my burg

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."  (Mark 10:45) "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'" (John 14:6)  I've just finished reading B. B. Warfield's classic article, "Christless Christianity" (1912) available online here . This long journal article is worth the time invested in reading. Warfield's research influenced his own student, J. Gresham Machen, especially as reflected in Machen's Christianity and Liberalism (1923) and What Is Faith? (1925).  What makes this relevant to us today is that orthodox (by that I mean, historic) Christianity has always needed to defend the unique position of our Lord Jesus to Christian faith itself. Ever since the Enlightenment skeptics have sought to separate Jesus Christ (or the Jesus of history) from Christianity. This is done a number of ways, for example, ...

"And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers."  (1 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV)  "...and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God..." (Ephesians 6:17 ESV)  "And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth."  (1 John 5:6 ESV)  Gresham Machen writes,  If we take the Bible as the Word of God, then the Bible becomes our standard of truth and of life. When we are asked whether we can support any kind of message or can engage in any course of conduct, what we do is simply to compare that message or that course of conduct with the Bible. If it agrees with the Bible, we can support it or follow it; if it does not agree with the Bible, we cannot support it or follow it no matter what we may be told by other authorities to do. ... Our standard is n...

Here are some quotes from three works by J. Gresham Machen (1881--1937)...  From The Origin of Paul's Religion (1921)... 16th cent. Russian icon of the Apostle Paul "What is really most significant in the Pauline Epistles therefore, is the complete absence of any defense of the Pauline doctrine of Christ , the complete absence, indeed, of any systematic presentation of that doctrine. The Pauline view of Christ is everywhere presupposed , but nowhere defended. The phenomenon is very strange if the modern naturalistic account of Jesus be correct. According to that account, the historical Jesus, a great and good man, came after His death to be regarded as a divine Redeemer; one conception of Jesus gave place to a very different conception." "Yet the surprising thing is that the mighty transition has left not the slightest trace in the primary sources of information. The chief witness to the transcendent conception of Jesus as divine Redeemer is quite unco...

“Fierce was the wild billow  Dark was the night; Oars labored heavily  Foam glimmered white; Mariners trembled  Peril was nigh;  Then said the God of God --  ‘Peace! It is I!’ “Ridge of the mountain wave,  Lower thy crest! Wail of Euroclydon,  Be thou at rest! Peril can none be –  Sorrow must fly –  Where saith the Light of Light --  ‘Peace! It is I!  “Jesus, Deliverer!  Come Thou to me: Soothe Thou my voyaging  Over life’s sea! Thou, when the storms of death  Roars, sweeping by,  Whisper, O Truth of Truth! --  ‘Peace! It is I!’” ~ Anatolius of Constantinople (d. 458),     Hymns of the Eastern Church  (J. M. Neale, trans.)   "We need our brothers and sisters down through the ages.  We need the whole church for this task of explaining God's word."   (Michael Horton) Summer reading suggestion:   Church History in Plain Language (4th. e...

So, I made a list of the twelve best books I read this past year.  I don't know why I do this, but it seems appropriate to share this, rather than, say, my favorite dog videos or Instagram photos of what I'm eating tonight.  So, in no particular order I'll dive in:  Setting Our Affections upon Glory: Nine Sermons on the Gospel and the Church , by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Crossway, 2013).  At least once each year I  find myself reading a book of sermons preached by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981).  Simply put, he's just in a category by himself and his  sermons always feed my soul, as well as stimulate thought and affections.  Snippets: "There is only one thing [ the Christian can ] do with time, and  that is to take it and put it into the grand context of eternity."  And, "The great need of the church today, in our sadness and in our slowness, is to  discover the secret of the burning heart." The Christian View of Man , by J. Gres...

"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. ...  This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true."  (John 20:30-31; 21:24 ESV) "The outstanding result of a hundred years of effort to separate the natural from the supernatural in the early Christian view of Jesus is that the thing cannot be done. The two are inseparable. The very earliest early Christian account of Jesus is found to be supernaturalistic to the core." (J. Gresham Machen) Read "The Supernatural Christ" , chapter 15 in The Christian Faith in the Modern World (1936) here .  

"In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the  sound doctrine which you have been following."  (1 Timothy 4:6 NASV) There is an ongoing concern in many evangelical churches that we need to move on from Christian doctrine to the more practical aspects of the  Christian life.  After all, Christianity is more relational and practical.  It's more about life and relationships than it is about the content of the teachings of the church.  This is a fair enough concern, since all biblical doctrine needs to be worked out in real life.   But the danger here is that we separate doctrine from faith and life, and so remove the very foundation (and motivation) for living faithfully to God in this world.  Those of us who are studying Romans together are seeing that the Apostle Paul lays out eleven chapters of doctrinal groundwork before he comes to th...

In no particular order... Reformation:Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow ,  by Carl Trueman (Christian Focus, Reprint 2011).  In this reprint, Trueman (professor of church history) gives a number of important applications for today's church from the Reformation.   How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds ,  by Alan Jacobs (Currency, 2017).  Hard to describe this little book, but it is profound. How community  affects the way we think.  I enjoyed two collections of sermons by Martyn Lloyd-Jones : Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled, (Crossway reissue, 2009). The Cross: God's Way of Salvation, (Crossway, 1986)  Awakening the Evangelical Mind:  An Intellectual History of the Neo-Evangelical Movement ,  by Owen Strachan (Zondervan, 2015)  Along with  Confessions of a Theologian, by Carl F. H. Henry (Word Books, 1986).  Strachan chronicles the rise of the new evangelicals in the 1950s and beyond.  Carl ...

J. Gresham Machen, Professor of New Testament at Princeton, and later the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, was succinct and lucid in his approach toward critical scholarship and liberalism of last century.  His words in the radio addresses he gave in 1936 are as applicable today as they were then...  Some radicals of the present day are drawing the logical conclusion. Since the supernatural is inseparable from the rest and since they will not accept the supernatural, they are letting the whole go. They are telling us that we cannot know anything at all with any certainty about Jesus. Such skepticism is preposterous. It will never hold the field. You need not be afraid of it at all, my friends. The picture in the Gospels is too vivid. It is too incapable of having been invented. It is evidently the picture of a real person. So the age-long bewilderment of unsaved men in the presence of Jesus still goes on. Jesus will not let men go.  They will not acce...

"We have trusted in Jesus.  But how far can we trust him?  Just in this transitory life?  Just in this little speck that we call the earth?  If we can trust him only thus far we are of all men most miserable.  We are surrounded by stupendous forces; we are surrounded by the immensity of the unknown.  After our little span of life there is a shelving brink with the infinite beyond.  And still we are subject to fear--not only fear of destruction but a more dreadful fear of meeting with the infinite and holy God.  "So we should be if we had but a human Christ.  But now is Christ our Savior, the one who says, 'Your sins are forgiven,' revealed as very God.  And we believe.  Such a faith is a mystery to us who possess it; it seems folly to those who have it not.  But if possessed it delivers us forever from fear.  The world to us is all unknown; it is engulfed in an ocean of infinity.  But it contains no mysteries to our...

The following paragraphs are taken from the conclusion of an article by J. Gresham Machen, originally published in 1933 in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science .  Machen is addressing the relevance of the Christian message to American education early in the 20th century.  He answers the question of what responsibility the church has in working for the betterment of society...  "The message will not be enforced by human authority or the pomp of numbers.  Yet some of you may hear it.  If you do hear it and heed it, you will possess riches greater than the riches of all the world. "Do you think that if you heed the message you will be less successful students of political and social science; do you think that by becoming citizens of another world you will be come less fitted to solve this world's problems; do you think that acceptance of the Christian message will hinder political or social advance?  No, my friends, I will pre...

In June of 1932, J. Gresham Machen gave three lectures at a meeting of the Bible League in Caxton Hall, Westminster, London. The titles were "The Importance of Christian Scholarship for Evangelism", " The Importance of Christian Scholarship  for Defense of the Faith", and " The Importance of Christian Scholarship   for Building Up the Church."  The PDF of this series, as well as MP3 readings of the messages are located on the Reformed Audio site .  It would be worth your while to listen to them! Here are just a few excerpts... Let us, therefore, pray that God will raise up for us today true defenders of the Christian faith. We are living in the midst of a mighty conflict against the Christian religion. The conflict is carried on with intellectual weapons. Whether we like it or not, there are millions upon millions of our fellowmen who reject Christianity for the simple reason that they do not believe Christianity to be true. What is to be done in suc...

"The truth is that what remains in Christianity when the supernaturalism of the Bible is given up is not Christianity at all. Liberal Christianity and liberal Judaism, for example, turn out to be exactly alike. They have the same God, or rather the same fundamental skepticism about God, the same complacency about man, and the same mild admiration for the prophet of Nazareth. Tolerance has had its perfect work. The equilibrium has been restored. The consuming fire of Christianity has burned out, and we have merely the same feeble moralism that was in the world before Christianity took its rise. It is a drab, dreary world-this modern world of which men are so proud. I for my part feel oppressed when I look out upon it.' I admire, indeed, those who try to hold on with heart to what they have given up with the head; but as for me, any religion that is to claim my devotion must be founded squarely upon truth. Where shall such a religion he found? At this point, I have it truly r...

"I am no medievalist. I rejoice in the marvelous widening of our knowledge of this mysterious universe; I delight in the technical achievements of our day. This is God's world, and neither its good things nor its wonders should he despised by those upon whom they have been bestowed. Moreover, I cherish within my soul a vague yet glorious hope of a time when material achievements, instead of making man the victim of his machines, may be used for the expression of some wondrous thought. There may come a time when God will send to the world the fire of genius, which he has taken from it in our time; a time when he will send something far greater -- a humble heart finding in his worship the highest use of all knowledge and power. There will come a time when men will wonder at their obsession with these material things, when they will see that their inventions are in themselves as valueless as the ugly little bits of metal type in a printer's composing room, and that their true...

Gresham Machen was a professor of New Testament at Princeton during the rise of modern liberalism and higher critical thinking.  He was an able apologist for historic Christianity, but was eventually fired for his conservative positions.  He went on to found Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Below are quotes from him, as he showed that the "Jesus" of modern theologians was a fiction of their own prejudices.  Rather, the entire Bible presents a complete and consistent portrait of Christ (centering on his work at the Cross), and that we must take or leave Jesus as the Scriptures so present him.    “The truth is that the life-purpose of Jesus discovered by modern liberalism is not the life purpose of the real Jesus, but merely represents those elements in the teaching of Jesus--isolated and misinterpreted--which happen to agree with the modern program...”   "It is vain, then, to speak of reposing trust in the Person without believing the m...

"The figure of Jesus in the Gospels possesses an individuality that is irreducible, a shining, startling vividness against which criticism ultimately will fail. Yet criticism has had its beneficent results; it has shown with increasing plainness that the picture of Jesus in the New Testament is essentially one.  "Gone is the day when a few miracles could he removed in order to leave a supposed historical account of an instituter of a new religious life or a preacher of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Recent criticism has carried us far beyond all such easy solutions of the problem as that.  "The Jesus of the New Testament is an organic whole; the New Testament writers are dominated one and all by the conviction that Jesus was a supernatural Redeemer come into this world for the salvation of men.  "Increasingly the great alternative is becoming clear: give Jesus up, confess that his portrait is forever hidden in the mists of pragmatic leg...

Shortly before his death on January 1, 1937, J. Gresham Machen dictated a final telegram to his friend and colleague, Professor John Murray. It was brief:  "I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it."  Here is a good explanation of what Machen meant .