The Federal Vision

The Federal Vision was a theological movement that caused controversy within Reformed churches during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The Federal Vision (also known as Auburn Avenue Theology) gained traction when a small group of pastors began to teach substantial revisions to historic covenant theology. While proponents of the Federal Vision did not all share the same theological commitments, they collectively sought to recast historic covenant theology as understood in the standard Reformed confessions. Federal Vision proponents tended to focus on the objectivity of the covenant of grace, downplay the distinction between law and gospel, conflate the visible church and the invisible church, assert presumptive regeneration or baptismal regeneration, embrace a functional sacramentalism, affirm paedocommunion, deny the covenant of works, reject the imputation of Christ’s active obedience, and promote the idea of a final justification based on Spirit-wrought good works. Out of concern for the impact of this revisionist movement, numerous Reformed churches formed study committees to report on its theological problems. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the momentum of the Federal Vision was severely weakened by the trajectories of some of its more prominent adherents.

The Federal Vision arose as a theological and ecclesiastical movement at the turn of the twenty-first century. A small number of ministers in the Confederation of Reformed and Evangelical Churches, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and several other Reformed denominations held conferences and proposed ideas in online and print publications. The common emphases and theses of these ministers became known collectively as the Federal Vision Theology.

The 2002 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, La., was perhaps the first significant presentation of Federal Vision ideas to the public. The conference addressed topics including the objectivity of the covenant, justification, the doctrine of assurance, and sacramentalism. As the Federal Vision developed in the first decade of the twentieth century, it became evident that not all those who identified with the movement agreed on every proposed doctrinal point. In 2007, key figures of the Federal Vision movement explained areas of agreement between them in the published statement, “A Joint Federal Vision Profession.”

Opponents of the Federal Vision have suggested that the movement had its roots in the teaching of Norman Shepherd, a controversial professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s. Shepherd denied key elements of historic Reformed and Protestant theology, including the covenant of works, the distinction between law and gospel, and justification by faith alone. Shepherd advanced the idea of an eschatological justification of believers based in part on the Spirit-wrought good works done by Christians, a position that was virtually indistinguishable from a Roman Catholic understanding of justification. Instead of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, Shepherd taught that one would be ultimately justified by his faith and his faithfulness to the covenant or his obedience to the law. The New Perspective on Paul holds similar ideas. For instance, both Shepherd and N.T. Wright dismissed the doctrine of justification by faith alone as understood in traditional Reformed theology. This, in turn, led both men to make personal sanctification and good works part of the basis of each Christian’s final justification. Numerous proponents of the Federal Vision have explicitly acknowledged appreciation for this theological revision made by both Shepherd and Wright.

The name Federal Vision derives from the Latin word foedus, meaning “representative.” In historic Reformed scholarship, the term federal theology is a synonym for covenant theology. Proponents of the Federal Vision insisted that they were seeking to recast a more comprehensive covenant theology by emphasizing what they called the “objectivity of the covenant.”

Blurring the distinction between law and gospel, supporters of the Federal Vision insisted that one gains the blessing of the Mosaic covenant by faithfulness or works of obedience and incurs the cursing of the Mosaic covenant through unfaithfulness or disobedience. In this way, proponents redefined the biblical teaching about the way that the covenant blessings and curses are related to Christ and His saving work as the true Israel of God. Whereas historical covenant theology focuses on Christ’s becoming the law-keeping, curse-bearing last Adam who gives the covenant blessing of justification to those who trust in Him alone, many Federal Vision advocates suggested that the baptized, in union with Christ, may attain final justification based on their obedience to the covenant. In other words, instead of grounding our righteous status before God only in the obedience of Christ imputed to us by faith in Him alone, they included the believer’s good works in his standing before God. Many Federal Vision advocates followed the teaching of the New Perspective on Paul regarding the substitution of “faith” with “faithfulness” for final justification.

A flattening of the law/gospel distinction associated with historical Reformed covenant theology also resulted in a conflation of the visible and invisible church. Traditional covenant theology makes a distinction between the internal and external administration of the covenant of grace. To be part of the external administration of the covenant of grace is to be baptized by water, profess faith, and be a member of a local church. Such an individual is part of what we call the visible church, which includes everyone who is a member of a local church, regardless of whether they have true faith in Christ in their hearts. To be a part of the internal administration of the covenant of grace is to be actually regenerate and to possess saving faith in Jesus Christ. People who partake of the internal administration of the covenant of grace are members of the invisible church, which is made up of all those who actually trust in Christ in their hearts. We call it the invisible church because it is invisible to us—we cannot see the hearts of other people, so we do not ultimately know who has saving faith in Christ; we can only see who professes Christ with their mouths and lives. Thus, we are never completely certain of the salvation of other people.

Ordinarily, all those who partake of the internal administration of the covenant of grace also participate in its external administration—that is, except in exceptionally rare circumstances, every member of the invisible church is a member also of the visible church. However, members of the visible church may or may not be members of the invisible church because membership in the latter is by personal faith in Christ, whereas membership in the former is by baptism. Many Federal Vision proponents, however, recast this idea. They proposed a “covenantal justification,” which means that all baptized individuals have their sins forgiven corporately, but they can then lose that covenantal justification if they do not persevere in covenantal faithfulness. Essentially, they said that one can be a member of the invisible church temporarily by virtue of membership in the visible church but then fall away finally from even the invisible church. Historical Reformed thought, however, says that no member of the invisible church ever falls away finally from the invisible church, for God makes His people persevere in faith to the end. Those who leave the visible church by rejecting Christ and never come back never had true faith in Christ to begin with. They were only ever part of the visible church.

This revision also led most Federal Vision proponents to deny the covenant of works, a central feature of traditional Reformed covenant theology. The covenant of works says that God entered into a covenant of works with Adam by which Adam could have merited eternal life for himself and all those he represented—all his naturally conceived and born descendants—if he had perfectly obeyed God in the garden of Eden. Because Adam failed, God sent a new Adam, His Son Jesus Christ, to keep the covenant of works and to secure eternal life for all those whom He represents—every person who trusts in Jesus alone for salvation. Federal Visionists often denied that Adam had to earn or merit righteousness, life, glorification, or anything else. In turn, many Federal Vision advocates rejected the traditional Reformed emphasis on the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, which says that Christ’s obedience is put on our record before God and that God declares us righteous based on Christ’s merit alone.

Closely related to the Federal Vision idea of the objectivity of the covenant was the recasting of traditional Reformed views of the sacraments. A key feature of the movement was an emphasis on the efficacy of baptism to all to whom it was applied. Since water baptism is the biblical sign and seal of regeneration, certain Federal Vision proponents taught that believers should understand that the sacrament of baptism objectively confers the grace of regeneration ex opere operato on all covenant children—that is, that the mere act of baptism actually grants new life to all who receive the sign. Critics of the Federal Vision observed a similarity between the movement’s emphasis on the sacraments and the sacramentalism of Roman Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism. Federal Vision sacramentalism is also evident in its proponents’ practice of paedocommunion. Paedocommunion is the practice of giving the Lord’s Supper to covenant children who have not yet made a profession of faith in Jesus. Historically, most Reformed churches have rejected the practice of paedocommunion, but many Federal Vision proponents administer the Lord’s Supper to any child who has been baptized, even if the child has not yet professed personal trust in Jesus.

In 2005, the Mississippi Valley Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America formed a study committee to examine and report on the theological errors of the Federal Vision. In 2006, Guy Prentiss Waters published The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology: A Comparative Analysis. The results of the Mississippi Valley report and Waters’ book encouraged other responses to Federal Vision errors. Reports were issued by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 2006, by the Presbyterian Church in America in 2007, by the Reformed Church in the United States in 2009, and by the United Reformed Churches in North America in 2010. These responses, along with various disagreements among those who espouse Federal Vision, contributed to the waning of the movement during the second decade of the twenty-first century.