Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 27:1 (Spring 2023)
Article: Machen On The Bible: An Explanation And Application Of "Christianity And Liberalism", Chapter 4
Author: Robert W. Yarbrough

Machen On The Bible: An Explanation And Application Of Christianity And Liberalism, Chapter 4

Robert W. Yarbrough

Robert W. Yarbrough is Professor of Greek and New Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. He earned his PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of numerous books and articles, including commentaries on John, the Johannine letters, Romans, and the Pastoral Epistles. Besides US locations, he has taught in Canada, eastern Europe, Sudan, South Sudan, South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia, and Haiti. He has pastored in Montana, Missouri, and Illinois, and also serves as a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, he is currently serving at Greentree Community Church (EPC) in Kirkwood, Missouri. He has been married to Bernie for nearly 50 years. They have two adult sons and a white German shepherd named Dagger.

J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism a century ago.1 Why should it still be of interest today? One reason is that the major argument of the book has proven correct.

Machen argued that in his day, “Christianity” in terms of the historic beliefs found in the Bible and confessed by the church, was undergoing a transformation. Something called “liberalism”2 was replacing it. More accurately, it was hijacking the church’s heritage and taking congregations and even whole denominations in doctrinal and ultimately practical directions that were disturbing and incompatible with what “Christianity” had tended to authorize and signify in previous times.

The aptness of Machen’s analysis is confirmed in a recent sociological analysis by George Yancey and Ashlee Quosigk entitled One Faith No Longer:

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The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America.3 In eight chapters they sketch the history and current status of an in-house battle for the soul of the church that has proceeded (in North America, but with international reverberations) under the title “the Modernist-Fundamentalist conflict.”4 The authors draw a straight line from the analysis of North American Christianity found in Machen’s 1923 book, to similar observations (with a different focus) in James Davison Hunter’s 1992 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Control the Family, Art, Education, Law, and Politics in America,5 to Yancey and Quosigk’s 2021 findings in One Faith No Longer.You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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