What Would J. Gresham Machen Do? (part 2)

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Spiritual Gifts 101 (part 3) - [1 Corinthians 12:4-11]

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Richard Niebuhr said this famous quote, A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a
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Christ without a cross. A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a
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Christ without a cross. That was his summary statement of liberalism.
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That it had some of the vocabulary. We talk about God, we talk about Christ, we talk about the kingdom, we talk about salvation.
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But it had taken away, it had vacated all of the meaning of those terms as they are biblically understood.
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What Machen was about in Christianity and liberalism was speaking to every single one of those propositions.
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To show that a God without wrath is not in fact the
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God of Christianity. And that certainly a Christ without a cross is not the
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Christ of Christianity. And therefore salvation apart from that is not salvation.
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It's not Christianity. This was the vision that he was trying to put forth in the book
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Christianity and Liberalism. Now you look at the chapter titles and you see what he was up to as an introduction.
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And then there's doctrine. And then there's God and humanity. And then there's
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Christ. And then there's the Bible. And then there's salvation.
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And then there's the church. He is after looking at every one of those things and seeing what's happening in liberalism in relationship to those things.
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And then looking at what scripture says about those things. And saying here's the conclusion.
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Liberalism is not Christianity. Now he was a political libertarian.
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You probably got some insight into that when he was against traffic lights. So he said you can believe whatever you want to believe.
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It's a free country. Knock yourself out. You can believe whatever you want to believe about Christ. Whatever you want to believe about God.
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But you can't take what you believe and call it Christianity if it has nothing in common with the biblical teaching on those topics.
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So that's what he was doing in the book. And I want to walk through some of those chapters with you. The doctrine chapter certainly.
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The God and humanity chapter. Briefly Christ and salvation. We're going to skip scripture because we're going to talk about scripture tomorrow.
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But we're going to frame scripture within the discussion of the reformers. So we're going to break out of Machen altogether.
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And then I want to end talking about the church with you. But before I talk about any of those things
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I want to mention history. History was very significant to Machen. This goes back to his inaugural lecture as a professor there at Princeton.
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This is what he says. The center and core of all of the
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Bible is history. Everything else that the Bible contains is fitted into a historical framework and leads up to a historical climax.
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The Bible is primarily a record of events. And then he says that assertion will not pass unchallenged.
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The modern church is impatient of history.
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The challenge that Machen was facing was the challenge of modernism or the challenge of modernity.
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And the way modernity had made its way into the church. And one of the fundamental suspicions of modernity is seen if we look at it in the opposite statement that becomes sort of a mantra.
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Even of contemporary American culture. It's simply newer is better.
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Newer is better. Your six month old computer is so old.
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This is what makes corporations thrive. They call it planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence.
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We live in Lancaster among the Amish. And we bought our house from a former old order
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Mennonite farmer. Those are the buggy Mennonites. We're surrounded by Amish and old order
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Mennonites. Which is really depressing for my kids because we don't have a Wii. So they can't go to the neighbor's house and play one because they don't even have electricity.
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But he left for me his shovel in the garage. And I could see in the shovel where it had been welded about 15 times.
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Screws put in here and there. It's not the majority of American culture.
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Planned obsolescence. Newer is better. My favorite saying. That's so five minutes ago.
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And then we say an ancient book is the authority for life.
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And that's the rub folks. Right there. An ancient book.
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And in ancient time to mythological peoples and cultures is the authority for life.
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We have mapped the human genome. And we're saying this ancient book is our authority.
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Machen understood that that was in fact the ballgame.
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That question. And it becomes fundamentally a question of submission.
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Will you or will you not submit to what
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God says in his word? That's the question.
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And the modernists said no. And the liberal said no too.
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But they said no by just sort of shifting meaning. And rechanging things.
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Rethinking things. So Machen writes his book. First, right off the beginning,
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Machen raises the question. Is Christianity a lifestyle or is Christianity a doctrine? Now I find this a very intriguing question because it's not a 1920s question.
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It is a 2010s question. Now I was teasing you a little bit with the titles for this.
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WWJGMD. Which is a lot of letters to fit on a bracelet. But you know where I was going with that, don't you?
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In the 2000s, the Christian culture can be the WWJD culture. Which does have some merit to it.
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I don't want to totally dismiss everything just because it's trendy and it's evangelical. But my reflex is to dismiss everything that's trendy and evangelical.
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But I don't want to. But I do. I think it's a variation of that thing
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Paul does in Romans. But I sense some sincerity in it.
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But I also sense a significant problem in it. And the significant problem is it is doing the same thing that was done in the 1910s and 20s in liberalism.
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Which is turning Christianity into not just a lifestyle.
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But primarily and essentially a lifestyle. And so Machen starts there.
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And his response is Christianity is first a doctrine. And then it's a lifestyle.
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It's never a doctrine without a lifestyle. In other words, good doctrine will always result in living.
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In what we call ethics. Good doctrine. Orthodox doctrine.
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What is called in the New Testament sound. Which actually is hygienic doctrine.
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Healthy doctrine. Always results in life.
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We could say orthodoxy always results in orthopraxy.
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As is sometimes said. But the order and the necessity of the doctrine is what's at stake.
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Machen puts it this way. Paul was convinced of the objective truth of the gospel message.
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And devotion to that truth was the greatest passion of his life.
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Paul was convinced of the truth of the gospel. Now we're back to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
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And you had to see it there. Some of whom are alive and remain.
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Which is to say, go ask them. These were witnesses.
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We don't have a religion that some guy dug up tablets in his backyard.
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Pulls a screen across. And has a little decoder ring. And interprets the mysterious language of these tablets.
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Of events that quite frankly are unverifiable. Let alone verifiable or not.
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We don't have that in Christianity. We have a concrete religion.
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We have a religion that is based on an event that occurred in space and time. And there were witnesses.
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Carl Henry tells the story of when Carl Barth came to America. This shows you how interesting things are culturally.
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When Carl Barth came to America it was actually a press conference. And as Barth was in America and he was at the press conference.
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Henry was there as a reporter for Christian Today. Went forward and asked him a question.
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I'm sorry, not Carl Barth. I didn't mean Carl Barth. Rudolf Bultmann. I'm sorry, Rudolf Bultmann. A German New Testament scholar.
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So he goes forward and he asks Rudolf Bultmann a question. And he says to him, Herr Professor Bultmann.
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We have the cameras here. NBC and CBS and ABC. Those were the days when there were only three networks. Not like 3 ,000 on satellite.
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There were three networks. We have these cameras here. And if they were there on that Sunday. When Jesus rose from the dead.
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Would they have been able to film it? What Henry was doing was getting at the point of the matter, wasn't it?
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Bultmann was famous for saying things like, It doesn't matter if Jesus rose again in history. The question is, did he rise again in your heart?
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Again with the heart. I don't know what that means. Did he rise again in your heart? Did you have an experience of the resurrection that has reoriented your life?
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That's salvation in Bultmannian terms. The question of the historicity of the resurrection is of no consequence to us.
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Bultmann said. So Henry says, if those cameras were there. Would they have been able to film Jesus walking out of the grave?
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You know what Bultmann did? He swore at him in German. No kidding.
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It's the same word. If you watch Indiana Jones, you know. When he's trying to get the Ark. And he's on the truck.
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And the driver sees him. Same word. Anyway. Sorry. I had to say it.
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And then he says. You're just a fundamentalist.
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Next question. And there's
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Paul. And he was seen. By 500.
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Some of whom. Are alive. And remain. Now if we read on in 1
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Corinthians chapter 15. Which you will. In about 3, 4, 5, or 6 years from now. You'll see what he says.
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If there is not an historical resurrection. Pack it up folks.
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Go home. You have a much better way to spend your Friday night. Because everything we're doing here.
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Is pointless. If it's not. For the historicity. Of the resurrection.
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The Bible. Is primarily. A record. Of. Events. But make no mistake about it.
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That proposition will not go unchallenged. Paul was convinced of the objective truth of the gospel message.
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And devotion to that truth was the greatest passion. Of his life. Christ died.
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That is history. This is Machen. Quote. Christ died. That is history. Christ died.
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For our sins. That. Is doctrine. Without these two elements.
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Joined in an absolutely. Indissoluble union. There is no.
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Christianity. That doctrine. Machen goes on to say.
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Makes all the difference in the world. Which is to say. It is profoundly practical.
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Which is to say. It is. Ethical. It is a lifestyle. But it is doctrine first.
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And it is doctrine always. And it is doctrine that always leads. To a lifestyle.
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What was happening in the 1920s. Was the desire. To have. The example of Jesus.
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Without the atoning death. And victorious resurrection. And ascension.
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And someday bodily. Return. Of Jesus. It was the sermon on the mount.
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Without the rest of the gospels. Even more. It was
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Jesus. As we are going to see later. Machen used to love to say this.
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To get at the liberals. The fairest flower of humanity. See. He could write like a
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Victorian too. If he wanted to. The fairest flower of humanity.
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Or is he the God man? And I'm afraid that it's not just the problem of the 1920s.
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I do think it is a bit of a challenge. Of evangelicalism. In the 21st century.
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That we have turned Christianity. Into a lifestyle. And we have relegated.
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Doctrine. Now. I will also say. That theologians.
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Have some of the blame. I think they have some of the blame. Because they have forgotten that primarily they serve the church.
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They have become a guild that serves themselves. With a vocabulary and a language.
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Usually Latin. That doesn't always communicate. With the people in the pew.
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And so. Theology has become somewhat of a professional discipline. That as the television announcer will tell you.
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Don't try this at home. These are professionals. But there is enough blame to go around.
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Because there is a wide swath of Christians. That simply don't want theology for whatever reason.
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Some of it is intellectual laziness. It's part of our culture.
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But I just don't want to culture bash. It's the idea. That we can have
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Christianity. Without the doctrine. It's the idea that I can just have
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Jesus. As my personal friend. And my bracelet. Reminds me of what
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Jesus would do. And what he wouldn't do. Just like my best friend. With me.
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We have turned Christianity into a lifestyle. Here's one.
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And it's political season. One is it not political season. But we have turned
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Christianity into a political view. And this is true of both the right and the left.
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I did a little book back there. Called Jesus Made in America. And I added a chapter.
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Which was a bit gutsy on my part. Called Jesus on the Right Wing. Looking at Jesus in politics.
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But it's not just the right wing that takes Jesus. In research of that book.
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I came across what remains to this day. One of my favorite book titles. Jesus Rode a Donkey. Now let that sink in.
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The symbol of the democratic party is a donkey. Jesus rode a donkey. Jesus was a democrat. That's the title of the book.
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Or the thesis of the book. I love the title. It's a bad book. Love the title. But how easy is it for us.
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To lasso Jesus. And have him endorse our political ideology.
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And say that's Christianity. When in reality.
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Ethics of Jesus are far too capacious. For any single political party to represent.
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But we do that. We equate and identify Christianity. With a political ideology.
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And to a watching world. They see that. They also see the lifestyle stuff.
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One of my things I came across in research for that book. Was a website called Jesusoftheweek .com
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I don't know if it's still active. I haven't looked at it for a long time. If you were my students. You'd be googling it right now.
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That's what undergrads do. And then they'd be laughing.
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Carrying on. You know what Jesusoftheweek .com is? It's a parody.
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Of stuff we do. With Jesus. And Christianity.
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And the way we market it. And sell it. I found this.
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Kid you not. Nativity rubber duckies. Little baby
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Jesus. As a rubber ducky. The incarnation. At an all time low.
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We have marketed. Christianity. Turn it into a gimmick.
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And a watching world sees that. So we can turn
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Christianity into all kinds of things. We can get
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Jesus' endorsement of our political view. Say that's
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Christianity. We can get Jesus' endorsement of. Say that's
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Christianity. Christianity is first and foremost. And always will be.
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A doctrine. And then that doctrine leads to an ethic. It is dangerous to have a doctrine without an ethic.
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But it is deadly to have an ethic without a doctrine. We never should have to choose between the two.
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But the choice for the church. Must always be doctrine. If it doesn't have doctrine first and foremost.
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The congregation is living on borrowed capital. It's only a matter of time.
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It's only a matter of time. So Machen spends time in his book talking about doctrine. What doctrines does he talk about?
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Well the first doctrine he talks about is God and humanity. And I love that he starts here. Christianity is about not
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God in the abstract. Not God of our own making. Not a domesticated
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God. A tamed God. But the real existence of a personal
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God. Who is above us and transcendent. So here it is in the book.
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Machen says it. The attribute that is absolutely necessary. The one attribute that is absolutely necessary.
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The awful transcendence of God. But this is a transcendent
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God. Who is at once transcendent and knowable.
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Who is at once above us and walked among us.
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The triune God. It blows our minds. And it's what differentiates
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Christianity from every other religion. C .S. Lewis has a great quote.
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I think it's from his book Miracles. He talks about how the God of the pantheists is a great
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God. He's everywhere. You can't really offend him. Endorses everything you do.
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The God of the deist. Great God. He's grandfatherly.
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He's all about love and mercy. But God.
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The warrior. The lover.
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God. The husband. Jealous for his bride.
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Approaching at light speed. Lewis says. Well that's another story altogether.
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I do not wonder. I do not wonder. Lewis says. Why modern man does not want a
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God like that. We have lost this.
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There's no doubt about it. Culturally. We also need to be careful that we don't lose this as a church.
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One of the interesting things about watching culture or understanding culture. Is how easily the church is affected by it without the church knowing it.
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Not too far from me is the mushroom capital of the world.
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Not the drug thing. Real. Just want to clarify. Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
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If you've ever driven through there. Or been around it. You know it. It smells like fungus.
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I have friends who live in Kennett Square. Some of my students come from Kennett Square. You know what they say?
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We don't really notice. How can you not notice. Like fungus grows on your house.
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This mushroom country. Culture is like the atmosphere.
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It's the air we breathe. We don't even recognize it sometimes. And we don't recognize its subtle influences on us.
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And this can be true when it comes to our understanding of who God is. We can be flip with God.
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We can try. This is the classic. We can try to manipulate
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God. This is what non -Christians do all the time.
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They're constantly making deals with God. If you let my mother live God. I'll get my act together.
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If you let my kid pull through this medical situation.
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I'll... And we see right through that stuff. But you know as Christians we do the same thing.
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We think somehow God's a puppet on a string. That we can press the right button.
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We manipulate him to do what we want him to do. We lose sight of the awful transcendence of God.
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I was talking to someone at the break. We were talking about R .C. Sproul. He did not come from Florida.
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He lives in Florida. He comes from Pennsylvania. This is a big difference. He did not come from Florida.
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My statement still sticks. No theologians come out of Florida. Surfers, yes.
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Theologians, no. I think when all is said and done in the 20th century, 21st century.
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He's going to emerge as one of the Machen's. One of the
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Luther's that we talk about. And the book of his that I think is going to do it for him.
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Is holiness of God. All you got to do is read that book. And recognize that no matter where you are on the continuum.
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You would do better to have a higher view of God. Do you understand that?
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No matter where you are. We can always mature in our understanding.
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Of having a higher view. And sense of the awful transcendence.
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And holiness. Otherness of God.
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And of course the flip side of this is the doctrine of humanity. What we view ourselves. And so Machen says the fundamental problem with liberalism.
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When it comes to humanity. Is we have lost a consciousness of sin. The modern church is busy.
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Machen says tongue in cheek. Calling the righteous to repentance. What does salvation look like for good people?
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Okay let's cut a little bit closer to home. When Bill Bright wrote his four spiritual laws.
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His daughter criticized him. In fact there was a rift in the relationship.
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The original version had hell. She had read that. She liked it. Had hell a couple times in it. He floated around to some people.
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They said that's too offensive. Take it out. And then the new version starts off with those words. God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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And she disagreed. And they actually broke their relationship. They since reconciled.
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But at the time they broke the relationship over that. We are sinners.
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Wash me or I die. Period. We don't need medicine.
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We're not sick. We're dead. And we need new life. And as we have a decreased conscious awareness of our sin.
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We necessarily diminish what Jesus did on the cross. And that's what happened in liberalism.
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Jesus becomes an example. I was asked one time to give a talk on Edwards. It was around his birthday.
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To a Presbyterian church. But it was a liberal Presbyterian church. And they found my name. I had done a book on Edwards. They invited me to come and preach.
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And I went and preached. Not well. And I literally had people huff at me.
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Like audibly huff at me. It was strange.
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But before I went, the pastor was on the radio. I heard one of his sermons. And the sermon ended with when
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Jesus died on the cross. He put a smile on God's face. Because he did such a selfless act in giving up his life.
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What are you going to do this week? Are you going to be selfish? Or are you going to be selfless and put a smile on God's face?
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Now though, flip this back to us. Consciousness of sin. Edwards wrote a letter to a young lady in Connecticut.
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He had preached there. And likely she came to Christ. Her name was Deborah Hathaway. Likely she came to Christ under him.
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But there was no pastor of that church. It was in between pastors. And so she wrote a letter to Edwards asking for his advice on how to grow in the
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Christian life. Edwards wrote back to her a 19 -paragraph letter.
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This was in 1742 at the height of the Great Awakening when his congregation went from 500 to 700 plus.
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And he was itinerating all up and down the Connecticut River Valley. And he walks into his study and he writes a 19 -paragraph letter to a teenager that's not even in his church.
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Convicts me. Oh, that convicts me. I don't even like to send back one -sentence emails to my students.
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Leave me alone. Go away. 19 paragraphs.
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And in it he says, never think that you lie low enough for your sins.
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Now, the next paragraph says that Christ's mercy is the mountaintops of Christ's mercy.
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Infinitely over top. The highest mountaintops of your sin.
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So we always have to remember that part. But never, you can never lie low enough for your sin.
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You know the standard joke. In our culture we have put sin onto the dessert menu. The desserts that we have.
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Sinfully delicious. We have reduced sin to its caloric count.
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We have minimized sin culturally. No doubt about it. It was true of Machen's day. It's true of our day.
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The question is, is it true of us? What is our consciousness of sin?
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This idea of having the proper perspective of God and the proper perspective of humanity is so important. Especially in our world.
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We really do live in a world that thinks it doesn't need God anymore. And that we have achieved so many things. I was struck by this.
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Machen wrote a piece called Skyscrapers and Cathedrals. And it was published in McCall's magazine.
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Is that not hilarious? He published an article in McCall's magazine. And in the book he talks about his visit to New York City and going in the
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Empire State Building. And taking the elevator up to the top. And how it was such an experience.
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That was like the thing to do in the 1920s. Go up to New York, ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building.
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And he said, you know, we've done all these great things. But all we've done is lift our bodies.
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We haven't lifted our souls. And then he compares that to the experience of walking into a cathedral.
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A medieval cathedral. And he was in a number of them. And he said, you know, when you walk into a cathedral, you're awed too.
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But it's a totally different experience, isn't it? You're not awed by the achievements of humanity.
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Your eyes are drawn up and up and up and up. And you're awed by the majesty of God. I was struck by this in Chicago.
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On the Miracle Mile at the end of it, of course, is the John Hancock Tower. And the way the
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John Hancock Tower is built, it's sort of an optical illusion. If you stand literally right up against it and look up, because of the way the supports are structured on the outside of the building, it's created as an optical illusion to appear as if it goes on to infinity.
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Or as Buzz Lightyear would say, to infinity and beyond. But it appears that there's no end to this building.
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And it just makes you feel so tiny. But if you turn and go directly across the street, there's a church.
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There's an old Presbyterian church there. Now, it's not a conservative church. It's a theologically liberal church. But it's open during the day.
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You can go into it. It's beautiful. It's a Gothic structure. It's a cathedral. At any other town in America, it would stand out.
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But next to the Hancock Center, it's dwarfed. And you go into that church, and you sit down at the pew, and you look up.
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And you have a totally different experience. But it's the Hancock Center that has captured the attention of our culture.
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The great things that we have done. I'm a
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John Steinbeck fan. He got the Nobel Prize. I know he's written some dumb stuff, but I love his books.
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When he got the Nobel Prize, he was making a point about how Alfred Nobel actually made most of his fortune off of one of his inventions, dynamite, and the irony that a person who dedicated his fortune to peace created this destructive force.
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And Steinbeck, as a writer, picks up on the irony of that. And he talks about how here we are in the 20th century, and we have the power within us to either create or destroy.
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And he says, at the very end of the speech, you can look it up, 1957
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Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he says, we have usurped the powers we had once ascribed to some deity so that now
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St. John may very well be paraphrased. In the beginning was man.
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That's the 20th century view. Philosophically, we could look at a late 19th century text by Nietzsche.
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Nietzsche is sometimes criticized for this statement, God is dead. But you've got to understand, he was launching it against the
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National German Lutheran Church of his day. And you should read the whole thing in context because it's very revealing.
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It's from a piece of his called The Gay Science. And in there he says that a madman has come with his lamp into a church at night.
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And he says, God is dead and we have killed him. And what is this church now but a whited sepulcher?
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Nietzsche was saying the domesticated God of this liberal church is no God worth having.
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And then Nietzsche goes on to say something. He doesn't say, oh, God is dead and he's happy jumping up and down on his grave.
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It's the exact opposite. He says, God is dead and we have killed him. And then he says this. And now night upon perpetual night has overtaken our souls.
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It's God is dead and this is a tragedy. But in 20th century culture, what we did was we do what we're best at.
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God is dead. Entertain me so I don't think about it. We anesthetize ourselves into the words that some of you won't admit to listening to this group in church, but you might.
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We've become comfortably numb. And we allow ourselves to be so entertained that we are simply numb.
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See, your pastor knows. He knows who it was. Comfortably numb to our realities.
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Francis Schaeffer used to talk about pre -evangelism. Before you can say
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Jesus Christ died for your sins, you need to have a few propositions in place in order for that to make sense.
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And the two you have to have in place are proper view of God and who he is and his holiness and his creator and what we owed him and what we did according to Romans 1 and who we are as human beings because of what we did in Romans 1 as we sum it up theologically, totally depraved.
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We can build skyscrapers. We can map the human genome. We can build planes.
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We can conquer space. But we're sinful.
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And unless he washes us, we die. Period. Our time is moving, but very quickly,
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Christ. Let me just read a quick quote to you. Jesus did not invite the confidence of men by a minimizing presentation of what was necessary in order that sinners might stand faultless before the awful throne of God.
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In other words, he didn't preach a watered -down message. On the contrary, he invited confidence by the presentation of his own person.
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Great was the guilt of sin, and that was Jesus' message. But, Machen says,
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Jesus was greater still. Have that mountain view, your sins as high as a mountain as you can conceive, and then
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Jesus' mercy infinitely overtops that. In liberalism, salvation is about doing good.
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It's about having character. It's about having faith. Faith in what? Who knows? It's just faith. In Christianity, sinners need a substitutionary atonement, and it is faith in Christ that saves.
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And the objective truth of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is Paul hammers home in 1
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Corinthians chapter 15. Lastly, Machen talks about the church.
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And I wanted to give this to you because I think this is very important. So I'm just going to sort of throw these out very quickly, and then
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I just want to end with a quote. And if you want to have some questions, we could have a few questions. I know the hour is late.
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Four things Machen says is the duty of the church. You can get these out of the book. But first, the intellectual defense of the faith is the duty of the church.
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The church is not about theological pacifists. I love that line. I live among pacifists, the
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Amish and Mennonite. Church is not about theological pacifists.
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Remember, when the theological paleontologists dig us up, will we have a backbone?
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Will they say they belong to the order of vertebrates? Number two, officers in the church should perform their duty in deciding upon candidates for ministry.
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Ordination vows were not taken seriously in the 1910s and 20s. And liberals got into the pulpits, and liberalism was preached from the pulpit.
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The ordination of officers is one of the most serious things for a church. Number three,
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Christian officers should show their loyalty to Christ in the congregation.
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Now that was very fitting in Machen's day. And then number four, and I love this one, there must be a renewal of Christian education.
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Once you decide the question, doctrine or life, this takes care of itself. If you say Christianity is lifestyle, then education is not necessary.
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Once you say Christianity is a doctrine, education is essential. Luther said it best. Unless we train the next generation, all our efforts are for naught.
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Everything we've just done in this Reformation thing is meaningless unless we train the next generation.
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Well, here's what Machen says about the church, and I'll leave you with this. Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the church to seek refreshment for the soul.
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And what does one find? Alas, too often one finds only the turmoil of the world.
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The preacher comes forward, not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God's Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problems of sin.
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Such is the sermon. Is there no refuge from strife?
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Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life? Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus' name to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the cross?
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If there be such a place, then it is at the house of God and at the gate of heaven. And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world.
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The church is about the gospel, the proclamation of the gospel in the
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Word of God. And isn't this a great quote? Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the church to seek refreshment for the soul.
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And the only refreshment they need, and the only refreshment that will ultimately satisfy, is the refreshment that flows from the gospel.
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That's ultimately why liberalism is not Christianity. Because there is no gospel there.
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And without the gospel, there is no peace. And there is no life. And that's
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Machen. We have a few moments. Is it alright to see if there are any questions?
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You've been so patient, listening to me. I've gladly listened to a question or two from you.
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Don't be shy. Speak up. Ah, there it is.
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Yeah, very similar. Yes, how would I see the split in Machen's time in the 20s and the split in the 60s that eventually led then to the
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Presbyterian Church of America, the PCA, coming out of the church that Machen split from?
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Two things. Number one, the church in the north was more liberal than the church in the south in the 1920s.
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So that southern Presbyterianism had a significant theological conservatism to it.
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And also, those southern Presbyterians tended to be not Federalists.
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They tended to be more local politics. So they tended to just worry what was going on in their
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Presbytery and not what was going on at the General Assembly. In fact, they discarded most of the notions that were handed down from the
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General Assembly. But it got to a point where those southern Presbyterians could no longer do that, and it was really the southern
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Presbyterians in the 1960s that formed the Presbyterian Church of America. So there was a northern -southern piece there.
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But the continuity is, in the 1960s, the church produced what they called the
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Book of Standards. I'm sorry, the Book of Confessions. And in it, what they did was they diminished
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Westminster by throwing in all of these other statements. And so Westminster then became confession alongside of others.
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And so now the church was governed by the Book of Confessions. And what it was was a very not -so -subtle undermining of the standards.
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And that was published in 1967. And that's what was the presenting problem, as psychologists say, that caused the split in 1967.
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So the continuity there is it was doctrinal. But the distinction was there was a northern -southern thing going on in the
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Presbyterian Church. They had united since after the Civil War, but they were still two different cultures.
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And something similar was true with the Southern Baptists and the American Baptists. The American Baptists were very liberal in the 1910s and 20s.
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The Southern Baptists had their battles in the 1960s. So there's a similar sort of thing going on there, too.
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Yes, Pastor? I think he would have been better had he married.
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He had these sort of weird bachelor eccentricities. We all owe everything to our wives, don't we?
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I was an absolute putz until I got married. So we owe everything to our wives.
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Machen should have been married. No, I'm just kidding. This is tricky.
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I will tread lightly here, but I will say it. Machen was a segregationist.
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He wasn't a racist, I don't think. In his mind, he wouldn't consider himself a racist. He was a segregationist.
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His mother was deep South, old money, etc. And I think he wrestled with it, but he was.
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Warfield was not, and Warfield criticized Machen on his views. Warfield tried.
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Warfield was very much not a segregationist. Warfield's maternal grandfather was the vice president of the
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Confederate States of America. So Warfield had a Southern pedigree. But Machen had that sort of Southern segregationalism in him.
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And I think that was a blind spot. I don't think it comes out a whole lot in his writings.
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But I think it did come out in some of the politics that were happening at Princeton. So I think that was a blind spot on Machen.
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As far as other blind spots on Machen go, I think he was very much criticized,
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I think, falsely. He really wasn't about fighting. It's interesting.
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One of the things I read in a letter that was from one of the daughters of one of the faculty at Princeton that was friends with Machen.
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It's in the Princeton archives. And it's a letter that she basically sent to Princeton to just sort of set the record straight.
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She says she has plenty of memories of Machen. He would eat dinner in their home Sunday afternoon many times.
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And she says, I always remember him laughing and telling jokes. And so these caricatures that he was just this mean -spirited, narrow -minded fundamentalist didn't mesh with the experience
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I had. So I think some of those criticisms of him that you'd find from time to time, that he was up for a good fight all the time, really wasn't dispositionally who he was.
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And especially when you look back in the 1910s, he was not looking for a fight.
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This really was thrust upon him, the controversy. Some interaction there.
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Any other questions? Yes. Yeah. Machen is in a category that thinks a little bit differently than the category of writing down the date, time, and the outside temperature of when you came to Christ.
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Machen was in what's sometimes referred to as sort of the catechetical tradition, where you're sort of always surrounded by the gospel.
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Clearly, there is a time when you're not regenerate and then you are regenerate.
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But your consciousness of that may or may not be so acute. So that's pretty much
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Machen's tradition. He doesn't talk about the time that he was converted and he remembers it and he prayed a prayer and he was converted.
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You're not going to find that in Machen. And I think, honestly, sometimes this is hard for Christian families to see.
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You definitely want to know your children are converted and you'd like to be able to say, well, here's the time and I can – and for personally, we like to have that.
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But there's also something to – if you're constantly surrounded by the gospel, you may not have an actual awareness of when that moment occurred.
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And I think that's the category Machen fits into. So I don't really find him talking about that, like an actual time that he was converted.
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And it is a different sort of perspective from those that are used to a – you get the card.
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You put it in your Bible and that's not quite Machen. Yes? Yes, right.
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I didn't talk about that. It's a little complex. I did a book on Machen and I talk about it in the book. So if you buy the book, you'll get the answer.
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Buy two. One at the office, one at home. I think two things.
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I think some of it was blown out of proportion. And what's really fascinating is it's letters he writes home to his mother.
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And two things are going on. One is he gets there and expects these people to have horns. And he finds out that they're actually very pious.
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So that throws him a little bit because he anticipates that these liberal thinkers will just be next to Satan and their activity, their character.
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And it turns out they're very pious. So that throws him a little bit. But in a letter home – this is where everybody makes a big deal out about this.
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He writes some letters home to his mother where he talks about that. And the thing
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I noticed in the correspondence between Machen and his mother is that early on she has a way of –
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I don't want to say blowing things out of proportion. But she has a way of blowing things out of proportion.
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So she writes back to him and sort of gets his goat a little bit.
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Then he writes back to her. And the whole thing sort of gets a little out of hand. And then his dad writes a letter.
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And it's like one paragraph. And then everything is cool. So I think that's some of it that's going on.
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And what Machen is wrestling with, I think, is not so much the faith as what he wants to do with his life.
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And he's also sort of criticizing the way the German liberals were so dismissed without rigorous engagement of them.
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So those are some of the things he's wrestling with in letters to his mom that I think she doesn't – she takes as him just saying,
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I don't want anything to do with the faith of my childhood. When what he's saying to her is, recognize that things are pretty complex.
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And if I'm going to deal with this German liberalism, I have to recognize it for its complexity. I can't just give a
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Sunday school answer to them. And I'm saying that to be smart -alecky. I'm saying that's how Machen writes in the letter.
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She takes that as Machen about ready to jettison his entire Christian upbringing, which really isn't what he's trying to do.
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And so the whole thing just gets ugly. And then, like I say, his dad writes a letter. And it's literally a paragraph.
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And everything is cool. So I think that's where a lot of that comes from. And I do try to deal with it in the book, seriously.
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All right. Well, thanks. I appreciate it. It's been a long night. And I appreciate your – you've been very kind, gracious audience.
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Thank you. Oh, yes, yeah.
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Machen – actually, the last sermon he preached was on the active obedience of Christ.
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Remember I told you he recorded some sermons for WIP in Philadelphia? And the last sermon he preached was on the active obedience of Christ.
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So when he gets to North Dakota and he's dying, he sends a telegraph back to Westminster to his colleague,
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John Murray, theology professor. And he says to him in the telegraph, So thankful for the active obedience of Christ.
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No hope without it. Isn't that great? Let's pray.
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Father God, we do thank you for this night. We thank you for the chance to take a break from our lives, take a break from what's in front of us and our horizon, and step back a little bit and see the life of Machen.
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We thank you not because we see some great man that we can put up on a pedestal and laud and honor, but we thank you for one that we see that threw himself into the midst of a conflict, a conflict that certainly was worth fighting for.
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We thank you for his example of being bold and courageous for the gospel.
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We thank you for his example of valuing scholarship and intellectual defense of the faith.
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We thank you for the real person that we see here, one who does struggle with disappointments and conflict and disillusion.
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And yet we thank you for one who has such a clear -eyed view of you, a clear -eyed view of our dear
01:00:51
Savior Christ, a clear -eyed view of who we are as sinners, at your mercy, as sinners, entirely dependent upon the rich, free grace that you pour out upon us.
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We thank you for his clear -eyed view of the gospel, and we thank you for these final words that he left us with.
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We're so thankful for the active obedience, the life, death, and resurrection of our
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Savior. We know there is no hope without it. We thank you that we are indeed a people with hope.
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May we not be selfish with it. May we proclaim it for your glory.