Biblical Studies

I'm once again appreciating the rich contribution that J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) has made both in New Testament studies and in apologetics. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was educated at Johns Hopkins, Princeton University and Seminary, Marburg, and Gottingen. Ordained in 1914, he taught New Testament at Princeton Seminary from 1906 to 1929. He, along with others, founded Westminster Theological Seminary (in Philadelphia, PA) and served as president and professor of NT until his death in 1937.  Among his most significant publications are Christianity and Liberalism (1923), What is Faith? (1925), The Origin of Paul's Religion (1927); and The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930). His popular radio messages have been published in book form as Things Unseen in 2020 by Westminster Seminary Press. Below are some random highlights from my past reading in Machen's books.  From Christianity and Liberalism (1923) “The truth is that the life-purpose of Jesus discovered by modern li

My heart is empty.  All the fountains that should run  With longing, are in me Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one  That drips to find the sea. I have no care for anything thy love can grant  Except the moment's vain And hardly noticed filling of the moment's want  And to be free from pain. Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep  Nor slumber, who didst take All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep Watch for me till I wake. If thou think for me that I cannot think, if thou Desire for me what I  Cannot desire, my soul's interior Form, though now  Deep-buried, will not die, -- No more than the insensible dropp'd seed which grows Through winter ripe for birth  Because, while it forgets, the heaven remembering throws  Sweet influence still on earth, -- Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes Still turning round the earth.   C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (1932) Image credit: sculpture by Spe