One of the regular charges leveled against Auburn Avenue types is that we are paving the way for our folks to go over to Rome, or, mayhap to the other church, farther to the east, that has apostolic credentials going all the way back. Unless you count the Copts. And the Armenian Orthodox. Bunch of others too. Keeping track of all the groups that go all the way back is almost as hard as keeping track of all the Presbyterian microbrew continuing church movements that go all the way back to Thomas Chalmers. Oh, and I forgot the Baptists. Their trail of blood goes all the way back.
But I got distracted. One of the charges we have to answer from our critics is that our Calvinistic sacramentalism (say) necessarily sets a course for Rome. In vain do we point out what Jean Calvin himself taught, and that he did it coming out of Rome. In vain do we quote the Westminster Catechisms on the subject (in which those sturdy divines apparently took time out from their pilgrimage to the Holy Father in the Vatican to call the sacraments effectual means of salvation).
I got distracted again. We have to answer this charge, right? And every once in a while, somebody in our ranks buys the argument and bolts for Rome, or parts farther east. The fact that this happened is then trumpeted by those who are alarmed by us as evidence for the claim, and we have to answer the charge again.
This requires a lot of further development, but allow me just two brief observations here. We recently took a poll in our congregation, and from the significant number of those who responded, it appears that about ten percent of our congregation is made up of former Roman Catholics. I know, Evangelicals and Catholics Together deplored sheep stealing and all that, but I do not intend to try to keep people away from a genuine relationship with Christ for the sake of ecumenical dialogue. The dialogue is fine, but we must understand what it can and cannot do, and not stop preaching the gospel in the meantime. As much as the evangelical cliche of having a “personal relationship with Jesus” is overdone and wrongly done in our circles, the fact remains that many thousands of Protestants today grew up God-fearing Roman Catholics, but became acquainted with God for the first time in a personal way when they went off to college and wound up rooming with a kid who was with Campus Crusade.
We rejoice that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are still robustly Trinitarian. These two one true, holy apostolic churches do have many things going for them. But at the same time, they are encrusted with a lot of man-made traditions which have supplanted the Word of God and obscured the gospel. Consequently, the Reformation must never be considered as a ghastly mistake, but a necessary, Spirit-led reformation of the life and liturgy of the Church. And so, as much as we hate to lose anyone to these groups, and treat it as a significant back-sliding (even when not exacerbated by other factors), on the whole, taking the long view, the “balance of trade” is still heavily in favor of the Protestants.
My second point needs to be said some time, and so I will say it here. When one of our guys converts to Rome or the East, and says that an essential part of their pilgrimage was the stepping stone of Auburn Avenue theology, the line goes something like this: “Couldn’t have made it here without those federal vision guys!” My one request is that somebody get me the name of this fellow’s new parish priest so I can call him up and warn him. “Hey, heads up. We are sending over a guy who pays no attention at all to what his teachers try to tell him.” In fact, one of the guys we lost to Rome wasted very little time in denouncing John Paul II as a heretic, and discovering that the papal throne was empty. All such things remind me very little of classic Roman Catholic doctrine, and remind me a great deal of bottle rocket anabaptism.
There are, of course, thoughtful converts from Geneva to Rome (wrong in my view, but still thoughtful). But headstrong men who won’t receive instruction are not in that number. Those who accept the wooden analysis offered by baptistic anti-sacramentalists, only to embrace the caricature instead of running from it in fear as was intended, are demonstrating one thing beyond any reasonable doubt. They cannot faithfully represent or follow out what they clearly never understood. All they do is provide our adversaries a few extra snatches of straw for the scarecrow’s hat.