Heresy or Hearsay: Making Sense of the AAPC/RPCUS Controversy

"The covenant is more like marriage than a business contract." – John Barach

Let me begin by proclaiming my enthusiasm for the Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference (AAPC) earlier this year. Covenant Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States (RPCUS) obviously does not share my enthusiasm, as evidenced by their recent "Call to Repentance." I am troubled by their charges of heresy. I know of many faithful Christians active in this Presbytery; therefore, I have viewed these charges with interest. Upon listening to the conference recordings, however, I discovered no shortage of helpful Biblical teaching. This article will provide a brief overview of the central teachings of the AAPC conference. Also, I would like to emphasize some applications of the conference.

The Conference

Steve Schlissel, Doug Wilson, John Barach, and Steve Wilkins delivered a total of ten lectures, all but one bearing a title including the word "Covenant." The overarching message for the attending pastors to assimilate into their lives and ministries was this: North American Christians have a more Baptist than Reformed idea of what it means to be God’s covenant people, and this needs to change.

Steve Schlissel’s main focus throughout his lectures ("Covenant Reading," "Covenant Thinking," "Covenant Hearing") was the church’s loss of its covenantal identity. Schlissel devoted a generous portion of his first lecture to dealing with Martin Luther’s antithesis between law and gospel. "We are not trying too hard to obey God," he maintained, thereby mockingly refuting the antinomianism of today’s churches. For Schlissel, law and gospel should not be in stark opposition to each other, but should inform one another. Thus, Schlissel claimed that we have been asking the wrong questions of the Bible by pitting law and gospel against one another: "If we don’t begin to retool our churches from ‘What must I do to be saved?‘ to ‘What does the Lord require?‘ we are going to die." Schlissel saw a division in spirit between these two questions, the former self-seeking and the latter God-seeking. Schlissel also seemed intent on forward progress. "We are not going back to 1645," Schlissel declared. "This [notion] that there is a frozen moment in history that’s to become the norm for now is false and dangerous."¹ He later compared our confessional history, particularly the Westminster Confession of Faith, to the God-authorized feasts of Amos’ time.² "Are they not true? Of course, they are true in a proper context, but they are not substitutes for…whole-hearted, biblical, covenantal religion."

John Barach gave three lectures: "Covenant and History," "Covenant and Election," and "Covenant and Evangelism." While his lectures were academic in tone, they were nevertheless packed with practical insight for the lives of covenant members. "There is no separation between ‘in the covenant’ or ‘really in the covenant,’" he claimed, teaching throughout his lectures that every baptized individual is indeed a covenant member. Furthermore, Barach espoused a view that holds the baptized to be the elect of God. In this scheme, God promises salvation through baptism to those who persevere in the faith. While the RPCUS might take issue with this teaching, the "Call" did not give a satisfactory explanation as to what made it heretical.³ If anything, Barach’s attempt to provide covenant members a more solid assurance of God’s salvation is admirable.

Doug Wilson spoke on the difficulties caused by the dichotomy of a "visible" and "invisible" church, how churches should deal with heretics, and the curses of the New Covenant. Wilson, who has been preaching a related sermon series entitled "Reformed Is Not Enough" at his church in Idaho, criticized the current state of Reformed churches, maintaining that an individualist spirit has corrupted them.⁴ Wilson joked, "The elders in the invisible church never tell you to do anything." His point was that our doctrine of a visible and an invisible church has damaged church unity AND discipline, causing endless splintering of the body of Christ. Wilson also urged that church members wary of heresy slipping into their churches should not run – they should stay and fight. "God can cut away branches," Wilson said, as he referred to an olive tree as a covenantal analogy.⁵ However, he squared this teaching with an orthodox view of election. When covenant members apostatize, Wilson said, faithful covenant members should look to Christ and remember their baptism. He exhorted the attendees to treat those who were visibly covenant members by encouraging them toward holiness and by warning them against sin.

Steve Wilkins gave one lecture at the end of the conference entitled "The Legacy of the Half-way Covenant." In this lecture, he reviewed the sacramental practices of historical Reformed groups like the Puritans and the southern Presbyterians of the 19^th century.⁶ "They completely ignored the significance of baptism and consequently misunderstood the nature of salvation…. The biblical teaching of salvation coming to us by our union with Christ was lost in its true sense." Instead of accomplishing nothing, baptism visibly solidifies our covenant membership, uniting us with Christ. "There is no presumption necessary" in viewing all covenant members as elect.⁷ Instead, covenant members are to be fully nurtured in the faith.

My Thoughts

In my mind, there is nothing that indicates the problem with Reformed churches in North America so much as our discordant and perpetually fracturing denominations. It is tragic that we have recovered so much of the gospel in the head but not in the heart. I would like to emphasize three teachings of the conference that might lead us into a fuller appreciation of our status as God’s covenant people.

God’s Word: There is no refuting Schlissel’s notion that we have done a grave injustice to the word of God by failing to take it for what it is. Instead of reading it contextually, historically, and covenantally, we have made a habit of picking and choosing proof-texts in the same manner as our Enlightened contemporaries.⁸ We have sought to put God’s Word in a tidy little box. While the "solas" of the Reformation are wonderful truths within their context, they are battle cries of another time and another age. Though still useful in many debates, they can also lead us astray if applied without understanding. Catch phrases are never better than patient, protracted covenantal teaching and discipline, yet how many modern evangelicals (Reformed folks included) rely more on catch phrases than on the instruction of the Lord contained in the Bible? As Schlissel proclaimed, "This book is your life! Eat it!"

The Church as Mother: How many Christians treat the body of Christ as a less than honorable thing in our day and age? Would you curse your own mother (or let anyone else)? How much more so the mother of us all? Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with engendering a fervent passion for God and a deeper understanding of His love for all of His people. After all, who doesn’t want a part in something beautiful? As we are children (and you won’t last long if you aren’t), so the church is our mother, and our lives should be centered on her. What happens to a child that tries to do everything by himself? Tarzan notwithstanding, we have no hope for life but to cling to our mother.

Re-formation: While the RPCUS might be right in disagreeing with some of the views of the conference, the overall spirit and aim of the conference – regaining an understanding of the church as God’s Covenant people whom He loves jealously and righteously – in no way warrants the death knell tone of the "Call."⁹ It is healthy and necessary for the church to engage in discussion and debate over some matters (circumspect discernment is needed here). As the church militant is constantly engaging the world, it must re-form around the Word of God so that it is not continually tilting at windmills. Those with strategic minds know that the enemy is always looking for a weak point, and in our day it is our understanding of the covenant. We too easily rest on past accolades rather than on racing toward the rest that is in Christ.¹⁰ The bottom line of re-formation is the difference between a pure stream and a standing swamp. While we must rest, we cannot be lazy.

If you have read this far, then you need to listen to the conference recordings, read the "Call to Repentance," read the responses of Christ Church, Messiah’s Congregation, Auburn Avenue PCA, and Trinity Reformed Church, and pray for all those involved. May God grant us all grace and peace.

Footnotes:

    1. The “frozen moment in history” that he was referring to is the Reformation, roughly 1517-1650.
    2. Amos 5:21
    3. A sample of Barach’s teaching on this matter can be found here.
    4. My sources tell me that a book version of “Reformed Is Not Enough” is on the way to publication at Canon Press. Update: Published!

    5. Romans 11:16-24
    6. Wilkins confessed his own love for both of these groups, lamenting the fact that he must take exception with them.
    7. Lest anyone think Wilkins (or any of the other speakers) promoted a superstitious or heretical view of baptism (i.e. bound for heaven no matter what because of baptism…), he was careful to qualify against such a view by stressing significant passages, such as 1 Peter 3:21-22. Wilkins’ point in stressing the importance of baptism was to emphasize our union with Christ. Wilkins also called the Romanist view “heresy.”
    8. We are a bunch of engineers in our exegesis, as if God contracted with a construction firm in the creation act rather than speaking the world into being. Yaaawwwnnn…
    9. I doubt, based on their conference lectures, that the speakers all concur 100% on every doctrinal matter.

    10. Hebrew 12:1-2. To borrow a trite motivational quip from my alma mater, “The only easy day was yesterday!”