MR VALIANT FOR TRUTH: J GRESHAM MACHEN

John Gresham Machen (1881-1937) remains one of the key figures in the history of the Christian Church this century. He is known especially for his high level of biblical scholarship and undying zeal in defending the Christian faith. A number of his books are invariably polemic in nature, namely, his first, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (1921), the highly acclaimed, Christianity and Liberalism (1923), and the classic, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930).

Machen lived in a time when modernism was at its height. He could not but react against the modernists who attacked the Bible and his Lord. Machen, for the sake of the purity of the gospel, took upon himself the responsibility of chief spokesman for conservative evangelical Christianity. He wrote convincingly against modernism in Christianity and Liberalism. Ned B Stonehouse described the effects of this book, “Defining the issue of the day more incisively than any other publication, it made a profound impression on all sections of the religious world. Thousands of copies were sold within a year. While the book on Paul established Machen’s reputation as a scholarly defender of historic Christianity, this smaller volume catapulted him into the area of ecclesiastical and religious life where the broader controversy between Christianity and modernism was being fought.”

Machen was so vehement in his attack on modernism that he was charged with bitterness, intolerance, and bigotry. Stonehouse said, “It is perhaps, inevitable that such charges should be leveled against any one so valiant and uncompromising in his defense of the faith and exposure of current error.” Indeed, Machen regarded modernism “as another gospel, not really a gospel at all. But if its advocates had merely associated themselves in organizations committed to their own liberal views, he would not have been profoundly disturbed. It was, however, their presence in churches constitutionally committed to the very historic Christianity which they were repudiating which compelled Machen to conclude that a most fundamental issue of the controversy was that of dishonesty.” Such hypocrisy and deception Machen could not tolerate. He made it a point to expose them so that the church might be alerted to the dangers of their double-talk. In the 1924 “Auburn Affirmation,” 1,274 Presbyterian ministers declared that it was not necessary to believe as fact the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the miracles and the resurrection of Christ. These five fundamentals of the Christian faith, they declared, were “theories”. Upon reading the “Affirmation,” Machen wasted no time in denouncing it as a thing most deplorable.

Machen was not a man to let such a serious attack on the historic Christian faith pass without being challenged. He wrote a formal letter of protest. Section III of his Counter-Affirmation states, “In Section IV of the Affirmation, the five points covered the pronouncement of the General Assembly of 1923 are declared to be ‘theories.’ This means that the Scriptures allow the Virgin Birth, for example, and the bodily resurrection of our Lord to be regarded as facts and not as facts. We protest against any such opinion. The redemptive events mentioned in the pronouncement of the Assembly are not theories but facts upon which Christianity is based, and without which Christianity would fall.”

Machen’s separation from the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA) was inevitable. Machen, in his article, “The Parting of the Ways,” which appeared shortly after the “Affirmation” said, “The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America has apparently come to the parting of the ways. It may stand for Christ, or it may stand against him, but it can hardly halt between two opinions. … We do not wish to split the church; on the contrary we are working for the unity of the church with all our might. But in order that there should be sharp separation of the church from the world, the carrying out of that separation is a prime duty of the hour.”

The modernist versus fundamentalist controversy in the PCUSA invariably affected Princeton Theological Seminary. The modernists became increasingly influential in the Seminary and soon gained the upperhand in the Board and Faculty. Machen, in a letter to F E Robinson, President of the Bryan University Memorial Association, wrote of the distressing situation at Princeton, “Princeton Theological Seminary for a hundred years, and never more successful than now, has been defending and propagating the gospel of Christ. It is now passing through a great crisis…. If the proposed abrogation of the whole constitution of the Seminary and the proposed dissolution of the present Board of Directors is finally carried out, if in other words, the control of the Seminary passes into entirely different hands—then Princeton Theological Seminary as it has been so long and so honorably known, will be dead, and we shall have at Princeton a new institution of a radically different type.”

Machen fought untiringly to save Princeton, but the situation was hopeless. When the old Board of Directors was being replaced by a new modernistic one, he resigned from the Seminary, and founded Westminster Theological Seminary.

We must pay tribute to Machen who was called “Mr Valiant-for-Truth” by his contemporaries. The Reverend T H Lipscomb testified, “We recall, as we think of him, Bunyan’s Valiant for Truth, … and having heard many of the ablest scholars of Europe and America, we affirmed frankly and sincerely that we know of no man in any church so eminently qualified to fill a chair of ‘Apologetics and Christian Ethics,’ provided you want the chair filled, the Christian faith really defended, and Christian ethics elucidated and lived. For, let me add that Dr. Machen is a humble saint, as well as a rare scholar, not a ‘saint of the world,’ who stands for nothing and against nothing, but a saint of God who loves truth, seeks truth, finds truth, and upholds truth against all adversaries, however mighty.”

His godly mother was especially proud of him. She said, “I feel that ‘life with all it has of joy and pain’ is well worth while to have a son who is a Defender of the Faith!” May the church today be able to say this of her sons. [Jeffrey Khoo, Biblical Separation (Singapore: FEBC Press, 1999), 79-81. Permission has been granted to the Rev Dr Morris McDonald to publish the above article for the synod meeting of the Bible Presbyterian Church USA, August 6-11, 2015.]

THE GETHSEMANE CARE MINISTRY

The Gethsemane Care Ministry (TGCM) is a ministry of Gethsemane Bible-Presbyterian Church under the Rev Dr Prabhudas Koshy. TGCM aims to help former drug addicts and offenders of the law to be restored and integrated into society through the gospel of Christ and the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures. As part of their rehabilitation programme, TGCM gets the residents involved in meaningful and gainful work by providing removal, transportation, cleaning and painting services, TGCM has recently introduced a printing service (of mugs and t-shirts).

Our fellowship groups can take advantage of this printing service especially if they intend to make anniversary souvenirs or camp t-shirts. Write to them at tgcmprinting @gmail.com or call Roy Lee at 92264951 or Jerah Tan 93372337 for more information. TGCM is worthy of our support.