Schaeffer and Machen

I was watching Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live? last night and came across pure gold,

If there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.

This of course is the climate we live in. He spoke of this one sentence directly after showing that arbitrary law had snuck into western culture. He basically points to the Roe v. Wade decision concerning abortion and shows that indeed, arbitrary law is alive and well in America.

People do not believe that there is an absolute and they therefore have no basis to make any laws much less moral laws. So Roe v. Wade was made essentially in a vacuum with no real moral absolute on which to base the deicison. So what essentially is the measuring rod to make the choices in our immoral and godless age? Society.

Thus, society becomes the absolute.

A dangerous thing if you think about the constantly shifting moral wasteland of America and the West.

On a similar note, I have been hard at Machen's Christianity and Liberalism in which he shows that Liberal "Christianity" and the Orthodox Stream of Christianity simply are not the same thing. He approaches several issues head on. One of the greatest issues of course is doctrine. I was taken aback quite a bit when he pointed out that the problem in Liberalism was the that they had a problem with doctrine. They would say essentially, "Christianity is a life, not a doctrine! Away with doctrine! Let's get back to Jesus!" Sounds familiar doesn't it? Before I point any fingers I should note what Machen says,

"[This assertion] is radically false, and to detect its falsity one does not even need to be a Christian."

He points out strongly,

"The Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of work, but upon an account of facts. In other words it was based upon doctrine."

This, of course, is absolutely true. Yes Christianity is a life and a life indeed but to do away with doctrine, and dogmatic doctrine for that matter, does away with the life itself.

I am most astounded because what the liberals said of old, "Do away with doctrine! Christ unites! Doctrine divides!" is exactly what my friends say now. Not just my friends, but the whole Emergent movement (it's not a conversation, when you have thousands of members, your own conference, a website, and books being titled An Emergent Manifesto, you're a movement) is wrapped up in this very heresy.

I do not do away with the entire Emergent movement, but when men echo the liberals of old by saying such things as,

"Doctrine is a wonderful servant but a horrible master."

I tend to listen up and red flags start flying.

Machen nails the issue over an over. For the sake of brevity I will not pepper you with tons of quotes. He moves through the stream of historic orthodoxy and points first to Paul. Did Paul think doctrine was necessary? Of course he did, any fool who reads Romans knows this. So what of doctrine in Paul then?

"Certainly, then, Paul was no advocate of an undogmatic religion; he was interested above everything else in the objective and universal truth of his message. . .Paul was not interested merely in the ethical principles of Jesus; he was not interested merely in general principles of religion or of ethics. On the contrary, he was interested in the redeeming work of Christ and its effect upon us. His primary interest was in Christian doctrine, and Christian doctrine not merely in its presuppositions but at its centre. If Christianity is to be made independent of doctrine, then Paulinism must be removed from Christianity root and branch."

So basically, if you want to really believe that you can be a Christian and get out of hashing out doctrines and taking stands, you need to chuck Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, the Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon out of your Bible.

Are you comfortable with that Emergent people?

So then what? Well, we got rid of Paul. So now we can really live as we are supposed to live. Now we just look to the early church and live like they did. A real 1st century Christianity. Lets just get back to the teaching of primitive Christianity.

Problem,

"What is it that forms the content of that primitive teaching? Is it the general principle of the fatherliness of God or the brotherliness of man? Is it a vague admiration for the character of Jesus such as that which prevails in the modern Church? Nothing could be further from the fact. 'Christ died for our sins,' said the primitive disciples, 'according to the Scriptures; he was buried; he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.' Form the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name 'gospel' or 'good news' implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened. And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth then there was Christian doctrine, 'Christ died' - that is history; 'Christ died for our sins' - that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity."

Well. . .dang. Now what? "Oh," said the liberals, "but Jesus was not wrapped up in the rightness or wrongness of doctrines. He was a great moral teacher and taught ethical principles to live by as a marginalized peasant." Machen again,

"Jesus certainly did not content Himself with the enunciation of permanent moral principles; He certainly did announce an approaching event; and He certainly did not announce the event without giving some account of its meaning. But when He gave an account of the meaning of the event, no matter how brief that account may have been, He was overstepping the line that separates an undogmatic religion, or even a dogmatic religion that teaches only eternal principles, from one that is rooted in the significance of definite historical facts ; He was placing a great gulf between Himself and the philosophic modern liberalism which today incorrectly bears His name."

In other words, Jesus taught doctrine. He knew He was the Messiah, he proclaimed it in tangible real words as abrasively as it could be proclaimed. Even at the Sermon on the Mount, where he uttered such beautiful ethical principles was,

"A stupendous theology, with Jesus' own Person at the centre of it, [and was] the presupposition of the whole teaching."

Oh! I must mourn that so many of my friends abandon doctrine or believe the right doctrines yet do not allow it to impact their beings. I must weep when my friends say,

"What need is there, then, of defining 'effectual calling,' what need of enumerating 'justification, adoption and sanctification and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them'?. . .Should not our trust be in a Person rather than in a message; in Jesus, rather than in what Jesus did; in Jesus character rather than in Jesus' death?"

What does Machen say of this?

"Plausible these words are - plausible, and pitifully vain."

And again,

"Certainly we shall remain forever in the gloom if we attend merely to the character of Jesus and neglect the thing that he has done, if we try to attend to the Person and neglect the message. We may have joy for sadness and power for weakness; but not by easy half-way measures, not by avoidance of controversy, not by trying to hold on to Jesus and yet reject the gospel. What was it that within a few days transformed a band of mourners into the spiritual conquerers of the world? It was not the memory of Jesus' life; it was not the inspiration which came from past contact with Him. But it was the message, 'He is risen.' That message alone gave the disciples a living Saviour; and it alone can give us a Saviour today. We shall never have vital contact with Jesus if we attend to His person and neglect the message; for it is the message which makes Him ours."

Friends, please hear this plea, we will do no good in the world or in eternity if we ditch doctrine or are indifferent to the great teachings of the Bible. We will be nothing more than silly foppish nothings if we remove doctrine from our lives.

Machen says most profoundly and I think most relevantly for us,

"Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith."

Indeed to abandon doctrine is to abandon, "not only Paul, not only the primitive Jerusalem Church, but also Jesus Himself." In this moral wasteland we must cling to our absolutes. Our absolutes are found in objective statements of truth within the Bible that were meant to be studied, learned, expounded, and defended. We must stop allowing society to norm our minds as the only absolute, and start allowing great doctrines of God to permeate our thinking.

To do otherwise is a disservice to the gospel and leads down the slippery slope to liberal heresy.

soli deo gloria

R.D. Thompson