Enjoy this conversation on Christianity & Liberalism with my friends and as we dicuss our recent series of articles and seek to help the listener defend the true faith in an age of falsehoods.

We pray this helps you continue to reform your thinking according to the Scriptures, especially when liberalism comes to town.

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Over the course of October, our church has been in a sermon series exploring true worship according to the Bible, a central issue in the Protestant Reformation.

I sat down with Paul Kuttig, my friend and co-elder at Cornerstone Bible Church, to discuss this crucial topic and equip Christians with what they need to understand how worship affects every aspect of life and to prepare our hearts for what is primary: weekly corporate worship.

We pray this conversation blesses you, and please feel free to share!

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Dear Failure,

I sometimes deny Jesus. You do too.

Maybe not with our words, but certainly with our actions.

Our sin calls God’s truth into question, leading us to accept the lie that what our flesh or this world is offering us is better than Christ. In other words, we deny Jesus.

This reality can burden true disciples with guilt; it causes us to run and hide behind the supposed success of our self-improvement project through outward obedience. What’s more, we fall into unbelief. I know amid my failures, I’ve denied God’s faithfulness, wondering if he’ll ultimately let go of me.

Those times revealed that I forgot an aspect of the good news: someone is constantly praying for me.

The Failure We Often Relate To

One of Jesus’ earliest followers, Simon Peter, failed His Savior by denying Him, not once, not twice, but three times. Before He did, Jesus said these words, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31–32).

After Peter denied His Lord, Jesus restored him, making good on His promise and showcasing that His prayer indeed was answered. But think of it, Jesus prayed for Peter.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus is doing right now? We know He’s seated at the Father’s right hand, but what is He doing there?

Hebrews gives us the answer: “He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). It turns out Jesus’ prayer for Peter on earth only foreshadowed the ongoing ministry He would undertake in heaven.

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He Intercedes: The Most Neglected Doctrine

The fact that Jesus always prays for His elect people is rooted, not in some arbitrary activity He has chosen to undertake, but in who He is as our mediator.

The Second London Confession sums it up this way, “This office of mediator between God and humanity is appropriate for Christ alone, who is the prophet, priest, and king of the church of God.” (Emphasis mine)

The Old Princeton Dutch Theologian Geerhardus Vos helped me understand this priestly role more deeply. Vos summarizes the intercession of Christ this way:

“It is the steadfast will of the Mediator by which He presents His satisfaction to the Father and keeps it in His remembrance, and by which He claims its particular application for all the members of His body.”

Intercession, then, is to stand between two opposing parties and plead on behalf of another, as Priests did for Israel in the Old Testament. Vos points out that the heavenly intercession of Christ does not mean that the Father somehow forgets Christ’s atonement or is perpetually angry at us and needs His Son’s prayers to keep His wrath at bay. Rather, it is simply the present application of the redemption already accomplished in history.

God the Father and God the Son mutually agree as they pour out love to the saints through the Holy Spirit. Christ stands before the Father praying which is the continual confirmation that satisfaction for sins has been made and His promises have been fulfilled. Additionally, He stands before the Father pleading that our “faith would not fail” (Luke 22:32), that is, we will not ultimately fall away.

He Intercedes: What Does it Mean For Failures Like Us?

Because Jesus is praying for you…

1. God continually accepts you

Christ’s prayers for you give you an ironclad defense against the condemning words of the accuser. Amid your sin, the Father’s heart has never grown cold toward you. Your union with Christ does not ebb and flow based on your performance. Yes, the Father looks at you and still sees His own Son.

This causes our hearts to respond with gratitude, go to him in constant prayer, and respond with true obedience, living like who we already are in Christ.

But when we fail to do so, we remember,

“Before the throne of God above,

I have a strong and perfect plea,

a great high priest, whose name is Love,

who ever lives and pleads for me.”

2. The Savior saves you completely

As the author of Hebrews reminds us, “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

The clause, “He is able to save to the uttermost…” is packed with meaning. The word “uttermost” denotes comprehensiveness or completeness. He doesn’t just save his people from the penalty of sin in the past; His salvation is comprehensive; He is saving us from sin’s present power and will save us from sin’s very presence in the future. And what grounds the promise? Notice the connector word “since…” He will keep you till the end since (or because) He always lives to intercede for you.

You deny Jesus with your words, thoughts, and actions. But remember, dear saint who is a failure just like me: Jesus is praying for you, instilling confidence that the same grace that saves is the same grace that leads you home.

Like Peter, your faith may fail momentarily but will not ultimately fail (Jude 24). As the Puritan Thomas Watson stated, “The saints persevere in believing because Christ perseveres in praying.”

Dear Failure,

I often forget the Lord. You do too.

Sometimes after I ask my son why he disobeyed and didn’t do what I asked, he responds with, “I forgot.” I resonate with his response; it turns out I’m more like my son than unlike him.

The Bible compares sin to intentional forgetfulness—ignoring God in the world He has made and casting His law behind our backs. We forget the glories of His gospel. We forget who Christ is and who we are, leading us to partake in what is evil or omit what is good.

The weight of our sinful forgetfulness is a crushing weight. We sometimes wonder if God will return the favor and forget us as well. But there’s good news that assures you of pardon and gives fresh power: Jesus remembers you. We must trace the history of God’s sinful people to see the glory of this reality.

Tracing the Forgetfulness of God’s People

1. Adam and Eve Forget, God Promises

After God gives Adam and Eve the command to avoid eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the serpent comes to Eve and says,

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” (Genesis 3:1-3)

Already, we see that, with Satan’s deceptive questioning, she’s forgotten the Lord. She separated the law from the Lawgiver. To her, God became an austere and malevolent slave master, and thus His law was no longer a delight.

Mankind has been forgetting the Lord ever since. Thankfully, God gave them the promise of the skull-crushing seed of the woman who would come and deliver those who forget His holy law. This promise unfolds throughout the covenants of scripture, showcasing that, though God’s people forgot Him and He kicked them out of His paradise, He still remembered them. There’s only one explanation: The covenant of grace.

2. Israel Forgets, God Remembers

Amid their forgetfulness and rebellion, God still remembers Israel. Why did God deliver Israel from bondage in Egypt? “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24–3:15).

But Israel’s story is a sad one; it is one of constantly forgetting the goodness of their God, leading to idolatry and greater depths of depravity.

Multiple times throughout the Old Testament we read of God commanding His people to remember Him:

Then Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery... (Exodus 13:3–20:8).

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today (Deuteronomy 15:15–16:3).

Remember the word that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, “The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land” (Joshua 1:13).

Unfortunately, the people of God are led into the hands of evil men time and again due to their forgetfulness. In the book of Judges, God’s people forget Him and he delivers them into the hands of their oppressors.

And the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side (Judges 8:34–9:2).

Even when He raised judges (like Samson) to rescue them they still forgot the Lord. And many of the judges forget God too. As a result, just like Adam and Eve, God casts them out of their land. Though the exiles returned to the promised land, the temple was not what it once was, idolatry continued, and God’s people forgot the law of the Lord (See the end of Nehemiah). After the book of Malachi, there was no revelation, no word from the Lord for four hundred years. Had God forgotten His people?

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3. We Forget, Jesus Remembers

God indeed remembers His covenant. His unbreakable covenant of grace is seen when Christ, the eternal Son of God, established a New Covenant by becoming incarnate for us and our salvation.

Christ alone lives a life of unshakable remembrance of His Father’s commandments and always does what pleases Him; He never forgets. Not only does He not forget His Father’s commands, but He eagerly remembers the forgetters.

As Jesus was hanging on the cross, giving His life for the sins of the world, what do we read from the utter failure who is dying next to Him? “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Thankfully, Jesus remembered him upon drawing His last breath: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

In my last post/letter, I summarized Peter’s sin of denying Jesus. Peter ran off and wept bitterly, knowing He failed His Lord. But Christ, being risen from the dead and having a covenant commitment to His people, relayed this message through His Angel, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee” (Mark 16:7).

Jesus remembers and names Peter after His resurrection. The last thing Jesus hears Peter say before He dies is his denial; the first thing Peter hears when he sees Jesus again is grace.

Our Response

Amid my forgetfulness, Christ remembers me, not because He turns a blind eye to sin, but because He has a covenant commitment to me by grace.

What is our response? “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel” (2 Timothy 2:8). Because Christ remembered you on the cross, you now have the power to repent and remember Him.

Amid your failure, remember Jesus Christ. Remember His glorious person; remember His perfect life; remember His sacrificial death; remember His victorious resurrection; remember His imminent return.

You often forget the Lord. But remember, dear saint who is a failure just like me: Christ remembers you, which means His pardon and power are forever yours, empowering you to remember Him when the world, the flesh, and the devil tell you He should be forgotten.

I pray you enjoy this audio production of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will. Upgrade to a paid subscription for $5/month, and it will be yours for as long as you desire to listen to it!

Additionally, I was very blessed to work on a series on Christianity & Liberalism where two others and I from other church traditions sought to defend the true gospel against the errors and deceptions of theological liberalism.

I once again thank and for their kindness and stellar contributions to the series. Their articles were both richly theological and immensely practical. Here is the series in order:

Enjoy the final chapter of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Putting it All Together.”

Read more

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Two Totally Different Animals

Every so often I hear someone say, “Man, I just hate labels. Why are there so many labels? I’m not X; I’m just me.” And I chuckle to myself because sure, let’s not perseverate on our Enneagram number, Myers-Briggs combination, or whether or not we are Extroverts or Gregarious Introverts. But also, labels exist for a reason. Labels take a four-legged piece of furniture where people eat food and call it a table.

Labeling, or naming, is exactly what J. Gresham Machen did in his groundbreaking book, Christianity and Liberalism. Published in 1923, Machen’s book became one of the defining orthodox Christian critiques of Theological Liberalism, and its central argument remains remarkably pertinent now, more than 100 years later. Machen, a Presbyterian minister, encountered a strange doctrinal creature he eventually called Theological Liberalism. He observed its habits, identified its features, and gave it a name. He labeled it and then described many of its characteristics in his book.

That is what makes Machen so useful to us now. He helps us recognize that strange “Christian” animal that has learned to occupy Christian territory and speak the Christian language. Machen’s great contention, however, is that Christianity and Liberalism are not different breeds of the same animal but that they are different animals altogether—as is the case with a dolphin and a shark. And if this is true, then we should expect them to have fundamentally different understandings of what Christians are here to do. That is, Christianity and Theological Liberalism have fundamentally different definitions of “mission.”

What Do We Mean by Mission?

In our post-Christian American culture, the concept of “mission work” seems clear and universal: Doctors Without Borders sends medical professionals on “missions”; my Muslim friends speak of their medical “missions”; the LDS gentlemen who came to my door were on their “mission.” Theologically Liberal Christians have their mission, too, as do historic, orthodox Christians.

But clearly, then, the word “mission” itself tells us very little. We must press for definitions: What is the biblical mission of the historic, orthodox Christian Church?

First, What Is the Church?

But first, what is the historic, orthodox Christian Church? How can we know the mission of the church if we don’t even know what she is? This is a critical question because— as I’m sure you’ve already guessed— historic Christians and Theologically Liberal Christians do not agree on the Church.

Historic, orthodox Christians maintain that the Church is the redeemed people of God in all places and throughout time. Christ has entrusted his Church with the proclamation and preservation of the gospel, making her “a pillar and buttress of the truth.”1 This gospel can be succinctly stated in the words of St. Paul: Christ died for our sins, was buried, raised, and appeared to many witnesses, and so if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.2 The Church is also a divinely ordained institution with officers, government, discipline, and sacraments established according to the Word of God.

In addition to primary doctrines, the historic, orthodox Church defends and upholds primary practices. These practices include the sanctity of life, and sexual ethics, as these positions are taught in the Law of Moses, the Council in Jerusalem, and the New Testament epistles. In summary, the Church has explicitly defined beliefs and practices.

Equally important here is to see what the Church is not. The Church is not simply a collection of Christians doing good things. The Church is not some amorphous, altruistic organization or the fourth branch of the government. It is something Jesus established, commissioned, and entrusted with particular responsibilities and with certain boundaries called doctrines and practices.

Which Brotherhood?

With all this being said, the Church also faithfully recognizes a synonymous title: the Brotherhood of Believers. And again, classical Theological Liberalism has historically recognized its own counterfeit: the Universal Brotherhood. Machen writes:

Very different is this Christian concept of brotherhood from the liberal doctrine of the “brotherhood of man.” Modern liberal doctrine holds that all men everywhere, no matter their race or creed, are brothers.3

Machen concedes that there is a sense in which all Christians can affirm this, since all people share the same Creator and the same human nature. But Christianity also recognizes a relationship far more intimate than our shared humanity—a relationship for which Machen (and Jesus4) reserves the word brother:

The true brotherhood, according to Christian teaching, is the brotherhood of the redeemed.5

The Lord gathers for Himself one people from every nation and tongue, place and time, socio-economic status and political conviction. Through one Spirit and one baptism, He makes them one people, one Body—one Family of Redeemed people. And this distinction matters enormously for the mission. Christianity does not merely seek the temporal improvement of humanity; it seeks the redemption of human beings and their adoption into the Family of God. If that is true—if it stirs your soul to worship, if it rouses your affections for the LORD and His family—then there is only one response.

The Main Emphasis

I could, of course, quote Scripture to illuminate our one right response to the worship and adoration of the One, True and Living God. But instead, I’m going to quote Machen:

If we [Christians] really love our fellowmen we shall never be content with binding up their wounds or pouring on oil and wine or rendering them any such lesser service. We shall indeed do such things for them. But the main emphasis of our lives will be to bring them to the Saviour of their souls.6

And why should this be the great emphasis of our lives? Why is it not enough to bind wounds, pour oil, provide housing and soup? Because in bringing someone to the Savior, we seek something greater than his temporal flourishing. We seek his eternal adoption into the Family of God.

And it is through this family that God has ordained to carry his gospel into the world. His ambassadors proclaim his ministry of reconciliation, calling sinners to be reconciled to God and, in Him, to one another. Here, then, we arrive at one of Machen’s most polemical claims: the Christian’s hope for society rests not ultimately in the improvement of society, but in the growth of this strange and supernatural family.

Again, I give you the penetrating words of Machen:

It is upon this brotherhood of the redeemed that the Christian founds the hope of society. He finds no solid hope in the improvement of earthly conditions, or the molding of human institutions under the influence of the Golden Rule. . . . These things may so palliate the symptoms of sin that there may be time to apply the true remedy; they may serve to produce conditions upon the earth favorable to the propagation of the gospel message; they are even valuable for their own sake. . . . But in themselves their value, to the Christian, is certainly small.7

So we see that the Christian does not hope in political reform. The Christian does not hope in soup kitchens and shelters, storytelling and systemic improvements. Those things have value— both in and of themselves and in that they prepare the soil for the seed of the gospel. And yet the Christian’s hope for the country, for the city, for the vulnerable is Jesus. And it is the Christian’s hope in Jesus that gives rise to his mission: he seeks to make more brothers for the glory of His Father. That is, those who have received the gospel will carry that same gospel to others.

Machen again states the answer so beautifully:

Christian men have been redeemed from sin, without merit of their own, by the sacrifice of Christ. But every man who has been truly redeemed from sin longs to carry to others the same blessed gospel through which he himself has been saved. . . . The propagation of the gospel is clearly the joy as well as the duty of every Christian man.8

Theological Liberals do not believe this, of course. Or at least, not the modern iteration: Progressive Christianity. Their hope is not in Jesus for the redemption of sins. Their hope is in a diminished Jesus who once made the world a better place by resisting unjust government systems, caring for the vulnerable, and bucking religious systems. Their mission is to go and do likewise. And then there’s this: having tasted social liberalism and American prosperity, they have found those things to be very good. And so their desire is for all to be as socially liberal and prosperous as they are, which is their own version of the Golden Rule: to treat others the way you want to be treated. What more could possibly be needed?

However, historic, orthodox Christians believe much more is needed: namely, salvation. Historic, orthodox Christians do believe that Jesus and Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. They look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. They do not fear the one who kills the body but cannot kill the soul. Therefore, they seek the salvation of souls at all costs! In hunger, thirst, nakedness, and imprisonment, they endure everything for the sake of exalting the Name of Jesus in all the earth!

And here our two animals reveal themselves. Both speak of Jesus. Both speak of love. Both speak of mission. But they do these things for two fundamentally different reasons. In sum, these are two different Christs, two different hopes, two totally different and incompatible belief systems and, therefore, simply two different missions.

So, What Do Christians Do Now?

The most obvious answer is to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching them all that Jesus instructed, because repentance for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in Jesus’ name to all nations. In this way, we are ambassadors of Christ proclaiming his ministry of reconciliation.

And these are, of course, good answers. But to stay on theme, let us consider this: if the Church is to remain faithful to her mission, especially in the face of a heretical Christianity, she must also guard the gospel she has been commissioned to proclaim. So what would Machen have Christians do to preserve the Church as the Church and thereby keep her faithful to her mission? Machen advised these four things:

1. Christians should encourage those engaging in the intellectual and spiritual struggle.9 The truth of the gospel cannot be stated clearly without being set against error; both the truth and the lie must come to light. That is, in pronouncing truth we inevitably confront falsehood. As Machen put it, “Thus a large part of the New Testament was polemic; the enunciation of evangelical truth was occasioned by the errors which had arisen in the church.10” And likewise, “God has always saved the Church. But He has always saved it not by theological pacifists, but by sturdy contenders for the truth.11”

2. Christians should perform their duty in deciding upon the qualifications of candidates for the ministry.12 In 2 Timothy 2:2, St. Paul told Timothy to entrust the gospel to qualified men; then he went on to outline what makes a man qualified. Likewise, the Bible specifies the qualifications for leaders in the Church. Machen is saying that historic, orthodox Christians need to step up and make sure the candidates for ministry meet the most basic qualifications for that ministry. He writes, “It is strange how in the interests of an utterly false kindness to men, Christians are sometimes willing to relinquish their loyalty to the crucified Lord.13”

3. Christians should show their loyalty to Christ in their capacity as members of individual congregations.14 This point is very similar to the one above except that, in the book, it references the lay person’s responsibility to choose a doctrinally sound pastor: “The issue often arises in connection with the choice of a pastor. Such and such a man, it is said, is a brilliant preacher. But what is the content of his preaching? Is his preaching full of the gospel of Christ? . . . God send us ministers who, instead of merely avoiding denial of the Cross shall be fired with the Cross!15”

4. Christians must pursue a renewal of Christian education.16 Theological Liberalism teaches that Christianity is a life, not a doctrine—which, of course, is ridiculous; Christianity is absolutely a set of doctrines and practices, and they absolutely form the Christian life. In short, the doctrines and practices of the Church give her her shape. It is this abandonment of Church doctrines and history that has given rise to ignorance in the Church: “The growth of ignorance in the Church is the logical and inevitable result of the false notion that Christianity is a life and not also a doctrine.17” Machen continues, “It must be remedied primarily by the renewal of Christian education in the family. . . . Christianity cannot subsist unless men know what Christianity is.”

These are strong, necessary words for these concerningly ambiguous times. Progressive Christianity— our modern iteration of Theological Liberalism— while not new, has received fresh recognition and support in the national news coverage of politician and Presbyterian minister James Talarico. The man uses Bible verses, not to point to the supremacy of Jesus, but to behavior. He rejects the doctrines and practices that define the Church.18 He hollows out the Christian language.19 He preaches a salvation by works, and all this to overwhelming applause.20 It is as wrote at the start of this series:

One may think of Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, James Talarico, who brings to the table a different “kind of Christianity.” J. David Goodman wrote recently in the New York Times, “Are Texans ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity?”21

What kind is this? It is theological liberalism with the crisp wrapping paper of “Progressivism.”22

And yet—and yet!—we are not those who shrink back. We are not without hope. There is no room in the Christian life for despair, Machen writes. “Only our hopefulness should not be founded on the sand. It should be founded, not upon blind ignorance of the danger, but solely on the precious promises of God. Laymen, as well as ministers, should return in these trying days, with new earnestness, to the study of the Word of God.23” And yet he also conceded that our souls are tired, that we can only do our duty in humility and in sole reliance upon the Savior.

And so if that’s you— if you’re weary with the defense and looking for refreshment, if you’re looking for a fresh vision of the Church and her mission—I bless you with this Benediction: our caution and our encouragement.

Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul. And what does one find? Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world. The preacher comes forward, not out of secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God’s Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed far into the background by the glory of the Cross, but with human opinions about the social problems of the hour or easy solutions of the vast problems of sin. . . Thus the warfare of the world has entered into the house of God. And sad indeed is the heart of the man who has come seeking peace…

Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus’s name, to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation for nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite it in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross? If there by such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven. And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world.24

Trading the Real Jesus for an Empty Counterfeit

Many industries require counterfeit detection. My experience as a former bank teller and banker showed me how U.S. dollar bills have various features that validate what real cash is. I remember times when customers came to the counter to make large deposits of dollar bills. Sometimes, there would be funny-looking bills where I would have to check under a blue light to see if they had the correct security strip or hold them up towards the fluorescent light above to see if the watermark showed in the right place. If the bills were legitimate, then the customer’s bank accounts would be filled with money immediately. If they were counterfeit, we, as the bank, would have to keep them, fill out a report, and deliver the fake money to the US Secret Service Counterfeit Investigations. My encounters with counterfeit bills have been mostly with distraught account holders who are shocked to find that the money they were given or a gift was fake, and thus not money entered their accounts as they expected. Thus, counterfeits, whether cash or something else, are wrong in intent because they portray themselves to be the real thing when they are not and thus are not able to deliver on what they promise to be (when detected).

It’s the same thing with Jesus. In the early 20^th century, the rise of Theological Liberalism proclaimed a Jesus that was different from what biblical, orthodox Christianity had affirmed for thousands of years. As J. Gresham Machen assessed, “There is a profound difference, then, in the attitude assumed by modern liberalism and by Christianity toward Jesus the Lord. Liberalism regards Him as an Example and Guide; Christianity, as a Saviour: liberalism makes Him an example for faith; Christianity, the object of faith. . . . What then is the difference between liberalism and Christianity with regard to the person of our Lord? The answer might be difficult to set forth in detail. But the essential thing can be put almost in a word—liberalism regards Jesus as the fairest flower of humanity; Christianity regards Him as a supernatural Person.”1

In this long-form essay, I will introduce Christology (the Doctrine/study of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ) in two ways: the counterfeit Christology presented by Liberal Theology and the historic, orthodox, biblical Christology that is rooted in the Holy Scriptures and consistently affirmed by faithful Christians from the early church to this present day. What you will find from this theological primer on Christology is that the presuppositions of Liberal Christology are not dead but still alive and repackaged in the various expressions of Progressive Christianity.2 But, more importantly, you will see how the Jesus as shown in Scripture and consistently confessed by the universal church throughout the generations is the real Jesus and far more glorious than Liberal Theology’s Jesus because he is actually who he says he is and thus able to bring everlasting life (John 3:16).

What is a Liberal Theology of Christology?

To answer, “How does Liberal Theology understand the Person and Work of Christ?” we have to briefly define what Liberal Theology is. As a reminder from my previous article, Theological Liberalism can be defined as “A movement in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant circles that builds from the assumption that Christianity is reconcilable with the positive human aspirations, including the quest for autonomy. Liberalism desires to adapt religion to modern thought and culture. Consequently, it views divine love as realized primarily, if not totally, in love of one’s neighbor and the kingdom of God as a present reality found especially within an ethically transformed society.”3 Put another way, “The task of liberal theology was to reinterpret Christian belief within the cultural values and intellectual trends of modernism. It has two basic commitments. On the one hand, liberal theology explicitly embraces the rational and scientific assumptions of modernism. On the other hand, liberal theology retains allegiance to Christianity.”4

From these definitions, five observations on Liberal Theology’s Christology arise that deserve our attention and response.

First, Liberal Theology roots its Christology in a dependence on human reasoning and experience, not divine revelation. When René Descartes stated, “I think; therefore, I am,” he grounded all knowledge and the standard of truth primarily on autonomous human reasoning as the starting point (i.e., Rationalism). Later on, Immanuel Kant would assert that all knowledge comes by human experience (i.e., subjectivism), and thus “human autonomy is primary; knowledge of metaphysics is impossible apart from experience; and theology must be done according to an extratextual interpretation of Scripture.”5 If one’s understanding of how we know truth is based on rationalism and experience, then already he or she has undercut any possibility of the supernatural.6 From this epistemological foundation, Liberal theologians like Fredrich Schleiermacher and others would construct a “theology from below” that is rooted not in divine revelation as an objective reality but in human experience, thus rejecting the framework of God as the sovereign Lord and creator of all reality and replacing that with a deistic, panentheistic, or evolutionary framework of reality (Or a Combination of all of them).7 This presupposition leads us to the next observation.

Second, Liberal Theology makes a distinction between the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Scripture by treating the Bible as merely human literature. If human reason and, consequently, human experience are the authorities for determining truth, then the claims of Holy Scriptures are scrutinized by said standards, especially that of Jesus. At the heart of Liberal Theology’s understanding of the Bible is Historical Criticism/Historical-Critical Method of Biblical Interpretation, which “seeks to understand the Bible in light of its historical and cultural backgrounds, that is, as a book arising out of a human context. Historical criticism uses a variety of methods to determine what actually happened in history “before,” “behind” or “under” the text rather than seeking a “divine” meaning in the text itself.”8 When applied to the doctrine of Christ, liberal theologians have sought to determine the “real Jesus” by looking for the “historical Jesus” apart from any presupposition of divine revelation. Yet, this results in, as Stephen Wellum summarizes, liberal scholars failing “to find the real Jesus for the same reason: They reject the revealed Jesus because they are beholden to Enlightenment principles that are alien to the Bible and its authoritative presentation of Jesus’s identity” thus removing or explaining away anything supernatural about him.9 Therefore . . .

Third, Liberal Theology downplays Jesus’ deity by either disregarding it or completely removing it. If liberal theology rejected any openness to Holy Scripture’s supernatural claims, then we are left with a Jesus who is merely “the fairest flower of humanity.”10 Because liberal scholars already assumed to “demythologize” the Bible, especially the New Testament (NT), their Christology took a variety of forms.11 Schleiermacher abandoned the classical understanding of Jesus as truly God and truly man and instead opted for a merely human Jesus who achieved perfect God-consciousness and was thus sinless. “Christ fully experienced absolute dependence on God-consciousness, and this reality was what rendered him unique yet similar to all human beings in pursuit of such consciousness.”12 Others embraced a Kenotic theology that held that at the incarnation, the Son of God “emptied himself of all or some of his properties down to the level of the human development attained and then gradually won them back in the way of development.”13 Albrecht Ritschl rejected the supernatural realities of Christ in that, as Herman Bavinck assessed, “Christ is not God in a metaphysical sense; rather, in his case, the name ‘God’ denotes his rank and status in the kingdom of God. It is not a reference to his being, but to his office. Christ may be called ‘God’ because in his relation to us, he occupies the place and value of God.”14 In short, as Machen aptly summarized, “According to the modern liberal Church, Jesus differs from the rest of men only in degree and not in kind; He can be divine only if all men are divine.”15

Fourth, Liberal Theology rejected the historic understanding of Christ’s atonement as a penal substitutionary atonement for other theories. Because of the previous points, liberal theologians vehemently rejected the classic understanding of Christ’s work of salvation and, instead, adopted other views. For example, according to Schleiermacher’s “God-consciousness,” Jesus saves by assuming “believers into the power of His God-consciousness, and this is his redemptive activity.”16 He also held that Christ’s atoning sacrifice can’t be thought of as “vicarious” or what we would call a “penal” substitution as “it could not have been expected of us that we should be able to begin this life for ourselves, nor does the act of Christ set us free from the necessity of pursuing this spiritual life by our own endeavour in fellowship with Him.”17 Another theologian, Gustav Aulen, presented a modified version of Christus Victor (Christ as Victor theory) by stating that Jesus’s atoning sacrifice won against the divine conflict against the evil powers of the world. Christ’s work on the cross accomplished not the satisfaction of God’s wrath against our sinfulness but the liberation of humanity from the oppression of “The powers holding humanity in slavery [which] include sin, death, the law, and demonic forces.”18 Additionally, Horace Bushnell promoted the Moral-Influence Theory of the atonement, which held that Christ’s death was meant to demonstrate the extent of God’s love for us, not pay a penalty for an offence against God.19 One common theme to notice in these liberal theological examples is the lack of emphasis or avoidance of the concept of humans’ sinfulness and rebellion against a holy God, and thus needing a sacrifice outside of human effort to save.20

Fifth, Liberal Theology interprets Christ’s resurrection not as a real, historical event but as an inspirational, moral, and metaphorical myth. By removing the supernatural emphasis of the person and work of Christ, liberal theologians viewed the reality of the resurrection with suspicion through a variety of interpretations. Some, like Hermann Samuel Reimarus and Albert Schweitzer, viewed the resurrection as a lie spread by the disciples to inspire a “moral and political salvation that Jesus attempted to achieve, not a spiritual salvation.”21 Others like David Friedrich Strauss and Bultmann didn’t see it as the disciples lying or being deceived, but as a mythological idea made by them meant to inspire faith in Jesus.22 In conclusion, due to the presuppositions of Liberal theology, the resurrection of Jesus is at best a fantastical fairytale that is meant to inspire a devotion to “spreading the kingdom of God” but with no substance, as there is no real, bodily resurrection of this Jesus to hope in.

What is Orthodox, Biblical Christology, and Why It Still Stands

If J. Gresham Machen is correct that Liberalism/Liberal Theology is an entirely different (and opposing) religion from Christianity, what then is historic, biblical, orthodox Christology? Let’s address those five previous points:

First, historic Christology presupposes that the Bible is divine revelation, which communicates propositional theology, thus giving a full-orbed Christology. Unlike liberal theologians who approached the Bible as merely a collection of human literature, Christians since the earliest days of the church have held that “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16) in that God has spoken to us through the Holy Spirit carrying along the biblical authors. Whereas Liberal theology has a “low” view of the Scriptures, Wellum states that the Christian worldview must hold to a “high” view, which is defined as follows:

The Bible is God’s inerrant and infallible word; it is written through the free agency of historical human authors inspired by God; it progressively reveals God’s own worldview (God’s relation to and work in creation) and his authoritative interpretation of his acts within and throughout history; it culminates with the historical person and work of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promises and the completion of his eternal plan for all things.23

Therefore, biblical interpretation requires us not to insert our meaning into the text and flow of the biblical narrative nor cut out parts of Scripture that don’t fit our plausibility structures but, instead, receive the text of Scripture according to its own terms.

Second, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology states that the Historical Jesus and the Christ of Scripture are one and the same. The NT authors, let alone the Gospel writers, clearly assumed that the Christ of Scripture is a real historical figure. Liberal scholars have sought to put away any notion of the supernatural when understanding Jesus in the Gospels, yet the Gospels themselves don’t see the reality of Christ’s deity as a hindrance to his historicity.24 Instead of seeing the Christ of Scripture as myth and reconstructing an anti-supernatural depiction of Jesus, historic Christology understood that the only way to understand Christ is to make the foundation the text and presuppositions of Holy Scripture. As Wellum states:

We can only warrant the theological/metaphysical claim that Jesus is the divine Son incarnate and that he has universal significance by placing him within the framework, categories, and teaching of an authoritative, reliable Scripture. Orthodox Christology is rooted in a specific conception of God, Scripture, humans, and so on, and apart from that theology, it cannot stand. In the end, whether it is Christology or any other doctrine, we must articulate and defend the theological system on which it stands, along with Scripture as more than basically reliable. For a normative theology, we need more than the “facts” of Scripture; we also need “God’s interpretation” of those facts, which alone yields a true, universal, and theological account.25

In short, to truly have an accurate account of who and what Jesus is, one must “proceed self-consciously and explicitly from the Bible’s self-presentation of Christ as the only way to identify him rightly,” or else we will not be able to say anything worth theological salt.26 Therefore, the Jesus revealed in Scripture (and attested by extrabiblical historical sources) inconveniently comes to us not merely as a human but as the eternal Son of God, which leads us to the next point.

Third, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms the uniqueness of Christ because he is truly God and truly Man. Whereas Liberal Theology viewed the deity of Christ as an embarrassing liability to the credibility of Christianity, historic Christology held Christ’s truly divine nature and truly human nature as essential to what makes Christianity powerful and compelling. Many passages can be provided to showcase the divine nature of the Son of God, but from the prophecies of the OT to the clear statements and demonstrates in the NT, “since the Bible reveals Christ’s activity long before he became a man; foretells the coming of Christ as the coming of God; calls him by the names of God; ascribes to him the attributes, relations, and actions of God; and gives him the honors of God, then Christ is God.”27 But Scripture shows like in John 1:14 that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Son of God took on a truly human nature in which he not only experienced physical, material functions but also possessed mental, immaterial elements.28 Therefore, biblically orthodox Christians have rightly and joyfully confessed the wonder of the incarnation of the Son of God because . . .

Fourth, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms that Christ accomplished a specific work of salvation by his penal substitutionary atonement, thus making him a glorious moral example. The reason for which the eternal Son became incarnate is, as the Nicene Creed states, “for us and for our salvation,” and at the heart of his work of salvation is his penal substitutionary atonement at the cross. Whereas Liberal theology wanted the cross to be one of moral example, a sign of victory against evil, or a display of God’s love, the Bible states in many ways how “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3), God the Father “for our sake . . . made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”(2 Cor. 5:21), and “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). The OT testifies of the need for a perfect sacrifice to pardon sinful man by looking forward to the suffering servant who will be “pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5-6). It is Jesus of whom Isaiah was looking forward to, and in whose death on the cross those who trust in him can be saved from God’s wrath against their sin and instead be “justified by faith” and thus “have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1-2).29 Whereas Liberal theology saw a great moral figure whose death emphasized moral improvement, historic Christology proclaims all are sinners before a holy God who needs the perfect sacrifice of Christ to pay the penalty for their sin so that they can be reconciled to God.

Fifth, in light of Holy Scripture, historic Christology affirms Christ’s real, bodily resurrection, which grounds a real hope for the Christian life. Because most of Liberal theology’s proponents belittle or outright deny the reality and significance of Christ’s resurrection, there are no substantial grounds of hope for the Christian after death. But historic Christology recognizes what Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19 that “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Instead, it recognizes that Jesus’s resurrection was not a myth or some motivational allegory but a legitimate, real, physical resurrection to the point of him not only eating fish (Luke 24:41-43) but also having the disciples like Thomas touch his pierced side and nail-scarred wrists (Luke 24:39-40; John 20:24-28). But if Christ has truly been raised from the dead, then Christianity actually means more than just a merely moral life, but the greatest news that anyone can ever hear and embrace wholeheartedly. As Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley doxologically summarize:

What a glorious message the empty tomb conveyed! “The Lord is risen indeed!” (Luke 24:34). All the promises and blessings of salvation lie wrapped in this wonderful news. The best news ever heard came from a graveyard! Oh, victorious resurrection—death is disarmed, sin is subdued, the world is overcome, Satan is trodden underfoot, the grave is sanctified, hell is conquered, and the old man is mortified. Do you see it and embrace it? Redemption is accomplished! Eternal life is secured! Justice is satisfied! The curse of the law is buried! Guilt is paid! Debt is cancelled! God’s amen on the all-sufficient work of Christ is loudly declared! All of salvation is verified! Christianity is true! Jesus is alive! Hallelujah!30

Application: Two Choices – A “Chest-less” Christ or a Christ with a Chest

C. S. Lewis, the British Medieval Literature scholar, apologist, and contemporary of J. Gresham Machen, wrote in The Abolition of Man about how the modern education landscape of his day was creating “men without chests” by promoting relativism. Instead of seeking to connect the intellect (head) and appetites (stomach) with the right sentiments or objective principles (chest), relativism seeks “to make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”31 In short, we make people with big brains and unrestrained desires, which will eventually lead to the self-destruction of society.

Allow me to use creative liberty with the same picture, but for who/what Jesus is and his work. What does Liberal Theology give you when you ask proponents to give you Jesus? They will give you a Christ without a chest. I’ll be blunt: Theological Liberalism doesn’t give you all of Jesus but a carcass of him. Instead of giving you all of Christ, which Scripture unashamedly unfolds, Liberal Theology embarrassingly withholds what is deemed not “modern,” “relevant,” and “acceptable” to the modernizing culture by gutting out the main body of what makes Christ life-transforming in the first place. What you receive is the husk of Christ, in whom you can fill in whatever preferred agenda you want, other than the agenda revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Although this Jesus would be accepted by a progressive, secular culture and non-Christian agenda, he is devoid of any true power. Altogether, the Christ of Liberal Theology is just a “better” guy like you that can’t be of any everlasting good, or, as Machen summarized, “According to the modern liberal Church, Jesus differs from the rest of men only in degree and not in kind; He can be divine only if all men are divine.”32 He comes to you as an empty, vain example to follow with no everlasting life to come after.

But the Jesus revealed in the Holy Scriptures whom Christians for the past 2000 years have worshiped is none other than the eternal Son of God incarnate who, in his own words to Pontius Pilate, said, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). It is this Jesus who is the only begotten Son of the Father who as the Word spoke all the galaxies into existence who took on a truly human nature, “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11). Because Jesus is all that is revealed in the Scriptures, we have a Savior who is infinitely glorious and able to save sinner to the uttermost so that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame’”(Rom. 10:9-11). It is this Jesus—the real Jesus—that “whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Friends, there are only two choices: an empty corpse or the all-sufficient, almighty Son of God incarnate.

Throw away the former. Joyfully receive and worship the latter.

Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.

Enjoy chapter six of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Transformed.”

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Introduction

The Bible is under attack.

Many popular narratives and creative stories are told today regarding the origins of Christianity. These stories concern who chose the books of the New Testament and whether future generations should trust the Bible's claims.

Because of Liberalism’s continuous interaction with the surrounding culture, “authentic” Christianity has now taken the seat of the accused. Furthermore, modern scholars such as Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, and David Dungan occupy the stand and popularize narratives about the New Testament. Are these stories about who chose the books of the New Testament true?

Charles E. Hill addresses these questions in his book, Who Chose the Books of the New Testament? Hill argues that there are many myths propagated by the current culture that seek to account for its “one-time fascination with an increasingly discredited religion.” (7)

To invalidate these myths and defend New Testament fidelity, he takes a two-pronged approach: he debunks popular tales concerning New Testament book selection, then he offers proof for the authenticity of the twenty-seven books received by the church.

Summary

Hill begins with the myth that political pressure gave rise to the selection of the New Testament. Many say Constantine, the Roman Emperor, chose the New Testament books. Furthermore, others say it was the group with the biggest army. Some say it wasn’t until 367AD that Athanasius of Alexandria wrote a letter listing the 27 New Testament books in the Bible today; it was then that the so-called “New Testament” floating around “out there” finally congealed.

Hill encapsulates the modern mindset: “The Bible was put together after Christianity had become wedded to the state, and people, societies, and civilizations have been struggling to extract themselves from the perceived entanglements with Christianity and its politically constructed Bible ever since” (8). Hill contends that serious scholars know these things are false. They are seen mainly in popular culture, housed in movies and books, and should be considered fiction.

Hill responds: “So what?” In other words, this is a non-sequitur. If this is how the New Testament was compiled, and God is sovereign, it doesn’t follow that Christianity is illegitimate. Just as Joseph said to his brothers, one can say, “Constantine and his army may have meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should hear the life-giving voice of Jesus in the books that made it into the New Testament.” (11) The real question is whether or not this story is true. Hill states that this political myth is not historical and thus, not valid.

The second myth Hill deals with is the “alleged development of certain criteria of canonicity applied to the books available.” (22) He interacts with a scholar named Lee McDonald and his claims that the churches used several criteria to determine the contents of their New Testament. The primary test, among others, to determine the canonicity of certain books, according to McDonald, was their usefulness.

Surely the church picked what was most useful for prayer, worship, and edification. Hill argues that the problem with this is that “there is no evidence that the books used as Scripture by the church had first been subjected to a list of qualifying criteria before they were used and acknowledged as Scripture.” (23) Nobody finds churches determining what is useful, but only using certain books that they deemed authoritative and apostolic. Hill argues that this “praxis” approach ignores transcendent or divine properties of the books and God’s disruptive, correcting voice in the church that extends beyond changing needs (24). Since this doesn’t satisfy scholars and cure their view of the early church, he adds one final argument.

Modern scholars still see inconsistencies in the early church when they cite and use non-canonical writings. If they did have criteria that governed the process, they weren’t even consistent in applying their own criteria because “non-canonical” books made it into the list of books used by Christians. Thus, this is a problem for the canon.

Rather, Hill concludes, what is wrong here is not the early church, but the method of modern scholars. By citing sources such as the author of the Muratorian Fragment (c. 180AD), he shows that certain books were used and valued for edification and catechetical training but not to be regarded as Scripture. This last argument sets him up for his final point, which is the proof of the authenticity of the New Testament.

The entirety of the proof he offers rests on this foundation: New Testament scriptures are self-authenticating and self-demonstrating; not chosen, but inherited. He acknowledges the problem with the view that the early church (by the late 4th century) chose books to be included: “How can we place ultimate confidence in a list of books chosen by the church, unless the church too is infallible, at least on par with Scripture or above it in authority?” (27) Rather than a collective act of the church choosing books, the process was to be viewed as the recognizing or receiving of the New Testament. This is how the church has spoken of the books of the New Testament since the patristic era.

He quotes John Calvin (who popularized this idea during the time of the Reformation), who simply was saying what early Christians such as Justin Martyr (c. 100AD) were saying. Calvin memorably wrote,

Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste. Those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning (28).

Hill also believes in reasoning and natural proofs for the canon. Still, he emphasizes the primacy of the undeniable divine quality of the New Testament for all those who know the voice of the divine Author.

Critical Evaluation

Hill carefully evaluates History and current culture throughout this book. This is what provides strength to his argument against the “political” myth. He gets beneath the surface of the argumentation, which is a strength of the book.

For instance, Hill points to the current culture’s fascination with diversity as the root cause of these myths. Modern scholars believe there wasn’t unanimity on core doctrine in early Christianity, so there was no such thing as “orthodoxy” until much later. The adage, “It’s the winners who write the histories,” is a lens that is imposed upon the historical evidence. This colors everything these scholars see, which causes them to have a hermeneutic of suspicion because, after all, the stronger group utilized political power to select books. He also carefully interacts with the so-called “evidence” given for such claims.

Elaine Pagels suggests that some early Church fathers (such as Irenaeus) advocated for the destruction of illegitimate writings; thus, we see a victorious Christian group turning up the political pressure. Other scholars suggest that political power struggles ended in excluding certain books and adding books like the Gospel of John that are political through and through. Hill reveals that this is a dubious claim: “​​Like Irenaeus’s campaign of literary destruction, this agreement, though historically certain in the minds of many scholars today, is nowhere found in the annals of recorded history” (13). Though these modern critiques are not devoid of proof, Hill argues that their so-called “proof” should be subject to examination.

The main evidence Hill gives to combat this narrative is the early Papyri that house the gospel writings we have today and the non-canonical gospels rejected by the Church. Because of numerous archeological discoveries of other so-called “gospels” such as the Gospel of Judas, modern scholars suggest that there’s no way of differentiating between these writings and what we have today, which proves there were many “Christianities,” not just one orthodoxy. Therefore, what is known as “orthodoxy” today cannot be trusted.

Hill comes against this by suggesting two simple things: First, the manuscript evidence–the alternative gospels were not copied and were not circulating in the church nearly as much as the other four gospels. Second, the basic physical form of the four canonical gospels makes clear the way early Christians cared for and copied these writings–they revered them as Holy Scripture.

With all the claims about political power struggles and alternative gospels, one would expect that these other documents outnumber the canonical gospels. But Hill concludes, “The fact that heterodox gospels do not even come close to doing so… that they are in fact currently outnumbered four to one, and that most of them have distinctively different physical properties from the canonical Gospels are, I think, ponderous problems for the political interpretation” (21). He brings these historical facts to the fore, allowing the reader to conclude that these modern critiques are historical inaccuracies.

One wonders whether the main proof of this book stands up against the winds of critical scholarship. Some objections could be, “The only way this would be proof is if one assumed God already exists.” Or, “This is circular reasoning, and one simply has to rely on blind faith.” Some might consider John Calvin’s argument for self-authentication as lazy or irresponsible. Two things can be said in Hill’s defense.

First, Hill’s approach serves to undercut arguments from scholars who generally have a spiritual worldview. They may not believe in the God of Christianity or the deity of Jesus, but based on the nature of their writings, they don’t operate from a purely atheistic worldview. It can especially undercut Liberalism, which operates in “low visibility” and yet upholds a vague spirituality. Thus, the argument for the self-authenticating canon is the best place to start.

Second, no matter who he tries to refute, this is the best foundation for establishing the canon. There are dangers in trying to apply modern (Enlightenment) methods of reason to determine whether the Bible is true. Hill sees reason and traditional apologetic arguments as important, and he uses them well, but the necessary foundation is the fact that those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling them can recognize the voice of the divine author and see the New Testament as the self-attesting word of God.

That’s why the language of “recognizing” and “receiving” when speaking of what has been handed down is proper. Those who were only a few links away from the apostles believed their words: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16).

Conclusion

Following Machen’s example, Hill debunks modern cultural and political myths with great clarity, displaying his prowess as a historian. He then provides compelling proof for the canon that both informs the mind and strengthens the faith of believers.

Today, Liberalism is still alive, challenging (attacking) the Bible. Since Machen wrote of Liberalism and where it finds its authority, let his concluding words ring out in your mind today:

The only authority [in Liberalism], then, can be individual experience; truth can only be that which “helps” the individual man. Such an authority is obviously no authority at all; for individual experience is endlessly diverse, and when once truth is regarded only as that which works at any particular time, it ceases to be truth. The result is an abysmal skepticism.

The Christian man, on the other hand, finds in the Bible the very Word of God. Let it not be said that dependence upon a book is a dead or an artificial thing... Dependence upon a word of man would be slavish, but dependence upon God’s word is life. Dark and gloomy would be the world, if we were left to our own devices, and had no blessed Word of God. The Bible, to the Christian is not a burdensome law, but the very Magna Charta of Christian liberty.1

Seven Weeks Coffee

Introduction

Have you ever noticed a mirror? I don’t mean have you ever noticed your reflection in a mirror; I mean, actually noticed the mirror itself.1

I have never once walked into a clothing store, passed by a mirror, and said to the passersby, “Wow! Look at this mirror! This thing is amazing! You can see yourself in it, the glass is immaculate, just take a look!” Most likely, what you really notice is the reflection in the mirror rather than the wonder of the glass. Mirrors were not created to draw attention to themselves but to what they are reflecting.

The story of mankind doesn’t begin with the fall in Genesis 3, but in Genesis 1-2, with the image of God. Theological liberalism wants to be free (or liberated) from any notion that man is inherently sinful. True freedom, says the modern liberal, is the ability to realize your own greatness, express your authentic self, and create your own reality; self-creation is the order of the day.

But true freedom is not ultimate self-determination or the ability to create your own reality (as the culture says), but to conform to reality as God created it. Such was the original righteousness of man in the garden.

The image of God in the beginning meant true, but changeable freedom. It meant that man’s mind was enlightened, being stocked with true knowledge of God, their affections (or loves) were well-ordered and oriented toward God, and their wills were unbound by anything that would hinder true conformity to His law. We were little mirrors displaying God’s glory.

A Broken Image: Man’s Sinfulness

Slightly different question: When do you notice a mirror? You notice the glass of the mirror when it is flawed. When there’s a smudge, a crack, or some kind of imperfection. Your eye becomes fixed on the glass and no longer on what it’s reflecting.

J. Gresham Machen describes Christianity as the “religion of a broken heart.” He is speaking of the reality of man’s sinfulness, their insatiable desire for self-glory, and their separation from the God who made them. He wrote: “…although Christianity does not end with the broken heart, it does begin with the broken heart; it begins with the consciousness of sin. Without the consciousness of sin, the whole of the gospel will seem to be an idle tale.”2

Mankind, after being created by God, fell from the scenic cliff of total perfection into the pungent, entangling swamp of sin. The mirror was irreparably shattered and marred. Genesis chapter 3 details the most horrific and dejecting event in human history. A mirror that once fulfilled its purpose by reflecting the image of its Creator has become a flawed image that draws attention to and exalts itself.

Even in our day, we see the exaltation of the self. God is the only One who can truly self-identify–“I AM who I AM,” He declares. However, many in the surrounding culture seek to self-identify and create their own reality rather than receive an identity that conforms to God’s design. Such is the outflow of the state of sin–the human will and personal autonomy become ultimate.

When a person acts, they do so by their deepest wants and desires, and those deepest desires are only explained by their true spiritual nature and the disposition of their heart, which is, of course, explained by the state of the image of God in that person, whether corrupted by sin or redeemed by grace.

Moral ability and therefore man’s will is inseparably united to the mind and affections of the heart; we cannot separate the will from the affections. The two are linked within the soul of man. This reality inevitably leads to an understanding of how the human will is enslaved and needs to be freed.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession helpfully sums this up:

Humanity, by falling into a state of sin, has completely lost all ability to choose any spiritual good that accompanies salvation. Thus, people in their natural state are absolutely opposed to spiritual good and dead in sin, so that they cannot convert themselves by their own strength or prepare themselves for conversion (9:3).

The Image of God & The Slavery of Sin

This may be an unpopular opinion, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve never been a fan of LEGO bricks. Now that I have kids of my own, I still don’t enjoy them. My 5-year-old son is incredibly creative and full of ideas, but I have to hold in all my impatience when a LEGO brick snaps off for the 114th time during the building process.

Recently, we built a rocketship together that took hours to build, and when I came home from work, he held up a shattered version of the rocketship. I could still identify it as some parts were intact, but it was not what it once was. But isn’t that just LEGO? $27.99 and 13 hours of my life for a shattered creation just 15 minutes later… (forgive me for venting)

This is what took place when mankind fell into a state of sin. The image of God can still be seen in part; it’s not totally lost, but it is a shattered image. The depravity of mankind does not reveal that man is as bad as they possibly could be. It means that they are as “bad off as they could be.” Pastor Jim Scott Orrick uses the illustration of a sponge. Imagine a sponge soaked in a bucket of vinegar.

You can take the sponge out, and it can be dripping with vinegar and just oozing with a foul stench. Or you can squeeze out as much of the vinegar as you want so that it’s no longer dripping, but no matter what, the vinegar touches every single centimeter of that sponge. You cannot fully rid the sponge of the vinegar. So too, the depth of man’s depravity runs to every aspect of body and soul; every part of man has been tainted and touched by sin, rendering them unable to respond to God positively.

Of course, we must acknowledge that non-believers—those who are not born again—can still do good things. Not every unregenerate person shows up in your life wearing a black cape and twirling a handlebar mustache. By God’s common grace, they can act with kindness toward others and do much good to benefit humanity.

However, there’s a difference between civic righteousness (good behavior that makes for good citizens) and spiritual righteousness, or good behavior that pleases God. Our corruption as humans is so deep that even the good things we do apart from Christ can be tainted with selfish motives, and that’s ultimately what God sees (1 Samuel 16:7).3

Thus, whoever is in the flesh, that is, the natural man, cannot do what is pleasing to God (Romans 8:8), for without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). The health or nature of the fruit borne by a tree is always dependent upon the root. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad. Jesus teaches us this in Matthew 12:33-35, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (cf: Matthew 15:18-19; Luke 6:45).

This is why this doctrine has been called “total” depravity since the totality of man is corrupted. The three texts (among others) that highlight this doctrine are Genesis 3 and Romans 1-3.

Genesis 3

Man freely walked in moral perfection, with every response to God being only positive. God, being King over them, gave the command not to eat of the forbidden tree. They obeyed up to a point. But “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).

Romans 5 gives us divine commentary on this passage: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Romans 5:12–14). Sin “came into the world,” which means that all were made sinners; all men and women are born with inherent corruption.

Adam represented every human under his covenant with God (Hosea 6:7; Romans 5:18). He was our covenant head, the one who took upon himself the task of achieving life by personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience to the revealed will of God. Therefore, when Adam sinned, we sinned in him; his sin was imputed to us, and now all are made sinners by nature, condemned under that same covenant. The modern person likes to affirm, “Nobody’s perfect.” And that’s true. But our diagnosis is worse than that. We are not basically or inherently good. We are corrupt to the core of our being–death has spread, and we are all now “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). To what extent? How deep is our corruption?

Romans 1-3

Romans 1:18 states, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven…” God here is provoked to anger; He is revealing His divine wrath to mankind. For what? “...all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” God’s anger is not capricious. He’s provoked to wrath by unrighteousness and ungodliness. Their ungodliness is so deep that they have suppressed the truth–they cast plain truth behind their backs. What else? “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Vs. 21). From suppressing the truth, to further darkening their hearts, to exchanging the glory of the invisible God for images to worship (Vs. 23), man has sunk into a sea of unrighteousness. The idol factory–man’s heart–is open for business, the conveyor belt daily bringing forth foreign objects of worship and adoration.

How does God manifest His anger? He gives them over. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves…” (Vs. 24) We see depravity manifesting in gross and awful ways even today, and this reveals that the shattering of the image of God, and therefore, sin, is not merely a force corrupting us from without; it is poison corrupting us from within. This evil can also manifest in self-righteousness.

Romans 2 deals now with the “moral” man or the outwardly “good” person. “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Vs 1). The bad news about “good” people is that the human heart is so corrupt that hypocrisy is a default. No amount of outward good can reverse the curse. God’s law doesn’t extend only to actions, but to the heart and mind.

Therefore, both the immoral gentile and the self-righteous Jew stand in the courtroom with this diagnosis: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12; Emphasis mine). Many miss Paul’s malediction: “No one seeks for God.”

This is how deep our corruption is–we went from only responding positively to God and His commands to now despising Him; we, by nature, do not want God. We want the opposite–we seek/love our own lusts and pleasures (1 Corinthians 2:14). Sin doesn’t just arise from our enemies “out there”; sin is an enemy within; perhaps to our bewilderment, we find that our greatest enemy is the self. The image of God is still present, but it is shattered and enslaved–man still has a will, but now it is a sinful will.

We as humans have been given a very bleak diagnosis. We are sinners to the core of our being from the time we are born. Man fell into a state of sin where their free power of choice was not lost completely but rather corrupted. They went from desiring only righteousness to desiring only evil every moment of every day–“evil” defined as preferring something else above God and not being concerned with His glory. Any action that does not have God’s glory as its chief end; any love that does not have God as its chief object; and any practice that does not have God’s law as its ultimate guide is ultimately evil.

God doesn’t look upon us as heaven-deserving people who are “basically good” in need of divine assistance, but as hell-deserving sinners where, since the fall, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

The Solution

As the storyline of Scripture progresses, we’re left wanting a specific solution: someone must come and be that perfect image.

Thankfully, Christ is that image.

The eternal Son of God, as He robes Himself in our nature, redeems humanity simply because He is that perfect human who shines as the perfect reflection of the Father’s lustrous character. It’s only necessary that the humans who took a hammer to God’s flawless image would need divine perfection to take on our humanity.

Jesus, then, shows what it truly means to be human. The reason is not only because He was sinless in His humanity, but because He is the last Adam who was not only the Son of God like Adam was (Luke 3:38), but He was “God with us,” the perfect image of God, the exact imprint of His nature.

Adam plunged us into a place where the curse of the law was upon us because he didn’t perfectly meet the standard. Christ perfectly met the standard of the law, then repaired the image of God in man by fulfilling the law in our place, becoming a curse for us, becoming broken on the Cross, and subjecting himself to the shattering brought about by the hands of the men He created.

As He was dying, He declared, “It is finished.” He satisfied the ultimate demands of God’s justice and absorbed the full weight of the wrath of God against sin. He took the blow. He paid what we owed. And as God raised Him from the dead, He accomplished for all time the redemption of all His people, offering hope, forgiveness, and eternal life which begins at the moment of faith in His Person.

Now anyone who trusts in the Son of God has passed from death to life since He has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). Now the saints stand and applaud as we sing, “Man of sorrows–what a name for the Son of God who came. Ruined sinners to reclaim; Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Conclusion

The fundamental flaw of liberalism and modern progressivism is that they are seeking to call the righteous to repentance rather than allowing the weight of the law to reveal the weight of their own sin and thus drive them to Christ for salvation. Yes, salvation. Salvation from sin—its penalty of eternal hell, its power that keeps people in bondage, and its indwelling presence which imprisons the soul forever.

Machen concludes:

The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin...Such is modern preaching. It is heard every Sunday in thousands of pulpits. But it is entirely futile. Even our Lord did not call the righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no more successful than He.4

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In part 1, I introduced and explored how Liberal Theology presented the doctrine of God. Here in part 2, I will respond to the movement’s impersonation of God by showing how Theology Proper has been recognized by Biblical, historic, and orthodox Christianity in accordance with Holy Scripture and draw some concluding applications.

What is Historic, Biblical, and Orthodox Theology Proper?

It makes sense for Machen to be horrified at Liberal Theology’s God, as this “God” is “Very different [from] the living and holy God of the Bible and of Christian faith.”1 As we have seen in the previous points, Machen argues that Theological Liberalism opposes even thinking of the doctrine of God because “It is unnecessary, we are told, to have a ‘conception’ of God; theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the death of religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel His presence.”2

But unlike Liberal Theology, historic, orthodox, and biblical Christianity has always held that “the Christian gospel consists in an account of how God saved man, and before that gospel can be understood” rightly, we must rightly understand who and what God is in accordance with Holy Scripture.3 So how has the faith once for all delivered to the saints addressed the doctrine of God in contrast to the liberal counterparts?4

First, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God has revealed Himself implicitly through creation and providence and explicitly through His Word, especially Holy Scripture.5 Whereas Liberal Theology asserts that God can only be known through our subjective experiences, the whole Bible testifies not only to the entire cosmos as a witness to God but also to itself as being the written Word of God. In Psalm 19 and Romans 1, David and Paul both highlight that God’s glory, power, and other attributes are revealed through creation as general/natural revelation. We call this natural revelation because “it occurs through God’s ordinary works and is appropriated by ordinary human sense and reasoning.”6

Yet, unlike Liberal Theology, which fronts all knowability of God to our inner sense of dependence and feeling, there is an objective reality about who and what God is that is knowable through his speech, specifically through his written Word. God is not obligated to reveal himself to his creation, yet out of his own sheer will and purpose, he chose to make himself known by his speech. This special revelation has come in many forms—through words of prophets, his audible voice, and even the incarnate Son of God, the Word made flesh—but the one medium by which anyone can obtain access to it today is his written Word, the Holy Scriptures.7 From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is God’s written self-disclosure to us, not a mere record of human experiences with the divine.

David, later in Psalm 19, states that God’s law is Perfect and able to transform the human heart. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Wellum rightly concludes that “Scripture’s own self-testimony is that it is God’s word written by the agency of human authors.”8 Real Christianity, not Liberal Christianity, is built on the foundation that there is a God who not only exists but has spoken to us directly, clearly, and certainly, especially through his written Word.

Second, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is the transcendent Creator who is separate from, rules over, and works in creation. Wrongfully, many Liberal Theologians conflate God and creation to the point that the creation is part of God’s nature, but throughout Holy Scripture, we see that there is a clear distinction between the Creator God and creation. True, God is immanent in that “he is present with his creation. . . . God is active in the world even though he is not ‘in’ time and space or limited by them (Deut 4:39; 10:14-15; Josh 2:11; Isa 57:15; Eph 4:4-6).9

However, Theological Liberalism fails to reckon with the biblical reality of God’s transcendence in that “as Lord, he is exalted ‘above’ all things, eternal, independent, and self-existent.”10 Throughout the Bible, we see analogical language being used by the biblical authors to show that God is not bound by space, time, and matter because “he is distinct from the world as its Creator and Lord. . . . God is omnipresent and transcendent; thus, he is not limited by space or time.”11 The Bible declares boldly that there is none like him, as he is utterly unique and thus his nature is not dependent on or connected to creation, and therefore, Christians must reject any notion of Panentheism. As Bavinck summarizes, “From the very first moment, true religion distinguishes itself from all other religions by the fact that it construes the relation between God and the world, including man, as that between the Creator and his creature.”12

If the Bible clearly testifies to God being the independent Creator who sustains the cosmos by the word of his power (Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:3), that leads us to affirm . . .

Third, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is all his attributes according to himself and thus not dependent on creation, no less our preferences. If Liberal Theology is correct in seeing creation as part of or connected to God’s nature, then that means he can be coerced or manipulated not just by the universe but by us humans. But the testimony of Holy Scripture could not be clearer in stating how God is completely independent and free from anything else; in other words, Christians have historically affirmed the aseity or self-sufficiency of God.13

The psalmist declares that “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3), and compared to idols made by human hands, God is not dependent on the creatures he has made, nor can he be swayed by their whims. As the late John Webster wrote, “God simply is, originally, authoritatively and incomparably, and no creature can say, as does God, ‘I am who I am’.”14

Therefore, unlike many liberal theologians who assert that God is mutable, Christians have historically affirmed the biblical realities of God’s simplicity, aseity, infinitude, eternality, immutability, impassibility, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. This does not mean God is a perfect yet distant being, but it is because he is absolute in his nature that “It is a mark of God’s greatness that he can condescend to the level of his creatures and that, though transcendent, he can dwell immanently in all created beings. Without losing himself, God can give himself, and, while absolutely maintaining his immutability, he can enter into an infinite number of relations to his creatures.”15

Machen concurs^, stating, “he is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free creator and Upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed.” It is the LORD alone who never grows faint or weary and is the everlasting God who is the creator of all things (see Isa. 40), and therefore, we must reject Process Theology’s claims that God is developing or able to be manipulated, as “This robs God of his divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.”16 Furthermore, because God is perfect in his nature, there is no need for us to pit his attributes against each other, as all that is in God is God.

Whereas liberal theologians sought to minimize or reject wholesale God’s holiness and righteousness for the sake of emphasizing his love. But the God of the Bible is not divided or conflicted within. As Louis Berkhof states, “Scripture does not explicitly assert it, but implies it where it speaks of God as righteousness, truth, wisdom, light, life, love, and so on, and thus indicates that each of these properties, because of their absolute perfection, is identical with His Being.”17

Thus God is perfect not only in his love but also in his holiness, righteousness, and all his other moral attributes, and, therefore, not only must punish sin by pouring out wrath but also demonstrates his mercy and grace by sending his only begotten Son to die in the place of sinners (Rom. 3:21-26; 5:1-8). Which leads us to my final point.

Fourth, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is the Triune, Covenant LORD who is Father to those who are united/associated with his Son, Jesus the Christ, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Whereas Liberal Theology asserted a vague notion of the fatherhood of God leading towards universalism with no need for a crucified Savior, historic Christianity has affirmed from the Bible the reality of the Triune God who has not only revealed himself as creator but also as the redeemer of all who trust in Jesus Christ. Machen writes how contrary to a vague fatherhood:

The gospel itself refers to something different; the really distinctive New Testament teaching about the fatherhood of God concerns only those who have been brought into the household of faith. There is nothing narrow about such teaching; for the door of the household of faith is open wide to all. That door is the “new and living way” which Jesus opened by His blood. And if we really love our fellowmen, we shall not go about the world, with the liberal preacher, trying to make men satisfied with the coldness of a vague natural religion. But by the preaching of the gospel we shall invite them into the warmth and joy of the house of God.18

What makes the Christian gospel good news is that the Triune God gives himself to sinners who have rebelled against him. Wellum writes, “God’s one act of redemption is the Father redeeming by the sending of his Son and the Spirit, the Son redeeming by becoming the incarnate Mediator of his people by the Spirit, and the Spirit redeeming by applying the work of the Son to us to the praise and glory of the Father and the entire triune Godhead.”19

The Bible from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament testifies to the reality that all humanity are sinners deserving condemnation before a Holy God, “but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7). Sure, God is like a Father to all creation as the Creator, but the only ones who can call God “our Father” are those who have been purchased by Jesus Christ “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

According to Holy Scripture, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:4-7). Only those who have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ can experience God as their heavenly Father who demonstrates his love towards them through Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (Rom. 4:23-5:11).

Therefore, the end goal of salvation is not primarily the brotherhood of man and betterment of temporal life but God saving sinners from his wrath and making them into a new humanity that has been “brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man” (Eph. 2:13-15). The Church is the new creation of a people born again by the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit through the reception of the Gospel of God’s grace that is received by faith in Christ alone (John 3; 2 Cor. 5:17; Tit. 3:3-7).

Application: Who is Truly Glorious, All-Satisfying, and Strong Enough to Save?

Much more can be explored, but I hope you have seen that Liberal Theology’s explanation of God does not match what Holy Scripture testifies and Christians have historically recognized. But why does getting the doctrine of God right matter so much? Sure, God is God and so we must rightly understand who he is, but getting the “God-ness” of God right is not to be treated as a mere intellectual exercise to get right on a theology quiz. Let me give three brief reasons why Theology Proper supremely matters.

First, the doctrine of God is a glory issue. What we have unpacked about the “liberalizing” of God’s nature shows how the God that theological liberalism presents to us is a being that is more like us. The God of the Bible is not a vague entity whose nature is linked with all existence, able to be manipulated by creation, and wants all humanity to just get along. God himself declares in Isaiah 45:5-7, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” Holy Scripture unfolds for readers the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is absolutely glorious in all that he is, undivided within, infinite in all his perfections, and sovereign over all creation. The god of Theological Liberalism cannot compare to the one, true, living Triune God and is thus not worthy of any ounce of worship.

Second, the doctrine of God is a joy issue. Liberal Theology’s version of God seems attractive because it makes God close to us and in tune with our experiences. But can this god whose nature is tied to our experience and vaguely knowable truly satisfy our hearts? The answer is “No” because Liberal Theology’s god is tied down to the human experience, not truly perfect in all attributes, and, therefore, not able to provide everlasting joy. But the God of the Bible is not dependent on his creation as if he needed anything (Acts 17:15), and being perfect in all that he is, he doesn’t grow faint or weary like us (Isa. 40:28).

Are you tired and weary from this life? Are you looking for true joy that will last forever? The “gods” of this world, including Liberal Theology’s, will never satisfy us nor be an everlasting comfort in life and in death.20 It is only the LORD God who “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40: 29-31). It is only the God of the Bible who is all-sufficient in himself that can make known to us the path of life and provide us with fullness of joy and pleasures forever by us being in his presence (Ps. 16:11).

Third, the doctrine of God is a salvation issue. Later in Isaiah 45, the LORD declares, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:22). Liberal Theology is not honest about the brutal reality that sin has marked not just all creation with brokenness but also all humanity as “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), rebels against the infinitely holy, righteous God, which thus makes us all deserving of everlasting condemnation.

Conclusion

It is not enough to strive for a “brotherhood of man” under a general “Fatherhood of God,” when the God of the universe is truly all of his attributes and must punish sinners who make up all human societies. But Hallelujah to what Paul states in writing:

If we believe in a god that is more like us, as Liberal Theology presents God to be, we do not have a God who can save us to the uttermost, but a god who only empathizes with us and tells us to work harder to make the world a better place. But in ourselves, we can’t save ourselves, let alone all creation. Only the almighty, creator, Triune God can save those who have rebelled against him. If God is like us, then we are lost. If God is absolutely God, then we have good news because he alone can save those who can’t help themselves.

Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.

I Don’t Know the God You Worship

“You’re not Jim!” exclaimed Dwight Schrute after “Asian Jim” greets him at his desk. One of my favorite bits from the show The Office is the prank when Pam, Jim’s wife, has Steve, their actor friend, come and impersonate Jim while he is at the dentist. Because it’s so hilarious, I’ll let you watch it instead of me describing it.

If that wasn’t enough, in another prank, Jim himself impersonates Dwight from his outfit to his manners, to which Dwight famously yells, “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!” Roll the clip:

“Joseph,” you respond, “I thought this series you, Johnny, and Emily have worked on was about Christianity versus Liberal Theology, not a recap of The Office.” You are most correct, because did you notice a common pattern in both clips? In both pranks, the impersonators do a great job acting like their subjects, but obviously they are not the actual person. Just because Steve dressed, acted, and even knew key pieces of information like Jim, he is not Jim. Just because Jim procured the exact look for only $11 and perfectly acted his colleague’s mannerisms and speech patterns, he is not Dwight.

Here’s my point: The God of Liberal Theology may look, sound, and act like the God of the Bible, but it is truly not.

In the previous post, Johnny demonstrated clearly how Liberal Theology’s dismissal of doctrine as an essential category in the Christian life is self-destructive, as that “uproots the life of the disciple from objective facts about the person and work of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”1 But the testimony of Scripture shows that what one believes is the foundation for one’s life, and thus sound doctrine is essential for a truly healthy, Christian life. If that is the case, shouldn’t then what we believe about who God is and what he has done be of central importance for our Christian experience?

In other words, how we understand who God is will determine whether or not our worship is real.

In this two-part essay, I will introduce Theology Proper (the Doctrine/study of God) in two ways: the impersonation that Liberal Theology presents and the recognition of historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity in light of Holy Scripture. Much more can be written and researched, but my hope for this theological primer on the Doctrine of God is that you will see how one’s doctrine of God determines the rest of one’s theological framework and beliefs about other tenets of theology. Ultimately, I want you to see both how the God of Liberal Theology is not only false but also not one who is worthy of worship and how the God of the Bible, as recognized by the Church throughout the ages, is truly God and thus the one we ought to glorify and enjoy forever.2

Does Liberal Theology Have a Doctrine of God?

Before answering that question, let’s briefly summarize what Liberal Theology is. “The task of liberal theology was to reinterpret Christian belief within the cultural values and intellectual trends of modernism. It has two basic commitments. On the one hand, liberal theology explicitly embraces the rational and scientific assumptions of modernism. On the other hand, liberal theology retains allegiance to Christianity.”3

First, foundationally, Liberal Theology generally asserts that God is not directly known objectively through propositions and metaphysics but subjectively through experience. This sounds vague, but the major liberal theologians and scholars grounded their epistemology of God primarily on empirical and experiential factors, not on direct divine revelation. Although a variety of expressions exist among liberal proponents, Gregg Allison highlights that a classic example of Liberal Theology’s epistemology of God is typified by its father, Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Allison states that Schleiermacher located “God within the realm of human experience—indeed, within the human consciousness. According to Schleiermacher, religion is ‘a feeling of absolute dependence’ on the Geist, or world spirit that pervades everything. Thus, being in relationship with God comes through intuition one becomes self-consciously aware of being dependent on this universal being. It is not mediated, or passed on, through the Bible, the church, human morality, or religion but, ‘it is a universal element of life.’”4

In Schleiermacher’s own words, “This feeling of absolute dependence, in which our self-consciousness in general represents the finitude of our being (cf. § 8, 2), is therefore not an accidental element, or a thing which varies from person to person, but is a universal element of life; and the recognition of this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God.”5 This inner intuition within us, then, is what gives us a sense of God, and this results in us looking for divine revelation not from above/outside us but from within us.6 Thus, Liberal theologians in general held to a form of “Immanentism” which placed a heavy emphasis on divine immanence with creation—even to how they understood the nature of divine revelation.7 As Millard Erickson assessed, for Liberal Theology, the definition of revelation, for instance, became more generalized. In an extreme form, that of Schleiermacher, revelation is any instance of conscious insight.

Thus, the Bible is a book recording God’s revelations to humanity. As such, however, it is not unique; that is, it is not qualitatively different from other pieces of religious literature, or even literature that does not claim to be religious . . . Any truth, no matter where you find it, is divine truth.”8 In short, the Bible is not considered God’s inspired word but instead a collection of people’s experiences of God; the Bible itself cannot be regarded as inerrant.9

Second, Liberal Theology historically blurs the line between creator and creation. As seen in the previous point, theological liberalism emphasized that our knowledge of God comes from within our experience, and, logically, this affects how one understands the relationship between God and the universe. Erickson remarks, “The liberal . . . tends to have a single-story view of reality. There is no supernatural realm outside the natural realm. God is within nature rather than beyond or outside it.”10

Many would thus adopt a view called “Panentheism,” which is “the view that the world, or ‘all’ (pan), is ‘in’ (en) ‘God’ (theos), thus denying the Creator-creature distinction. ‘God’ is greater than the world but not distinct from it. Both God and the world are eternal and dependent on each other.”11 In Machen’s words, “In modern liberalism, on the other hand, this sharp distinction between God and the world is broken down, and the name ‘God’ is applied to the mighty world process itself. . . . God, therefore, it is said in effect, is not a person distinct from ourselves; on the contrary our life is a part of His.”12

A great example of this view would be Paul Tillich, who, although he viewed himself as being somewhere between liberal theology and Neo-Orthodox, held that “God is not a being, not even the highest of all beings; he is being itself, or the ground of being, the internal power or force that causes everything to exist. Thus, whereas all finite beings exist, God does not exist. While this may sound like a derogatory statement about God, it is not, but was intended as a compliment. When he said that God does not exist, Tillich meant that God does not merely exist—God is! Finite beings exist; God is, and is the basis of the existence of everything that exists.”13 Although somewhat different from Pantheism, where God and creation are the same, Panentheism still connects the universe to God’s nature, and thus he is affected by events occurring in it.14

This has massive implications which will be expanded later, but as Wellum summarizes, “God is not the transcendent, sovereign triune Creator and Lord. Instead, God is (“in”) the natural processes of evolution by which the world and history take shape as the one who ‘lures’ and ‘shapes’ the world by offering it various aims, but he cannot guarantee his will since he is incapable of unilateral and/or effectual agency, making him mutually dependent on the world.”15

Third, Liberal Theology remixes God’s attributes by interpreting them for modern sensibilities. When thinking about the “what-ness” or nature of God, liberal theologians have reinterpreted God’s nature in various ways.

First, due to many proponents of Liberal Theology’s affirmation of Panentheism, they understood God’s nature as prone to change along with creation, which is a rejection of the classical doctrine of God. As mentioned before, theological liberals held that the universe is part of God’s nature, and although they would say he is still “distinct” from creation, he is still affected or moved by whatever occurs in creation. One key manifestation of this comes as a system called Process Theology, which holds that God is “finite, mutable, less than omnipotent, and via his physical pole suffers alongside of his creatures.”16 Originating from the likes of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, this theology holds that God “should be thought of as fundamentally dynamic and developing, rather than static and fixed. Everything is growing and processing. Change, rather than fixed essences, characterizes reality.”17 Therefore, liberal theology rejected the classical formulation of God’s attributes—especially his incommunicable attributes—like simplicity (God’s nature is not made up of parts), aseity (self-sufficiency), infinity, immutability (unchanging), and impassibility (incoercible), since his nature is prone to change like his creation.18

Second, Liberal Theology overemphasizes the love of God to the detriment of other attributes, like holiness and righteousness.19 This elevation of God’s love over others that seems antithetical to it was common among liberal theologians, though they varied in how they conveyed it. Some, like Albrecht Ritschl, asserted that “the goodness of God, as the general presupposition of everything, is embraced in the specific attribute of the Divine Fatherhood; or, in other words, the truth that He has revealed Himself to the Christian community as love. There is no other conception of equal worth beside this which need be taken into account.”20 Allison remarks that for Ritschl, “any other attribute . . . that seems contrary to the divine love could not be real . . . . From the point of view of theology, therefore, no validity can be assigned to the idea of the wrath of God and his curse upon sinners.”21 C. H. Dodd would hold to a similar view in that he would state that God could not be wrathful against sinners but would deem his judgment as part of the moral fabric of the universe,22 but others like Albert Knudson would attempt to soften God’s wrath against sin by not getting rid of God’s holiness and righteousness but by having God’s love conquering over them.23 We can see from both the mutability of God’s nature and the confusion of God’s love over other attributes that Liberal Theology has not only remixed God’s incommunicable and communicable attributes but also rejected the horror of human sinfulness and thus the need for a savior from his wrath against sin. Which leads us to . . .

Fourth, Liberal Theology emphasizes the unifying “Fatherhood” of God over all creation, leading to universalism. Machen takes note of how many liberal preachers love to speak of God as “Father” in that they derive from Jesus’ teaching that God is father of all humanity and thus we should embrace the brotherhood of mankind.24

Machen comments:

“It is very strange how those who accept only the universal fatherhood of God as the sum and substance of religion can regard themselves as Christian or can appeal to Jesus of Nazareth. For the plain fact is that this modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God formed no part whatever of Jesus’ teaching.”25

It is true to say that God is the author of all life and being that he should be, as creator, called the “father of all,” but what liberal theology asserts to be the “essence of Christianity” is “at best only that vague natural religion” which rejects the necessity of the doctrines of sin, salvation, and atonement by the blood of Christ.26 As previously shown, Liberal Theology’s emphasis on God’s immanence and the conflation of God’s relationship with creation has led many liberal theologians to elevate the Fatherhood of God, thus downplaying the Bible’s description and assertion of the three persons of the Trinity. I will let Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley summarize several liberal proponents on their assessment of the Trinity:

For Friedrich Schleiermacher, the Trinity was not about a distinction of persons in one eternal God, but about how God unites himself with human life in our feelings and experience. Albrecht Ritschl rejected theology as a description of who God is and reduced faith to what God does in us. Adolf von Harnack accused Christianity’s theological system of being a Hellenistic philosophical imposition on the church. He replaced the classic doctrine of the Trinity with a universal affirmation of God’s fatherhood and a denial of Christ’s unique sonship—Jesus was just the most divine of God’s many children.27

If the whole point of the Christian faith is God’s universal fatherhood, then the goal of Liberal Christianity is not the salvation of sinners from the holy wrath of God but the betterment of all human society for the brotherhood of man. Therefore, Liberal Theology’s God does not provide an exclusive message of salvation, as there is no sin to be saved from and no wrath to reflect any holiness because he is only fatherly love.28

In part 2, I will respond to Liberal Theology’s presentation of God by showing how Theology Proper has been recognized by Biblical, historic, and orthodox Christianity in accordance with Holy Scripture and draw some concluding applications.

Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.

Introduction

“Keep your doctrine. Just give me Jesus.”

Perhaps we’ve heard it before: “Doctrine is not that important—what’s important is that we’re experiencing Jesus.”

In J. Gresham Machen’s (1881-1937) day, liberalism championed this teaching:

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine.”

Leaving aside the doctrinal nature of this statement (!), is it true?

While it’s certainly true that one ought to avoid “cold orthodoxy, which is precise in doctrine but lacks heartfelt devotion,”1 liberalism takes it a step further and uproots the life of the disciple from objective facts about the person and work of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is a fatal mistake.

Let’s examine liberalism—then and now—its posture toward “doctrine,” and see the beautiful results when doctrine is taken seriously in the Christian life. As a garden without water or a car without fuel, the Christian life without doctrine will lack beauty and go nowhere fast.

Liberalism & Doctrine

Theological liberalism has essentially made three claims:

1. Christianity is a life, not a doctrine.

According to Machen, liberals in his day promoted the experience of Jesus, however that is achieved, as true Christianity, not the announcement of facts. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this still rears its head today in the form of Progressive Christianity, which has made its way into many modern evangelical churches.

Men like Phillip Gulley and Richard Rohr have restated this claim as follows: “Gracious behavior is more important than right belief.”2 People who are overly concerned with doctrine, argues Gulley, can be likened to the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. Their problem was their “fixation on orthodoxy” and their “misguided quest for theological purity.”3 Michael Kruger summarizes their accusation: “If you care about orthodoxy, you are probably just another Pharisee.”4

2. You can be a Christian without doctrine

In the mind of the liberal, doctrine ultimately doesn’t matter since it is only one expression of the divine in every age. In other words, orthodox Christianity is just a myth crafted by those who want to be exclusive and hold the corner on truth.

In the modern day, Progressive Christianity builds a slightly different structure with the same scaffolding or foundation. For instance, Tim Whitaker, with The New Evangelicals (along with many others)5, will emphasize doubt and uncertainty as key features of Christianity.6

What ensues is a flattening of various doctrines. No triage. No bucket reserved for essentials. Questioning the timing of the “rapture” can be granted equal standing with the truth of the resurrection, the deity of Jesus, or the inerrancy of Scripture.7 In Tim’s mind, there are no “essential doctrines,” and one cannot be certain what constitutes true-blue Christianity. It can be different in every age.8 Therefore, you can claim the name “Christian” and question or hold beliefs that depart from the apostolic witness since the beginning.

3. “Doctrine” emerges from the debates of the “subtleties” of the theologians.

Doctrine is not helpful, claims the liberal, but the fruit of worthless musing, hair-splitting, and the subtleties of theologians.

What are these “subtleties”? What causes scholars and pastors to get tied up in their theological underwear? The liberal would say the virgin birth of Jesus; the deity of Jesus; the resurrection of Jesus; the divine origins of the Bible. To get hung up on these things is to defend a defenseless cause and waste your time.

Thankfully, the Apostle Paul and Jesus firmly (yet graciously) push back.

Counterpunches from Paul… & Jesus

1. 1 Corinthians 15:3-6

Paul the Apostle, a man directly appointed by Jesus to speak on His behalf, declares to the church that he is passing on something “of first importance.” And what is it?

It’s a message. A doctrine: a teaching this church “received,” in which they “stand” and “are being saved.” Shockingly, after giving them sound Christ-focused ethics in the first 14 chapters, he starts this section by announcing historical facts that are even more foundational:

Look at how simple Paul makes the concept of “doctrine.” It’s merely the facts of history, followed by the meaning of those facts.

“Christ died”: This is history. “Christ died for our sins”: This is doctrine!9

As Machen confessed, without these two things together, according to Paul, there is no Christianity. If these facts aren’t, well, facts, we are the most to be pitied.

2. Galatians 1:6-9

In context, Paul is admonishing the believers to embrace the true gospel over against this other “gospel” that was being smuggled into the church—a gospel that says one can be justified by faith and works of the law.

But then Paul thunders the anathema:

Clearly for Paul, the gospel—the good news upon which Christianity is built—is not just “a life” but a teaching, one that can be polluted, denied, or verified at the expense of their eternal destiny. In Paul’s mind, the statement “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine” is an extraterrestrial intruder that should be unrecognizable to any true disciple of Jesus.

For Paul, and the primitive church, there was a bucket reserved for “essential beliefs” without which there is no Christianity.

“Yeah, but that’s Paul! We follow the teachings of Jesus.”

So be it:

1. Matthew 5-7 “The Sermon on the Mount”

This entire sermon by Jesus has been described as one big “do” message. It may seem that way on the surface, but upon closer examination, that line of reasoning fails.

Jesus has baked doctrine into the cake of the whole sermon. For example, notice the repeated refrain: “But I say unto you…” He says this after stating God’s law, not to nullify the law, but as if to clarify and say, “What I meant when I wrote that to Moses was this…”

Machen observed how liberals would not uphold Jesus as merely a “master teacher” if He was exalting Himself as supreme and authoritative as in the above refrain. To instruct someone in the Old Testament law is one thing. To declare “But I say unto you…” and announce the supremacy of His person is quite another. He’s not just a teacher; but God in the flesh Whose teaching is as authoritative as God’s law spoken from heaven and inscripturated for future readers.

Moreover, in Matthew 7:21-29, we don’t just see Jesus the good teacher or the wise sage; we see Him take the place of judge.

Machen directly commented on this text:

…have those who quote the passage so triumphantly in this way ever stopped to reflect upon the other side of the picture—upon the stupendous fact that in this same passage the eternal destinies of men are made dependent upon the word of Jesus? Jesus here represents Himself as seated on the judgment-seat of all the earth, separating whom He will forever from the bliss that is involved in being present with Him. Could anything be further removed than such a Jesus from the humble teacher of righteousness appealed to by modern liberalism? Clearly it is impossible to escape from theology, even in the chosen precincts of the Sermon on the Mount. A stupendous theology, with Jesus’ own Person at the centre of it, is the presupposition of the whole teaching.10

2. Mark 1:14-15

The evangelist here lets us in on Jesus’ first recorded words when He began his public ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

Some may want to twist these words to speak of a subjective experience that involves expanding your mind and being transformed into a societal and cultural contrarian. Rather, Jesus is preaching about the inauguration of the long-awaited kingdom of God, which Israel would have been anticipating.

After being delivered from slavery and passing through the Red Sea, witnessing Yahweh’s rule over the floating Egyptians, the Israelites declared, “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (Exodus 15:18). Their declaration of Kingship was not a subjective experience of God reigning in their hearts; it was dependent upon a theologically pregnant, redemptive-historical act they had just witnessed.

Thus, when Jesus declares kingship, it’s dependent upon a fact that He has now arrived on the scene to offer a “gospel,” a royal announcement of “news.” “News,” by definition, is the announcement of facts or events, without which “experience” is baseless.

3. Mark 10:45

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Notice the word “for,” which serves as a ground for what came before. Christ reveals to His disciples what true greatness is: humbly serving others. What a good life to lead!

But what grounds the life?

A historical event—the Son of Man coming to serve and give His life as a ransom for man. No doctrine, no life of humble service.

Therefore, doctrine logically comes first, and experience flows from it, for better or for worse. The question is not whether doctrine is taking center stage, but what kind of doctrine has captivated your attention?

The Proper Place of Doctrine

As stated above, Christian Doctrine is simply the declaration of historical facts along with their meaning. It grounds the Apostle’s earliest message and the entirety of the Christian life. Machen wrote,

The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”—that is history. “He loved me and gave Himself for me”—that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church.11

The problem with today’s evangelical (and EXvangelical) culture may actually be the lack of theological precision or certainty, not the promotion of it. The objective facts of the person and work of Christ must not be accommodated to a post-Christian culture; they must be proclaimed and upheld as we allow them to fuel our Christian experience.

Modern progressives such as Tim Whitaker enjoy proclaiming their “EUREKA!” over others, telling them that certainty in doctrine is the crux of our problem. We should look back at Tim with tearful eyes and say, “Where else are we going to go? This Jesus, and Him alone, has the words of eternal life” (See John 6:68).

The statement, “Keep your doctrine, just give me Jesus,” is crippling the church because you cannot have one without the other. So dive in! Go deep! And, as you study the doctrines of Christ and His grace, Scripture and salvation, remember the proper place of doctrine.

Dr. Michael Horton describes doctrine and theology as the lights which brighten the runway for a plane. When a plane is landing, it doesn’t land on the lights. It lands on the runway.

Same with us. Doctrine guides our way so we land on Jesus; our great end is to worship, know, adore, experience, and savor Him. Thus, any hike up the path of doctrine that doesn’t lead to the scenic view of the Savior as revealed in Scripture is a superficial side quest.

Conclusion

Life and doctrine are inseparable, but order matters. So let’s adjust the liberal statement a bit: Christianity is a doctrine, then a life—Ah, that’s better.

Ironically, if someone says, “Keep your doctrine. I just want Jesus.” You immediately have to ask, “Who is Jesus?” The next words out of their mouths will be either false doctrine or sound doctrine, but doctrine nonetheless.12

It is unavoidable.

A Book for Our Times: (Re)Introducing J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)

Enter stage right J. Gresham Machen (Pronounced: “GRE-sam MAY-chen”).

Born in Maryland on July 28, 1881, J. Gresham Machen was a theologian and apologist who encountered much controversy for boldly standing for truth. Many wince at the idea of controversy. But it’s been said that “Controversy and conflict bring clarity and conviction.” This was certainly true in the case of Machen.

Machen saw the rise of liberalism in his day, particularly within Princeton Theological Seminary and the denomination he ministered in, the Presbyterian Church (USA). After teaching at the seminary and becoming an ordained minister, he unknowingly entered the ring.

The year was 1915, and it was Machen’s first general assembly as a commissioner in the PCUSA. The so-called “Philadelphia Plan” proposed by the denomination sought to have union with other denominations using a creed that softened the core doctrines of the faith with imprecise language and maintained what Machen later called a “low visibility.” They sought to uphold traditional Christian terms but denied their historic definitions.

Machen opposed the plan. He (and his colleague, B.B. Warfield) argued that the creed advocated for unity at the expense of evangelical truth.

He was defrocked, but was unmoved by the attempts to silence him and so gave an address to the Chester Presbytery outside of Philadelphia. This address later became his most famous book entitled “Christianity and Liberalism.”

The most important part of the title was the word “and.” Think ham and cheese; fork and knife—the thesis is clear: Christianity is not liberalism. Or in the reverse: liberalism is not Christianity.

In this classic text, Machen argued that liberalism is not just a different version of the Christian faith, but an entirely different religion.

To do this, he surveyed the 5 core doctrines of the faith—the supremacy of God and the sinfulness of man, the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth (and deity) of Christ, the necessity of salvation, and the Biblical understanding of the church—and sought to reveal how liberalism has denied these tenets.

Liberalism, he argued, departed from the apostolic faith in favor of an anti-supernatural, moralistic, and therapeutic version of the faith that valued questions over answers and being “good” over being right.

And yet, this book is just as relevant today as when it was written; indeed, it “could have been written last Thursday.”1

Dr. David Briones presents a helpful summary and shows that, in his book,

Machen describes liberals who criticize Christians for defending a defenseless cause. It’s like defending the belief that the earth is flat, they say, or that miracles happen, or that sins need to be forgiven. “What’s the point?” asks the liberal. Everyone knows those things are impossible, so why bother defending them?

If that sounds familiar, it’s because we hear similar arguments from within the Church today. Many are calling for a reevaluation of Biblical views on sexual attraction, the sanctity of life, race, or even what it means to be a man or a woman.

Although the topics have changed, the motivation for liberalism or progressivism today isn’t all that different from that scathing critique of the Church Machen confronted 100 years ago. Back then, the American Church tried to compromise essential tenets of Orthodox Christianity to make it work… In the years after Machen’s book, Liberal Protestant Mainline Churches folded. Thousands made a shipwreck of their faith. Denominations split, and scores of ministries succumbed to theological compromise. So what should we do?2

It’s been over 100 years since Machen’s book defended the truth and over 500 years since the protestant reformation, when Luther stood for the truth. But in our day, we’ve (sadly) retained the name “protestant” while jettisoning “reformation.” The American church is a boat adrift from the dock of orthodoxy, its slow departure obscured by the thick fog of ecumenicism. Doctrinal minimalism, cloaked in the name of “unity,” has won the day.

Thus, Machen’s argument is still important for our times. In the spirit of Semper Reformanda (“always reforming”), I hope to keep it alive. Liberalism always rears its ugly head, just with a fresh coat of paint.

Dear Christian, understand something:

The task of defending true Christianity against liberalism will

not be finished until glory.

So what should we do? We don’t accommodate the gospel. We savor it, we proclaim it, and we fight for it. Thus, we must be equipped to engage with liberalism again and again to emerge on the other side clinging more closely to the unvarnished person of Jesus Christ. Unsurprisingly, you may have already engaged with liberalism without knowing it.

Liberalism: Beware!

How do you know Liberalism has come to town, your church, your small group? Here are snippets from the paper trail I picked up after engaging with the version that arose during the rise of modernity (and even newer iterations from someone like Phillip Gulley, who wrote “If the Church Were Christian,” which is the modern manifestation of Liberalism known as “Progressive Christianity”3):

• A master class in half-truths: What makes liberalism so dangerous is the half-truths that pervade its worldview (e.g., Jesus is a good moral example more than He is a God to be worshiped;4 Jesus might have risen again in history, but what truly matters is if He has risen again in your hearts5). They operate in “Low visibility”: using similar theological terms while holding a different dictionary.

• Prizing uncertainty: Knowing anything with certainty oppresses the doubter, they claim. Yet, that in itself is a claim of certainty. Moreover, in the modern repackaging of Liberalism, teachers have no issue speaking with great certainty regarding morals they deem essential, like accepting homosexual lifestyles.

• “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine”: Machen saw this as a top-tier issue for this whole discussion—a downplaying of doctrine due to a rejection of the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures. And therefore…

• Moralism: Its good news centers on a horizontal-only vision of doing good and displaying “love,” yet achieving it requires doing more and trying harder. This is an adventure in collapsing the law into the gospel (“go-law-spel”)—a gospel that enslaves rather than liberates; one that damns rather than saves.

• Poisoning the well: What’s difficult about reading and listening to folks such as Tim Whitaker from the “New Evangelicals” or Brandon Robertson, or Phillip Gulley is that they poison the well of orthodox Christianity, making their audience predisposed to reject it before even engaging our arguments. It’s important to push past this as you seek to engage with their content and know why you believe what you believe.6

To summarize all of this in the words of Richard Neibur, liberalism exchanges the apostolic faith, the fundamental message of Scripture, for a message about a “God without wrath trying to bring man without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”7

I’m all for Christians seeking to avoid a rank combativeness—Christians being known more for what we are against rather than what we are for—but controversy and conflict can also be a means of bringing clarity and conviction, so we ought not to shy away when they come.

The Way Forward

Over the next few weeks, I will be partnering with friends and fellow writers from (slightly) different church traditions to publish a series of essays in honor of Machen and to defend the historic faith against liberalism.

We will seek to cover a few of the topics in Christianity and Liberalism with contributions from my friends (Southern Baptist) and (Anglican).

Like Machen’s ultimate goal, ours is not to merely take down liberalism or “own the libs.” It is salvation through Jesus Christ; our goal is to propagate the only message that can save sinners from eternal death.

In the Spirit of Jude 3, 2 Peter 2, and 2 Timothy 2:24-26, we will contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, while correcting our “opponents with gentleness” so that

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3

Progressive Christianity uses the same scaffolding as classic Liberalism but builds a slightly different structure. Put another way, same drywall, different coat of paint. Here’s my definition of Progressive Christianity: “Progressive Christianity is a contemporary form of theological liberalism with a distinct emphasis on the liberal doctrine of man and salvation. Though claiming to begin with the authority of Scriptural revelation, it rather begins with grounding human identity and moral authority in the autonomous self, leading it to revise Christian doctrine and morality to be in line with prevailing societal and political norms.” To test my conclusion, read one manifesto from a Progressive person here:

The Jesus Movement

What is Progressive Christianity?

A lot of people ask me about my Christianity. As an out gay man living in Brooklyn, many are surprised to hear me talk about my church, or are taken aback when I say I can’t grab a drink on Thursday night because I have Bible Study…

Read more

2 years ago · 72 likes · Andrew Springer

Introduction

One morning, when my family and I lived in San Diego, I was at Birdrock Coffee Roasters. It was a typical workday out of the office—headphones in, laptop out, quietly typing up my sermon.

Background noise of conversations and coffee grinders hummed faintly underneath the music playing in my ears. As I clicked and clacked away, a woman’s voice pierced through:

“…you know, the biblical Jesus is different than the historical Jesus.”

My eyebrows shot to the top of my forehead.

I sought to save myself from whiplash, forcing my head to stay as straight as possible. But I shifted my gaze ever so slightly to the right, where two women sat across from each other, coffee in hand, leaning forward, engaged in a riveting conversation about religion.

I stealthily reached for the top of my keyboard and muted my music.

(Don’t judge me…)

As I listened, one woman began to explain the supposed “difference” between the historical Jesus and the Biblical Jesus.

The Biblical Jesus in her mind is the Jesus who is intolerant, bigoted, and rigid, as incarnated by many of His followers. But the historical Jesus would have affirmed: “love is love.” He would have been for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ ideology. She wanted to make sure it was known: the real Jesus is the one who embodies all of the current cultural narratives, not the Jesus found in the Bible.

In other words, an ancient book doesn’t have to define Jesus for us; we need to look at the facts of “history” and not be so narrow as to think only one set of people gets “Jesus” right. Furthermore, it’s not only the individual on the street who posits these revisions.

One may think of Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, James Talarico, who brings to the table a different “kind of Christianity.” J. David Goodman wrote recently in the New York Times, “Are Texans ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity?”1

What kind is this? It is theological liberalism with the crisp wrapping paper of “Progressivism.”2

After listening to a few sermons from Talarico (More like political pep talks with a side-order of Christianese), it’s easy to find that authority over morality has been located outside of the Bible, following Jesus’ example takes precedence over worshiping Him as God, and God’s definition of sin and man’s sinfulness are being rejected. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Theological Liberalism.

This ideology tends to creep back into the church in every generation, often with new packaging. But what we are seeing displayed in the high ranks of politics all the way down into the coffee shop is not just a kind or variation of Christianity, but something else entirely.

Tracing American Liberalism: How did we get here?

Surprisingly, the term “Liberal” or “liberalism”3 is not meant to be a swear word or a cheap shot to pull the plug on productive conversations. It is a tradition, with its own heroes, truth claims, and “ecclesiastical vision.”4

The timespan in view is 1880-1920. As the period of the Enlightenment progressed and Darwin washed ashore, a view of human progress—rooted in German soil—began to blossom. German higher criticism was a movement that sought to approach the Bible using critical methods. By the use of reason and a posture of anti-supernaturalism, one can approach the Bible’s claims to divinity and authority with an enormous amount of suspicion.

The underlying worldview was what is known as “Modernism” or “Modernity.” Much can be said about modernism, but the chief claim slowly dripping into universities, books, and scholarship was the idea of human progress predicated on man’s potential or inherent goodness. Sure, they would say, there is evil in the world, but it does not spring from bad people, but bad structures and institutions. With the right education and the reordering of bad structures, we can achieve a new phase of human progress.5

The English author and “father of science fiction,” H.G. Wells, even declared that we have turned a new page in history. Because of man’s goodness, we don’t need the Bible or any kind of atonement from Jesus. It’s nice to have Jesus as a good moral example, but we certainly don’t need him.

The seed of this kind of thinking was planted further back, even in religious literature. To summarize, we went “From Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who argued that the essence of true religion is a feeling of absolute dependence, to Albert Ritschl (1822-1889), who emphasized the kingdom of God as moral progress, to Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) who insisted that the development of doctrine marked the abandonment of true Christianity, to Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) who advocated the social gospel of deeds over creeds…”6 to Rudolf Bultmann who propagated the idea that the New Testament was simply a mythological retelling of the life of Jesus, giving rise to the claim, “the biblical Jesus is different than the historical Jesus.”

And in the face of Modernism’s main conclusion, namely, we don’t need God, these arguments seemed appealing and enabled those who claimed Christianity to accommodate and conserve some semblance of the Christian witness.

In America, this all came to a head in the famous sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick preached in New York City in 1920 entitled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” In this sermon, Fosdick took each of the essential beliefs of historic Christianity (The innerrancy of Scripture, the resurrection, the virgin birth, etc., you know, doctrines held by “fundamentalists”), and essentially advocated for maintaining the title “Christian” while modifying what we believe about each of them.

What looked like “modifying” or equivocating was actually a disguise for full denial. If modern philosophers and a modernist society are going to listen to the church, they thought, then we need to accommodate and innovate. Thus, said Fosdick triumphantly, we will not let the fundamentalists win!

This is why Stephen Nichols7 defined the liberal movement as,

In the next post, we’ll see the next player to enter the game that turned the tide on Liberalism in America. A whirlwind came to Philadelphia through a certain book you never knew you needed.

Stay tuned.

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Enjoy chapter five of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Reformed.”

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Enjoy chapter four of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Deformed.”

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Growing up, our nightly bedtime routine was fixed and rarely ever changed. One thing my mom and dad incorporated was Scripture memory. No system. No rigorous repetitions. No flash cards. They just read a passage to me until we all remembered it over time. But one we spent a significant amount of time on was Proverbs 3:5-6.

This was my very first memory verse. I don’t remember much from my early childhood, but I do remember this. Therefore, like a friend I haven’t seen in a while, this verse will seem to be distant but then pay me a visit at just the right time. In every season of my life, it makes inroads into my thoughts:

As I grew up and sat with my own musings, I treated this verse like a mere formula for decision-making or “finding God’s will.”

“I don’t know what college to attend! Okay, okay. I just gotta trust the Lord with ALL my heart (check), lean NOT on my own understanding (check)… Viola! The heavens will open up, a divine Apple Maps pin will drop, and I will know what decision to make!”

But upon further reading, the passage is so powerful because of what it shows us about the character of an infinite God.

Trust in the LORD (Yahweh) with all your heart…

What does this line teach us about God other than that He indeed can be trusted? What a striking statement from the Biblical author! It’s a command, not a suggestion. But why such confidence?

The capital “LORD” is the transliteration of the word Adonai, which the Jewish writers would substitute for the divine name YHWH (Or Yahweh). Yahweh (or I AM) is the special covenant name of God. It was the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush that was rife with redemptive underpinnings.

Moses asked for the name of the God who would send him to Pharaoh, whom he would audaciously command to let God’s people go. “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” (Exodus 3:14). God giving Moses His own name in this way suggests His self-sufficiency, self-existence (aseity), and faithfulness.

Do you see how this would be comforting to Moses while being commissioned to lead thousands of people out of slavery to the greatest earthly superpower with the greatest earthly leader, Pharaoh? Moses is thinking, “Who is this God who will go with me to Pharaoh?” Answer: The one who is—the infinite source of all life and being, the one who sustains and gives life to everyone and everything, including the big mean Pharaoh! Moses had the creator of all the universe on His side. You would almost feel bad for poor Pharaoh, for what created being is even remotely as strong as the great I AM?

Not only is the divine name a cause for God’s trustworthiness, but He acts in accordance with that name by fulfilling every one of His promises. Throughout Israel’s history, they were used to reading, “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:45).

For disciples of Jesus, this is even more comforting. As we read of promises, prophecies, and prefigurings of a messiah and deliverer who would come to crush the serpent’s head, we stand on their fulfillment.

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [Jesus]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Co 1:20–21).

Because God the Son came to us and provided infinite hope as the long-awaited prophet, priest, and king who died and rose again for the guilty, what else can we say in light of this? Trust in the LORD with all your heart. It’s the only logical conclusion.

Lean not on your own understanding…

What does this teach us about God other than that, in light of our weak and flawed understanding, He is the God of infinite understanding, wisdom, and knowledge?

God is the God whose greatness is unsearchable since His understanding is unsearchable (Psalm 145:3; Isaiah 40:28). In other words, his understanding is far above us. Our understanding has limits. His is utterly limitless.

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His thoughts above our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

In Christ, we have the storehouse of infinite wisdom since He is wisdom incarnate. Paul tells us that in Christ lie all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).

Let me ask: why on earth would I lean on my own understanding? Why would there be any trust in my finite mind to understand God and life under the sun? Leaning on my understanding is like using a twig as my walking stick as I traverse the highest peaks—It’s going to break, and I’m going to fall. Thus, I go to the place where God has chosen to reveal His divine mind that I may think His thoughts after Him; I run to the inerrant Scriptures.

In all your ways acknowledge Him…

What does this teach us about God other than that He is worthy of our attention?

In all of our ways—every decision, every season of life, every twist and turn—we tend to acknowledge other opinions, stock our minds with worldly advice, and absorb what is seen.

The call to acknowledge God in all our ways is a call to fruitful contemplation of what is unseen:

Facing temptation? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His power over sin.

Facing a tough decision? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His wisdom and providence.

Facing difficult people? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His love for you, a difficult person.

We tend to acknowledge everything on earth before the One who reigns for all eternity. Rather, in all your ways, acknowledge Him. Remember Him. Contemplate Him. He’s worthy of your attention.

He will make straight your paths.

This is where we mistakenly take the turn toward formula. If I do all the above, boom, God will just tell me my next step in life… right?

Well, actually, the immediate context does not speak of decision-making or finding God’s hidden will. Solomon is instructing his “son” in the good commandments of God. He desires for God’s “steadfast love and faithfulness” to never forsake him but rather be written on the tablet of his heart.

He’s essentially trying to shine a beam of light on a straight path in the midst of dark, crooked paths covered with thorns and thistles. God makes straight a path no matter what we face—it’s the way of His commandments. Trusting God with all our hearts in this context is the idea that, when all your senses see are crooked paths, faith sees the straight path in the midst of them.

Proverbs 3:5-6: A formula for finding God’s will? Unlikely. An antidote for anxiety in various circumstances? Absolutely.

For instance, that temptation smacking you in the face is seeking to bring you into a crooked path. But acknowledging God’s commandments in light of the trustworthiness of Christ carves the straight way of escape, helping you “fear the LORD and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7).

That trial may be a cause for despair, but acknowledging the Lord Jesus who blazed the trail of suffering before you enables you to walk the straight path of submitting to His sovereignty (1 Peter 2:23).

That season of joy and celebration may bring with it the temptation to live independent of God. But acknowledging God will provide the straight path of continued dependence on Him, whose kindness cooled you down in the pool of joy while surrounded by the deserts of sorrow.

In all these things, therefore, the straight path that God makes for us is the straight path of His commandments. They guide us to enjoy Him when our hearts would rather wallow in sorrow and drown out the screams of our circumstances that seek to woo us onto the path of self-dependence.

“My son grew up in church, but now he needs to make his faith his own.”

“Look, I know your parents are Christians, but you can’t rely on their faith; you have to make their faith your own.”

Have you heard this sentiment? Parents, youth leaders, and pastors often say things like this to convey that every young person must personally place his or her faith in Christ or take initiative in spiritual matters.

If that’s all people mean, I agree theologically. But language matters, and I fear that this catchphrase has unintended effects: It perpetuates unbiblical ideas about the nature of salvation, appropriates the individualism of our culture, and promotes a subtle kind of legalism.

Salvation Belongs to the Lord

Strictly speaking, this language of making your faith your own isn’t biblical. The Bible’s testimony is that repentance is granted (2 Tim. 2:25), a new birth is necessary to see the kingdom (John 3:3), and this new birth comes from the will of God, not man (1:12–13). Additionally, faith is a gracious gift of God through Jesus (Eph. 2:8–9), the founder and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2); indeed, “salvation belongs to the LORD!” (Jonah 2:9).

The only place in Scripture we find language similar to “make your faith your own” is Philippians 3. Paul reflects on his former life in Judaism and explains that he’s no longer devoted to seeking righteousness by the law. His aim is to know Christ and experience the power of his resurrection. Paul says, “I press on to make it my own” (v. 12)—“it” being the knowledge of Christ and future resurrection (vv. 10–11).

Paul’s wording points to our participation in sanctification, not salvation. And even for sanctification, “make it your own” isn’t the consistent language of Scripture.

When we describe faith (and therefore, initial salvation) as something a child must take ownership of, the emphasis unintentionally shifts from receiving to producing. It takes the focus off what God has done and places it on what the child needs to do. In this way, a youth leader, pastor, or parent may inadvertently convey that the child contributes something to the process of salvation.

Discipleship Happens in Community

The idea of making your faith your own also evokes a distinctly American, Disneyesque individualism. Our culture pushes the narrative of the “self-made woman/man.” However, other people’s influence in our lives is real and powerful, and when it comes to the Christian life, that’s exactly what God intended.

Paul’s reflection on how Timothy’s faith was influenced by his mother is instructive for us:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. . . . Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:14–15)

Paul doesn’t commend Timothy for making his faith his own; he highlights how God used Eunice’s faithfulness in teaching Timothy the Word to bring Timothy to saving faith and develop his firm belief.

Similarly, I can look back and say I became a believer because of my parents (e.g., regular Scripture reading, praying with me nightly even into adulthood, regularly rehearsing the gospel with me). I wasn’t pursuing faith like a person stranded in the desert looking for water. Rather, the Lord used my parents’ faithful discipleship. We ought not to minimize the channels through which gospel seed is dispensed, and discipleship is cultivated, whether that’s through teaching from the pulpit or in the living room.

When we do, we risk misguiding not only children but also parents. When parents come to believe that their children need to make their faith their own, it can loosen the parents’ sense of responsibility for the ordinary work of discipleship.

The Bible teaches that seeds of faith can be planted and grown through means of teaching, modeling, and retelling God’s wondrous works—especially in the home (Deut. 6:6–7; Ps. 78:5–7; 2 Tim. 1:5; 3:14–15).

Christ Fulfilled the Law

I grew up thinking that to make my faith my own meant I had to forsake some sin before I could genuinely embrace Christ. Or perhaps I needed to prepare myself for conversion through manifesting enough emotion or an inner willingness to forsake all else. I felt I could have peace with God only when my performance was up to snuff.

While it’s right to call children and teens to forsake their sin, telling them to make their faith their own may create confusion about the relationship between the law and the gospel. The weight of the law is meant to drive our children to Christ, who perfectly fulfilled its requirements. Christ alone, received with the empty hands of faith, grants us his righteousness and then transforms our hearts.

Rather than calling kids to make their faith their own, let’s call them to respond to Christ, the author and finisher of their faith (Heb. 12:2). Once they find refuge in the comforts of the gospel, we can point them to the law as their guide and “kind advisor.”

Better Way

We rightly desire to see children in our homes and churches “work out [their] own salvation” (Phil. 2:12), and it’s good for us to encourage them to actively seek the Lord. But we need to be thoughtful in how we talk to them about it. And we need to talk to the Lord about it regularly. I’ve found these two prayers helpful.

First, for kids who have professed faith, I pray that their faith would be tested and nourished to full maturity. That’s how Peter speaks: “that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7; emphasis added).

Second, if they’re not regenerated, I pray that Christ will make them his own. Our kids can then rightly pursue, by the Spirit, growth in knowledge of Christ and conformity to his image, as Paul pursued it: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3:12; emphasis added).

No, our kids don’t need to make their faith their own, but we can pray that Christ’s truth prevails over unbelief and possesses their hearts, resulting in the knowledge of Christ coming to full flower.

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