The Reading Room - History

The Present State of American Presbyterianism

Introduction - Numerical Decline - Population Growth • Internal Conflicts • Conclusion - Sources

By: Dennis W. Jowers (WRS Adjunct Professor of Theology 2004)

III. Internal Conflicts: the Auburn Avenue Theology

In the process of renovating themselves, however, the Reformed churches must also adhere to biblical standards of doctrine and life. When forced to choose between numerical growth and faithfulness to God, the church must, of course, opt for faithfulness to God; it would be perverse to sacrifice God’s honor in order to aggrandize a human institution. In order to be faithful to God, moreover, the Reformed churches must firmly repudiate all teachings that detract from the purity of the gospel.

What is commonly known as the Federal Vision, or Auburn Avenue theology, it seems, constitutes just such a teaching and has wended its way into influential circles within the Reformed churches. Its adherents advocate at least three tenets that place them squarely at odds with the Reformed faith as delineated in Scripture and the Reformed confessions. Specifically, proponents of the Auburn Avenue theology, first, deny the existence of a covenant of works distinct from the covenant of grace.³ Scripture clearly states, however, that even after the fall, God offers salvation to human beings on the condition of perfect obedience to the moral law (Lev 18:5; Ezek 20:11b; Matt 19:17b; Gal 3:12): a condition no one descended from Adam by way of ordinary generation can fulfill.

Scripture states as well that God, in view of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, offers human beings salvation on the sole condition of justifying faith. If one distinguishes between two covenants, a covenant of works and a covenant of grace, one can just as easily distinguish two radically contrasting conditions of salvation: perfect obedience to the moral law and mere justifying faith, which is incompatible with reliance upon one’s own works for salvation. If God offers only one covenant with salvation as its reward, however, then both obedience and faith must constitute conditions of that covenant. By forsaking the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, therefore, advocates of the Auburn Avenue theology seem at least implicitly to abandon the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Proponents of the Auburn Avenue theology, second, deny the legitimacy of a distinction between the visible and the invisible church.⁴ Traditional Reformed theologians distinguish between the regenerate, who compose the invisible church, the mystical body of Christ, whom God unconditionally elects to salvation; and the merely visible church, which includes the tares who possess no genuine faith and no share in the covenant of grace. Auburn Avenue enthusiasts, by contrast, maintain that regenerate and unregenerate baptized persons alike are members of Christ’s body.⁵ They distinguish only between the historic (= “militant” in traditional terminology) church and the eschatological (= “triumphant” in traditional terminology) church: between, that is to say, those who keep their baptismal covenant and those who do not.⁶

To replace the former distinction with the latter, however, is to imply: (1) that members of Christ’s mystical body can revoke their membership in that body;⁷ (2) that elect and reprobate members of the visible church are partakers of the same covenant with God; (3) that those who persevere in faith possess no covenant privileges that those who apostatize do not;⁸ and (4) that persons are saved, therefore, not because God enters into some special covenant with them, but because of their obedience to the conditions of a covenant made with elect and reprobate members of the visible church. The first implication is manifestly inconsistent with a traditional Reformed understanding of the perseverance of the saints. The second, third, and fourth implications, moreover, amount to a statement that human beings, as opposed to God’s covenant of grace per se, determine who is and who is not saved. This statement, it seems, comes perilously close to a denial of two critically important Reformed doctrines that advocates of the Auburn Avenue theology themselves endorse: namely, that God predestines human beings to salvation or damnation and that sinners are saved by God’s grace alone.

Proponents of the Auburn Avenue theology, third, implicitly deny the possibility of an infallible assurance of salvation.⁹ Scripture and the Reformed confessions direct Christians to gain assurance partially by examining their lives and determining thereby that the Holy Spirit has actually transformed them in accordance with God’s promises to genuine believers. Advocates of the Auburn Avenue system, however, direct Christians to seek assurance in their baptism. That is to say, supporters of the new teaching direct persons to assure themselves of their membership in the visible church by reference to an external token of this membership: baptism.¹⁰ As the Auburn Avenue theorists themselves would grant, however, membership in the visible church is no infallible guarantee of salvation. Although this teaching’s proponents speak much of assurance, therefore, their theology allows for no infallible assurance of salvation at all.

The three tenets that we have discussed (a. the denial of the existence of a covenant of works as distinct from the covenant of grace; b. the denial of the existence of a real distinction between the visible and invisible church; c. the denial of the possibility of genuine assurance of salvation) by no means exhaust the range of errors spawned by the Auburn Avenue theology. Discussion of these three suffices, however, to uncover this teaching’s thoroughgoing incompatibility with what has traditionally been regarded as the Reformed faith. The Auburn Avenue theology constitutes a sacramentalistic legalism that is in important respects inconsistent with the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone. Extirpating the Auburn Avenue theology, naturally, will neither preserve nor expand foundering Reformed churches; if these churches come to advocate the Auburn Avenue theology, however, they will be worth neither preserving nor expanding.

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