Free Republic

In 1923, J. Gresham Machen, then professor at Princeton Seminary, wrote the book, Christianity and Liberalism. The book was a response to the rise of liberalism in the mainline denominations of his own day. In short, Machen argued that the liberal understanding of Christianity was, in fact, not just a variant version of the faith, nor did it represent simply a different denominational perspective, but was an entirely different religion altogether. Put simply, liberal Christianity is not Christianity. So insightful is Machen’s volume, that it should be required reading certainly for all seminary students, pastors, and Christian leaders. What is...

Wally was a sweet fellow and very graciously lent me volume one of the Battles edition of Calvin’s Institutes. A while later I visited him in his luxurious office at the local “tall-steeple” PCUSA congregation in order to return the book. I was full of questions. In conversation, Wally mentioned that he was a graduate of Princeton Seminary. I had heard about this fellow “Machen” so I asked Wally about him and about Westminster Seminary. His jovial face quickly turned red with anger at the very mention of the traitor Machen and the rebel seminary. Mind you, this was about...

Believers in Unbelieving Churches What Should Be Done by Christian People Who are in a Modernist Church? What is the duty of Christian congregations or Christian individuals who find themselves in a church that is dominated by unbelief? Shall they remain in such a church, or shall they withdraw from it and become members of a consistently Christian Church? That is certainly the question of the hour for the orthodox part of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Various attempts are being made to answer the question. Various considerations are being urged on one side or the other. If we...

On New Year’s Eve, 1936, in a Roman Catholic hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota, J. Gresham Machen was one day away from death at the age of 55. It was Christmas break at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, where he taught New Testament. His colleagues said he looked “deadly tired.” But instead of resting, he took the train from Philadelphia to the 20-below-zero winds of North Dakota to preach in a few Presbyterian churches at the request of Pastor Samuel Allen. ... He had pneumonia and could scarcely breath. Pastor Allen came to pray for him that last day of 1936,...

On October 29, 1929, the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt. The stock market crashed, sending these United States of America into the Great Depression, which in turn affected much of the industrialized world. On September 25, 1929, in God’s sovereign timing, just one month before the Wall Street Crash, fifty-two students began their fall semester at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Only a few months prior, J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) resigned from Princeton Theological Seminary and founded Westminster Theological Seminary. Machen, along with Robert Dick Wilson, Oswald T. Allis, and Cornelius Van Til (and later John Murray), resigned...

The town where J. Gresham Machen, the founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, last preached before his death has shown up again in the news, this time in a horrible way. While Machen's direct denominational influence was fairly narrow, as the key leader of the secession from the Northern Presbyterians and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, Machen has a lasting role in American Calvinism that is far larger than the Orthodox Presbyterian Church which he founded. In his own lifetime, however, Machen's role was even more important and went well beyond Reformed circles. As a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary,...

It’s 4 p.m. ET as I’m writing this. If you had that time plus “deeper complicity for Holder in the Rosen investigation” in the pool, congrats.We already knew that he signed the warrant for Rosen’s e-mails. Now we know for sure that it wasn’t pro forma. President Good Government announced yesterday that he’s ordered the Attorney General to review the DOJ’s guidelines for snooping on reporters. Imagine how dismayed Eric Holder will be when he finds out what Eric Holder’s done. The Justice Department said on Friday that officials up to Attorney General Eric Holder vetted a decision to search...

The US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald C. Machen - the man responsible for the aggressive surveillance and phone record scrutiny at Fox News - is also a big donor to the Obama Campaigns. At the time of his appointment, the Washington Post wrote a profile on Machen including this tidbit: Over the years, he has donated $4,350 to Obama's campaigns. He gave $250 to Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2003, a year before Obama, then an Illinois state senator, emerged on the nation's political radar, according to campaign finance records.

<p>Looks Like DOJ HAS BEEN TAPPING AP NEWS TELEPHONE LINES TO DISCOVER THEIR CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES IN CONGRESS!</p> <p>The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.</p>

BREAKING: Attorney General Holder appoints two prosecutors to oversee leak probes

<p>Holder appoints 2 prosecutors to lead leak probes WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday appointed two U.S. attorneys to lead a pair of criminal investigations into possible unauthorized disclosures of classified information.</p>

J. Gresham Machen was professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary before becoming one of the founders of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). This address on The Scientific Preparation of the Minister, was delivered September 20, 1912, at the opening of the one hundred and first session of Princeton Theological Seminary, and in substance (previously) at a meeting of the Presbyterian Ministers' Association of Philadelphia, May 20, 1912. It was first published in The Princeton Theological Review, Vol. 11, 1913. _________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________There are, indeed, those who tell us that no defense of the faith is...

What does it mean to be a conservative in the United States? Dictionaries are not much help on this one, since like most reference works, they turn out to yield fairly bland and abstract conceptions. For instance, the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines the adjective conservative as either "relating to a philosophy of conservatism" or "constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism." Webster's does go on to say that being conservative has to do with the maintenance of "existing views, conditions, or institutions." In other words, conservative is supposed to be synonymous with "traditional," "moderate," and "cautious," favoring...

No doubt such a program is full of perils. Might it not be safer for our future ministers to close their ears to all modern voices and remain in ignorance of the objections that the gospel faces in the modern world? We reply that of course it might be safer. It is safer to be a good soldier in comfortable barracks than it is on the field of battle. But the great battles are not won in that way. Thus we encourage our students to be fearless in their examination of the basis of the faith. Let no one say...

Foreword The action of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, meeting at San Francisco, in adopting the Report of the Special Committee to visit Princeton Theological Seminary, has raised an issue upon which the entire future character of the institution depends. In treating of this issue, I shall not deal with the personal attack that has been made upon me. My real sorrow has been due not to the personal indignity that I have suffered by the actions of the last two General Assemblies, but to the fact that I have been the...

I'm re-reading J. Gresham Machen's Christianity & Liberalism with my friend and co-worker, Jacob Hall. Machen wrote this book in 1923 as a response to the doctrineless preaching of Harry Fosdick. It rings true today--and I'm not just talking about what others are preaching. I'm talking about the temptation I face to avoid saying hard things. I'm surprised how often I have an inner conversation as I prepare a sermon. It goes something like this: "Aaron, that's true. It's in the Bible. It needs to be said even though it may offend some." In spite of myself, I am resolved...

Plagued by questions about the divine truth of the Bible, today's young Christians are doubting their faith as never before, says Peter Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside. But when Enns wrote a book urging wobbly believers to embrace man's role in shaping the Bible, he plunged the famously conservative seminary into crisis. Westminster's board of trustees suspended Enns, 47, from his teaching post in March, and has ordered a four-day hearing to determine if he should be dismissed "for the good of the seminary." Some of his supporters are condemning the hearing, due to...

Machen (1881-1937) was Professor of New Testament, first at Princeton Theological Seminary, and afterwards at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Published in God Transcendent (1949). ________________________________________________________ "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him, which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). These words were not spoken by Jonathan Edwards. They were not spoken by Cotton Mather. They were not spoken by Calvin, or Augustine, or by Paul. But these words were spoken by Jesus. And when put together with the many other words...

It has been observed in the last chapter that Christianity is based on an account of something that happened in the first century of our era. But before that account can be received, certain presuppositions must be accepted. The Christian gospel consists in an account of how God saved man, and before that gospel can be understood something must be known (1) about God and (2) about man. The doctrine of God and the doctrine of man are the two great presuppositions of the gospel. With regard to these presuppositions, as with regard to the gospel itself, modern liberalism is...

Modern liberalism in the Church, whatever judgment may be passed upon it, is at any rate no longer merely an academic matter. It is no longer a matter merely of theological seminaries or universities. On the contrary its attack upon the fundamentals of the Christian faith is being carried on vigorously by Sunday-School "lesson-helps," by the pulpit, and by the religious press. If such an attack be unjustified, the remedy is not to be found, as some devout persons have suggested, in the abolition of theological seminaries, or the abandonment of scientific theology, but rather in a more earnest search...