Machen - Christianity And Liberalism [Chapter 1]

Scripture’s Absence in Liberalism and the Authority of Inspiration

You know, I was like, what's notable or what really stuck out to me a lot in the introduction in Chapter 1 is this, and some of you will recognize where I'm going right away because I'm holding a Bible, what was missing?

There was no scripture whatsoever. So I want to start with this because I think this is the singular issue that we'll be addressing this morning even though it's not explicit. Second Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

And I thought, when you think about it, what's the biggest difference between Christianity and liberalism? Liberalism says, oh, it's a book written by men that we have to defend. Christianity says, it's a book inspired by God that we declare, right?

Okay, so with that as our preface, number one, true or false according to Truman, liberalism is a legitimate form of Christianity. False is the correct answer. This is the context of Christianity and liberalism in the book, the so-called modernist fundamentalist battles of the early 20th century.

And who knows anything about those battles between the modernists and the fundamentalists? I mean, it is interesting. I have a series of books in my office called The Fundamentals, and some of the articles in there are written by Machen and some of his cohorts, and some of them are written by like Baptist preachers who are just kind of rabble-rousers.

And how did they all come together? Well, it was on the fundamentals. The original word fundamentalist, unlike what it's grown into today, was not a bad word. It just meant they held to the fundamentals of the faith.

And the modernists came along and said, you guys are morons. Yes. Well, he died in the 30s, but this was written in 1919. And I was reading parts of it to my wife last night, because I'm just like, I go, doesn't this just like sound...

Yes. I mean, again, I just think it's so timeless. It's kind of amazing. Yes, it did. Yeah. Which really, liberalism took over the German church. I mean, when you start reading this book, you start reading the names that are thrown around.

They're mostly Germans. It's German philosophers and German scholars. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, higher criticism came from the Tübingen School of Theology. And how many of you are familiar with that? Higher criticism?

What does it mean? There's lower criticism, which is fine. Lower criticism just says, let's look at the scripture and let's examine it and let's kind of see if these things are true. Higher criticism, I'm simplifying it, starts with the supposition that the Bible isn't what it appears to be.

So instead of Moses writing the first five books, they say that there were probably at least four different authors. You know, they're called J, D, E, and P, which stands for the Yahwist. That's the J.

It doesn't sound like it, but that's what it is. Yahwist, Elohist, you know, these different voices, Deuteronomist and the Priestly voice. And so they say that somebody, some editor mixed them all together.

And I'm like, wow, what a smart guy that was. See, I'm struggling with, does anybody know what I'm struggling with? So I think it's more likely that we're talking about oral traditions and that's where, you know, people say, oh, you know, can you really trust it?

And the answer is what? Yes, and for two reasons. Right. God is the author. But the other one, you know, just from a human perspective, in a world without the internet, without television, without radio, without, without, without, without, what did they do?

All they did was talk to each other. And all they did was, you know, they, they, they would make sure that things were memorized. I mean, you catechized, this is how you learned, right? So and everything had to be precise.

And if you study how the Hebrew scriptures were copied, even, even that process, you come to realize that if they found a manuscript that had a mistake, what did they do? Scribble it out? Sometimes. But often they just destroyed the whole thing, right?

Or eradicated the whole thing and started all over because the precision was absolutely necessary. Okay. So, modernists, fundamentalists, in fact, you know, you could go back and how many of you are familiar with the Scopes trial?

So, you know, where they put like evolution basically on trial and evolution, I think, did it win or lose? I don't know. Okay. That was it. Machen, I like this quote, the truth is that the manifold religious life of the present day, despite interlocking of the branches and much interaction, does not spring from one root.

He's talking about the various branches of Christianity do not spring from one root, but from two. One root is Christianity. The other is a naturalistic or agnostic modernism, which despite Christian influences in detail, is fundamentally hostile to the Christian faith.

It calls itself Christianity. It looks like Christianity. They have a cross up in the church, but it's not Christianity. Well, I mean, yeah, but I mean, when you're talking about the liberal branch of it.

Liberalism, Sentimentalism, and the Cross

Okay. Number two, true or false? Liberalism shook Machen's faith. It's actually true. Brian's first mistake of the year. Write it down, mark it. Truman tells the sad tale. He says, strange to tell, Machen had, Machen too, as in Machen also, had a ritual connection, ritual being a German theologian, studying under Wilhelm Hermann.

See, there you go. At the University of Göttingen. It's all German. It's all German to me. Letters to his mother from that time indicate that Machen was swept away by the passionate zeal of the wild-eyed and wild-haired Hermann to the point where this conservative Southern gentleman seems to have had something of a crisis of confidence in the faith his mother had taught him.

Machen came through the crisis, and indeed he spends considerable energy in Christianity and liberalism attacking precisely this kind of sentimentalism he saw the liberalism of his German professor as encouraging.

In other words, he listened to this professor. He listened to the emotional appeal that the professor was making, and he was somewhat swayed by it. It weakened his faith. He had a crisis of confidence in the faith.

But listen to how he bounced back. How do you know that God is all love and kindness? Because this is the God of liberalism. He loves everybody. He's not really against anyone. He's pulling for you. He's rooting for you.

And you know, if I may say just on a personal note, this reminds me of a message I heard at Saddleback Church, not preached, preached, not uttered by Rick Warren, but by Steve Arterburn, a Christian psychologist, God, the God of second chances.

God is in heaven rooting for you, pulling for you. It says, how do you know that God is all love and kindness? Surely not through nature, for it is full of horrors. Human suffering may be unpleasant, but it is real, and God must have something to do with it.

Right? I mean, it's hard to argue with that. You can't look around at everything that's going on and go, man, if only, I mean you can, if only God could do something about this. Because you've just dethroned God just by virtue of the idea.

Then he says, a one-sided God, in other words, a God whose love only is not a real God, excuse me, and is the real God alone who can satisfy the longing of the soul. God is love, but is he only love?

God is love, but is love God? Seek joy alone, then seek joy at any cost, and you will not find it. So if the idea of religion, if the idea of liberal religion is just to seek after pleasure, seek after joy, what does that sound like?

What is it? It's hedonism. Is there such a thing as Christian hedonism? Yeah, go to Minneapolis and ask. That's John Piper's thing there. But even he didn't have the idea of just pursuing joy, pursuing happiness.

His idea, which I don't want to get into, was something else entirely. But can one pursue joy, happiness, and pleasure, and at the same time be pursuing joy? And God? I mean, you pursue God, and he adds things to you, and you find pleasure in those things, but it's not pleasure for the sake of pleasure.

It's pleasure because God has blessed you. Okay, number three, true or false, Machen disdained the hymn, Nearer, My God, to Thee. It is true. He hated it. And you know, are there any hymns that you hate that are in the hymnal, or used to be in our hymnal?

I mean, one of the reasons, I have to confess, one of the reasons I was all in favor of switching to this new hymnal, because guess what song's not in it? That wasn't in the old one either, I don't think.

Shine, Jesus, Shine was not in the old one. No, I think it's in the new one. I think it is, yeah. But what's not in the new one is a little ditty we like to call, in the garden. Man, oh man, the next time, you know, and the problem is, there's a generation that has been dying here for a while, and that seems like that's the number one favorite song.

Are you familiar with it? Oh, you will be when you get to the chorus. And he walks with me, and he... It feels like you should be on a carousel when you, you know, and I'm just like... And it's so bad, the lyrics are so bad.

He walks with me, and he talks with me, no he doesn't, no he doesn't, you know, next. Come on, can we find a, you know, gospel-centered hymn? Okay, to the book. Machen also saw this sentimentalism as manifested in attitudes towards the cross, symbolized by the words of popular hymns.

And this is, you know, this is my thing with K-Love these days, you listen to it and you just go, man, I would like to hear a song about the Jesus of the Bible, right? I mean, it happens every once in a while.

Every once in a while I'll be listening and I'll go, like Jeremy Camp or somebody will come on and I'll go, that's a good song, I could listen to that again. But most of the time it's just like, I need some rock and roll to wash that out of my mouth.

Yeah, Jesus keep me near the cross, Jesus keep me near the cross. Oh, actually, it's not even that one, nearer my God to thee, yeah, it's bad. Yeah, that's not in our current hymnals. So, nearer my God to thee, not because he considered the hymn untruthful, suffering can bring one closer to God, but because this sentiment was seen as somehow making the hymn distinctively Christian, while the cross in Christian theology is first and foremost a reference to the vicarious suffering of Christ on our behalf.

I love this quote, he says, one can only be sorry that the people on the Titanic could not find a better hymn to use in the last solemn hour of their lives. The ship's going down and the band's playing, you know, nearer my God to thee and he's like, come on, don't you have something better you can sing while you're drowning?

Christianity as Truth, Not Mere Relationship or Example

He's going on, he says, in all the talk that comes from some circles about Christianity's not being a set of beliefs, but a way of life, how many times, you know, it's not a religion, it's a relationship.

What's wrong with that, Brian? Okay, wrong focus, right? He's saying it has to do with the personal relationship instead of the objective truths of the gospel. If I say to somebody, an unbeliever, I want you to have a relationship with Christ, yes?

They're already in a relationship. The problem is, instead of being their savior, he's their judge, which is a big problem, right? You don't want him as your judge. Trying to push you to personalize it, or maybe, could I say, dare I say, emotionalize it.

Well, I mean, think about it, if I say the word religion, is our first thought, yes? Or is it, you know, back off Jackson. And I think that's the point, right? To get you not to just stiff arm it because you think religion is stodgy, religion is stale, religion is smells and bells and whistles and all kinds of things, but it has nothing to do with me, right?

I don't want to go into a church where they're just all about God, what about me? So, he says that we should not believe in Jesus, but follow him, that's another, you know, when I hear this kind of, I'm a Christ follower, is that true?

Yeah, okay. But boy, I think that kind of misses the mark because it can lead right to what? You know, Jesus as my example. He is an example, he is my example, and what does that example tell me?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Right, well, and especially, good point, I mean, we do, you know, as Christians, we do have this relationship, right? We're adopted, you know, all these things, engrafted into the family of God, all these things are true.

But when that's the sole focus, it loses, you know, I mean, the things that ought to be focused on, sin, you know, I mean, the holiness of God, all these kind of things. Right, right, it's not just a list of facts, absolutely true, right?

I mean, there has to be some personal attachment and outflow from those facts, but I think it's, you know, this, again, when he's talking this way, all the talk that comes from some circles about Christianity as not being a series of beliefs but a way of life, that we should not believe in Jesus but follow him, seems to arise out of a view of Christianity as sentiment and even to bear uncanny linguistic resemblance to precisely the kind of 19th century liberalism against which Forsyth Barth, Barth, you know, it looks like Barth, sounds like Barth, but it's actually Barth, and Machen railed, they railed against with such passion and persistence.

The world of today is perhaps not so different from that faced by these men. Human beings still try to make God, and this is kind of the point, they try to make God in their own image and still project their own image or their own values onto the divine.

In other words, Christianity is fine as long as you don't get too biblical about it, right? As long as you don't take the Bible too seriously. You have to keep in mind, it's just a book. Yeah. Did you say equality?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The term relationship can imply kind of a peer-to-peer sort of relationship. Brian? Okay, the cultural relevancy. Okay, good. Do you guys have something you want to share? Do we need the cone of silence for you?

Okay, all right, got it. I'll move on. Number four, true or false, Christians rarely have the stomach for such difficult fights. It's true. I mean, these issues are, you know, I mean, what happens when people say you're a moron for believing the Bible?

Or, you know, where's that effect? I mean, most things, somebody said something to me the other day, not Bible-related, but I just, I listened to it and I just thought, whatever. You know, I don't have time to defend myself.

I have people driving by me and flipping me off. I don't, you know, what difference is the insult you just tossed at me make? Yeah, you have to pick your battles. You have to. And Machen says, presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time.

That's another statement. Or how about this? How about this phrase? We want to be known for what we're for, not what we're against. Is that true? Right. I mean, it's partly true. We want to know, we want to be known for what we're for.

Is that true? Yes. Not for what we're against. False. I mean, which makes the whole statement false. I mean, people are like, well, you know, why do you want to be known for what you're against? Because a lot of what we're against is really bad.

I mean, people want to, you know, these days it's become fashionable to be in favor of trans rights. But when you start, you know, whatever that means, or how about my favorite phrase right now, and there's somebody in our town who has this on their front lawn.

This is my favorite phrase right now because it's self-refuting. How about this? Abortion rights, or actually they call it reproductive rights, are human rights. Yeah, just down the street from Bill.

Reproductive rights are human rights. Well, what's wrong with that? Yeah, it doesn't go so well for the baby. There's a human being in there. And when they say reproductive rights, what they're really meaning is the right to execute, you know, kill the baby.

And so the human rights of the baby are, you know, not present. And it's interesting. I was in a minor discussion on Facebook the other day, and because this was—. California's just passed this law. California.

So a baby survives abortion. It is now perfectly illegal in the state of California to even investigate what happens post-birth. In other words, if they just leave the baby to die, totally fine. Not a crime.

Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, so I'm just like, let's just think about that. What does that say? It says that, you know, that—and somebody then argued that that was a fetus. And I'm like, no, no, no, because even, you know, scientifically, you can't argue— because I put the definition of fetus.

Watch that change, though. That will change. The definition of fetus says what? Yeah, it's still in the womb. So now it's, you know, the baby's out of the womb. And, you know, but now it's perfectly illegal in California to just ignore and let the baby—.

I mean, you just can't—. Yeah. I mean, it's just frightening how inhumane our society has become so far. I mean, so far, because I think there's a sentiment involved with that. I mean, there was a case here.

I don't know if you guys saw that. You must have seen the video. This woman in Los Angeles just goes screaming into this intersection, and she hits, you know, a car. She hits some pedestrians, and people are just going flying everywhere and goes into a gas station, and, you know, there's an explosion and all.

So did you see that? And she was doing—I think they figured that she was doing, like, well over 100 miles an hour, you know, on surface streets in Los Angeles. And, you know, they're trying to get her off on some kind of mental defect or something, but killed five people, I believe.

Yes. And I say, you know, you obviously have the right to reproduce. What's the problem? Nobody's trying to stop you from reproducing. Well, okay, let's just call it what it is. Reproductive termination.

You could say that, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that is pretty good. I mean, that is a euphemism of euphemisms there. Okay. So presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means popular. Yeah. He says, there are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Francis Patton has aptly called a condition of low visibility.

Duck and Chuck, right? Or Chuck and Duck. Just get out of sight. He says, this is Machen again. He says, light may at times, 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. I mean, I was talking to a liberal minister here a few weeks ago, and they spent two and a half years in their church in turmoil because they refused to exercise Matthew 18.

I mean, it was, you know, the congregation was arguing with each other and fighting all the time and everything, because they wouldn't kick somebody out using Matthew 18. I thought, I want to say, I could tell you what to do, but you won't like it very much, you know.

And he wasn't asking, so. Okay, number five. True or false? We can see what is important by the willingness of two parties to dispute it. Absolutely true. Right? I mean, if it's not important, yeah. If it's not important, yeah, you're not going to fight about it.

Unless you're married. You know, I'll credit my wife with this, though. She says, you know, she probably learned this the hard way from putting up with me for years. She'll say, well, in light of eternity, what does it really matter?

So I think if more couples could do that, view it through the lens of, in light of eternity, does this really matter? Probably be fewer arguments, but yeah. Mason says, 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. And I mean, when we, you know, let's just look at the government for a moment. What is the government willing to fight? You know, what are the two big parties willing to fight over?

Abortion. But I mean, do they even fight over it, right? These days, do they even fight over war? No. Both sides generally speak in favor of it. You know, how long is the war in Ukraine going to go on?

Apparently forever, because nobody's against it. That's right. As long as we've got a credit card, we can keep doing that. What else? Spending. Does anybody care about spending? Apparently not. Don't even ask me about town spending.

I mean, we're going to have a special town meeting here in a couple weeks, basically. And I think probably all, well, two of the three things are going to pass. The only one that probably won't pass is the one that should pass.

Because it's going to cost the town the least amount of money and do the most good. So, of course, it's not going to pass. But the soccer fields? Sure, we'll borrow $3 million for that. Sure. Fine. I expect there's going to be more soccer mobs that night than just about anything.

Okay. Misha says, In the sphere of religion in particular, the present time is a time of conflict. The great redemptive religion, which has always been known as Christianity, is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology.

It looks like Christianity. It tries to sound like Christianity. But it's not Christianity. Well, it is, right? I mean, it's Pharisaism. Why, Brian? But it's liberal. They're loving. So why would you call it Pharisaism?

You're not wrong, by the way. I'm just giving you a hard time. Well, can I help you, Brian? Okay. All right. You can say one more thing. Right. And that's the same kind of idea. If your kids can go to church every week, go home every week, and act like little Christians, but not be Christians, how is that?

Well, because they act the right way. They talk the right way, at least when they're out in public. But, you know, for liberals, what do they do? They have all the walking and talking and sounding, but what's at the heart of it?

The heart of it is something altogether different. But here's the thing that's funny. Does a liberal Christian view the true Christian as a brother in Christ? Yes. You think? Right. Maybe, but they're so unloving, and so unkind, and they just hold so much dogma.

You know, the dogma runs deeply with...

Well, I mean, it's the modernist fundamentalist controversy, right?

They're cool, they're hip, they're modern. They're not really worried about how people get to heaven. By the way, just as an aside, if anybody wants to... I need to... I left my phone in the office, but I'm going to probably send out an email to anybody who wants to go.

There's an upcoming West Boylston Town Fair deal coming up. Fall Fest. Oh, that's it. Fall Fest. And on Fall Fest, which is on a Saturday, there's going to be a booth for all the churches. And they said, do you want to be included on the flyer?

And I was like, why not? It's like free advertising, right? And then they're like, okay, does somebody want to show up and man the booth? And I'm going, I don't know, I'll send it out. I mean, a good opportunity.

If people come up to you, I think they're basically just asking to get the gospel. So I'll be sending that out as a BBC announcement. Let's see. Where are we? Number... Oh, and I was going to say just about five real quickly too.

There are a lot of religions now doing that. I mean, the Mormons do that. Other religions kind of imitating Christianity, trying to pretend that they're Christian. Number six, true or false? A key element of liberal Christianity is acceptance of divine activity.

Yeah, that's false. Sid Machen. Manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, talking about liberalism, 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 in connection with the origin of Christianity. In other words, I mean, this is kind of like Jeffersonian Christianity. You know, it's fine to believe that Jesus is a good teacher, et cetera, et cetera, but don't even come up with all this miraculous stuff.

You know, the power of God, don't do that. He goes on to say, modern inventions and the industrialism that has been built upon them have given us, in many respects, a new world to live in. We can no more remove ourselves from that world than we can escape the atmosphere that we breathe.

And I thought it's really important for us to understand what science, what industrialization, what technology has basically done to our world. Do people worry? I mean, it's coming, but right now, do we worry about surviving, you know, food and whatnot?

The answer is no. And in part, it's because of industrialization and specialization and all the things that have come about. But here's, in Scientific Advances, but here's Machen's point. Here he says, 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 spirits or the achievements of science. And I read all that, and I thought, you know, there's a major shift of the tide, as it were, that comes about with enlightenment and then with industrialization.

And so ultimately, man, you know, in enlightenment, man comes to think of himself as the center of everything that is, the measure of all that exists. And then really through industrialization, and indeed I think we could say further by the Internet and whatnot, he proves to himself that he is the measure of all things, the center of existence.

Brian? Yes. Yes. Yeah, what's made the world better? Is it Christianity or is it science? You know, you dumb people with your backwards religion, you actually are obstacles to advancement. Because the arc of justice, oh, sorry.

Science, Modernity, and the Critique of “Settled Science”

Number seven, true or false, because of science, many truths of Christianity have crumbled. I said false. I think true is an interesting argument. Let's see what Machen says. In such an age, it is obvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject to searching criticism.

Right? As man becomes the center of everything and so smart and too smart to believe in old religious things, then science turns its eye upon everything and examines everything. 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. Brian? I was going to say in Dave's favor. Which camp are you coming from, Brian?

Okay. Because of science, many truths of Christianity have crumbled. I think that's false. What truths of Christianity have crumbled in light of science?

Okay. So, yeah. I mean, may I suggest with all or actually completely lacking humility that you're reading too much into the question.

It just says because of science, many truths of Christianity, full stop, have crumbled. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. As a matter of fact, some convictions of the human race have crumbled to pieces. Human race is not Christianity.

Gary? A lot of things. And eventually, they'll prove even more. It says so many convictions have had to be abandoned that men have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go. And that's the world, you know.

If you think about, he's addressing modernism, and now we're in post-modernism. Modernism is the idea that all truth must be examined, and now post-modernism is the idea that what? Truth doesn't exist, which is fairly depressing.

Machen goes on to say, he says, 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, right?

We live by a book, you know, and even if we go beyond the book, then we have our confessions and whatnot, and those are old. These are old traditions. Number eight, true or false? The age of the Bible is reason enough to question it.

After all, it was written by uneducated men 2 ,000 years ago and more. Why is that false? Well, it is false. Machen says this, he says, the writers of the books in question were no doubt men of their own age, which, you know, they didn't even understand necessarily that the sun was the center of the universe, although they may have, whose outlook upon the material world judged by modern standards must have been 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 day or first century religion can ever stand in company with 21st century science.

What about it? How can it hold up? Jonathan. So the age is not necessarily something to necessarily undermine it, but I think there's a more fundamental reason that it can't be undermined. They would say that, right?

They would say that, right? I mean, have you ever heard that? I mean, uneducated people, I think, mostly say that. You can't trust it because it's been translated so many times. And that's the point. I mean, is it true that the Bible is 2 ,000 or 4 ,000 years old or however old it is?

Yes, that's all true. Irrelevant. And actually, if you get right down to it, it kind of makes it more amazing because it's coherent, right? And it tells the truth about the human condition, which you would think, given the presuppositions of these Neanderthal, not literally Neanderthal, but these uneducated rubes, you know, it would be wrong.

I mean, if you read the Koran for very long, you just go, well, this can't be right. Yeah, David. Which is our chronological snobbery, which is, right, this is what's going on in our culture right now.

Why is it okay to tear down the statues of all these men? U .S. Grant, you know, et cetera, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, you know, or Christopher Columbus. Why should we eradicate him?

What a bad man. It's easy to, you know, go back in time, 500 years in Columbus's case, and decide, you know what? By today's standards, dude does not measure up. Okay. And? I mean, 500 years from now, you're going to look really bad.

So, you know, but it's this whole idea. Why would people be so consumed by tearing down everything from the past? Yes. That's right. Because they presume in destruction there is freedom. Right? They presume that by unchaining themselves, as it were, from the past, that they're free to rewrite or to write the future in a completely different way.

Yeah. Which is, it's scary culturally, and, you know, in terms of Christianity, it's absolutely insane. You're always going to wind up in a cult when you do that. Number nine, true or false? It does not matter what science finds, the Bible cannot be contradicted.

See, I wanted to make that, I wanted to say that was true, but here's the problem I have, because I think the second part of it is, you know, like 10 ,000 true, which, I don't know, I'm not sure. Yeah.

But the first part, it does not matter what science finds. What about that part, John? Yeah, I think, actually, Machen said that, so, yeah. I don't know, I came across it somewhere. Maybe it was in the newspaper.

Miraculous, other things, yep, true. Science only has temporary conclusions, absolutely. And, I mean, that's, you know, if there's a phrase that should be stricken from the record, eliminated from our language entirely, it's settled science.

Settled science is horrible. I mean, that's, and it's an awful idea, you know. Settled science, the earth is the center of the universe. It's settled science. Stick a fork in it. I'm not even going there.

You know, man cannot fly. It's settled science. I mean, there are a lot of things that were absolutely definitively said and turned out not to be true. Science is ever-changing. We're always, because it's, science is just nothing but the knowledge that we have, and mankind is always learning new things, so the idea of settled science is kind of silly.

He says, 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 rightly or wrongly to conclusions which impinge upon the innermost domain of philosophy and religion.

In other words, science is constantly trying to prove religion false, and then he does say, he gives the John Zook example. It's amazing that he knew John. For example, if any Christian of 100 years ago or even today were asked what would become of his religion if history should prove indubitably that a man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century of our era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fall away.

Could they prove that, and the answer is, no, we already know that. You know, it was interesting when James White was last here, he was working on a book about the ossuary of Jesus. Remember that kerfuffle?

Do you remember that at all? They found a box, you know, because this is how they buried people, they stuffed them in a box. They took their bones after a certain amount of time and they put them in these boxes, these ossuaries, and they found one that said he was like son of Joseph and brother of somebody.

And so everybody's like, oh, it's Jesus! So James White writes this book about the ossuary of Jesus. And I remember asking James, we were driving him to the church, I said, don't you think that what we really need to do is equip our people to deal with, you know, basically all these kind of things, just generically, that all these kind of challenges are going to come up against the Word of God and they just need to be steeped in the Word of God, right?

And he's like, I'll never forget what he said. He said, no, he said this, talking about the ossuary, is going to be the seminal issue of our time. You know, the preeminent issue of our time. And I'm like, so James White is not a prophet.

It's okay. It's okay. It's alright. I just thought. I mean, they're not going to be able to prove that he is... I mean, think about it this way. If Jesus died, was buried, and remained buried, then guess what?