Lessons to Learn from Christianity and Liberalism a Century Later

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This year marks the 100th anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s famous, and probably one of the most important theological books of the past century, Christianity and Liberalism.[1] The book’s significance cannot be overstated and its larger impact on the modernist-fundamentalist debates, along with the rise of evangelicalism in the twentieth century is incalculable. Numerous reasons could be given for the book’s importance, but I will mention only three.

1. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, New Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).

Three Reasons to Remember Christianity & Liberalism

First, in Christianity and Liberalism, Machen masterfully and correctly distinguishes true, orthodox Christianity from its counterfeit known as “classic liberal theology.” Due to the cultural, philosophical, and religious impact of the Enlightenment on society and the later embrace of the Darwinian theory of macroevolution, some within the church sought to recast Christianity to “fit” and “conform” to the current thought of the day. Convinced that Christianity could not survive unless it embraced the “spirit of the age,” which meant for these people that Christian theology had to reject its own starting points and authority structure grounded in God and his revelation. Thus, instead of starting with the triune God who is there and who has spoken infallibly and authoritatively in Scripture, theological liberalism continued to use the language of Scripture but divorced from its theological grounding. The result of this attempt to correlate the Bible with contemporary thought (which functioned as the authoritative grid by which we read Scripture) was not the “saving” of Christianity or even making it “relevant” to its cultured despisers, but its ultimate destruction. Instead, of faithfully expounding and applying Scripture to the present day, classic liberalism constructed a different religion of its own making that had no resemblance to historic Christianity. They continued to use biblical language, but they hollowed out its biblical meaning and significance. No doubt, Machen was not the first to sound the alarm that theological liberalism was not Christianity, but his book was certainly one of the most significant works to remind the Church of this crucial point.

Second, in Christianity and Liberalism, Machen reminds us that God’s glory and the truth of Scripture demands a loving confrontation of the church against all error that seeks to undermine the truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There comes a time when people who claim to be Christians have so departed from the truth of God’s Word that separation and division is inevitable. We ought to seek the unity of the church, but not when the truth of Scripture and the gospel is at stake. We no longer have unity when biblical truth is either redefined, undermined, or rejected. Machen knew this well. As a result of his stand against the drift towards theological liberalism within the Presbyterian church, he was instrumental in founding a new seminary (Westminster Theological Seminary) and a new denomination (the Orthodox Presbyterian Church). None of these decisions were easy for him to make, but Machen knew that in order to honor God, his Word, and glory of Christ, truth required confrontation against error, and even separation from those who identified as Christians.

For the evangelical church today, this is a lesson we must learn from Machen. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the battle was over the authority of Scripture and the objective truth of historic Christianity over against classic liberalism. Classic liberalism rejected the supernatural triune God of Scripture, the pervasive nature of human sin and depravity, and the only saving hope for humans in the finished work of the divine Son who assumed our human nature in order to perfectly obey for us in his life, and by his death pay for our sins to secure our justification before God. In contrast to the theological liberalism of his day, Machen knew that Christianity was not simply about doing good for our fellow humans and thus seeing “kingdom” progress in this world. Instead, first and foremost, Christianity is about what the true and living God has done to take the initiative to save sinners in and through Christ alone. It is about what the triune God has done to establish his church, which no doubt impacts the world. But the first things of the gospel must come first so that Christianity is not turned into a liberal social program, and not what it truly is: what God has done to save sinners from their sin.

Of course, this raises the question of our day. The specific form of theological liberalism that Machen stood against may no longer be with us, but the need to stand against error and all that opposes the truth of Scripture is perennial. On every side, the evangelical church is floundering as it accommodates to the current Zeitgeist, whether regarding the present sexual revolution that demands we change our biblical convictions, or in our redefinitions of God, humans, sin, Christ, salvation, and so on. Even the issue related to female pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention is tied to larger issues of Scripture, interpretation, and biblical authority. What Machen teaches us, therefore, is that we must recognize today where the battle rages and to lovingly confront error based on the truth of God’s Word.

Third, in Christianity and Liberalism, Machen not only speaks against the error of his day but also positively expounds and defends the truth of Scripture and Christian theology. Machen’s rejection of theological liberalism meant that he had to put historic Christianity in its place, hence his concern for theological education and the establishment of faithful churches who would join to form a new denomination. Machen knew that it was not enough to reject error; he also knew that he had to ground the church in the truth of the whole counsel of God. This too is a lesson that the evangelical church must learn today. Poll after poll reminds us that those who identify with the evangelical church know less about Scripture and sound theology. Not surprisingly, the evangelical church is having difficulty discerning what is error and what belongs to the “spirit of the age” because she is not grounded in the truth of Scripture.

Christianity and Liberalism at Christ Over All

Although many more reasons could be given for the significance of Machen’s book, these reasons are sufficient to warrant further investigation of it. This is why Christ Over All is devoting the month of June to introduce our readers to this important work of theology and apologetics. For the entire month, we are devoting our long form and concise articles to describing who J. Gresham Machen was, the context in which he wrote, how he came to write Christianity and Liberalism, and its significance for the evangelical church.

Specifically, we want to describe each of its seven chapters and demonstrate why this book has continuing relevance for us today. As the adage goes: if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat its mistakes. This is especially true of Machen and this book. Machen has a lot to teach us, and we have a lot to learn from him, and we ignore him and the arguments of this book to our own peril.

In the remainder of this article, I will focus on the first chapter, which serves as the introduction to the book, while other articles will focus on the remaining chapters.

Doctrine: The Place Machen Begins Christianity & Liberalism

Machen begins by saying that the purpose of the book is “not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible, in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself” (1). In other words, Machen’s purpose is not to discuss and resolve all the differences between Christianity and classic liberalism; instead, it is to clearly demonstrate that those who identify as “theological liberals” are not Christian. What we must first perceive is that historic Christianity is an altogether different religion than the new theology that is being taught and embraced by many in Machen’s day. Although theological liberals appeal to biblical language and talk about the Bible, God, humans, sin, Christ, salvation, and the church, the use of these concepts is both fundamentally different and opposed to how these same concepts are used in historic Christian theology.

For example, Christianity is supernatural from beginning to end, because it begins and ends with the triune God who is the Creator and Lord of all things. But theological liberalism is not supernatural; instead, it is naturalistic and rejects the biblical teaching and outworking of the Creator-creature distinction (2). This does not mean that liberalism necessarily denies “God’s” existence. Instead, what they deny is the God of the Bible who is completely independent and self-sufficient. For them, that type of God is a relic of a by-gone era, more indebted to Greek philosophy than to “modern” evolutionary conceptions of God. They reject the biblical teaching that God, due to his own sovereign initiative, chooses to create the world ex nihilo, and presently rules and governs all things, as well as supernaturally acts in the world, to bring about his eternal plan for the world. Such a view of God is what liberalism rejects and instead substitutes the biblical God for one who cannot supernaturally act.

When did this “new” view arise? Machen perceptively notes that theological liberalism did “not come by chance, but has been occasioned by important changes which have recently taken place in the conditions of life” (2). In other words, theological liberalism did not merely pop on the scene out of nowhere. Instead, it is rooted in ideas that go back to the Enlightenment, which witnessed seismic epistemological and scientific shifts away from a Christian view of the world. In the place of Christianity, an alien worldview was embraced grounded in human autonomy and a methodological naturalistic view of the God-world relationship. None of these shifts were necessary, but for several reasons, including the truth of human sin that seeks to stand in opposition to God and his revelation, these shifts occurred, which impacted the mindset and thinking of an entire culture.

What was the result of this embrace of current thought antithetical to Scripture? In relation to Christian theology, it resulted in its redefinition. If the current secular, naturalistic view is embraced as the epistemological and metaphysical given, then all of life must be interpreted considering it, including historic Christianity. For this reason, theological liberalism sought to correlate the Bible with what they took as the “givenness” of current thought, which required a reinterpretation of Christianity. This was clearly evident in how liberalism viewed God’s supernatural activity in history. Since they rejected from the outset that God miraculously acts in history, then the Bible’s account of the supernatural Jesus in the Gospels must be rejected. In place of the Jesus of the Bible, they substituted a fictitious “Jesus of history” who is not the divine Son, but a constructed figure from their historical-critical methodology, who in the end, is nothing more than a human Jesus, a natural man who is only quantitatively greater than the rest of us, but certainly not God the Son incarnate.

However, in making the Bible “fit” with their worldview consistent with “modern” thought, classic liberalism created a new religion, which was completely antithetical to historic Christianity. And it is this point that Machen wants to drive home in his book. He does not want the church to be fooled by the rhetoric and language of liberalism because in the end, this “new” form of Christianity is not true Christianity. On this point, Machen has a lot to teach us.

Although our day is different, we must always be vigilant and on guard that the same attitude that sought to accommodate Christianity to the thought of his day is still with us. The desire to not offend anyone with the truth of Scripture and to adapt to current thought remains an all-too-common feature among evangelicals. Machen reminds us that the perennial need for the church is to remain on guard, steadfast in defending the truth, and vigilant in helping the church to recognize how easy it is to accommodate to the cultural mindset of our day.

But there is one last point that Machen makes in his introduction that we must not miss. Machen’s goal is not simply to demonstrate that Christianity is not liberalism or that these two views are incommensurable. He also wants to demonstrate that this “new” form of Christianity has come at a price. Liberalism is not only antithetical to Christianity; it also cannot substantiate itself. As Machen notes, this “new” view “is based upon a grossly exaggerated estimate of the achievements of modern science,” (8) and in the end, it does not provide the foundation to account for the world and especially the spiritual state of humans.

In fact, ironically, this new view has not led to human flourishing but the opposite. Machen does not develop this point in detail, but he notes that in the realm of art, literature, and education, the modern world has led to a denial of human dignity and liberty, and in its place is witnessing the growing rise of totalitarianism as exhibited in communism, socialism, and the growing power of the State (8–13). One can only imagine what Machen would have said, if he had witnessed further the rise of Hitler’s Germany, and the destruction of humans in the late twentieth century by Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot, and the increasing push towards globalism and centralized power in the twenty-first.

Importantly for Machen, the only hope for America and the West, let alone the world, is a return to Christianity as that which alone brings salvation before God, along with societal benefit. But Machen is clear: the Christianity that the church must embrace, proclaim, and defend, and the Christianity that alone can bring secondary blessings to the world in terms of common grace is not the Christianity of the “modern liberal Church” (13). The Christianity that is needed is historic Christianity, rooted and grounded in the authority of Scripture, which proclaims “a message of divine grace” centered on the glory of the triune God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. Anything less is not Christianity, and anything less will offer nothing to this poor, lost world that stands under sin and condemnation.

Machen’s Clarion Call Still Sounds

Although Christianity and Liberalism was written a century ago, its trumpet blast resounds to our day. It does so not because of the brilliance of Machen, but because Machen faithfully called the church in his day to build their lives on the authority of God’s word. For us today, we need to heed his call to stand for the truth of Scripture. We need to stand against the mindset of fallen humans who build their lives on sinking sand away from God’s grace and his Word. Machen calls the church today to build her life on the solid rock of Scripture and the truth of the gospel, which alone is sufficient for the knowledge of God, life, and godliness centered in the gospel of his sovereign grace in Christ Jesus our Lord.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author

  • Stephen Wellum

    Stephen Wellum is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his MDiv and PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of numerous essays, articles, and books. He is also the co-author with Peter Gentry of Kingdom through Covenant, 2nd edition (Crossway, 2012, 2018) and the author of God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Crossway, 2016).

Stephen Wellum

Stephen Wellum

Stephen Wellum is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He received his MDiv and PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of numerous essays, articles, and books. He is also the co-author with Peter Gentry of Kingdom through Covenant, 2nd edition (Crossway, 2012, 2018) and the author of God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of the Person of Christ (Crossway, 2016).