Ruminating Musings Brainwork

In this week’s chapter of Christianity and Liberalism, there are two main themes: authority and subjective experience. Machem was concerned with the people of his time losing sight of the authority of Scripture and relying only on their own experience to recognize truth. This is very prevalent in our time and culture today. In our culture, there are an exuberant amount of people who will nominally claim Jesus for the sake of fire insurance or simply forsake Jesus altogether. What does this mean and why is it a problem? This means that people who claim Jesus but not have any fruit from an alive relationship with God are forsaking the authority of Scripture. How do we know this? Scripture is not only informative but transformative. The more you know God the more you love God. “The Christian message has come to us through this book.” (59, Machem) Machem explains how some will use their experiences to confirm or deny the Gospel. “It is one of the root errors of modern liberalism. C...

I keep forgetting this book was published in 1923… There have been several sentences in this book that I simply am just completely baffled by. Whyyyyy is this written for posterity? Also, there are a few points that seem completely opposite to culture today. This doesn’t describe what is happening today… Qualms aside, let’s take a look at some of the main points in chapter three of Christianity & Liberalism. First, Machen talks about how liberalism has caused Christians to reduce Christianity to a feeling of spiritualism. “It is unnecessary, we are told, to have a “conception” of God; theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the death of religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel His presence.” (47, Machen) This has been the complete opposite of my experience and education. So many churches are so concerned about being theologically correct, truth being held above relationship with God and others, and issues being apologetically defended that we can...

Chapter 2 of Machen’s book, Christianity and Liberalism is all about his thoughts on doctrine and how it interacts with our culture. For Machen, doctrine is the core of Christianity. His argumentation revolve around how all of Christian doctrine is based on common sense and honesty therefore justifying it in full. He also argues a zero-tolerance policy to be uncompromising in doctrine. Ironically, he also argues how Christianity is strictly doctrine and not a lifestyle. The glimmer of hope for truthful gold nuggets in this chapter is dim and bleak; nevertheless, let’s try to uncover some. Machen begins the chapter with laying out a problem with liberalism bleeding into theological seminaries and universities causing professors to shy from the truth in effort to not bring offense and end up risking complete dishonesty misleading their students. This does sound like a problem, and it very well could be a problem at a local university or seminary near you, but I am not convinced Mac...