Christianity and Liberalism

J. Gresham Machen, D.D.

New Edition

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

First published 1923

New edition published 2009 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

All rights reserved

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

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ISBN 978-0-8028-6499-4

ISBN 978-0-8028-6488-8 (Westminster Edition)

www.eerdmans.com

To My Mother

Contents

Foreword, by Carl R. Trueman

Acknowledgments

Preface

I. Introduction

II. Doctrine

III. God and Man

IV. The Bible

V. Christ

VI. Salvation

VII. The Church

Index of Names and Subjects

Index of Scripture References

Foreword

Those few people today who have heard of the name J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) almost certainly know him as the author of the book that is reprinted here, Christianity and Liberalism. In his own time, he had a somewhat broader reputation: as a controversial Presbyterian churchman; as a New Testament scholar (whose Greek primer is still in print); as a Princeton Theological Seminary professor; as a thorn in the flesh of both the seminary board and his denomination; as the opponent of the Nobel Laureate, Pearl Buck; as a libertarian litigant on the issue of jay walking; and as the founder of two institutions that survive to this day, Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

The context of Christianity and Liberalism (the so-called modernist-fundamentalist battles of the early twentieth century) and its central thesis (that liberalism is not a legitimate form of historic Christianity but rather a different religion entirely1) meant that, from the moment of its publication, it was seen as a piece of religious fundamentalism, albeit well written and originating from the pen of an academic whose intellectual and scholarly credentials could not be questioned. Such, for example, was the opinion of The British Weekly, which cited the book in an article in 1924 entitled “Fundamentalism: False and True.”2 While this characterization has continued in much of the relevant scholarly literature, it has been carefully argued by D. G. Hart that the categories underlying this analysis are simplistic. While Machen and the fundamentalists shared basic concerns for supernatural Christianity and traditional doctrinal formulations, not only were there significant differences between the two on major cultural platforms (e.g., the use of alcohol and prohibition), but Machen’s churchmanship also separated him from the typical fundamentalist mainstream. He was thus not so much a fundamentalist as a confessional Presbyterian. Of course, much depends on how one defines “fundamentalist,” but Hart’s critique is undoubtedly helpful in highlighting the different intellectual and cultural milieu and mindset of the Princeton professor. Fundamentalism and Machen may well have been, to use the modern term, cobelligerents and even allies, but ...