Part 1: The Focus of Machen’s Efforts
Friends,
Over the course of the next several weeks, my editor, Laura Terrell, and I will be writing a series of blog posts entitled The Gospel and Postmodern Substitutes. Each of these blogs will provide a piece of historical analysis and assessment of the American Church’s reaction to the culture over the past two centuries.
As it concerns my forthcoming book on J. Gresham Machen’s life and influence, each of these blogs will build upon each other, in order to form a coherent word of application for our present cultural climate, with a direct connection to those who have come before us. Additionally, this blog series will coalesce into the final chapter of The Life I Now Live: Continuing Machen’s Historic Battle for the Gospel.(1)
The Focus of Machen’s Efforts
As we now begin to consider the application of Machen’s life and influence upon our own day and age, I want to turn our attention first to the focus of Machen’s gospel-oriented efforts.
For those who are currently unfamiliar with John Gresham Machen, he served as a Reformed, Presbyterian pastor in the early twentieth century in Princeton, NJ. He was one of the most prolific and influential writers and pastors of the 1920s and 1930s. He taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, in the ranks of highly esteemed men like Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Francis Patton, and Geerhardus Vos. His colleagues and protégés included such men as John Murray, Cornelius Van Til, and Ned B. Stonehouse. Additionally, Machen was the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary (1929), the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1936), and organizer of the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions (1933). He was a renowned preacher and scholar. His communication is marked by clarity, with a great deal of simplicity. His desire was for the average church member to understand his message, while never losing sight of the treasure house that is “The Whole Counsel of God.”(2)
We must never lose sight of the treasure house that is “The Whole Counsel of God.”
Over the course of his preaching and teaching ministry, Machen wrote a myriad of scholarly works, in addition to writings for the church. However, the focus of Machen’s efforts were, holistically-speaking, for the building up of Christ’s Church (cf. Eph 4:10–11). Scores of his shorter works can be found in D.G. Hart’s anthological book, Selected Shorter Writings.(3) Copies of his sermons, radio addresses, and lectures can be found as well, all of which contain a broad-reaching scope of Machen’s theological interests.
However, there stands before us—nearly a whole century removed from his lifetime—a common thread running throughout the message of his works. It is the heart of the gospel: the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20). Machen’s primary concern, therefore, was for the integrity of this gospel message—Christ’s historic, substitutionary, atoning death and bodily resurrection for the salvation of his people from their sins.
In his pastoral and theological efforts, Machen operated with a high degree of intentionality. And though he lived a relatively short life (d. Jan 1, 1937) and was himself a lifelong bachelor, his unashamed, decided message was that gospel integrity was worth protecting against the Protestant Church’s growing number of counterfeits. The Bible’s teachings concerning the fundamentals of the Christian faith were not to be sacrificed upon the altars of cultural accommodation or alluring academic interests or socially progressive ideations.
Machen’s efforts were not isolated from the conversation of his day. One of the underlying questions of early 1920s and ‘30s was the following: Does Christianity exist as the enemy of Social Progress?
“Does Christianity exist as the enemy of Social Progress?”
This question echoed throughout the hallways of academic institutions, the local coffeeshop and gathering place, and into the precious sanctuaries of Protestant churches throughout America. After all, the traditional, historic faith clung to supernatural matters concerning Jesus’s virgin birth, miraculous healings, resurrection from the dead, and eschatological return in power and glory, let alone his divinity itself. Modernity, fresh off the heals of Post-Enlightenment philosophies, rejected such claims on the basis of their supernaturalistic presuppositions. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were therefore the a prime target of Modernism’s epistemological inquisition.
The following were conversation starters of the day:
Does Christianity then oppose the advance of science?
Does it hold a pessimistic view of human nature?
Is it inimical to social progress due to its focus upon the individual?
It Christianity merely doctrinal and not practical?
To each of these questions, Machen answered with a resounding “No!” In detailed reply, he stated the following:
“We [who hold to the historic faith] maintain that far from being inimical to social progress, “Fundamentalism” (in the broad, popular sense of the word) is the only means of checking the spiritual decadence of our age… The process of decadence has been going on apace, and it is high time to seek a way of rescue if mankind is to be saved from the abyss. Such a way of rescue is provided by the Christian religion, with its supernatural origin and supernatural power. It is a great mistake to represent us who are adherents of historic Christianity as though we had no message of hope. On the contrary, our eyes are turned eagerly to the future. We are seeking no mere continuation of spiritual conditions that now exist but an outburst of new power; we are looking for a mighty revival of the Christian religion which like the Reformation of the sixteenth century will bring light and liberty to mankind. When such a revival comes, it will destroy no fine or unselfish or noble thing; it will hasten and not hinder the relief of the physical distress of men and the impoverishment of conditions in this world. But it will do far more than all that. It will also descend into the depths—those depths into which utilitarianism can never enter—and will again bring mankind into the glorious liberty of communion with the living God.”(4)
Friends, may we, like Machen hold fast to this historic faith once delivered to the saints!
For Christ and his kingdom of grace,
- Rich
Footnotes:
If you are interested in reading the scholarly articles which form the body of the book in advance, you can find these on my publisher’s website: logcollegepress.com.
“Πασα η βουλη του θεου,” Greek for “The Whole Counsel of God,” is the motto of Westminster Theological Seminary.
D. G. Hart, Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004).
J. Gresham Machen, “Does Fundamentalism Obstruct Social Progress?” in D. G. Hart, Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004), 115.
