[82] Graves, John’s Baptism, 75.

[83] The Greek translation used is Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 28.

[84] Emphasis added.

[85] Ryan McGuire, The History of the Church (Lumberton, MS: Blessed Hope Baptist Printing Ministry, Publish Date Unknown), 53.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Schleiermacher, 56.

[88] Graves, Old Landmarkism. xii.

[89] Graves, Tri-lemma, 42.