ignored by pulpits with an overemphasis on ethics.73 He writes,
What then does the word translated “gospel” mean? The question might seem to be unnecessary (were it not apparently ignored in so many sermons and religious books); everyone knows that “gospel” means “good news.” But if “gospel” means
“good news,” then many common notions about the gospel disappear at once.
“Good news” is never in the imperative mood; a “gospel” cannot possibly consist in directions as to a way of life or in a complex of worthy ideals. . . . News consists always, not in exhortations or commands, but in information about facts; a “gospel”
is always in the indicative mood.74
In Machen’s day, the “apparent ignoring” of the gospel had led pulpits to place exhortation over information. Machen was concerned that doctrinal preaching had “been pushed from the primary place” that it deserved.75 Machen was committed to seeing doctrinal preaching return to its place of primacy.76
In summary, all three of Machen’s books express the gospel with the elements of history and doctrine. These two elements concern the person and work of Christ, with particular emphasis upon the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross.
This element is important in determining the actual worldview of a person, since a worldview is not only confessed but lived. Sire explains, “It is important to note that our own worldview may not be what we think it is. It is rather what we show it to be by our words and actions.”78 Or again, he writes, “If we want clarity about our own worldviews, however, we must reflect and profoundly consider how we actually behave.”79
This section overviews the above three books in order to demonstrate the gospel as Machen’s foundation for life. This foundation is revealed in the way Machen applies the gospel to specific areas of Christian living.
The commitment’s implications in Christianity and Liberalism. In Christianity and Liberalism, Machen declares the centrality of the gospel and its
implications when he writes, “The same message [i.e., the gospel] with its implications, has been the very heart and soul of the Christian movement throughout the centuries”
(emphasis mine).80 Even with its heavy doctrinal focus, Christianity and Liberalism does provide at least two gospel implications. First, in his chapter on doctrine, Machen asserts the gospel to be the foundation of Christian morality. This morality is the product of gospel indicatives, and not moral exhortations.81 At one point in this discussion, he contrasts the gospel of Christianity with the moral exhortations of ancient religions:
78Ibid.
79Ibid., 22.
80Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 30. That “message” to which Machen refers is “the message of the redeeming work of Christ.”
81Ibid., 47-48. “In the first place, we do not mean that if doctrine is sound it makes no difference about life. On the contrary, it makes all the difference in the world. From the beginning, Christianity was certainly a way of life; the salvation that it offered was a salvation from sin, and salvation from sin appeared not merely in a blessed hope but also in an immediate moral change.” Ibid., 47.
The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different
method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event. It is no wonder that such a method seemed strange. Could anything be more impractical than the attempt to influence conduct by rehearsing events concerning the death of a religious teacher? That is what Paul called “the foolishness of the message.” It seemed foolish to the ancient world, and it seems foolish to liberal preachers to-day.
But the strange thing is that it works. The effects of it appear even in this world.
Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds;
the lives of men are transformed by a piece of news.82
The second implication is the gospel’s power to transform society. In his chapter on the church, Machen explains the gospel as the foundation for the building of genuine community and the transformation of society.83 He argues for the necessity of individual transformation through the gospel before a true brotherhood of men and a biblically just society can be formed. He writes,
A solid building cannot be constructed when all the materials are faulty; a blessed society cannot be formed out of men who are still under the curse of sin. Human institutions are really to be molded, not by Christian principles accepted by the unsaved, but by Christian men; the true transformation of society will come by the influence of those who have themselves been redeemed.84
For Machen then, the gospel had powerful implications for individuals and through individuals to society as a whole. This kind of transformation was not possible through the social gospel.85 The only hope for humanity was the redemptive message of the gospel with its implications for Christian living.86
82Ibid., 47-48.
83Ibid., 157.
84Ibid., 158.
85Ibid., 152-53.
86Ibid., 21-23.
The commitment’s implications in What Is Faith? In What Is Faith?
Machen emphasizes Christian ethics as a central implication of the gospel. He believed the gospel resulted not only in the freedom from the guilt of sin but also from the power of sin.87 This belief led Machen to ground ethics and morality in the gospel.88
Although Machen declared the gospel to be a message of redemption to be believed upon, he still believed the message had implications for Christian living. He primarily viewed the gospel as God’s means of redemption and only secondarily did it provide an example. He explains his view by stating,
Thus the Cross of Christ is certainly a noble example of self-sacrifice; but if it be only a noble example of self-sacrifice, it has no comfort for burdened souls . . . Many things are taught us by the Cross; but the other things are taught us only if the really central meaning is preserved, the central meaning upon which all the rest depends. On the cross the penalty of our sins was paid; it is as though we ourselves had died in fulfillment of the just curse of the law; the handwriting of ordinances that was against us was wiped out; and henceforth we have an entirely new life in the full favour of God.”89
So for Machen the gospel did provide implications for ethical living, but these implications were always connected to the gospel.90 Machen articulates the inseparability of the gospel and ethics in his discussions on public education:
The reading, in public schools, of selected passages from the Bible, in which Jews and Catholics and Protestants and others can presumably agree, should not be encouraged, and still less should be required by law. The real centre of the Bible is redemption; and to create the impression that other things in the Bible contain any
87Machen, What Is Faith?, 204.
88Ibid., 224.
89Ibid., 148.
90For his attempt to ground Christian ethics in the gospel, see Machen, What Is Faith?, 111, 206-07, 211, 213, 217.
hope for humanity apart from that is to contradict the Bible at its root.91
Machen’s conviction concerning Bible reading in public schools arose from his fundamental belief that ethics could not legitimately be disconnected from the gospel.
For Machen, the Bible taught a message of redemption and only secondarily, by way of implication, ethics. Machen knew that schools were taking the ethical portions
disconnected from the central redemptive message of the book and thereby doing damage to the cause of Christ. As for Machen, he held the central message of the Bible to be the gospel with implications being drawn from that center.
The commitment’s implications in Selected Shorter Writings. Machen’s shorter writings present much of the same teaching on the gospel and ethics as does Christianity and Liberalism and What is Faith?; that is, the gospel provides the basis for Christian ethics, and therefore the gospel was to be primary in biblical preaching and teaching.92 However, concerning the gospel’s relation to the ills of society, Machen’s shorter writings provide greater detail.93 One example of the gospel’s ability to deal with
91Ibid., 128.
92Two of Machen’s articles present similar arguments as those found in What is Faith? against the teaching of the Bible in public schools: “The Responsibility of the Church in our New Age” and “The Necessity of the Christian School.” Machen writes, “There are those who tell us that the Bible ought to be put into the public schools, and that the public schools should seek to build character by showing the children that honesty is the best policy and that good Americans do not lie or steal. With such programs a true Christian church will have nothing to do. The Bible, it will hold, is made to say the direct opposite of what it means if any hope is held out to mankind from its ethical portions apart from its great redemptive center and core; and character building on the basis of human experience may be character destruction; it is the very antithesis of that view of sin which is at the foundation of all Christian convictions and all
Christian life.” Machen, “The Responsibility of the Church in our New Age,” 375.
93In J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, Hart groups five articles under the title
“Church and Society.” This group of articles relates Christianity as a worldview to Western Society. The five articles are “Christianity and Liberty,” “The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age,” “The Church in the War,” “Voices in the Church,” and “Statement on the Eighteenth Amendment.”
societal problems is in the realm of human liberty. Machen believed that under a naturalistic worldview, modern society had begun to view man as a machine living in a mechanistic world.94 Thus modern culture was enslaving society through its attempt to standardize all of life. For Machen, the only solution to this enslavement was the liberating power of the gospel.95 Far from understanding Christianity as binding up human thought and expression, Machen understood the gospel to set men free to know and live by the truth.96 The gospel, Machen explained, liberated men in their pursuit of academic and cultural advancements. Thus the Christian school was important because of its ability to ground all of learning in Christian convictions.97 In his article “The Necessity of the Christian School,” he writes,
It is this profound Christian permeation of every human activity, no matter how secular the world may regard it as being, which is brought about by the Christian school and the Christian school alone. I do not want to be guilty of exaggerations at this point. A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian; and truth is truth however learned.
But while truth is truth however learned, the bearings of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part, but all of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in
94For details of Machen’s view, see “Christianity and Liberty,” and “The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age.”
95Machen writes, “From such a slavery, which is already stalking through the earth in the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, from such a world of unrelieved drabness, we seek escape in the high adventure of the Christian religion. Men call us, indeed, devotees of a book. They are right. We are devotees of a book. But the book to which we are devoted is the Magna Charta of human liberty—the book which alone can make men free.” Machen, “Christianity and Liberty,” 359.
96“If liberty is to be preserved against the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, there must be something more than courts and legal guarantees; freedom must be written not merely in the constitution but in the people’s heart. And it can be written in the heart, we believe, only as a result of the redeeming work of Christ.” Machen, “Does Fundamentalism Obstruct Social Progress?,” in J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, 112.
97See Machen, “The Necessity of the Christian School.”
hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life—those are great central convictions that underlie the Christian school.98
Since all truth is grounded in Christianity, Machen believed everything was to be viewed in light of a Christian worldview, particularly a gospel-centered one. In
“Christianity and Culture,” Machen highlights the centrality of the gospel to all academic and cultural disciplines when he writes,
Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world. The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all
connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel.99
These words capture the supremacy of the gospel in Machen’s thought life. He believed the Christian calling to be a call to bring all things “into subjection to the
obedience of Christ.”100
In summary, all three of Machen’s books present the gospel’s implications for the Christian life. These implications include both the ethical life of believers and their interaction with society and culture.