TPW 84 J Greshem Machen and the New Liberals Part 01

Welcome to the Proud Son Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Principal Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee, and today I'd like to post a program I did yesterday with my brother in Christ, Ryan Kaiser, who's also a seminary student.

That we're.

Overseeing his education here at our church and through Lamp Seminary, and we're gonna be reading through J. Gresham Machen's excellent and highly relevant book called Christianity and Liberalism, and we had a great discussion of it yesterday.

We had a good time doing that. Machen was a first-rate scholar. He was really the leader of the Calvinist Christian resistance to the rise of modernism. Towards the end of his life, Machen really didn't like the the label fundamentalist much.

He always described himself as a Calvinist, and his book Christianity and Liberalism is, I've described it before, as 120 proof Christianity, and Machen was a dear saint, a dear man of God, and so I hope you find this discussion as edifying as it was fun for me and Ryan to do it, and there'll be more of these coming.

This is Pastor Patrick Hines today here with one of our seminary students, with Ryan Kaiser, and Ryan's been doing seminary work for how long now? Just a few months?

A little over a year now. That's been over a year? Yes. We've been doing this for a year? Well, I did some time down in North Carolina. Ah, that's right. Okay. I took two classes down there before we moved up here.

Okay, all right, all right.

I was gonna say, man, it cannot have been that long. We've been meeting on Saturday mornings to do stuff, but anyway, so he's one of three, but Ryan has a big heart for the for the faith and for the truth, and one of the things I try to do at our church here is keep really, really great books dirt cheap, so lots of people can buy them, and I have a special heart for seminary students to build, help them build a library, so I've made sure that they get really good books in their hands, and one of those books is Christianity and Liberalism.

I'm looking at Ryan's copy. It's got all the little sticky tabs all over it,.

So that's good. Did you get all the way through the whole thing? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yes, I got through this copy once. I'm through an audio copy. Oh, yeah. Halfway through. Yeah, this has been one of the most foundational books that I've ever read.

Yeah. How so? Because he doesn't mince words. He's very fair to his opponents, but really he gets at the heart of Christianity. What is Christianity? And it's more than experience. It's more than emotionalism.

It's more than all these things. It's a message. It's a historical message founded on doctrine, sound doctrine, and if we lose that, we really lose the Christian faith, and he argues that the whole book.

Yeah.

Christianity as a Historical Faith Against Modernism

Yeah, and this book is, I mean, what year is it published? Is it 1924? Is that this was first published? I believe that's correct. I mean, I know, I believe it was lectures that eventually were submitted for publication.

When was this first put out? Does it say? November 3rd 1921. 21? The author of the present book delivered before the Ruling Elders Association.

Yeah. Okay, so that's three years after World War I ends. Yes. That he writes this. So, I mean, you're looking at, I mean, in two years from now, it'll be 2021. So, just about a hundred years ago, this is published, and it's, would you say it's relevant to what we're seeing today, Ryan?

Oh, absolutely.

What's incredible about this book, it, when I started reading it, I had to go back and look at the date. Yeah. Because it could have been written yesterday. Yeah. That's what's incredible about it, and really, he had a pulse on what was going on in his day, and he could see what was coming so clearly, and that's what makes this book so timeless.

Because now, what we have is, we have all of his issues that have come true, and then we're seeing the next wave of issues coming through, because we've already given up so much. Yeah, yes. I remember.

Years ago, one of the very first series of lectures I listened to from, or actually, I probably shouldn't call them lectures, but it was, it was, this was before podcasting. It was when the White Horse Inn first started in the 1990s, and I used to listen to the White Horse Inn, and you'll love how I did this.

I had a, one of those old cassette recorders, and I would set it in front of the speakers on my computer, and I would just push record and let it record, and then I would listen to those in my car, and that car I still drive, that 97 Saturn, still has a tape deck in it.

Yeah. So, I used old tapes and recorded those and listened. They did a series on the great debates, and they went through debates between, you know, in scripture between the Judaizers and the Apostle Paul, the Pharisees and Sadducees.

They did Anselm and Abelard in the Middle Ages. They did Athanasius and Arius, Pelagius and Augustine, and they did Luther and Erasmus, which was great. And see, and every time I listened to another debate, a historical debate, they would, like, mention a bunch of books that I would have to go by.

But the last debate they covered in the great debate series was the fundamentalist modernist controversy, and they highlighted Machen versus Harry Emerson Fosdick, and Fosdick was one of the main proponents of the liberalism that he's responding to in Christianian liberalism.

And, of course, they recommended this book, and they said, you know, this book is just outstanding, and it's great. And so, I picked it up, and I remember noticing this was published in the 1920s. And I kept, like you said, I kept having to go, like, wait a second.

This is not someone that wrote this last year. Right. Because what he describes as, quote, modern liberalism, end quote, is very similar to the evangelical fundamentalist church I grew up in. I mean, he says things like, according to modern liberalism, faith is simply committing your life to Christ.

You go,.

Okay, I heard that a million times. So-and-so committed their life to Christ. They committed life to Christ. And I used to wonder even then, what does that mean? What does that even mean?

You hear all this rhetoric that religion is bad, but Jesus is good, relationship is good, when Paul clearly talks about a one true religion that is good. That's right. And it's that kind of rhetoric that has really done a disservice to the church and has been destructive to the church.

Yeah, people say, I don't want all this doctrine, all this theology.

I just want to love Jesus. And the thing is, you know, you can't talk about Jesus apart from divine revelation. You can't talk about him apart from propositions in scripture. And so, there's no separation of the two things.

And that's another thing, like you already said, I caught some of the phrases that he uses a lot in some of your comments. We're talking about real historical facts and events. He talks about that a lot in the book.

This is connected to actual historical events. And just real quick, I remembered the White Horse Sim, when they discussed this, one of them, I can't remember who it was, it might have been Michael Horton, might have pointed out that a brilliant atheist critic at the time, a fellow named H .L. Mencken, read Christianity and Liberalism and wrote an article about it and basically said, any human being with a functioning brain knows that Mencken has destroyed his opponents.

And even though he's an atheist, and he's looking from the outside like this is a joke anyway, he also said that he himself was moved by the power intellectual arguments and by how clear and forceful Mencken's presentation is of recognizing that the liberalism that he was addressing was not another species of Christianity, but rather, the title of the book says it all, Christianity and Liberalism, that the two things are completely incompatible with one another.

And what we have now, his issues, what he was dealing with, was considered liberalism. But now, really, a lot of what he's talking about is considered conservative. That's right. So most of the churches in America, or at least a majority of the churches, have already embraced these things and have gone on to other liberal notions and other liberal.

Theologies. Yeah, that's right. And I think too, especially for our time being in the PCA, with the rise of Revoice and the things that took place at the General Assembly with some of the speeches that were made, I think that it's profoundly naive.

If people look at that and think, well, I'm sure that, you know, they're confessional and they hold to everything else the Bible says except this one thing. The fact that they had Roman Catholic speakers at their conference demonstrates that's not the case.

No. This is connected to an entire matrix of errors. And it's the same thing here with Machen. It was never the case that, well, you know, these liberals, they've got some questions about the virgin birth of Christ, but they've got some questions about how we're supposed to understand, you know, the deity of Christ.

No, this is just the camel's nose. The sexual stuff and all the compromises that are going on with that and what they're wanting to push for having a place for, you know, quote-unquote gay celibate side B.

Christianity, that is not by itself. That's going to be connected to a whole host of errors. And that's why there's been, you know, very little talk about the fact that the ecumenical agenda with Roman Catholicism was front and center with the whole conference.

And it has shocked me, even though we included it in our presbytery report, it has shocked me that not more people have pointed that out.

And even, as you said, the ecumenical movements that are out there, their idea is, well, at least we have unity in service. If we don't have unity in doctrine, but that is destructive to the truth. You can't sacrifice truth for unity because if there is no truth, there can be no unity.

That's right. And the thing that's exactly correct, and the thing is, if you do make social causes and social justice kind of the thing that unites you and you set aside your doctrinal commitments, your theological grandchildren will be pro-choice.

Yes. Your theological grandchildren will believe in gay marriage, too. And that's exactly what happened. The liberals that Machen was facing back then, today, no longer hold to any of those social causes anymore.

They don't. They've jettisoned all of them because you lose the doctrinal foundation. You no longer have a basis for morality or law or anything like that. It's a package deal. You take all of it or none.

All right. Well, that's a fairly decent intro, I think. I think it's important for people to know Machen was a churchman. He taught at Princeton. Eventually, when the seminary turned liberal, he left and founded Westminster Seminary.

And there's been other seminaries that have come out of that, our Reformed Theological Seminary, the seminary I went to in Jackson, Mississippi, is definitely in that stream of old Princeton having, you know, the confessional commitment.

But Machen was eventually thrown out. I mean, he was excommunicated. He was tossed out of the denomination for, I can't remember if it was specifically for being a disturber of the peace or something like that.

It was something really lame and he really wasn't even allowed to make a defense of himself. But this book has got so much good discussion fodder in it. So let's go ahead and we're just going to read through.

This will probably take pardon me, a number of programs to get through, but it's well worth it. The book is worth its weight in gold and his answers to the problems of the time are timeless because we're seeing these same issues now.

So why don't you go ahead and read the first paragraph there?

Okay.

The purpose of this book is not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself.

Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time. There are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Francis L. Patton has aptly called a condition of low visibility.

Okay, stop there. Has it ever been popular business?

Never. It has never been popular business.

Yeah, especially in our touchy-feely, you know, sentimental effeminate culture. I'm sorry, go ahead.

And you'll notice a lot of the arguments we have against modern day liberalism, it's always shrouded in clouds or in low visibility. You know, no one can know what everyone believes and says, so it's just like, well, we can't really say everyone's intentions.

We just know that this is kind of an umbrella thing. And we hear that all the time and really it's just smoke screens.

It is.

Clear-cut definitions of terms in religious matters, bold facing of the logical implications of religious views, is by many persons regarded as an impious proceeding. But it's so important, isn't it?

We have to be precise with our wording. And I've heard you say, you know, from the pulpit, why does language matter? Why do phrases matter? Because the Bible was given to us. The Bible is given to us in words and phrases.

That's right. People say, I mean, during all the John Piper acid that people have thrown in my face for that, you know, one of the Reformed Brotherhood guys, well, you just don't like his phrase and you just can't get past his phrasing.

And I had to say, look, if you phrase the gospel wrong, you are wrong.

Okay, so go ahead. And it's also sinful to treat words that way. To misrepresent what someone else is saying or to say something and to be disingenuous. So, may it not discourage contribution to mission boards.

May it not hinder the progress of consolidation. And produce a poor showing of columns of church statistics. But with such persons, we cannot possibly bring ourselves to agree. Like we may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but it is always beneficial in the end.

The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings or shrinks from controversial matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life.

This next sentence, real quick, this next sentence, I used to have this as a signature on one of my emails. Go ahead.

In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men agreed are apt not merely and not even primarily to current experience, but to certain ancient books, the most recent of which was written some 1900 years ago.

I think that's something, did you miss a page? Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm like, you started speaking in tongues, man.

I'm, sorry, let me, let me restart that. Yeah, read that, read that sentence again. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding.

The really important things are the things about which men will fight. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. But that's absolutely true. The things that men are willing to give up quickly are typically not the things that are worth fighting for.

And basically today,.

What are the things that we can agree on? That we should all be nice. Yep. Yeah, that the Bible's God's word, that Jesus is cool. I mean, seriously, it's usually stuff that, like you said, are things that are the least worth holding.

The really important things are the things about which men will fight, like the gospel and the law and the gospel. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Next, next paragraph. In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict.

Has there ever been a time when that was not the case? I mean, seriously, even the whole New Testament is like a polemic, most of it's a polemic against false doctrine. Absolutely.

Yeah. Gnosticism. Yeah. I mean, there are always darts being fired toward the church. That's right. Different angles may come in different forms. Yeah. But there's always something that we have to combat.

Yes, always.

Okay. So he's saying, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict. So this is 1921. The great redemptive religion, which has always been known as Christianity, is battling against a totally diversive type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.

This modern, non-redemptive religion is called modernism or liberalism. Notice he calls it a non-redemptive religion. Okay, because what's missing from it is the idea that men are sinful. Right. I forget, I think it was, it might have been H. Richard Niebuhr, some theologians said that he summarized liberalism with one sentence.

A god without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without grace through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. Yeah. Both names are unsatisfactory, modernism and liberalism. The latter, in particular, liberalism, is question begging.

The movement designated as liberalism is regarded as liberal only by its friends. To its opponents, it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed, the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms.

But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one. The many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism. That is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature in connection with the origin of Christianity.

It's exactly right. Yeah, it's exactly right. The anti-supernatural bias of German higher critical scholarship, which is what gave rise to liberalism. Remember what someone said, America is where old German heresies come to die.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So they come here and they die here, but they had been picked up and they had made their way into the mainline church at that point through the seminaries.

And we see that with all denials. You look at the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ. It always comes from a naturalistic worldview. Because if there is no God, of course these things would not be possible.

That's right. But if there is a God, which there is, the God of the Bible, these things are most certainly possible and did happen because he has given testimony.

Yeah, and that's why really in all of our dialogues or discussions that we ever have with unbelievers or with atheists, you've got to cut past some of the rhetoric and get to the underlying worldview issues.

Yes. Because if their starting point is that there is no God and that all reports of miracles are ipso facto ruled out of bounds from the get-go, you can present all the evidence that you want from scripture.

It's not going to make any difference until you've challenged that naturalism. The word naturalism is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense, it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called by what may turn out to be a degradation of an originally noble word liberal religion.

The rise of this modern naturalistic liberalism has not come by chance, but has been occasioned by important changes which have recently taken place in the conditions of life. The past 100 years have witnessed the beginning of a new era in human history, which may conceivably be regretted, but certainly cannot be ignored by the most obstinate conservatism.

That's absolutely correct. Yeah. It's much regretted now. Yeah. That we see the fruits. Yeah. The change is not something that lies beneath the surface and might be visible only to the discerning eye.

On the contrary, it forces itself upon the attention of the plain man at a hundred points. Modern inventions and the industrialism that has been built upon them has given us in many respects a new world to live in.

We can no more remove ourselves from that world than we can escape from the atmosphere that we breathe.

Modern Science, Technology, and the Challenge to Christianity

Yeah, he's right. And it's again, it's strange to think, okay, this is 100 years ago. Yeah, that was a time of great technological advancement and everything else, but I mean, think about how much the technology has changed from Machen's day in 1921 until 2019 and the things that we have now and how much of an impact that's had on people's world views and how atheistical and secular people are now.

Yeah, it's really incredible how technology has united the world. Yeah. You know, you have access to so much information now, you know, all the Puritans really had to work for their stuff. You know, they couldn't hop on Google or go to Puritan library and download books from the other Puritans.

They had to work hard. Now we have such a vast amount of wealth. Yeah, it is, of resources.

I think Jonathan Edwards only had 300 books in his personal library. Wow. And yet you think, look at what he accomplished. I know Bunyan's library was even smaller. But you're right. These guys were, they were Bible men.

But yeah, the modern technology and the inventions have really caused people to have a quote, a so-called scientific, you know, I just want to have a naturalistic understanding of everything because naturalistic science has given rise to all these inventions, but that comes into the church's unbelief.

Yes. Yeah. But such changes in the material conditions of life do not stand alone. They have been produced by mighty changes in the human mind as in their turn they themselves give rise to further spiritual changes.

The industrial world of today has been produced not by blind forces of nature but by the conscious activity of the human spirit. It has been produced by the achievements of science. The outstanding feature of recent history is an enormous widening of human knowledge, which has gone hand in hand with such perfecting of the instrument of investigation that scarcely any limits can be assigned to future progress in the material realm.

The application of modern scientific methods is almost as broad as the universe in which we live. Though the most palpable achievements are in the sphere of physics and chemistry, the sphere of human life cannot be isolated from the rest, and with the other sciences.

There has appeared, for example, a modern science of history which with psychology and sociology and the like claims, even if it does not deserve, full equality with its sister sciences. No department of knowledge can maintain its isolation from the modern lust of scientific conquest.

Treaties of inviolability though hallowed by all the sanctions of lifelong, I'm sorry, age-long tradition are being flung ruthlessly to the winds.

In such an age it is obvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject to searching criticism and as a matter of fact some convictions of the human race have crumbled to pieces in the test.

Indeed dependence of any institution upon the past is now sometimes even regarded as furnishing a presumption not in favor of it, but against it. So many convictions have had to be abandoned that men have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go.

Yes, isn't that incredible? So a hundred years ago in 1910s and 20s people are so fascinated by the progress of science that they think well anything from the past is just really not worth much. Right.

You know and the same attitude is today, don't you think? Yeah, we don't need this anymore.

We are more sophisticated now than those sheep herders or whatever. We hear that. Yeah, we hear that all the time being thrown against us out how mentally superior we are to them. Yeah, which I don't buy that for a second.

I don't either. But there's this notion of we're smarter. We don't need this anymore. We have science. Science is our god. Yeah is pretty much what it is. And we will allow science to rule the day. Right.

So supposedly the findings of science. Yes. If such an attitude be justifiable then no institution is faced by a stronger hostile presumption than the institution of the Christian religion for no institution has based itself more squarely upon the authority of a bygone age.

And that's absolutely correct. Right. We have a historical faith. Yes. It's a faith rooted in history. Yeah, and that's why we're always called.

Conservatives because we believe in something that's fixed and it's not not only is it unchanging it is unchangeable. Correct. It will never change.

Yeah, good. We are not now inquiring upon such policy is wise or historically justifiable. In any case the fact itself is plain that Christianity during many centuries has consistently appealed to the truth.

The truth of its claims not merely and not even primarily to current experience but to certain ancient books. Yeah, the most recent of which was written some 1900 years ago. So you're already I'm, sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah for us. So you're already hearing what he's saying. It's not in our experience. Yes. It's something that has been rooted in history. Yeah 2000 years ago. Yeah.

And yeah, that's right. And that's what the liberals at the time have been pushing really since the the enlightenment was was pushed Theologically by schleiermacher and then that comes over more and more into liberalism and they they define Religion basically as the feeling of dependence.

You know, I think that it's a famous schleiermacher quote where he says, you know religion the the essence of religion Is like the child falling backwards into its mother's arms and being held close to it that that kind of sentimentality rather than Rooted in divine revelation and propositions that are anchored in historical facts.

That that's what he's trying to differentiate it from. All of our thoughts all of our feelings all of our actions are rooted. Yes in scripture not apart from scripture and not over scripture. Yes.

Like.

And that comes out even in a lot of hymns a lot a lot of people. People will say things like we need to go back to the good old days and we had the great hymns like in the garden. And you think that's not a good hymn.

That's like that's like a gnostic manifesto. I come to the garden alone. And you know and the joy we share as we tarry there. It's like nothing that anyone's ever known now. One of the things that that old the old reformers used to say is that if it cannot be said of all christians Then it's not real christian experience.

So I don't have this gnostic sort of like inner experience of god that is Uniquely mine and is is divorced from divine revelation. My feelings always have to come under the scrutiny. My experience comes under the scrutiny.

How relevant is that today? Oh tremendously relevant because especially of all the gay stuff people are saying my experience is this. I can't get rid of this orientation. Your experience is not relevant.

Yeah.

And on the other side. The charismatic movement that we see it's well the spirit says this right? But we know that the spirit always speaks one back to christ and always according to the word. Yeah, they cannot be divorced.

So any experience that we have must be tested. Any feelings that we have must be tested.

That's right. That's right.

It is no wonder that the appeal is being criticized today. That that appeal is being criticized today. For the writers of the books in question were no doubt men of their own age. Whose outlook upon the material world judged by modern standards must have been of the crudest and most elementary kind inevitably.

The question arises whether the opinions of such men can ever be normative for men of the present day. In other words whether first century religion can ever stand in company with 20th century science.

Genesis, Creation, and Authority Over Against Evolution

Yeah, and I just want to say like.

One of the things that you know.

It.

Really came as a really strong conviction, especially after I was done with seminary. Was just being really committed to six-day creation and really just getting rid of every last remain of. You know, I was taught the framework hypothesis when I was in seminary and.

The.

The impetus behind that is to kind of safeguard the bible from being you know Challenged seriously by science and really have just gotten rid of that altogether. And I believe that the earth is you know, only about six thousand years old give or take a few hundred years.

The reason that that's so important is because Those two things creation and evolution are just as incompatible as christianity and liberalism. They're they're oil and water. You cannot mix the two together.

I mean everything about evolution. The evolutionary worldview is contrary to christianity but one of the things that we've talked about a lot in my house with my kids over the years and we've watched a Lot of answers genesis and creation ministries international and basically every everything out there.

That's that's really toeing the line about the creation issue as we've talked about the cumulative degeneration of Animals and genomes and human beings that yeah, we we definitely have not gotten smarter human beings are not getting smarter.

We're not evolving upwards. We're devolving because we're just piling on more and more genetic mistakes and mutations and everything else. And one of my kids, um eventually said do you think that's why people believe in evolution today.

Because we're so much dumber and I was kind of like You know, I don't I don't know that the idea would have gotten much traction in the first century like my opinion Mason was dealing with you. How could how could anyone that goes to the dentist and has these amazing technological tools and electric lights and everything and drives cars?

I mean.

How could they possibly, you know look back to the first century. But now I mean I really think they were a lot smarter in the first century than we are today because they they would never have gone for the Idea that dirt became life all by itself.

And then yeah.

And the the premise of of christianity. And of what machen is arguing. Is authority? Yeah that has been lost today. Yeah, you know, there is no more authority given to scripture. Yeah, but that really is the basis of of all these issues that we see now these liberal Readings or eisegesis that's being read into scripture.

It all comes back to authority. Is it thus saith the lord? Yeah, right and that was the first lie, right? Did god really say and you can apply that to everything that we see today? Yeah, you know did god really say that he created the world in six days?

Yeah, absolutely. He did. That's what he said and that's what we believe but it all comes back to an authority issue. Man wants authority. Man wants to be.

Autonomous. Yeah, you know during the the new perspective when the new perspective controversy was really hot. You know when? Nt, right was you know when he first published what st Paul really said that was in 1997.

And then he had the explosion of all the other books and then you know. Some older books that have been written paul and palestinian judaism by ep sanders that that was you know. A book published in the 70s and all that stuff starts going forward and I remember thinking to myself How can these guys read the apostle paul and not understand this?

Absolutely, you know, there was a there was a famous. Um, I think it was uh, krister stendhal was a lutheran. Um, Theologian that responded or was or no, excuse me stendhal was the new perspective guy and stephen westerholm was the guy that wrote Um paul or paul and paul.

What was it? Um. The or I can't remember what it's called i've got the book over there, but he turned a great phrase in there. He said anyone who thinks that martin luther did not understand galatians needs to take up a career metallurgy.

You think you know and james white when i'm pretty sure it's his book the god who justifies in the early Introduction to that he made an argument that I just thought was outstanding. It's in one of his books I can't remember.

I'm pretty sure it's the god who justifies that he says basically. Sound exegesis sound biblical exegesis. Can only be done by those who are committed to biblical inspiration and inerrancy. Because if they're not then that means that they don't see themselves as servants.

To the text and under the text if they don't hold to divine inspiration and inerrancy. They're going to be trying to force this to fit something else. I remember thinking that is exactly right. That's the problem is people do not bow to the word of god.

They don't see it as something that Their thoughts ideas opinions experiences and liver shivers and everything else has to come under the scrutiny and correction of scripture.

Yes. Yeah, so.

Do you remember where we were before I started preaching?

Uh, however the question it was yours. Okay. Yes.

That's a long paragraph. All right. However, the question may be answered. It presents a serious problem to the modern church. Attempts are indeed sometimes made. To make the answer easier than at first sight it appears to be.

Religion it is said is so entirely separate from science that the two rightly defined cannot possibly come into conflict. This attempt at separation as it is hoped the following pages may show is open to objections of the most serious kind.

But what must now be observed is that even if the separation is justifiable between religion and science It cannot be effected without effort. The removal of the problem of religion and science itself constitutes a problem.

For rightly or wrongly religion during the centuries has as a matter of fact connected itself with a host of convictions especially in the sphere of history. Which may form the subject of scientific investigation.

Just as scientific investigators on the other hand have sometimes attached themselves Again again rightly or wrongly to conclusions which impinge upon the innermost domain of philosophy and of religion for example.