J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was born in the American South. He was born fewer than 20 years after the end of the Civil War. He was born to wealth and privilege. He also inherited the attitudes of many in the American South (and in the American North) about “race” (now a dubious category),1 ethnicity, and segregation. The world into which he was born assumed the righteousness of Jim Crow laws and racial segregation. It is likely that the only African-Americans with whom Machen had regular contact were door men and porters on the train. In the last few days there has been much angst over a letter that Machen wrote to his mother in which he expressed his disagreement with his older and equally southern Princeton Seminary colleague, B. B. Warfield (1851–1921), who, unlike Machen, had come to reject racial (or ethnic) segregation. Their disagreement came to a head in 1913. Fred Zaspel explains,
In 1913, while Warfield was acting president of the seminary, he acted on these convictions administratively. The faculty had maintained that whites and blacks should remain socially separate, and Machen, Warfield’s junior colleague at the time, complains in a letter to his mother that Warfield unilaterally overruled the protest and allowed a black student to live in the student dormitory at Alexander Hall. Warfield practiced what he preached.2
The letter is ugly and painful to read and does not reflect well on Machen. It raises some larger questions, however. The first is what to do when we find that our heroes were sinful? This question has arisen before in this space. Nearly 6 years ago Thabiti Anyabwile noted that Colonial Americans, sometimes denoted “American Puritans” or “Colonial Puritans” were slaveholders. Then, as now, my response is to observe that these are good reminders that church history is, in part, the history of sin. There is strong historical, empirical evidence for the Pauline and Augustinian (and Reformed) view of original sin and depravity after the fall. As a consequence of Adam’s sin all humans are corrupt in all their faculties (e.g., the intellect, the affections, and the will). By nature, after the fall, we think wrongly, we love badly, and we choose wickedly. This means that we should not be surprised to find out about the particular sins of our theological forebears.
Second, “heroes” and “golden ages” are a bad idea on both theological and historical grounds. The only sinless man who ever walked this earth was Jesus. He is God the Son incarnate. His humanity was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was born of the Virgin and perfectly obeyed God’s righteous and holy law all the days of his earthly life. He did so vicariously (as a substitute) for all of his elect and that righteous active and suffering obedience was imputed to all his people for their justification received through faith alone, which he himself gave them by the work of his Holy Spirit. All the rest of us are, by nature, Adam’s children and we make progress in sanctification slowly and unevenly. Romans 7:21–25
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin (ESV).
The traditional Reformed reading of this passage holds that Paul was speaking of himself, about his Christian experience. To the objection that a Christian could not speak this way, the Reformed response has been to say that only a Christian says “when I want to do right”and “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” and only a Christian experiences the warfare to which Paul refers, and only a Christian cries out, “who will deliver me from this body of death?” and closes a ringing doxology combined with such a brutally honest self-assessment. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” is followed by “with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Under the historic Reformed reading of this passage, which is reflected in the Heidelberg Catechism (e.g., 60), we are not perfectionists. Because history is the account of human actions (behind which lies the secret providence of God) we understand that there are no golden ages on this earth before the coming of Christ. In the Second Helvetic Confession (art. 11; 1566) the Swiss Reformed (and others) confess:
We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt., chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch. 18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and 4, present something quite different.
This also means that just as all our heroes (e.g., Polycarp, Athanasius, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, and Machen) had feet of clay and real, actual sins. So also there were no golden ages in the past either. There was never a time after Eden when all was right with the world or that there were sinless men (apart from Jesus). It means that, as much as Reformed confessionalists should admire Old Princeton, not everything was right there. It means that we all have skeletons in our ecclesiastical and historical closets. Calvin sinned. He consented to and participated in the civil punishment of religious heretics. Virtually everyone in the West between Justinian and the 18th century believed in the civil punishment of religious heretics. Pastors were often officers of the state, paid by the state. This is one of the reasons why the American founders sought religious liberty (again, however imperfectly practiced in the first decades of the Republic). They remembered that non-conformists in England and Scotland (congregationalists and Presbyterians) suffered greatly at the hands of the Anglican establishment and sought to avoid repeating the mistake of Christendom.
How should Reformed confessionalists respond to the fact that Machen wrote an ugly, racist letter to his mother? Does that fact disqualify or taint his work? Does it taint or disqualify his Grammar of New Testament Greek? Does it taint or disqualify his argument that Christianity is one thing and Modernism (including Walter Rauschenbusch’s so-called “Social Gospel“) is another? Does it taint or disqualify his defense of the Virgin Birth of Christ or his defense of the supernatural origins of Paul’s religion? Does it call into question the institutions he founded, e.g., the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary? Does it mean that when Machen defended the gospel in his writings (e.g., his Notes on Galatians), he defended a false gospel?
Let us consider the matter this way: Imagine that Machen’s critics, those who have just discovered his clay feet, themselves have their own sins. Imagine, for example, that they had written a letter that, though not racist, violated the moral law of God in some other way. Does the existence of such a letter invalidate their criticism of Machen’s racism? One thinks not. To suggest that Calvin’s sins disqualify his theology is fallacious. It is an ad hominem argument, which says that the nature of the person falsifies everything he says. This does not follow. There is also the matter of poisoning the well. Does it follow that everything a slave-holding Puritan wrote is either falsified or at least tainted by the fact of his slave-holding? If logic still matters, and it does, we must say no. We must also, however, be clear-eyed about the sins of our forefathers. We should not repeat them. Machen’s racist letter was inconsistent with his theology. His confession said that all humans are created in the image of God. He did not apply that truth consistently to brothers and sisters and other image bearers who had an ethnic history different from his own. That is a shame and a sin. It was contrary to the Word of God as he confessed it. It is contrary to the Word of God as we confess it now.
He was a man of his time and place but, given that Warfield, who was just as Southern as Machen and born before the Civil War and therefore even more closely tied to the Old South, was able to overcome his culture and see that the sort of segregation held by the Old Princeton faculty (Machen was not alone in his views at Princeton) was contrary to the Word of God so too Machen should have done the same. Racism is sin. Still, history is real. He lived in a time and place and those realities had a real, damaging effect upon him. We are products of our time. I was raised before weed was legal, when the modern war on drugs was just beginning. I am a product of that experience (and lots of experience with drug abusers). Surveys suggest, however, that Millennials largely think that weed is harmless. They also tend to think that same-sex marriage is no great matter. They are the product of a more lenient and more overtly post-Christian culture than the Gen-Xers and Baby boomers. It is difficult to break free of the long-held prejudices by which one is surrounded but, by the grace of God, it happens. It happened for white people during and after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. People really did have a change of heart, mind, and will. Had Machen survived his trip to Bismark and lived to see the Civil Rights movement, perhaps his heart would have been changed. Perhaps not. We will never know.
We do know, however, that Machen was a sinner and so are you and I. We all are in desperate need of the favor of God earned for sinners by Jesus, the righteous God-Man. Machen now knows that his opposition to integration at Princeton Seminary was wrong. I suppose that, within the limits of pilgrim theology (even the theologia visionis), he knows a great lot more than he knew when he was on earth. He is praising God with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev 5:9). There is no segregation in heaven. Indeed, before the throne of Christ the truth of Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11 is realized. In Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, Scythian or Barbarian “but Christ is all, and in all.” So it should be in Christian seminaries and churches. Those contemporary advocates of segregation, ostensibly in the interest of “social justice,” ought to repent too. If segregation is wrong, it is wrong. It cannot be wrong when Machen advocates it but right when the politically correct approve of it. Such a view is incoherent. There is no place in Christ for ethnic or “racial” segregation.
In Christ we must, each of us, repent of our sins, including racial or ethnic prejudice. We must love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus did. He obeyed and died for people of all skin colors. Machen is our neighbor. We ought to treat him the way that we hope that our children and grandchildren will treat us. We should not indulge in the Hegelian-Marxist-Enlightenment fantasy that we really are superior to our forebears. Whatever the Marxist dialectic claims, there is no such thing as “the right side of history.” For Christians, there is only loving one’s neighbor. After all, one day all our letters, emails, tweets, texts, and DMs will come to light. Those who plan to stand before Jesus on the basis of their political correctness and self-righteousness shall be judged on the basis of their works. Jesus said:
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. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt 12:24–37; ESV)
On that day the Christian, who is trusting in the finished work of Jesus as the propitiation of God’s wrath and the expiation of all his sins, shall receive Jesus with joy and an uplifted head (HC 52), knowing that he stands before the throne with his sins already judged on the cross and clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. The Pharisee, however, shall stand under a covenant of works, when all the secrets of the heart and mouth shall be disclosed and judged. Ironically, the racist and the self-righteous have more in common than they think. They both need to repent and flee to Jesus, the only righteous Savior of sinners.
©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.
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- Princeton Seminary Catches Up With Machen On Segregation?
NOTES
1. There are serious questions about the history and validity of the category of “race.” Given those questions, one wonders how sustainable the category of “racism” is. One may not deconstruct “race” and then coherently affirm one of its byproducts, i.e., racism. Surely, what we mean by “racism,” is a civil evil and a sin, a violation of the second table of God’s moral law. Perhaps I am missing something but I do not see anyone addressing this problem. It would help us if we were more critical of the category “systemic racism,” and more receptive to the older category of analysis “prejudice.” By dismissing prejudice as a category we have lost a valuable tool for analyzing and understanding sin. Individuals may and must repent of prejudice but “systemic racism” is vague, nebulous, and whatever truth it may convey it has the unintended consequence of excusing particular people of particular sins. On this see e.g., David VanDrunen, “Reflections on Race and Racism,” Ordained Servant (March, 2021).
2. Fred G. Zaspel, “Reversing the Gospel: Warfield on Race and Racism,” Themelios 43, no. 1 (2018): 32.
Thank you for the article. It is a sad and sobering reminder our heroes in the faith, like Abraham, Peter and others have feet of clay. This isn’t to excuse the sins, only to realize how powerful and pervasive the remaining corruption is within all Christians.
I pray these things cause us to pray to forgive others for their sins and seek forgiveness for our own. Let us seek His aid to grow in grace and holiness in hopes we learn to not repeat the same sins of our fathers, and also to not discount the good works God did produce in our heroes, not throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath.
Thank you for pointing out even Biblical people. By the logic of the men beating the anti-Machen drum, Peter in particular should be ostracized for he held similar prejudices in the Sean that he was ashamed to be seen with Gentiles before Jewish Christians. (Paul in Gal). Dr. Clark does a great job reminding us of the fact that we are all sinners who need the grace of Christ for any hope. Another argument, based on logic of these Indoviduals; why not just everyone go back to Rome since Luther showed anti-semitism? Surely his work should be condemned due to that. I also agree with Chris below. This is a vicious attack to a man who defended the gospel more ably, proudly, and skillfully than majority of Christians today.
It should read “sense” not Sean above. Auto correct and not proofreading are never good combinations.
Great reflection, Scott. Thank you! And then there’s the issue that a personal letter made to his mom, of all people, was taken by someone to viciously disperse all over social media with the goal of condemning him and discrediting everything he ever wrote. Machen wrote that in a context of no social media. That’s like pulling the twisted thoughts out of our brain and then dispersing them to the planet a 100 years later. None of us would want God to do that. If there was ever a moment that love should cover a multitude of sins, as the Lord does our own, this is it. But, such is the vicious approach of this social movement in the church.
What Satan intends for evil, God uses for our good. It always amazes me that God publishes the gross sins of the OT and NT saints, in such graphic detail. I’m sure it is in God’s plan to prevent our idol factory hearts from making them into idols that we would venerate, so He makes us aware of their sins and failures. God, in His providence reduces Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, Augustine, Owen, Calvin, Luther, and Machen to the same level as ourselves, sinners who depend on the only perfect righteousness, outside of us, in Christ alone, for acceptance with God. As Machen telegraphed before he died, “I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it!”
Yes, we don’t intend (usually) for our private letters to be read by millions of people. I agree, it is similar to pulling thoughts from our brains. Thank you for putting that so well.
With respect to Note #1 “There are serious questions about the history and validity of the category of “race:”
The idea of multiple human races derives from the evolutionary thinking that has swept the post-Christian West and America, virtually displacing the Genesis account of creation.
Evolution is an ancient esoteric doctrine positing an inverted exegesis that is in every way the antithesis of the Revealed Word of God as even evolutionary atheist Richard Dawkins agrees:
“I think the evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right in a way, in seeing evolution as the enemy. Whereas the more, what shall we say, sophisticated theologians are quite happy to live with evolution, I think they’re deluded. I think the evangelicals have got it right, in that there really is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity…” (“Homeschooling parents demand evolutionary textbooks,” Lita Cosner, 13 June 2013, creation.com)
The ancient roots of modern evolutionary thinking are traceable to the Enuma Elish (the Mesopotamian origin account) and ancient Egyptian Hermeticism. Like its modern counterparts, Hermeticism posits an inverted exegesis teaching biological and spiritual evolution from lower to higher states of existence:
“Human beings are themselves the product of a long spiritual evolutionary process that moves from ‘creeping things’ to fish, mammels, birds and then people. Humans can-—through occult knowledge and extraordinary ability-—continue this evolutionary process and become daemons, then gods, and finally planets or stars.” (The Making of the New spirituality, James A. Herrick, p. 40)
According to the owner of the Kheper website—a vast collection of ancient and modern esoteric and magic science teachings covering evolution, transformation, and metamorphosis—the exciting idea of a new race of men had to await the rise of modern evolutionary thought with Hegel, Darwin, and others:
“In the 19th century, Nietzsche introduced his Overman, Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote his famous science fiction story ‘The Coming Race,’ and finally H.P. Blavatsky incorporated many themes, including Bulwer-Lytton’s, in her Secret Doctrine, which included the concept of Root Races. However, this theme reaches its greatest formulation spiritually in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and technologically in the concepts of Transhumanism.”
Modern evolutionary thinking is not empirical science but rather occult magic science that incorporates the previous esoteric teachings and occult sciences. It is this so-called ‘science’ that is at the center of the ‘new’ emerging spirituality overtaking post-Christian society. The new spirituality is the “striving human will” seeking desperately to launch itself into godhood through the “mechanisms of directed spiritual evolution, spiritualized science and spirit contact.” (The Making of the New Spirituality: the Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James A. Herrick, p. 279)
Modern evolutionary thinking and the ‘new’ spirituality now presents itself as the,
“rightful replacement for the Revealed Word (and) proclaims its spiritual liberation from the worldview that informs Christianity and its freedom from (the) personal and wholly other God. But this new way of self-salvation (is) little more than the refurbishing of an ancient spiritual mistake.”
Dr Clark, it’s one thing to claim that establishmentarianism isn’t a biblical mandate. It’s entirely another to claim that our fathers sinned in punishing and supporting the punishment of blasphemy – such a claim directly contradicts the generally equity clause of the westminster confession. Can you provide clear exegetical evidence that punishing blasphemy is sinful? If not, isn’t such a claim an addition to the moral law (dt. 4:2, 12:28)?
I was wondering this too. What is the general equity of Deuteronomy 13 (for example)?
It depends on what one means by “general equity,” which, in medieval/16th century usage simply meant, “common” or “natural law.” That’s certainly what the Westminster Divines meant by it.
Thanks for the article. I always include reference to Warfield’s attitude in the lectures to my students in Church History.
Interesting about Warfield. It made me think of another of that era, who is also usually seen as “ahead of his time”–Justice John Marshall Harlan the elder (incidentally, also a Presbyterian from a Kentucky slave-holding family).
Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) argues that the Fourteenth Amendment does not allow for making distinctions among groups of citizens; hence a Louisiana law segregating railroad facilities which was challenged by Homer Plessy (who was at most 1/16 black) was unconstitutional. He also notes the social disruption and inconvenience segregated trains might cause in forcing white employers and black employees to sit separately while traveling.
However, Harlan affirms something to the effect that the white man will stay on top as long as he cultivates the virtues which gave him that status. While he probably would not have begrudged economic success and social advancement to freedmen, he also seems to haave supposed such advancement would not go far.
Further, Harlan waxes indignant when he notes that a Chinese traveler would not be segregated–even though such a person belonged to an extremely alien and unassimilable race (paraphrasing Harlan). In the same year as Plessy, Harlan also dissented in US v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the court’s majority ruled that being US-born, Wong Kim Ark was a citizen under the Fourteenth Amendment, and could not be barred under the CHinese Exclusion Acr from re-entering the US after a trip to China. In this case, Harlan construed the Fourteenth Amendment narrowly as meant to apply only to the post-Civil War freedmen.
Perhaps, with Warfield and Harlan, with their Kentucky slaveholding backgrounds, their might have been the underlying understanding that if a slaveholder didn’t treat his human chattel decently, he might see them disappear over the Ohio at the earliest opportunity.
And their are others’ feet of clay. Samuel Sewall, the Puritan judge and pillar who in 1700 wrote _The Selling of Joseph_ as a blistering tract against the African slave trade, calling it cruel and thoroughly un-Christian, was the same judge who had earlier hanged witches at Salem.
However, while not excusing the sins of our fathers and brethren, it might be worth noting to “progresssives” who bring up the burning of Servetus or Dabney’s racism, that in the 20th century alone, more people were killed, exiled, imprisoned, or otherwise ruined by their governments in the names of progress and social justice than suffered for heresy or unbelief in the fifteen centuries between the conversion of Constantine and Ruggles v. New York
ALL have sinned…
Machen’s death date should be corrected to read 1937.
Done. Thank you.
I agree with much of what is here but just what does Machen being born in the South 20 years after the Civil War to a wealthy family and inheriting the attitudes and prejudices about race and segregation common to the times to do with the issue of the son of racism? Does any of this provide an excuse? Are we supposed to be more understanding of it? I am sorry I cannot give him a pass on any of it. I was born in the north less than 20 years after World War II to a middle class family and inherited the attitudes of sexual promiscuity and self indulgence common to my generation. Will you be less condemnatory of the son of adultery as a result? I do not think so. It may not invalidate my work in other areas but will impact your assessment of my character. By all means use Machen’s Greek text, his defense of the Virgin Birth and his other writings but these contributions do not make him likeable in the least as an elitist racist pig. If Warfield could overcome the liabilities of birth and training and allow scripture to govern his attitudes towards black men at Princeton, there is no reason why Machen should not have likewise. He had sufficient light from the Bible he defended and from the colleague and teacher he valued. No excuses here.
Paul,
What makes Warfield interesting in this case is how exceptional he was. In the ordinary course of things, a man of Machen’s place and experience in the post-Civil War (Jim Crow) South would have afforded him very little opportunity to think differently than he did.
One of the great problems we all have in our age is a lack of historical sensibilities. What you want is for Machen to have an enlightened post-WWII attitude toward race. Many American caucasians had their first direct experience of African-Americans during WWII and after, in the integrated military and in cities as a result of the Great Migration.
History is not the business of making excuses but it is the business of explaining how things were and why. Warfield was an exception on this the way Davinci was an exception. Who else was theorizing about mechanical flight in the late medieval period? Should we demand that Thomas Aquinas have theorized about mechanical flight? No. Such a demand is anachronism. We know about mechanical flight because we live after the Wright Brothers. We take it for granted. So too, after the Civil Rights movement, we take certain things for granted that, for most people, were almost impossible before the Civil Rights movement.
We need to condemn Machen’s attitude (which, we should hasten to remember, was written privately to his mother not published) even as we try to understand how a man could do so much good and yet contradict his own confession so directly.
Doubtless you and I will be judged by the future and found wanting. Excuses? How about a little less self-righteousness?
Men like Machen, and earlier Dabney as well, were captives of their Big House Culture, as we call it. Southerners like myself, who were in the lower strata of Southern Society had an entirely different view. The Old South was a very stratified society, very hard to fathom for outsiders. My Northern relatives viewed all Southerners, Texans in particular, as uncouth barbarians, and there was a blatant racism among them that was not allowed in my family. I grew up with Blacks, a minority on the ball teams I played on. What I shared in common with them was a love of playing the rich white kids and beating the tar out of them. Machen may have made some statements regarding society that some may dislike, but his love of the Gospel of Christ cannot be questioned, nor his desire to bring that Gospel to all people.
Wesley,
I do think that the social stratification of the Old South, which was much more like Europe than it was the American North, is an over-looked sociological factor. History (time and place) matter. They shape us far more than we know.
Dr Clark thank you for this article, I personally tend to idealize my reformed forefathers and to think of them as glorified saints walking the earth, this is a necessary reminder of the fact that only Jesus is sinless and that should we ever get to know the secret sinful thoughts of great men of the faith we would be scared (as others would be with ours). When in front of Jesus for judgment Machen will have no sins accounted to him but only the righteousness of the fulfiller of the covenant of works, the imputed righteousness of the active obedience of Jesus will be the only hope for the helpless sinner that Machen knew he was, like each and everyone of us is.
Well said!
Thank you for this well-reasoned and articulate article. Personally, I also find a distinction between something like what Machen said in “private” and the public advocacy of racism by someone like Dabney. While I recognize the ad hominem fallacy needs to be avoided, in Dabney’s case that aspect of his “work” sub-consciously hovers over the rest of it to the point that I find his writings as a whole rather unpalatable. He conveyed some theological points quite well, but not any better than many other Reformed stalwarts that can readily be read. Thoughts?
I think Dabney’s work should be read and evaluated on its merits. If we set up cultural/political tests, as some want, then, in the end, we will have very little to read indeed.
I have not found Dabney particularly interesting as a Reformed theologian. I have learned more from Hodge and Warfield and tend toward them.
It probably won’t mean much to anyone other than those who already have respect for him, but in his biography of Machen, Ned Stonehouse notes that Machen personally paid for the surgery of a black janitor at Princeton.
It would be helpful to reproduce the text of the letter.
Peter,
I have only seen a version of it on Twitter. I have not seen a source text yet. Further, I considered tracking it down and publishing it but decided that would serve no useful purpose.
I have had my fill, and beyond, of today’s self-appointed Reformed guardians of civic and ecclesiastical righteousness, with little understanding of history and even less patience towards others., In my view, these individuals too have become “humorless scolds,” as someone wrote elsewhere of today’s political left. Unable to be charitable to anyone who fails to rise to the level of their own exalted contemporary standards, they have become uncharitable, insufferable, boorish prigs. To speak of a great man and scholar such as J. Gresham Machen as one whose “contributions do not make him likeable in the least as an elitist racist pig” has crossed a line for me. How do professed Christians who speak like this deal with the sins and weaknesses of those whom they encounter every day? Do they consider themselves exempt from the command to “bear one another’s burdens” and gently, lovingly, minister to each other as we seek to grow in likeness to Christ? Or has “racism” (often so broadly defined as to have little objective meaning) become the only unforgivable sin? Since the beginning of this century, I have seen hero after hero of the faith ground to dust beneath the wheels of the smugly self-righteous, while these same judges conveniently fail to deal with their own sins. I have seen the peace of my own denomination – the PCA – disrupted by majoring on the minors. I have seen obsession with “social justice” eclipse our commitment to the system of doctrine contained in the Scriptures as summarized in our doctrinal standards.
I’m waiting for one of these people to be bold enough to savage Philemon as a wicked slave owner, and to berate the apostle Paul for lacking the courage to tell him so.
Amen! Brilliant.
Isn’t that their agenda, to replace the good news of God’s acceptance of wretched sinners in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ with the social gospel? This is a social gospel of a covenant of works where Jesus is made out to be, not the Son on Man sent by the Father to redeem sinners, simply an earthly messiah, and if you don’t get in line with their version of a new earth, you are an obstacle to be removed, by any means necessary, in the cause of the new religion.
I’m sure the social gospelers are already berating Philomen and Paul for failing to condemn slavery, since as they see it, the bible is only the opinion of men who were not as enlightened as they are.
Is there a way to read the letter Machen wrote to his mother?
Bill,
It’s in print but not online as far as I know. Zaspel cites Calhoun, Princeton Seminary, 505. I’ve not had time to track it down. Not sure I want to do, frankly.
Dr. Clark:
You should look. Zaspel has a different view of Warfield than does Mark Noll. Zaspel’s Themelios article made Warfield look too good.
Thanks for the article. I read the original tweet bringing this to light and was sad to hear about Machen’s racism.
I am also saddened that some people have added to those sins by using the sins of Machen to try to beat and bludgeon the OPC and Westminster. One blogger even went as far as using Machen as an example that the cause of the founding of the PCA was primarily (if not solely) a move of Southern PCUS churches so that they could maintain their segregationists ways. Apparently the only real reason the PCA got started was white supremacy and somehow Machen was a key cog in this. This absurd line of reasoning has been making it rounds to the point that there is a group of people now saying concerns about liberal theology isn’t genuine either and that it is a cover for white supremacy. Sad stuff indeed!
Such is the desperation of unregenerate haters of the gospel good news that Christ lived and died to provide the perfect righteousness for the wicked sinners who are God’s elect. To them that is an impossible scandal. They cannot accept that it is precisely the redemption of the most wicked and detestable sinners that gives the greatest glory to God, because those who are forgiven much, love much. To such self righteous people, who are saints in their own eyes, the sins of God’s true saints should disqualify them, and their faith from any credibility, so they will do anything to try to dredge up dirt to discredit and persecute Christians. BUT GOD, did not come to save the righteous but sinners. God justifies the wicked! What a lovely, satisfying, wonderful, delicious scandal that is the stumbling block of all self-righteous reprobates.