J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Honesty and Freedom in the Christian Ministry By Professor J. Gresham Machen, D. D., Princeton, N. J.

GALATIANS 1:1-5 “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead); and all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia; Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” These words constitute the opening of one of the Pauline Epistles. We know more about the letter-writing of antiquity than we did a few years ago; for in Egypt, where the dry air has prevented the destruction elsewhere at work, there have been discovered on ancient rubbish heaps and in the wrappings of mummies, great numbers of private letters coming from the age in which Paul lived. These letters begin with a formula nearly as constant as our own “Dear Sir.” It is “So and so to so and so, greeting.” But the strange thing is that Paul did not use this form. That is to say, even in the formal opening of the letters his Epistles are unique. Perhaps this may have some connection with the second word in the passage which we read, the word “apostle”; this letter is written by “Paul an apostle. . . . to the churches of Galatia.” It should never be forgotten that the Epistles of Paul are not ordinary letters but apostolic letters; they are very different from the letters which have been discovered on the Egyptian rubbish heaps, very different from these letters which were intended to be read once and then thrown away.

The Epistles, Real Letters The Epistles of Paul are, indeed, real letters; they are addressed to actual people in view of particular circumstances. They are written, moreover, in no mere artificial language of books, but in the living language of Paul’s day. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the Pauline Epistles are characterized by anything like cheapness or vulgarity. The dignity of the King James Version reproduces great passages, like the eighth chapter of Romans, for example, far more accurately than do the recent attempts to render the New Testament in the language of the modern street. The strange thing is that these Epistles—even the most informal of them— are vastly different from the letters that have been discovered in Egypt; there is nothing among the papyrus letters which in the remotest degree resembles the Epistle to Philemon. The Epistles of Paul are no mere private communications, intended to be read once and then thrown away, but they are Epistles written by an apostle for the edification of the Church of God.

Tolerance and Intolerance Paul was an apostle because he had been entrusted with a message, and he was interested above everything else in getting the message straight.¹ He could it is true, be very tolerant about some things. A fine example of his tolerance is found in the Epistle to the Philippians. Some rival preachers were stirring up trouble for him in Rome. As long as he had been at liberty, they had been obliged to take a second place; but now that he was in prison their supremacy was undisturbed. They made the most of their opportunities; they were preaching Christ even of envy and strife; it was about as mean a piece of business as could well be conceived. But Paul was magnificently tolerant. “Notwithstanding, every way,” he said. “whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.” The way in which the preaching was carried on was abominably wrong, but the thing that was being preached was true, and Paul was interested above all else in the content of the message. In Galatia, also, there were rival teachers, but Paul had no tolerance for them. And why? The reason is perfectly plain. Paul’s opposition was not due to personalities; his opposition, he tells us, would have been exactly the same if the rival teachers had all been angels from heaven. He was opposed to them because the thing that they were saying was not true. And yet the difference between Paul and those Judaizers would have seemed to many modern leaders of the church to be a mere theological subtlety. The Judaizers agreed with Paul about many things; they agreed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah; they agreed that His body had emerged from the tomb after His crucifixion; they had no objection whatever to Paul’s conception of Jesus as a heavenly person seated on the throne of all being. And they agreed with Paul in holding that one must believe in Christ if he is to be saved. Only they held that in order to be saved one must also keep the law. Yet Paul also did not deny that the believer keeps the law of God in its deepest import. So the Judaizers differed from Paul only with regard to the logical (not even the temporal) order of three steps: the Judaizers said that a man (1) believes in Christ, (2) keeps the law the best he can, and then (3) is saved; Paul said that a man (1) believes in Christ, then (2) is saved, and then (3) as a fruit of his salvation necessarily keeps God’s law. Some men in the modern church would have dismissed the whole question as a mere theological subtlety. Think what a glorious cleaning-up of those corrupt Gentile cities it would have meant if in them the Judaizers had succeeded in establishing the keeping of the Mosaic law, even including the unfortunate ceremonial requirements! Brigadier General Butler’s clean-up in Philadelphia would have been nothing to it! Surely, it will be said, Paul ought to have made common cause with such men; surely he ought to have overlooked small theological differences in the interests of righteousness and in the interests of the unity of the Church!

No Tolerance for Falsehood As a matter of fact, however, what Paul said was, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Paul was interested, not in the truth of the gospel for the sake of the unity of the church, but in the unity of the church for the sake of the truth of the gospel. He was interested primarily in the truth of the message, and it never occurred to him that the message might be true for one man or for one generation and not for another; the intellectual and spiritual blight of pragmatism had never seized upon his soul. He saw clearly that despite superficial similarities, the religion of the Judaizers was an entirely different religion from the religion of Christ; it was a religion of merit as over against a religion of grace. If Christ gives us only part of our salvation, so that there is a gap which we have to bridge by our own good works, then we can never be sure that we are saved. We start to wondering whether our goodness is sufficient even to bridge that gap; the old miserable balancing of good and evil in our lives begins again, we again open an account with God, and the truly awakened conscience sees that we are undone. Christ, Paul saw clearly, does everything or nothing; to trust Him for part and not to trust Him for the whole is not to trust Him at all; those who would listen to the Judaizers would have fallen from grace.

And Paul was absolutely right. It was the very basis of the Christian religion which was at stake. “Just as I am, without one plea, But that thy blood was shed for me” —that was what Paul was contending for in Galatia. That hymn would never have been written if the Judaizers had won; and without the thing that that hymn represents there is no Christianity today. Thus Paul was tolerant about methods of work, and intolerant (if the word be rightly understood) about matters of doctrine. He would be tolerant about the way in which the message was proclaimed, but he insisted that the message itself should be true. Paul would have had no sympathy with those who at the last Presbyterian Assembly professed to believe in the Bible and yet voted for the denial of the Bible in the First Presbyterian Church of New York. He would have had no sympathy with those who stood against Christ because they did not like the “spirit” of some of those who stood for Him. Tolerance in Paul was just the opposite of tolerance in the modern church. Paul was intolerant about matters of doctrine and tolerant about methods of work. The modern church is tolerant about matters of doctrine but intolerant about methods of work. And I venture to think that Paul was right. I venture to think that we ought to be very tolerant about methods of work but exceedingly careful about the content of our message.

The Right Kind of Tolerance It is important, indeed, that in what we are now saying we should not be misunderstood. I do not mean that we are returning to the ancient intolerance of the Church of Rome.² The charge that we are doing so is a libel constantly brought forward by those who have not given themselves the slightest trouble to understand the point of view of those against whom they are launching so bitter an attack. What is constantly ignored is that in this controversy we are dealing with purely voluntary organizations. We believe with all our hearts in tolerance on the part of an involuntary organization like the State. We are opposed with all our might and main to attacks upon civil and religious liberty like that which is made in the Oregon law which requires that all children shall be taken forcibly from their parents and forced to attend monopolistic public schools. We are opposed with all the strength that is in us to the dangerous Towner-Sterling bill in Congress which has as its ultimate tendency (whatever temporary safe guards there may be) the establishment of a unity of education under central control which is one of the most awful calamities into which any nation can fall. We are opposed to the state licensing of teachers, in accordance with the abominable Lusk laws in the State of New York now happily repealed. We welcomed with a new rush of hope in the future of America the decision of the United States Supreme Court setting aside the laws in Nebraska and other states preventing the study of languages other than English in public and private schools. We are devoted to the freedom of speech and of the press with all our souls, and we think that that freedom ought to be preserved no matter what dangers the preservation of it may involve. But the church is a purely voluntary organization, and it is therefore absolutely no interference with liberty for it to be true to the purpose which is plainly set forth in its constitution. No man is forced to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church (if I may take as an example the church to which I belong). If he does not agree with the creed of that church he is perfectly free to enter into a non-creedal church like the Unitarian or to form a new organization of his own.

Where Preachers Should Be Free I believe with all my heart in the freedom of the preacher, and I can imagine no more miserable and degrading existence than that of speaking from a platform where one is not allowed to speak his full mind. That is why the recent report just submitted to the Presbytery of New York regarding the First Presbyterian Church of that city seems to me to stand on deplorably low moral ground. In that report the special preacher in the First Presbyterian Church is rebuked for the form of a sermon called, “Can the Fundamentalists Win?” and for the provocative title; and it is intimated that the preacher will be more discreet in the future. No one who really knows the preacher in question can doubt what that means. It means that Dr. Fosdick is to avoid presenting the negative side of his views sharply and clearly, and is to continue to clothe a thorough-going agnosticism in the terminology of the Christian religion. It is, I think, a degrading proposal. Far from being the worst sermon which has been preached in the First Presbyterian Church of New York, the sermon “Can the Fundamentalists Win?” was perhaps the best. It came nearer than any other to presenting the real views of its author in language which the plain man could understand. But a frankness even more thoroughgoing than that partial lapse into honesty, ought to be a matter of course; a preacher ought above everything else to seek a pulpit or a platform where without reservation and without a double use of lan guage he can speak his full mind. The present speaker, to take a very humble example, could not find that freedom in a church where so-called “controversial” matters were banned. I could not find freedom where in the present time of conflict I should be prevented, out of deference to the agnostic Modernism of the day, from witnessing for Christ. And I can imagine no more degrading thing than such relinquishment of freedom. Preaching is the most degrading of occupations unless the preacher stands in a pulpit where he can speak his full mind. Let every preacher seek such a pulpit. That is our simple program for the perplexities of the present day. Let the man who stands firmly for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God, and for the great “reformed” system of doctrine as the system taught in the Bible become a minister in the Presbyterian church. Let the man who believes that Christianity is simply a way of life and that doctrine is the necessarily changing expression of religious experience enter into the Unitarian church where he would be perfectly at home, or else found some new organization of his own.

Where Preachers Should Be Honest But above all things let there be honesty. What good is it to gain the whole world, what good is it to have fine large churches to preach in and admiring crowds, if the whole life is founded upon a lie? Possibly honesty may involve some sacrifices. It would certainly mean the abandonment of the fruits of a long period of equivocation and deceit. It would certainly mean the failure of antichristian propagandists to gain control, by the concealment of their real views and by the use of traditional terminology, of the existing Christian church organizations. But we venture to think that honesty would be better in the long run. At any rate, there are some of us who are going to fight for honesty with all our might. There are some of us who still believe that a man has no right to “interpret” a pledge to mean the exact opposite of what it says. There are some of us who still believe that a witness ought to tell the truth. We are contending for two things— one just as much as the other. And those two things are freedom and honesty—the freedom of a man to choose the platform upon which he will stand, and the honesty which obligates him to speak his full mind. Apparently we have entered upon a digression from the Epistle to the Galatians. But we have not digressed so far as might appear. A man who contends for freedom and for honesty is not so very far from Paul. Paul had a message which he held to be true, and for it he was willing to contend with all his soul. It is significant that the first word in the Epistle to the Galatians, after the bare name and title of the author, is “not.” That word indicates the character of the Epistle; the letter is a polemic from beginning to end; it is a fighting epistle if there ever was one.

Where Preachers Should Be Brave Many persons at the present time are afraid of polemics. Let us avoid controversy, it is urged, and preach the “simple gospel.” Persons who talk in that way are quite unfaithful to the New Testament. Did you ever observe what a very large part of the New Testament is directed against false views? The Epistle to the Galatians is polemic throughout, and so are great sections of the other Epistles of Paul. The hymn to Christian love in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians which some Christians read today to excuse themselves when they have just denied their Lord, is polemic. It was called forth by the false use which the Corinthian Christians were making of the spiritual gifts. A large part of the most gracious teaching of Jesus is polemic. Jesus set His kind of righteousness over against the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. The truth is, it is quite impossible to say what a thing is without saying what it is not. All definition proceeds by way of exclusion. Black letters cannot be read on a black board, there must be contrast if there is to be clearness. The principle is illustrated to the full in the situation of the present day. What is this “simple gospel,” which is supposed to be presented by those who will not engage in controversy? I defy anybody to say. It is certainly one of the most subtle and intangible things ever seen; even its own advocates are apt to become irritated if you ask them to tell you in simple language exactly what it is. Very different is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is abundantly plain. But when it runs counter to the pride of men, and if you are going to be an adherent of it you must fight. The weapons of your warfare, it is true, must be spiritual weapons. In advocating polemics, I am not advocating persecution, or base personalities, or the desire to get the better of an opponent in an argument or the substitution of vituperation for argument. These things involve deadly weakness; we ought to avoid them as we should avoid a plague. The kind of polemic about which I am speaking is a polemic that springs from love—love even for our opponents in the debate. It is a polemic in which a man is compelled to engage when he rises from his knees. It is a polemic which springs from an earnest devotion to truth. Such was the polemic of Paul. The “not,” which is the third word of the Epistle, is, it is true, directed against those who denied Paul’s own apostolic authority. But Paul defended his apostolic authority, and indeed it had been given to him in the first place, for the sake of the gospel. The polemic of Paul is due always to devotion to the objective truth of the gospel message. The apostle regarded himself not as an orator or as the originator of a “program,” but as a witness.

A Witness Should Tell the Truth Now I hold that it is important for a witness to tell the truth. I know that that is very old-fashioned, and I know it is very dangerous to be regarded as oldfashioned just now, but I am afraid I must stick to it all the same. When a witness takes his seat on the witness stand, it does not seem to me to make much difference how he delivers his testimony or whether his sentences are nicely turned; the important thing is that he should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I do not believe that he has a right to “interpret” his oath in one way and let the judge and jury think that he is interpreting it in another way. He certainly has no right to interpret the oath as he pleases, but the only honest interpretation is in accordance with the plain meaning of the words. So it is exactly with creeds and ordination pledges; I do not believe that homely honesty ought to be left behind at the door of the church. I do not believe that a man ought to say, in repeating the Apostles’ Creed, that “the third day He rose again from the dead” and interpret that to mean, “The third day He did not rise again from the dead.” The recent Modernist pronouncement signed by one hundred and fifty ministers in the Presbyterian Church advocates liberty of interpretation. Now I do not deny that honest differences of opinion about the interpretation of the Bible or of other documents may exist. But if there were not some limits to such leeway, all speech would become entirely useless: for if everything that I say can be “interpreted” to mean its exact opposite, what is the use of saying anything at all? And to say, as this Modernist “Affirmation” says, that such plain questions as the question whether Jesus was born without human father or whether His body emerged from the tomb are questions of “interpretation” which the New Testament leaves open, is absurd. Any man of common sense can see that these are not questions of interpretation but questions of fact. The New Testament affirms in the plainest possible way the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of our Lord. If you reject these things you are not rejecting an interpretation of the New Testament, but you are rejecting the New Testament itself; you are simply holding that the New Testament is wrong. If you said so, no doubt you would lose votes in the General Assembly of the church, and you might have lost the signatures of some Christian men who were led to sign the “Affirmation” as it is. You would have lost votes and signatures, but you would have kept honesty intact. And I venture to think that in the long run honesty is worth more than votes.

Splitting the Church? But people say that if we insist upon that we shall split the church. These theological questions, it is said, ought to be discussed quietly among brethren, and not be allowed to disturb the rank and file. But of course that simply begs the issue. The question is whether the advocates of agnostic Modernism are “brethren” or not. I, for my part, do not think that they are. They are fellowcitizens; they are human beings with immortal souls, whom we ought to love and try to win for Christ; but “brethren” in the Christian sense they certainly are not. On the contrary they are what Paul calls “false brethren privily bought in.” And the first step toward the unity of the church is the exclusion of these men from its teaching ministry. They have introduced a wedge into the mighty structure; allow that wedge to remain and there will be a “split” indeed. The way to save the building is to remove the disruptive elements. And it is that work upon which Christian men are now engaged. It is high time; the work ought to have been undertaken many years ago. But by God’s favor there may yet be time. We are working then, not for the disruption but for the unity of the church. And we do not believe that the church can be founded upon the pitiful reduced Jesus of modern naturalistic reconstruction, but that it can only be founded upon the Lord of glory presented in the Word of God. The church’s one foundation, we believe is Jesus Christ her Lord.

Modernism Is Naturalism The truth is that two mutually exclusive religions are contending for the control of the corporate witness of the existing ecclesiastical bodies. One is the naturalistic or agnostic Modernism represented by Dr. Fosdick and by many ministers in all or almost all of the churches. The other is the great redemptive religion, founded upon certain supernatural events in the first century of our era, which is called Christianity. A mighty conflict is on between the two. Paganism has made many efforts to disrupt the Christian faith, but never a more insistent or a more insidious effort than it is making today. There are three possible attitudes which you may take in the present conflict. In the first place, you may stand for Christ. That is best. In the second place, you may stand for anti-christian Modernism. That is next best. In the third place, you may be neutral. That is perhaps worst of all. The worst sin today is to say that you agree with the Christian faith and believe in the Bible, but then say that you receive into your teaching ministry and make common cause with those who deny the basic facts of Christianity, like the virgin birth and bodily resurrection of our Lord. Never was it more obviously true that he that is not with Christ is against Him. On which side will you stand? Have you the courage to stand on the side of Christ? No doubt you will have to endure hardship and reviling. But I do not think that you need to fear. There may come a time, and it may come sooner than we suppose, when the gospel will again, by the power of the Holy Spirit, be brought to light, and the world, now in bondage, will again be set free.