DG Hart Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host. Before we talk to our special guest today, don't forget we have the No Compromise Tour coming up.

We're going to Greece in April of 2013. If you'd like to go with us, you can write to us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. We'll go to Athens and Corinth, Thessalonica, and then head over to Ephesus and Patmos.

So we'd love to have you go. Our special guest today on the radio is Darrell Hart, author of many books. I appreciate his books. I especially today want to talk to Darrell about defending the faith regarding Jay Gresham Machen and the crisis of conservative Protestantism.

Darrell, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Thanks.

Nice to be with you. And I just returned from Turkey. So I'm a little jealous of your going there.

Tell me about Ephesus while I've got you on the line. Was it a great place to visit?

I mean, it was very warm when we were there. So it's hard not to associate it with getting a little sunburned, but it's just remarkable that the ruins there. But overall, I was really impressed with Turkey as well.

So I'm sure you'll have a great time.

Now, if you'd like to listen to or read what Darrell has written about some of the stuff at Turkey, you can go to oldlife .org. That is his blog, oldlife, one word, .org, and read Darrell's writings and catch up a little bit on your Turkey trip as well, right?

Yes. All right, Darrell, let's just think basically about Jay Gresham Machen. I'd like to introduce our audience to him. Some know some about him, maybe Christianity and liberalism, maybe some Presbyterian background, but let's just assume people don't know much about Machen.

Machen, Westminster Seminary, and the Discovery of Christianity and Liberalism

First, tell me, Darrell, why were you fascinated with Jay Gresham Machen?

Well, it's fairly personal, not in a Jerry Springer way, but I was a student at Westminster Seminary after graduating from Temple University, and there was a building on campus named Machen Hall, but we didn't really learn much about Machen there, which is in some ways understandable.

I can follow up with that, but Machen was the founder of Westminster Seminary, and when I was there in the early 80s, there was, I guess, some disconnect, perhaps, between the seminary and Machen. So from there, I went to Harvard Divinity School to pursue another master's degree in American religious history, and in my first semester there, the professor whom I still regard quite highly, he's now deceased, but William R. Hutchison taught a course, a survey course of American religious history, and he had us read Christianity and liberalism in there, and Hutchison also wrote probably the best book on Protestant liberalism called The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism, and he devotes a major part of a chapter in there to Machen and Machen's photograph is even in there.

So Hutchison recognized Machen as an important critic of liberalism, even though he did not agree with him. So anyway, here I am in old Divinity Hall reading Machen, thinking I've just graduated from Westminster Seminary, and I love Christianity and liberalism.

Who is this guy? I want to find out more about him. So I actually did more work on old Princeton Seminary, where Machen was before he founded Westminster Seminary, and things began to click into place.

So it was part of an intellectual awakening for me.

Why Christianity and Liberalism Still Speaks to Evangelicalism

Gerald, with regards to the book Christianity and Liberalism, when I reread it, I'm thinking this can't be 1923. This is for today. Why do you think the book Christianity and Liberalism is so applicable for today and the issues going on in evangelicalism at large?

Well, one is because it's very basic in setting out the outline of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant orthodoxy, and Machen's explication of the doctrines of God and man and Christ and salvation in the church are always worth anyone's consideration.

And then another reason why I think it's still relevant is he didn't, for political reasons in part, he didn't want to name names and create tensions in the church as far as calling certain people liberals and therefore somehow going outside the mechanisms of church discipline.

And that also prevents it from being simply typecast in a particular era. There are a few references in the introduction to political developments that people may not be aware of, but otherwise it's pretty general in describing the differences between liberalism and historic Christianity.

But also the reason why it's still relevant is because I think liberalism still afflicts the Protestant church or even evangelicalism. Now that sounds perhaps provocative and alarming or alarmist, but I do think that the kind of defection from orthodoxy that was characteristic of the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly with regard to pursuing social justice and transformation of culture, what people then would have called Christian America is still very much with us.

A lot of people that I've interacted with don't like me drawing parallels between contemporary evangelical pastors who were pursuing cultural transformation and some of the old social gospelers of the late 19th and early 20th century.

But I'm still not convinced that there aren't important parallels unless today's evangelicals wanna make the sort of hedges or introduce sort of cautions that Machen does. And I just don't think that those cautions are there.

So that's another reason why I think the book is still very relevant.

The Triumphant Indicative, Sin, and Imputed Righteousness

We're talking to Darrell Hart today on No Compromise Radio. Darrell, I loved it in your book where you highlight Machen's discussion on the triumphant indicative. I ponder a little bit the idea with social gospel and all the imperatives and do good and moralistic therapeutic deism.

Tell our audience today about the triumphant indicative of the gospel and why Machen would not move from that position.

Well, what the triumphant indicative refers to, sort of pulling back my memory on this, is the fact that Christ died for our sins, and Machen would have summarized the gospel with that statement of the indicative that Christ died for sinners when they were lost.

And so he's pointing to the truth that salvation comes entirely from God. It's not what we do. It's not how we improve ourselves. It's not how we improve society. And that doesn't Christianize society either, but it's entirely what God has done in Christ.

And that's because, and one of the chapters in Christian liberalism is about sin. And Calvinists have a certain reputation, and Machen was a Calvinist. In fact, he preferred to call himself a Calvinist to a fundamentalist.

But for having an overly pessimistic view of human beings, but if sin is a reality, and if God has a righteous standard, there's no way that sinners can meet that standard, no matter how many good things sinners may do.

So there's always going to be a huge gap between human beings and God, and Christ is the one who bridges that gap by taking our sin upon himself, and then also giving us his righteousness imputed to us through faith.

And so that's what Machen is getting at. And that's been one of the joys for me, again, personally in studying someone like Machen, is that his understanding of the gospel and the explanation of the gospel has been personally encouraging and a blessing throughout my many years of studying and reading Machen.

Well, I'd encourage our listeners.

To pick up the copy of the book, Defending the Faith by D .G. Hart. I believe it's a Baker book. And Daryl, your memory did serve you well because on page 70 of that book, Highbrow Fundamentalism, the chapter's name, he next considered, Machen next considered Christ's place in the Christian faith, asking whether Jesus was an object of faith or an example for faith.

And I think that gets right back to the triumphant indicative of the gospel and social issues. Machen would say, liberalism isn't Christian. What did he mean by that? And again, how just, it's so relevant for today.

Why Machen Rejected Liberalism and Supernaturalism

Liberalism isn't Christian. Why isn't it Christian?

Well, on the one hand, it was because he thought they denied the gospel in the way that they talked about human beings and the possibility of human goodness. Also in the way that they talked about Christ as being divine, but in a very squishy way so that Jesus really isn't all that different from who we are or from God.

And he would also say that they were not Christian in the sense that they didn't affirm supernaturalism, which again is part of this idea that sinful human beings are so in need of grace and salvation, there's nothing they can do.

So it has to be something entirely outside of us that comes and works salvation for us. Christ does that in his own earthly ministry by living a perfect life, dying on the cross, rising again from the dead, but then also the Holy Spirit does that supernatural work of regenerating people, sinners lost in sin who are really hostile to God.

But the Holy Spirit turns their minds and hearts around and enables them to embrace Christ. So you have this supernatural work where Christ's spirit applies that redemption. Of course, God the Father has planned all this in all eternity.

So it's a Trinitarian conception and it's a very supernatural one. And that's, again, part of what Machen was arguing against with regard to liberalism. And there's a reason partly why I think liberals would not want to affirm those things even, because in this period between, say, the end of the Civil War and the 1920s, sometimes also known as the Progressive Era, there was a real effort by the Protestant churches to try to make America a better country.

And many of those efforts were laudable in so many respects. But to tell people you're lost in sin and there's no hope for you, apart from God's working on your behalf, that's not a message that's going to lead people to go out and pursue the kingdom in the United States of America.

So again, I'm not still sure entirely which comes first, whether it's a rejection of Christian truths that leads people to embrace looking for the kingdom of God on earth, or whether it's trying to make America a better place or society a better place that leads people then to think about how they can repackage the gospel.

But the two do go hand in hand. And again, this is another reason why I wish more people today who are involved in various kinds of activism or cultural engagement would sit down with Machen and think about this more carefully.

Machen, the Gospel Coalition, and the Limits of Para-Church Alliances

Well, Dr. Hart, Machen isn't here, but you're the historian and the expert on Machen. What would Machen say about things today? Let's fast forward a little bit, and I'll just pick one off the top of my head.

Gospel coalition. What would Machen say about the gospel coalition or Together for the Gospel?

I think he would say, I'm not going to take debate. I think he would say that those are worthwhile endeavors, but that he would, and he would speak in those sorts of settings, but that he wouldn't join them because he was committed to being a churchman and working in Presbyterian circles.

For instance, there was an organization called the World Christian Fundamentals Association headed by William Bell Riley, started in 1919. And it was, in some respects, the holding company for a lot of Protestant fundamentalists in the 1920s.

And Machen was asked many times to join. He wouldn't join because of their platform, doctrinal platform, which included dispensational premillennialism. But he also, for instance, was invited to become the president of Bryan College or Bryan University, an institution founded in Tennessee soon after William Jennings Bryan died.

And Machen, again, declined that because he was committed to the controversy in the Presbyterian church. He was also thought of himself as a Presbyterian churchman. So I think he would have been cautious about joining those organizations.

Again, speaking at them, I think he would have, he would have, he spoke pretty much everywhere. I mean, he spoke in liberal Protestant churches, he spoke in Roman Catholic circles, not in their churches.

Preaching is another matter. But he spoke all over the place, trying to make his ideas understandable and persuasive. So again, I think he would speak at some of these conferences, but that's not necessarily an endorsement of those.

Right. Well, I wonder if he would be the celebrity at this celebrity event.

Right. Well, I mean, it's funny, his celebrity came to him in an unlikely way. And I go into this in the book, it's still, I think, a very interesting story that he was preaching in 1923 as a state of supply, meaning he was a regular preacher while the pulpit was vacant in a Presbyterian church in Princeton.

And he preached there for six months. At the end of his time, he preached a sermon about the fundamentalist controversy. And one of the members there, who was also a professor of English literature at the university, Henry van Dyck, who had also been the ambassador to the Netherlands during the Woodrow Wilson administration, decided that he had had enough of Machen, held a press conference to resign his membership in the church.

And when van Dyck holds this press conference, then Machen's sermon sort of goes viral. And reporters are thick as flies, he says, at his dorm room at Princeton Seminary. And all of a sudden, Machen becomes this more notable figure.

I don't know that he was ever as popular as, say, some of the preachers of the day like Harry Emerson Fosdick, or even a layman like William Jennings Bryan. But that incident, late 1923, really did catapult Machen into some kind of notoriety.

And from 1923 on then, he became one of the regular go-to people that editors or conference organizers or academic administrators would ask to contribute or speak to represent the so-called fundamentalist position.

Even in 1925, only about a year and a half later, leading into the Scopes Trial in July of 1925, New York Times newspaper runs a series called What Evolution Stands For Now. And they get a prominent zoologist to write that article.

And they want to know what fundamentalism stands for now. And they get Machen to write that article. Machen never goes anywhere near evolution, but he does, again, outline what he thinks conservative or historic Protestantism stands for.

And so that's another indication of the kind of notoriety Machen had that even editors at the New York Times would consider him somebody to feature in a series like that.

Machen's Publicity, Scholarly Life, and Tension with Activism

Well, Dr. Hart, in my mind, and correct me if I'm wrong, when someone today uses the machine to become popular and make themselves a celebrity, to me, that's diametrically opposed to what happened to Machen.

God gave him a broader base. He gave him more breadth of influence. And it was something that came to Machen. It wasn't as if Machen wanted to do that. I think Machen said at Princeton, he wrote a letter to his mother, if I remember right, that he wanted to just write big, thick books there.

That's what he was after, is the scholastic side.

Right, I think that's true. And the only way I'd complicate that a little bit is I don't think that Machen sought publicity. And I do think he was a gracious man and really did not promote himself. You know, as private correspondents, he could let himself, his views be known to his family members about other people.

And, you know, some people are alarmed by that, but I'm sure if any of us had our, what we say at home, recorded, we might get similar criticisms. But there is this aspect of Machen's life. He was clearly bright and well-educated and liked the scholarly life, but he also had a longing for some kind of active outlet and so in 1918, when America is going to war, he feels a real need.

In 1818, that would make him roughly 38. He wanted to get involved with the war effort. And so he goes to serve in the YMCA as a secretary and he leads Bible studies and he sells hot chocolate and cigarettes to troops at the front in France.

So Machen had, and he had a real resistance to going into the ministry. Between 1906 and 1914, he was very undecided about whether to commit himself to see coordination. And it had something to do with his perceptions of a minister and the kind of limits that were placed upon ministers and sort of life that they were able to lead or not lead.

And Machen was someone who liked to go to New York and go to plays and go to restaurants and go to bookstores. And I think he recognized that maybe that wasn't necessarily becoming a minister, even though he would still be largely a professor at a seminary.

So there's a tension in Machen about simply being a scholar or a minister, that there's a desire for a more active life at times, at least, and that's what I think leads him to Europe during World War I.

But also, I think, I do wonder then if he was in some ways drawn into the controversy in the Presbyterian Church because, again, of this interest in activism, which isn't the same in any way as being interested in celebrity.

I mean, I think, if anything, Machen's involvement in the church controversy made his name mud in a lot of Presbyterian circles. I mean, even to this day in Presbyterian circles, people who know the name Machen in the mainline Presbyterian Church, who know the name Machen, I mean, it's basically, you know, you roll your eyes and say what a kook he was.

So he was seeking an active life. He wasn't seeking necessarily a reputation. And in some ways, you could argue that his interest in an active life cost his reputation or his celebrity.

Thinking Christianly About Politics and the Church-State Distinction

We're talking to Daryl Hart today. You can go to oldlife .org, Hillsdale College, or a variety of different spots to see Daryl and his influence there in evangelicalism. Daryl, we've got a few minutes left.

You've written two books that I'm thinking about regarding politics from Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism, and A Secular Faith, Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State.

I believe you dedicated A Secular Faith to Machen. In the three minutes we've got left, which I know you probably need an hour to do this, tell us how we should think Christianly about politics and in specific, the election coming up in America in 2012, November.

Oh, okay. Well, the first thing I would say You have three minutes.

Keep a strong distinction in view between the United States of America and the Christian Church. The two are not the same, and I can't argue for this. I can only just state it, but the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ comes through the ministry of the Church, preaching of the word, sacraments, prayer, discipline, not through the United States government.

That may not be controversial, but if you really think about that for very long, it does at least help you to think that if the United States goes down the tubes, the Church may still be around. And we should put our hope really in the sorts of things that we hear in church, not the sorts of things that politicians are going to say.

Secondly, I would also try to make a distinction between someone's identity as a Christian, as a member of a church or as a Christian, versus someone's identity as a citizen, and the sorts of things that we want in the church or in Christian circles is not necessarily the same thing that we want for the United States of America, because in the United States of America, we have a mixed body of people who are not necessarily all Christian.

So we might have to have some kind of arrangements that are as good as possible for everyone in this diverse country. And so I think that those kinds of distinctions are at the heart of those two books, and they are really things that I think I learned from Machen.

I mean, he was a strong libertarian. I have not found the evidence that he was a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but if he wasn't a card-carrying member, he was very sympathetic to their defense of civil liberties.

Machen was also a Democrat, Southerner, so that complicates what it means to be a Democrat, of course, but I do think that Machen really made a strong distinction between the church and the state, and he would make arguments in the public realm.

He even testified before Congress about the Federal Department of Education opposed it, but he would make arguments there that would be very different from the kind of arguments he would make in the church.

And then, well, somewhat naturally, the sermon that got him in trouble with Henry Van Dyke, the man who protested his sermon at Princeton in 1923, the sermon there, Machen makes a very important distinction between the kind of liberty we have in society, like the United States, versus the kind of intolerance that the church is supposed to embody.

I don't know where I'd stand in the three minutes we have, but there's as close as I can get.

That's excellent. The book, Secular Faith, I thought was a good read because it tries to look at politics. Darrell tries to get us to look at politics at the level of individual rather than the church, and so I appreciate that, Darrell.

I appreciate your ministry through your pen and speaking engagements. Darrell Hart, oldlife .org. Thanks for being a guest on No Compromise Radio. Thanks for having me, Mike. Good to talk to you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

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