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Part two of a series. Read part one.
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An undiscerning and indifferent majority allowed a small minority of a denomination's ordained men - less than 15% - to lead it to spiritual destruction.
When the Auburn Affirmation was first published in January 1924, it included the names of 150 signers, all of them ministers in the Presbyterian Church in the USA. By May of 1924 the number of signers had grown to nearly 1,300 ministers and ruling elders. This number, though substantial, constituted no more than 15 percent of the PCUSA's ordained ministers and ruling elders at the time.[1] But the Auburn Affirmation was to exert an influence on the denomination well beyond those numbers.
The Affirmation proclaimed itself to be "designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." In reality, it was a declaration of the underlying principles of liberalism. Far from being an affirmation of truth, it was a denial of the foundations of the faith. As one minister put it, "The Affirmation revealed the campaign strategy of the modernists. The attack on historic Christianity was not to be an open, forthright one. It was to be a denial of the faith by feigned affirmations."[2] It received substantial public and private support from so-called moderates within the PCUSA, and even from some who styled themselves conservatives.[3]
Reading the Affirmation at a distance of 100 years, vigilant Bible-believing Christians recognize it as a frontal attack on the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, justification by faith alone, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and the reality of His miracles. They also recognize its underlying principles. But the majority of men in the PCUSA of the 1920s and 1930s were not so discerning. Many were taken in by the subtlety of the Affirmation. As Gordon H. Clark said in 1935, "the Auburn Affirmation is a cleverly written document with some pious phraseology slightly obscuring its real intent."[4]
Its writers and signers, men who openly denied the true Gospel, struck the pose of faithful men who were allegedly victims of ecclesiastical injustice. But the alleged "injustice" consisted of the efforts of faithful men to rid the church of heresy. The Auburn liberals said they felt bound, in view of "persistent attempts to divide the church and abridge its freedom," to express their "convictions." They insisted that
We do not desire liberty to go beyond the teachings of evangelical Christianity. But we maintain that it is our constitutional right[5] and our Christian duty within these limits to exercise liberty of thought and teaching, that we may more effectively preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World.
...[W]e deplore the evidences of division in our beloved church, in the face of a world so desperately in need of a united testimony to the gospel of Christ. We earnestly desire fellowship with all who like us are disciples of Jesus Christ. We hope that those to whom this Affirmation comes will believe that it is not the declaration of a theological party, but rather a sincere appeal, based on the Scriptures and our standards, for the preservation of the unity and freedom of our church, for which most earnestly we plead and pray.[6]
Under this cloak, they sought redress of those alleged injustices. In the Affirmation they clothed deadly error in affirmative language, stressing the word "liberty," used nine times in the document. They called on the PCUSA to "safeguard the unity and liberty" of the church and to "safeguard the liberty of thought and teaching of its ministers."
Taken in by that subtlety, the majority in the PCUSA adopted a posture of tolerance and accommodation, if not outright support, toward the Auburn Affirmation's signers and their wicked propositions. They turned a deaf ear toward the Holy Spirit's warnings and admonitions regarding the subtlety of false teachers.
The Auburn Affirmation made the case for the preservation of a doctrinal pluralism within the PCUSA that was already well established, as we shall see shortly. The signers sought to protect and expand the big theological tent they had been spreading through incremental advances for many years. Under this big tent, in the name of "the unity and freedom of our church," it would be acceptable to permit multiple conflicting interpretations of the foundational doctrines of Scripture. There would be no single standard of truth, but ministers and communities of ministers could arrive at their own "truth" - all the while professing loyal adherence to Scripture and to the confessional standards of the church.
On the surface, the writers of the Auburn Affirmation addressed certain issues and controversies that had arisen in the PCUSA in the first two decades of the twentieth century. These issues were indicated by sub-headings in the text of the Affirmation. But the sub-headings masked the writers' true intent. Woven into the text of the document was a structure of false and deadly principles that went largely unchallenged at the time, except by a small number of Bible-believers.
It is those underlying principles of liberalism that are important to our present historical study. We shall begin to examine them as we continue.
References:
1. Charles E. Quirk, "A Statistical Analysis of the Signers of the Auburn Affirmation," The Journal of Presbyterian History (Volume 43:3, September 1965), 149-196.
2. Robert K. Churchill, Lest We Forget: A Personal Reflection on the Formation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1997), 65.
3. Charles E. Quirk, "Origins of the Auburn Affirmation," The Journal of Presbyterian History (Volume 53:2, Summer 1975), 120-142.
4. Gordon H. Clark, "The Auburn Heresy", an address given at a meeting of Presbyterian laymen in Philadelphia, February 28, 1935, and later published in the Southern Presbyterian Review in July 1946.
5. Here they referred to the constitution (i.e., the Form of Government, Book of Discipline, and confessional standards) of the PCUSA.
6. The full text of the Auburn Affirmation appears here.
Next: False Principle #1: Conceal Liberalism's True Colors
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