From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part 8 of a series. Read part 7.

Doctrinal pluralism is one of the three deadly daggers of apostasy.

As we have seen thus far, the authors and signers of the Auburn Affirmation built a pyramid of false principles building a foundation to allegedly justify their departure from the sole authority of the Word of God. In the remaining sections of the Affirmation they erected a three-pointed pinnacle bearing three deadly daggers of apostasy. We now consider the first of them.

The Auburn liberals claimed that the church should not require its minister and elders to submit and conform to the clearly-articulated doctrines of the Word of God. They claimed that in the name of "liberty and unity" the church must permit the development and propagation of multiple conflicting em>theories about the "great facts and doctrines." Thus the Auburn Affirmation:

The General Assembly of 1923 expressed the opinion concerning five doctrinal statements that each one "is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our standards." On the constitutional ground which we have before described, we are opposed to any attempt to elevate these five doctrinal statements, or any of them, to the position of tests for ordination or for good standing in our church.

Furthermore, this opinion of the General Assembly attempts to commit our church to certain theories concerning the inspiration of the Bible, and the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the Continuing Life and Supernatural Power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We hold most earnestly to these great facts and doctrines; we all believe from our hearts that the writers of the Bible were inspired of God; that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh; that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, and through Him we have our redemption; that having died for our sins He rose from the dead and is our everliving Saviour; that in His earthly ministry He wrought many mighty works, and by His vicarious death and unfailing presence He is able to save to the uttermost. Some of us regard the particular theories contained in the deliverance of the General Assembly of 1923 as satisfactory explanations of these facts and doctrines. But we are united in believing that these are not the only theories allowed by the Scriptures and our standards as explanations of these facts and doctrines of our religion, and that all who hold to these facts and doctrines, whatever theories they may employ to explain them, are worthy of all confidence and fellowship.[1]

The statement that the liberals "hold most earnestly to these great facts and doctrines" was a bald-faced lie. Harry Emerson Fosdick, for example, said that "To believe in virgin birth as an explanation of great personality is one of the familiar ways in which the ancient world was accustomed to account for unusual superiority." He claimed that Jesus was only virgin-born in the same sense that "Pythagoras was called virgin born, and Plato, and Augustus Caesar, and many more."[2] In the liberal no-rules world of the 1920s, as in the liberal no-rules world of the present-day, unity on "great facts and doctrines" is based on a lowest common denominator where those doctrines cease to have any fixed and univocal meaning.

The virgin birth of Christ is, of course, essential to the Christian faith. Scripture unequivocally declares that in His incarnation, Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, not of a human father, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel." We find this prophecy fulfilled in Luke 1:31-35 and Matthew 1:20. The virgin-born Christ was given the name Immanuel, which means "God with us," as we read in Matthew 1:23.

This is why the Holy Spirit declares through the Apostle Paul in Colossians 1:15 that Jesus Christ is the very "image of the invisible God." We read later on in Colossians 2:9 that in the incarnate Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a body. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the most amazing and monumentally important statement in all the world. In the incarnate Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a human body. He is fully God and fully man. If He were not born of a virgin and had been born through the agency of a human father born under Adam's curse, He would be completely disqualified to offer Himself as the one and only perfect propitiation for our sins.

Bible-believing Christians must exercise great discernment to avoid the apostasy that comes through the promulgation of man-made "theories" allegedly explaining - but actually eviscerating - the great facts and doctrines of Scripture. Just because someone broadcasts on religious radio stations; just because his latest best-seller is on the shelves of religious bookstores; just because he speaks in Evangelical pulpits or at Christian events; just because he is interviewed as an Evangelical spokesman on the cable news channels, or has the endorsement of undiscerning Christian leaders - those things do not make him an authentic minister of Christ.

The signers of the Auburn Affirmation, and their present-day spiritual descendants, are in fact unbelievers and ministers of Satan. They are "false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Jesus condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees applies equally to them:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of Hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)

Such men are to be marked and avoided (Romans 16:17-19). Jesus said of them, "Therefore by their fruits you shall know them. Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:20-21).

Bible-believers in our day must be especially discerning. We must remember that the Pharisees were the social conservatives and leaders in religious education during Jesus' days on earth. They made much of their supposedly stellar spiritual heritage. But they too had abandoned the authority of Scripture. They preached salvation by faith-plus-works and other grievous errors. Jesus repeatedly condemned their hypocrisy, and He made it clear that their heritage and outward conservatism meant nothing apart from personal faith in Him alone and the consistent, unwavering teaching of sound doctrine (e.g., Matthew 23; John 3:10, 8:36-59).

The Apostle Paul echoed our Lord's words in his instructions to two of the young ministers he mentored, and to the church at large:

O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge - by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith (1 Timothy 6:20-21).

For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God, not self-willed...holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convict those who contradict (Titus 1:7-9).

References:

1. The full text of the Auburn Affirmation appears here.

2. Harry Emerson Fosdick, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" in The Riverside Preachers, Paul Sherry, ed., (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1978), 27-38.

Next: Un-Biblically Broadening the Definition of Christianity

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