The Auburn Affirmation 4: Put a Positive 'Spin' on Doctrinal Compromise
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By Dr. Paul M. Elliott
The Auburn Affirmation was not something that appeared "out of the blue". Those who exercised spiritual discernment understood that it was the culmination of over one hundred years of growing doctrinal compromise.
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The Auburn Affirmation was not something that appeared "out of the blue". Those who exercised spiritual discernment understood that it was the culmination of over one hundred years of growing doctrinal compromise.
The second false principle propagated by the Auburn liberals was that doctrinal compromise is a positive development for the sake of unity and growth. The Auburn liberals were referring to the doctrinal compromises of the 1800s through the early 1900s in the PCUSA.
What were those compromises? In 1801, the PCUSA united with New England Congregationalists who embraced Hopkinsianism, a system of theology based not on Scripture but on a fusion of the Bible and abolitionist political philosophy, based on the writings of Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), a Congregationalist pastor and theologian. Hopkinsianism was the historical descendant of many older heresies. Although couched in noble and often seemingly Biblical language, among other things Hopkinsianism denied human depravity, the imputation of sin through the federal headship of Adam, and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ as the federal head of believers. Hopkinsianism taught justification by faith plus works.
In 1837 the PCUSA General Assembly abrogated the 1801 union with the liberal Congregationalists. But by then the liberals had already done great damage. Some remained in PCUSA pulpits after the 1837 split. Men from the liberal wing had infiltrated existing colleges and seminaries and founded new ones - including Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, from which would come, three generations later, the infamous Affirmation.[1]
In 1869, the liberals who had been put out of the PCUSA in 1837 were allowed to return to the denomination in full force, and by then, in larger numbers.
In 1889, the repatriated liberals and their supporters attempted to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith to gain official standing for some of their un-Biblical views. The General Assembly appointed a committee to prepare the revisions, and in 1892 the proposed compromises were circulated to the presbyteries but subsequently rejected. However, this was a hollow victory for conservatives. They succeeded only because many liberals joined them in opposing the doctrinal compromises, but for a far different reason: for the liberals, the changes had not gone far enough.
In the late 1890s, discussions began with the goal of reunion between the PCUSA and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The CPC had been founded by men who had broken away from the PCUSA in 1810 to form a more liberal group. It became obvious that reunion would necessitate doctrinal compromise. Thus, in 1903 the liberals succeeded in having the PCUSA revise the Confession of Faith. Among other things, those revisions opened the door to a denial of the federal headship of Christ and the imputation of His righteousness to sinners in bringing about their salvation.
The confessional liberalizations also opened the way to increased acceptance of a doctrine of salvation that accorded a role to man's works alongside Christ's atonement. A few decades later, C. S. Lewis would promote such a heretical view when he asserted that Christ's atonement was "the bit we could not have done for ourselves"[2] rather than the totally complete and only way that sinners' salvation could have been accomplished.
By 1918-1920, the spirit of compromise had permeated the PCUSA to such an extent that a "Plan of Organic Union" with other churches, spanning the full spectrum from conservative to extremely liberal, was approved by over 100 presbyteries representing approximately one-third of the denomination. The creedal basis of the proposed union was a pseudo-Christian declaration to which even a Roman Catholic could have subscribed. In this, it prefigured the ecumenical Evangelicals and Catholics Together and The Gift of Salvation declarations of the late twentieth century.
As with all such compromise documents, what it said was less significant than what was not said, especially concerning the Gospel and the Scriptures. The proposed "Plan of Organic Union" spoke of "God's eternal purpose of salvation" but said nothing of justification by faith in Christ alone apart from works. It said that the Scriptures merely contained God's revealed will, but said nothing of their inerrancy, infallibility, or full sufficiency as the believer's rule of faith and practice.[3]
In 1920 this plan of union was voted down in the PCUSA. But once again it was a hollow victory for true conservatives. Many who called themselves doctrinal conservatives opposed the plan not because it embodied serious doctrinal compromise, but mainly because it meant union with non-Presbyterian groups!
The Auburn liberals portrayed these decades of growing compromise on the Gospel, the Scriptures, and other foundational elements of doctrine as healthy developments. In the Affirmation they wrote:
Of the two parts into which our church was separated from 1837 to 1870, one held that only one interpretation of certain parts of the Confession of Faith was legitimate, while the other maintained its right to dissent from this interpretation. In the Reunion of 1870 they came together on equal terms, "each recognizing the other as a sound and orthodox body." The meaning of this, as understood then and ever since, is that office-bearers in the church who maintain their liberty in the interpretation of the Confession are exercising their rights guaranteed by the terms of the Reunion.
A more recent reunion also is significant, that of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, in 1906. This reunion was opposed by certain members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, on the ground that the two churches were not at one in doctrine; yet it was consummated. Thus did our church once more exemplify its historic policy of accepting theological differences within its bounds and subordinating them to recognized loyalty to Jesus Christ and united work for the kingdom of God.
Today thousands of churches and dozens of denominations maintain positions of doctrinal pluralism on the Gospel and other foundational matters. Men who say they hold the truth on the foundations of the faith choose to coexist with liberals; they serve together with them on boards, committees, and commissions; they meet together with them Sunday after Sunday - all as if nothing were wrong. They ignore the mistakes of church history, going all the way back to the churches of the New Testament era. The New Testament is filled with warnings against compromise with those who promote false doctrines - we must note well the warnings and commendations in Jesus' letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.
Like their counterparts in the PCUSA one hundred years ago, many so-called conservatives of the present day misguidedly subordinate differences that clearly cross the divide between truth and error, in the name of supposed "loyalty to Jesus Christ and united work for the kingdom of God." In making common cause with liberals they have, as J. Gresham Machen put it at the time of the Auburn Affirmation, been "indifferent to the question whether the Gospel is true or false." And when they bow together in prayer with their liberal counterparts, as Machen said during the Auburn controversy, "that is not Christian prayer; it is bowing down in the house of Rimmon."[4]
Following the path of the Auburn liberals, postmodern Evangelicalism not only redefines the essential doctrines of the faith but in fact abandons the very idea of doctrine, because, its leaders say, "Doctrine divides. We must avoid such divisions as we pursue numerical growth." Indeed, sound doctrine does divide - it divides those who are true to the revealed Word of God from those who refuse to come to its glorious light.
1. The full text of the Auburn Affirmation appears here.
2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: MacMillan, 1952), page 156.
3. Minutes of the General Assembly of the PCUSA, 1920, Part 1, page 118.
4. J. Gresham Machen "The Defense of the Faith" in J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, page 147. Rimmon was the Syrian god of storms. See 2 Kings 5:18.
Next: Undermining the Doctrine of Inerrancy
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