Machen considered the church in the book’s final chapter, where he argued that since modernism was a different religion altogether, the honorable thing for modernists to do was to withdraw from the church. Knowing this to be unlikely, Machen appealed to moderates in the church: “A separation between the two parties is the crying need of the hour.” To allow ministers who opposed the message of the church “is not tolerance but simple dishonesty,” he explained, likely with Fosdick in mind. “Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith.”
Machen’s manifesto against modernism became a best-seller, and it was recognized by the secular newspaper journalist H.L. Mencken as “undoubtedly right.” But moderates could not follow Machen in his vision, especially when his opponents in the church and seminary portrayed themselves as winsome evangelicals. A General Assembly special commission appointed to study the causes of unrest in the church turned a deaf ear to Machen’s testimony to the threat of liberalism. In its 1926 report, the commission confidently commended the “evangelical unity” that lay beneath the diversity of views. “The church has flourished best,” it wrote, “and showed most clearly the good hand of God upon it, when it laid aside its tendencies to stress these differences, and to put the emphasis on the spirit of unity.” This stunning conclusion served to vindicate the signers of the Auburn Affirmation. When some signers of the Auburn Affirmation were then added to the reconstituted board at Princeton Seminary in 1929, Machen left and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Read more»
John Muether, “The Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy,” Tabletalk | May, 2020
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This is something those on the fringes have been saying for close to a decade. Now it’s too late.
Amazing how this is happening again 100 years later with the same playbook and the same result.
Thank you, Dr. Clark, for supplying the ammunition and the call to arms, as well as the compelling argument to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints now at hand, as you have before, at need.
There was an interesting article of Aaron Denlinger “John Calvin on Condoning Theological Delusion” on ligonier.org