“Call Bible things by Bible names. Do Bible things in Bible ways.” These phrases have been repeated in Churches of Christ for decades. They often affirm a commitment to biblical language and practice, especially in contrast to denominational traditions or religious innovations. Like many Restoration slogans, they express a deep desire to return to the New Testament pattern and honor Scripture as the final authority in all matters of faith.

That desire should be respected. Christians should care about using the Bible’s language and shaping their lives and congregations according to what the apostles taught and practiced. These slogans were never meant to be catchy branding. They were intended to call the church back to simplicity and faithfulness.

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Today, we’ll think about the origins of these sayings, why they matter, where they’ve gone off track, and how we can recover a more thoughtful, faithful way of handling the Bible that reflects its authority without flattening its depth.

Where They Come From

The phrases “Call Bible things by Bible names” and “Do Bible things in Bible ways” are not drawn directly from Scripture, but they grew organically from the convictions of the early Restoration Movement. They point to the Restorationists’ desire to imitate the New Testament church’s language and practices.

The first phrase—“Call Bible things by Bible names”—can be traced to a recurring theme in Restoration literature: the concern that religious language had drifted far from the language of Scripture. In the Christian Baptist, Alexander Campbell criticized the use of unscriptural titles such as “Reverend” or “Father” for church leaders and argued for calling things what Scripture calls them. He wrote:

“Human names, human creeds, and human inventions in religion have been the fruitful sources of division, contention, and schism in the professed body of Christ.”

—Alexander Campbell, Christian Baptist, Vol. I, No. 1 (1823)

This concern wasn’t simply about semantics. Campbell believed that the language of the Bible carried theological weight. Substituting other terms was unnecessary and could introduce confusion and division. If Scripture refers to the church as the “church of God” or “churches of Christ” (Acts 20:28; Romans 16:16), then those names ought to be sufficient.

The second phrase—“Do Bible things in Bible ways”—developed from the Restorationist insistence on pattern theology: the belief that God has revealed a clear and reproducible model for the church in the pages of the New Testament. This conviction shows up consistently in Campbell’s The Christian System (1839), where he defends the necessity of following the apostolic order in matters of worship, church government, and doctrine. While the exact wording of the slogan does not appear in his writings, the concept is everywhere present.

Barton W. Stone shared this mindset, emphasizing that any practice not found in Scripture ought to be laid aside in the pursuit of Christian unity. In The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804), Stone and others declared:

“We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit… and that the people take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven.”

These slogans were not coined as formal doctrines but emerged over time as shorthand expressions of the Restoration plea. Their goal was to return to a recognizable biblical pattern—calling things what the Bible calls them and doing things in the manner taught or exemplified by Christ and His apostles. In their original context, they were corrective and unifying, intended to strip away centuries of human tradition and restore the clarity of apostolic Christianity.

What They Get Right

The leaders of the Restoration Movement were not simply reacting to tradition. They were asking a serious and necessary question: if the Bible is sufficient, why rely on anything else to define who we are or what we do?

The call to “call Bible things by Bible names” reflects the belief that biblical language matters. The names used in the New Testament are not accidental. They carry meaning, purpose, and theological clarity. To refer to the church as the “church of Christ” (Romans 16:16), the “church of God” (Acts 20:28; 1 Corinthians 1:2), or “the body of Christ” (Ephesians 1:22–23) is not about choosing a label. It is about affirming who the church belongs to. Likewise, terms such as “elder,” “overseer,” and “deacon” are not the same as titles like “reverend” or “bishop” in many religious traditions today. Using biblical terms helps avoid confusion and keeps the church grounded in the language of the apostles.

This concern for language also served a larger purpose. It was a way of resisting the theological clutter that had grown around Christianity over the centuries. By returning to the language of Scripture, the early Restoration leaders believed they were taking a step toward unity. If believers could drop human labels and return to biblical ones, they might begin to overcome the divisions that had fractured the church.

The second phrase, “do Bible things in Bible ways,” shows a similar concern for faithfulness, not just in belief but in practice. The early church did more than proclaim the gospel. It gathered in specific ways, celebrated the Eucharist regularly, appointed elders in each congregation, and baptized believers by immersion for the forgiveness of sins. These were not random or culturally optional practices. They were grounded in the teaching and example of the apostles (Acts 2:42; 20:7; 14:23; Ephesians 4:11–13; Titus 1:5).

This mindset helped shape the identity of the Churches of Christ in essential ways. Practices like baptism, weekly communion, and elder-led congregations were preserved and taught across generations because of a serious commitment to the New Testament as the church’s model. These patterns are not based on tradition or preference but on a desire to remain faithful to what God has revealed.

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When used in their proper context, these slogans remind us that faithfulness is not just about believing the right things. It is about allowing Scripture to shape the language we use, our worship, and the kind of church we become. The challenge is learning how to hold that instinct with maturity and discernment.

What They Get Wrong

While the intentions behind these phrases are good, my fear is that they are used without awareness of how language, culture, and theology actually work. They can unintentionally distort the very faithfulness they were meant to protect.

The Bible Was Not Written in English

One of the most basic challenges to the phrase “call Bible things by Bible names” is that the Bible wasn’t written in English; it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Every time we read the Bible in English, we are reading a translation, and all translations involve interpretation. The words we use in English are not identical to the words Paul, Peter, or Moses used. They are approximations chosen by translators to make ancient concepts understandable to modern readers.

That doesn’t mean translations are unreliable, but it does mean that insisting on exact “Bible names” in English is misleading. Unless someone is reading the original languages, they already rely on someone else’s interpretation of those names and terms. Even the word “church” is an English rendering of the Greek ekklesia, which simply means “assembly” or “called-out ones.” The word “baptism” is a transliteration, not a translation; it comes straight from the Greek baptizō, which means “immerse.” There are hundreds and hundreds of more examples. These aren’t just technicalities. They show how language shapes what we think the Bible says.

No English Translation Is Perfect (Not Even the KJV)

Many who emphasize “Bible names” and “Bible ways” often default to the King James Version out of familiarity or tradition. In some cases, this becomes an KJV-only mindset, where the wording of that particular translation is treated as the definitive standard. But the KJV, while historically important, is based on later and less accurate manuscripts. It includes known additions not found in the earliest Greek texts, like the Johannine Comma in 1 John 5:7 or the long ending of Mark, neither of which appear in the most ancient manuscripts.

Beyond textual accuracy, the KJV also uses a form of English that no one speaks today. Words like “conversation,” “peculiar,” or “charity” carried different meanings in the 1600s. Relying on an outdated and textually limited translation undermines the very goal of clarity and faithfulness that these slogans (and even the original KJV translators) were meant to promote.

Theological Terms Outside the Bible Are Sometimes Necessary

There is also the question of language that isn’t directly found in the Bible. Some argue that if a word isn’t in Scripture, we shouldn’t use it. But that logic breaks down quickly.

Let’s take the word “Trinity” as the first example. It’s not found in the Bible, yet it has been used for centuries to summarize the unified teaching of Scripture about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some Christians may prefer to use the word Godhead instead of Trinity, arguing that it is the “biblical” term (as seen, for example, in the King James rendering of passages like Romans 1:20). While they will still affirm the substance of the doctrine of the Trinity and simply prefer a different term, this approach can unintentionally create confusion which is in direct contradiction to the principle itself.

Groups like the Latter-day Saints also use the word “Godhead,” but they deny the Trinity and fundamentally reject monotheism altogether (although they will tell you they don’t). They believe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate gods. So while the terminology may sound familiar, the underlying theology is radically different.

A similar point applies to the word “atonement,” which didn’t exist in English until William Tyndale coined it in the 16th century. He created the term to express the idea of reconciliation between God and humanity through the death of Christ. The concept is biblical, even if the vocabulary had to be invented to convey it clearly in English. Yet nobody would ever question the validity of using the word “atonement.”

This is why clarity matters more than familiarity. A commitment to biblical truth may require us to use non-biblical words to guard against unbiblical ideas. Refusing to use theological terms like “Trinity” because the word doesn’t appear in Scripture can make it harder to defend the doctrine, especially in a religious culture where heretical groups use biblical vocabulary to mean very different things.

The goal is not to invent new doctrines. It’s to faithfully articulate the truth Scripture teaches, even if doing so requires language the apostles didn’t use. Extra-biblical terms are not enemies of biblical fidelity when they help express and protect what Scripture clearly reveals.

Pattern Theology Can Go Too Far

The slogan “do Bible things in Bible ways” often functions as a call to imitate the practices of the early church. In some cases, that’s wise. The apostles were guided by the Spirit, and their teaching remains authoritative. However, not everything they did was meant to be repeated by every church and every generation. For example, Acts describes believers sharing all their possessions and casting lots to make decisions. Yet I know very few Christians who share their possessions that way, and have never heard of an eldership casting lots to make decisions. These details are part of the inspired narrative, but they are not patterns the church must replicate.

Failing to distinguish between what is descriptive and what is prescriptive creates confusion. It can lead to rigid rules where Scripture offers flexibility and can turn matters of expedience into tests of faithfulness. That’s not restoration—it’s repetition without discernment.

Oversimplifying Faithfulness

Finally, these slogans can lead to a surface-level view of what it means to be faithful. If we think we’ve “done it right” simply because we’ve used the right terms or copied the right patterns, we may miss the deeper call of Scripture: to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to be transformed into the image of Christ. Obedience is not just about vocabulary or form. It’s about humility, maturity, and submission to the whole counsel of God.

These phrases are still useful when they point us back to Scripture with honesty and care. But they lose their power when they are used to shut down discussion, reinforce tradition without reflection, or divide churches over non-essential matters. The goal is not to abandon the slogans but to handle them with more wisdom than we often have.

From Slogan to Substance

These phrases came from a sincere desire to honor God’s Word. They reminded the church to resist tradition for tradition’s sake, stay rooted in Scripture, and pursue clarity in doctrine and practice.

But slogans, by nature, simplify. When simplification replaces discernment, the church begins to lose the very clarity it was trying to protect. The goal of biblical faithfulness has never been about repeating the right phrases or mimicking first-century forms. It has always been about submitting to the authority of Christ through a mature understanding of Scripture, rightly handled and carefully applied.

That means we need to keep asking better questions. Instead of simply asking, “Is this the Bible name for it?” we should ask, “Is this how Scripture describes and defines it, and do we understand what that name means in context?” Instead of saying, “This is how they did it, so we must do it the same way,” we should ask, “What did this practice mean for the early church, and how does that meaning carry forward into our setting today?”

A faithful church isn’t just one that quotes the Bible to defend what it believes. It’s one that listens carefully to what Scripture actually teaches, studies it within its historical and covenant context, and seeks to live it out in a way that reflects both the letter and the spirit of the gospel.

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