Even
as far back as 1918 there were concerns with modernism in the
Presbyterian church and other Protestant churches. The 90 essays that
make up the 12 volume work The
Fundamentals (from
which the word fundamentalist is said to be drawn) had been published
in the period 1910-1915 as a clarion call in defence of orthodox
Protestant beliefs, attacking higher criticism, liberal theology and
geological evolution, among other things.
In
his letter of December 28 1918 Machen says to his mother (243)
“If
my conscience were quite at rest on the matter of principle, upon
which Dr Stevenson and I differ so widely, I should be happy now.”
Dr
J Ross Stevenson was principal of Princeton and the reference is to
curriculum changes that were to put less emphasis on the biblical
languages and apparently on the Calvinism in which the seminary had
been steeped. The problems at Princeton can in many ways be dated
from this curriculum change.
Some
of what Machen had to say about Stevenson was removed from the
letters but he wrongly assumed that in his YMCA role Stevenson had
prevented or delayed his involvement in the religious work in France,
In fact it was Dr Henry King who had him moved to Paris as some had
complained that Machen's sermons were “too long and too deep”.
Waugh
comments that at this time Machen was able to come to peace of mind
with regard to Stevenson but “his assessment of the situation with
Dr Stevenson would change over the course of the next decade”.
(317).
What
happened, as we have intimated, was that there was a series of
battles between so called modernists and fundamentalists with the
moderates between them also having quite an important impact. Machen
was the focus of much of the controversy.
In
1922 Liberal Baptist Henry Emerson Fosdick, supplying First
Presbyterian Church, New York preached a notorious sermon called
Shall
the Fundamentalists Win? The
sermon has been cited as “the signal for a new and public outbreak
of the conflict between the forces of historic Christianity and
modern liberalism within the Presbyterian Church in the USA.”
(Rian, Presbyterian
Conflict,
17). Long before, before Machen
had returned from France, Fosdick had published a strongly
unbelieving article entitled The
Trenches and the Church at Home
in the Atlantic
Monthly for
January 1919. Attacking biblical Christianity he declared that the
church had lost the soldiers because it proclaimed a negative
religion of outmoded doctrines that failed to measure up to their
self-sacrifice at the front. “The only use of the church is to
gather up humanity's best,” he declared, to unite people in common
cause of progressive social aims.
Machen
probably knew of Fosdick's article when he addressed the Princeton
alumni on May 6, 1919, on The
Church in the War.
He declared that the church had failed in the war because it had
abandoned the reality of sin, the gospel of personal salvation and
the sanctified life. He wrote, “One
drop of the precious blood of Jesus is worth more, as a ground for
the hope of the world, than all the rivers of blood which have flowed
upon the battlefields of France”. It was not merely a matter of
learning more about Jesus but of believing in his divine holiness as
distinct from our sinfulness. The
self-satisfaction argument declared that the soldiers' sacrifice kept
God happy, since the Germans were the real sinners in the war and the
Allies had won a great victory by their stupendous efforts.
For
Machen
The roots of modern self-satisfaction lie far deeper than the war. During the past century a profound spiritual change has been produced in the whole thought and life of the world - no less a change than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant principle of life.
He
defined paganism as “a healthy and harmonious and joyous
development of existing human faculties” which is the opposite of
Christianity, the “religion of the broken heart”. For the
Christian, it is only after repentance that joy comes in being the
Lord's steward in all of life.
Some
time later in 1924 he wrote similarly
At this point we find the most fundamental divergence between modernism and the Christian faith; the modernist assertion that doctrine springs from life, and may be translated back into the life from which it came, really involves the relinquishment of all objective truth in the sphere of religion. If a thing is merely useful it may cease to be useful in another generation; but if it is true, it remains true to the end of time. ... It makes little difference how much or how little of Christian doctrine the modernist affirms since whatever he affirms, he affirms as a mere expression of an inner experience, and does not affirm any of it as fact.
Machen's
great ability was to see liberalism not as a variant form of the
gospel but as another religion altogether. This he brought out in his
book Christianity
and liberalism.
The book began as an article in 1921 and was published in 1923. “The
author is convinced” wrote Machen “that liberalism on the one
hand and the religion of the historic church on the other are not two
varieties of the same religion, but two distinct religions proceeding
from altogether separate roots.”
Machen's
last address to the Princeton students was on fighting the good
fight. He said
You will have a battle ... when you go forth as ministers into the church. The church is now in a period of deadly conflict. The redemptive religion known as Christianity is contending, in our own Presbyterian Church and in all the larger churches in the world, against a totally alien type of religion. As always, the enemy conceals his most dangerous assaults under pious phrases and half truths. The shibboleths of the adversary have sometimes a very deceptive sound. "Let us propagate Christianity," the adversary says, "but let us not always be engaged in arguing in defence of it; let us make our preaching positive, and not negative; let us avoid controversy; let us hold to a Person and not to dogma; let us sink small doctrinal differences and seek the unity of the church of Christ; let us drop doctrinal accretions and interpret Christ for ourselves; let us look for our knowledge of Christ in our hearts; let us not impose Western creeds on the Eastern mind; let us be tolerant of opposing views." Such are some of the shibboleths of that agnostic Modernism which is the deadliest enemy of the Christian religion today. They deceive some of God's people some of the time; they are heard sometimes from the lips of good Christian people, who have not the slightest inkling of what they mean. But their true meaning, to thinking men, is becoming increasingly clear. Increasingly it is becoming necessary for a man to decide whether he is going to stand or not … If you decide to stand for Christ, you will not have an easy life in the ministry.
He
also says
I do not think that we shall obtain courage by any mere lust of conflict. In some battles that means may perhaps suffice. Soldiers in bayonet practice were sometimes, and for all I know still are, taught to give a shout when they thrust their bayonets at imaginary enemies; I heard them doing it even long after the armistice in France. That serves, I suppose, to overcome the natural inhibition of civilized man against sticking a knife into human bodies. It is thought to develop the proper spirit of conflict. Perhaps it may be necessary in some kinds of war. But it will hardly serve in this Christian conflict. In this conflict I do not think we can be good fighters simply by being resolved to fight. For this battle is a battle of love; and nothing ruins a man’s service in it so much as a spirit of hate. No, if we want to learn the secret of this warfare, we shall have to look deeper; and we can hardly do better than turn again to that great fighter, the Apostle Paul. ...
And
Where are you going to stand in the great battle which now rages in the church? Are you going to curry favor with the world by standing aloof; are you going to be “conservative liberals” or “liberal conservatives” or “Christians who do not believe in controversy,” or anything else so self-contradictory and absurd? Are you going to be Christians, but not Christians overmuch? Are you going to stand coldly aloof when God’s people fight against ecclesiastical tyranny at home and abroad? Are you going to excuse yourselves by pointing out personal defects in those who contend for the faith today? Are you going to be disloyal to Christ in external testimony until you can make all well within your own soul? Be assured, you will never accomplish your purpose if you adopt such a program as that. Witness bravely to the truth that you already understand, and more will be given you; but make common cause with those who deny or ignore the gospel of Christ, and the enemy will forever run riot in your life.
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