Machen’s Enemies Then And Now And The Myth Of Influence

The Aquila Report ^ | 11-19-13 | R. Scott Clark

[ReformationFan]

Wally was a sweet fellow and very graciously lent me volume one of the Battles edition of Calvin’s Institutes. A while later I visited him in his luxurious office at the local “tall-steeple” PCUSA congregation in order to return the book. I was full of questions. In conversation, Wally mentioned that he was a graduate of Princeton Seminary. I had heard about this fellow “Machen” so I asked Wally about him and about Westminster Seminary. His jovial face quickly turned red with anger at the very mention of the traitor Machen and the rebel seminary. Mind you, this was about 50 years after Machen had left Princeton and decades after Wally had been a student at PTS.

Obviously that episode left an impression. It certainly made me want to get to know Machen. What was it about this fellow that made such a lovely and gracious fellow so openly angry, even contemptuous? It wasn’t Machen in se that made Wally angry, it was the textus receptus, or the received libel of Machen, that Wally believed, that angered him. It’s a funny old thing. The liberals have apologized for everything, for things in which they have corporate complicity and things for which, arguably, they do not but they’ve never apologized for what they did to Machen. The campaign of smears and allegations, perpetrated by good “evangelicals” and outright liberals together still stirs one’s blood. “Get over it” you say? Can’t do it. Wouldn’t be prudent. We need to learn from it the nature of the “go-along, get along” evangelicals positioning themselves for influence in the culture and the illiberal nature of theological liberalism, which wants the same thing as the evangelicals: cultural influence.

[ReformationFan]

ping

[aumrl]

Princeton.
What interesting times.
Machen and Dr carl Mc

[HarleyD]

...the spirit of Eerdman and Stevenson lives on; it lives in all of all of us. How do I know it lives? It lives within my heart.

Excellent point. Heresy is one of our greatest enemies. We hear the whispers of tolerance, peace, and love in our hearts mistaking them for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We give in to get along or bend doctrine to fit our situation. We chide others who stay on the straight and narrow path all the while we acquiescent to others in the belief that we're furthering the cause of Christ. We forget that it is Christ that rules and wants us to follow Him. Instead we justify our actions with good intentions.

What heresies really does is draw us away from following Christ and weakens our testimony. Machen understood these dangers. His distractors never did much to their ruin and the ruin of the PCUSA.