J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) is not a name, I would think, most readers would know, even though Wikipedia gives him a long biography. It's worth reading. He's an outlier in that he went to Germany for post graduate education and rejected liberalism for conservative theology. He was a professor for 23 years (1906-1929) of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, then led a revolt against liberal theology there, and left to start Westminster Theological Seminary. He was a Presbyterian and usually called a fundamentalist Presbyterian.
As you would know, I am Baptist, and reject Presbyterianism and Protestantism in general. I respect though what they mean for history. I am happy about a conservative Presbyterian. I like him obviously better than a liberal Baptist and even a moderate Baptist. Sometime I like a conservative Presbyterian more than a conservative Baptist, who is pragmatic, revivalistic, and a soft continuationist. Enough of those comparisons. I'm in part writing this because of a quote I read from Machen. Here it is:
In order to maintain themselves in the evangelical churches and quiet the fears of their conservative associates, the liberals resort constantly to a double use of language.
It comes from his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism. Carl Truman, Presbyterian historian, wrote this summary of the book:
The thesis of the book is devastatingly simple: Christianity, built on the authoritative, divinely-inspired, inerrant revelation of God in Scripture, embodying a robust supernaturalism, and focused on the exclusivity of salvation in the person and work of Christ, is a different religion to that liberalism that repudiates each of these things.
Machen uses as an example, a liberal saying, "I believe Jesus is God," but the words meaning something entirely different. He uses the words to comfort the heart of a young one who has questions. Machen says he "offends against the fundamental principle of truthfulness in language."
I see more offense than ever against this fundamental principle of truthfulness in language. People want to play both sides. They want acceptance from liberals and still maintain an audience with the conservative, bridge that gap.
Talking to a woman in evangelism, I said that Jesus wasn't a rorschach ink blot, that we can look into and see whatever Jesus we want to see. She said she believed in Jesus, but she also believed that He really was like that ink blot. He was intended to be whatever people needed Him to be. This was what she meant by 'she believed in Jesus.'
Perhaps with regard to truth, men still believe a large percentage of orthodox doctrine at least on paper, but they cave on beauty and goodness. They say they follow Jesus, but they don't like what He likes. They do something different than what He did. They love the world.
Ambiguous words become vessels for whatever meaning someone wants to give them. They give liberty to those who hold them. They can live what they want, expecting in the end to play a word game. "That is what I really meant, what you said." No, you didn't.
When I took ethics, we imagined casuistry, which was called Jesuit casuistry. Casuistry comes from the Latin casus, which means "case." It started out being a means of evading a difficult case of duty. "Were you there?" I was. It is the Clintonian, it was all a matter of what "there" means. I was "there," just not where you're talking about.
False religion is full of imprecision and fuzziness. The hermeneutic is speculative and mystical. With this use of language, man easily worships and serves the creature rather than Creator. The creature still calls it Creator though. Machen called it "the double use of language."
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