Christians today, no less than in Machen’s day, desperately need to come to terms with the fact that we are all theologians–whether good ones or bad ones. While we must be zealous to guard our hearts against embracing the ethos of the vitriolic doctrinal voices around us, we must equally avoid giving ear to those who, under pretense of love and charity, have functionally encouraged “a horror of theology.” As Machen rightly noted, “Every Christian must think about God; every Christian to some degree must be a theologian. The only question is whether he is to be a bad theologian or a good theologian.”
The noisy gongs of acerbic and judgmental discernment bloggers, podcasters, vloggers and conference speakers are scattered throughout our social media feeds…and they’re here to stay. The uncharitableness with which such individuals speak online immediately ought to leave a bad taste in the mouth of Christ’s true lambs. After all, the fruit of the Spirit in the life of believers is an inextricable constituent of doctrinal truth. No amount of insistence that one is speaking the truth in love (when, in fact, he is speaking the truth in anger) will mask the fact that he is actually speaking in loveless pride. As Jesus said, “A tree is known by its fruit.” The bitter fruit of an acrimonious “truth speaker” will inevitably be the bringing forth of disciples more fractious than himself. Nevertheless, the root of the problem does not lie in a love of the truth and a desire to trumpet forth sound doctrine–it is rooted in pride and self-love.
In Scripture, God everywhere charges us to be lovers of biblical truth. The early believers “continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship” (Acts 2:42). The Apostle Paul teaches us to be lovers of truth and practicers of love when he wrote, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13). It is often, on account of a loveless defense of truth that many Christians succumb to the opposite error, namely, the embrace of the diminution of sound doctrine. One doesn’t have to scroll through his or her social media feed for long to come across an influential pastor or teacher warning his followers about the dangers of an overemphasis on sound doctrine. It sounds quite pious to sophisticatedly downplay truth in order to up play love. Nothing, however, could be more fallacious and factitious. It is impossible to love the truth and to speak the truth too much or too often.