Written by W. Robert Godfrey |
Friday, February 17, 2023
His reflections on the nature of true Christianity in each chapter show the profound and powerful importance of these truths. But before he develops this great theme, he reflects briefly on the broader issues confronting Christians in our times, particularly naturalism and materialism. “Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritual decline,” he writes. As Machen sees it, “modern unbelief” has not just attacked true religion but has also undermined the higher life of individuals more generally.
J. Gresham Machen introduces his invaluable book Christianity and Liberalism by observing that he lived in “a time of conflict.” Perhaps all humans have lived in times of conflict ever since mankind’s fall into sin. The fundamental conflict is always between Satan and the Seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15), but that conflict takes somewhat different forms in different times. Machen sees the conflict of his time as a conflict between materialism and the spiritual life, which remains very much the reality for us one hundred years later.
In his book, Machen celebrates the modern advances in improving our physical lives that have come from scientific discoveries. The danger he sees is that these very successes have blinded many to the reality that there is more to life than physical well-being. They have focused exclusively on the material and have become materialists. The natural world that surrounds us, that can be seen and touched, is the only world. The supernatural, which is to say God’s acting beyond the natural in this world, is ruled out entirely. But Machen wisely alludes to the words of Jesus (Matt. 16:26): What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
The great purpose of Machen’s book is to insist that only true Christianity can answer the challenge of materialism and to show that true Christianity is entirely different from and opposed to liberal or modernistic pseudo-Christianity. His reflections on the nature of true Christianity in each chapter show the profound and powerful importance of these truths. But before he develops this great theme, he reflects briefly on the broader issues confronting Christians in our times, particularly naturalism and materialism. “Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritual decline,” he writes.
As Machen sees it, “modern unbelief” has not just attacked true religion but has also undermined the higher life of individuals more generally. He sees a materialistic worldview as restricting the freedom of individuals to cultivate the great achievements of the human mind and spirit. He points to the modern arts, music, and literature as evidence of modern decline of human accomplishment.
One example that he offers of the deadening effects of the neglect of the spirit is in the field of modern education. His remarks seem truly prophetic. Remember, he is writing in 1922. He complains that “the choice of schools must be taken away from the individual parent and placed in the hands of the state.” In state education, “the child is placed under the control of psychological experts, themselves without the slightest acquaintance with the higher realms of human life.” Indeed, “bureaucratic regulation” in education as elsewhere is leading to a “drab utilitarianism in which all higher aspirations are to be lost.” Such education values teaching only what is useful in the estimation of materialism.
As an example of this tendency of the state to ruin education, Machen refers to a law passed in 1919 in Nebraska.