“In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend. Here, as in many other departments of life, it appears that the things that are sometimes thought to be the hardest to defend are also the things that are most worth defending.” – J. Gresham Machen
The 1922-1923 academic year was a busy one for J. Gresham Machen. Along with his teaching responsibilities, he was also involved in various speaking engagements, Bible studies and writing projects. His publications included two books: New Testament Greek for Beginners and Christianity and Liberalism. Both works remain in print.
The content of Machen’s various addresses included such topics as What is Christianity, The Fundamentals of the Christian Faith and Is Christianity True. These messages would comprise the foundation of his seminal work.
“With Warfield’s passing, and others in the fundamentalist camp consumed with issues of eschatology or revivalism or cultural issues such as Prohibition, it fell to Machen to offer the scholarly defense of Christianity,” explains Dr. Stephen J. Nichols.
The theological liberals of Machen’s day argued that Christianity needed to adapt to modern times or it would find itself out of step. In other words, the Gospel would not be in conformity with the prevailing worldview of life and living. Things have not changed much in a hundred years.
One such liberal, Professor Shailer Matthews in his book The Faith of Modernism, wrote that the doctrine of Jesus Christ as the God-Man must no longer be believed. Other biblical doctrines that were to be rejected included the substitutionary atonement of Christ.
While there were many other individuals and institutions opposed to biblical Christianity at this time, none was as prominent as Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969). Born in Buffalo, New York, Fosdick graduated from Colgate University in 1900 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1904. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York City. He served in several churches and ministries until he became the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Manhattan in 1918. Fosdick was not only a charismatic personality, but he also had the support of America’s richest man, John D. Rockefeller.
In May 1922, Fosdick preached the sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win in which he supported the theological liberal modernist position. He rejected the virgin birth of Christ as truth and consequently the deity of Christ. He rejected the orthodox and biblical Gospel. He did not believe the Bible to be the literal Word of God.
“He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. Fundamentalists regarded this as rank apostasy, and the battle-lines were drawn,” writes one historian.
Fosdick’s Christianity is best summarized by Christian ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962). In his book The Kingdom of God in America (1937) Niebuhr criticized the liberal social gospel. He described its message as “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
Machen loved biblical doctrine. He loved the truth of God’s Word and the biblical God of truth. He could not sit idly by while apostasy was proclaimed. He summarized his orthodox thoughts in Christianity and Liberalism. A survey examination of Machen’s book will be our focus in the articles to follow.
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 