From: Trevin Wax
It’s been almost a century since J. Gresham Machen’s landmark work, Christianity and Liberalism
Keeping Morality, Ditching the Miracles
The trajectory of liberalism one hundred years ago went something like this:
- We are living in a scientific age of discovery.
- The miracles we read about in the Bible were written from another cultural vantage point.
- It is important to maintain the ethical and moral teaching of Christianity.
- Belief in the literal occurrence of biblical miracles is not needed to maintain the moral center of Christianity.
- If belief in miracles is embarrassing to modern people, we should deemphasize them in order to extend Christianity into the next generation.
Machen’s point countered this line of thinking: You can’t have the moral teaching Christianity apart from its miracles.
The Issue Today
Interesting review of “apologists” and “cultural interpreters” within the Christian faith community. It’s one of those “Ying-Yang” or “glass is half full/empty” things in my view — why some Christians.tend to mix liberal views on culture, humanism morality, and lifestyle choices with Christian guidelines in their interpretations of the Bible.
I do not consider myself a fundamentalist, but I do think that the Bible accurately depicts most of the “empty glass” sins and human failures in either the Old or New Testament text. Humans always seem to delight in debating about what the Bible means in our daily relationships with other people. They bend Christ’s and Paul’s words to fit many popular humanist morality positions of their time. This is not new, nor would I assume unique to our time.
I doubt there is anything new in man’s history of sins and rationalizations. I find no real conflicts between my science background and being a Christian. To me, the Water of Life is the Word, and the empty rationalizations of Christian apologists is the empty portion of the time vessel of life. Failure to care enough to confront as a Christian Believer is a portion of the emptiness of the glass (whether the glass is viewed water side down or water side up.) The Bible also describes many miracles that have occurred over the ages – part of faith is believing in the “Invisible” intercessions of the Trinity.
So to read the Bible actively means to reread passages that one may have read before and glean new personal insight into the way we perceive and morally conduct our life here on earth. Wisdom and messages from God are eternal and always pertinent to the receiving soul. The greatest miracle to me would be a total personal relationship with Christ with real conviction to confront evil and support people of Good Will.
Last year I had a religious leader tell me he avoids those Old Testament Psalms that say “Go get ’em, God”. Ah, “selective reading & interpretation” to avoid the subject of addressing the forces of evil. As the Bible says there is a time for everything [here on earth]. We cannot pick and choose whatever we like about the Bible and ignore the rest of it, or God’s constant messages to us in this life. We just need enough faith in Jesus Christ’s daily support to not be drawn into non-Christian “liberal view” morals and philosophical interpretations that are described in this article. It’s interesting to me that Machin’s theology work was released during the “Roaring Twenties” of loose morality (and organized crime). Machin’s book was also developed around the time the United Nations was created by President Woodrow Wilson and a bunch of influential and rich Progressive intellectuals in America and Europe after WWI. My mother never had much good to say about Woodrow Wilson (and she voted for Democrats in elections.) Mom was usually a good judge of character and warned me about Wilson’s political agenda fallout on America (and she was right, God bless her departed soul!)
Amen, Al!