Reading Machen
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 liberalism is not the life purpose of the real Jesus, but merely represents those elements in the teaching of Jesus--isolated and misinterpreted--which happen to agree with the modern program...”
"It is vain, then, to speak of reposing trust in the Person without believing the message. For trust involves a personal relation between the one who trusts and him in whom the trust is reposed. And in this case the personal relation is set up by the blessed theology of the Cross..."
"The critical process is certainly very difficult, and the suspicion often arises that the critic is retaining as genuine words of the historical Jesus only those words which conform to his own preconceived ideas... It is not Jesus, then, who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus' recorded teaching has been made. Certain isolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted, not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because they agree with modern ideas."
“The Jesus of the New Testament has at least one advantage over the Jesus of modern reconstruction– He is real. He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. Men have loved Him through all the Christian centuries. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still.”
From What Is Faith? (1925)
“That view of the Cross, it cannot be denied, runs counter to the mind of the natural man. It is not, indeed, complicated or obscure; on the contrary it is so simple that a child can understand, and what is really obscure is the manifold modern effort to explain the Cross away in such fashion as to make it more agreeable to human pride.”
"There is a wonderful clause in the Westminster Shorter Catechism which puts the true state of the case in classic form. 'Faith in Jesus Christ,' says the Catechism, 'is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation, as He is offered to us in the gospel.' In that last clause, 'as He is offered to us in the gospel,' we have the center and core of the whole matter. The Lord Jesus Christ does us no good, no matter how great He may be, unless He is offered to us; and as a matter of fact, He is offered to us in the good news of His redeeming work. There are other conceivable ways in which He might have been offered to us; but this has the advantage of being God’s way. And I rather think that in the long run we may come to see that God’s way is best."
"Acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is offered to us in the gospel of His redeeming work, is saving faith. Despairing of any salvation to be obtained by our own efforts, we simply trust in Him to save us; we say no longer, as we contemplate the Cross, merely 'He saved others' or 'He saved the world' or 'He saved the Church'; but we say, every one of us, by the strange individualizing power of faith, 'He loved me and gave Himself for me.' When a man once says that, in his heart and not merely with his lips, then no matter what his guilt may be, no matter how far he is beyond any human pale, no matter how little opportunity he has for making good the evil that he has done, he is a ransomed soul, a child of God forever."
From The Origin of Paul's Religion (1927)
"Not by man but by Jesus Christ," he says at the beginning of Galatians, and the same contrast is implied everywhere in the Epistles. This heavenly Redeemer existed before His earthly life; came then to earth, where He lived a true human life of humiliation; suffered on the cross for the sins of those upon whom the curse of the Law justly rested; then rose again from the dead by a mighty act of God's power; and is present always with His Church through His Spirit."
"One fundamental feature of the experience has too often been forgotten—the appearance on the road to Damascus was the appearance of a person. Sometimes the event has been regarded merely as a supernatural interposition of God intended to produce belief in the fact of the resurrection, as merely a sign. Undoubtedly it was a sign. But it was far more; it was contact between persons."
"There is, therefore, no moral or psychological objection in the way of a simple acceptance of Paul's testimony about the conversion. And that testimony is unequivocal. Paul was not converted by any teaching which he received from men; he was not converted as Christians are usually converted, by the preaching of the truth or by that revelation of Christ which is contained in the lives of His followers. Jesus Himself in the case of Paul did in visible presence what He ordinarily does by the means which He has appointed."
From Selected Shorter Writings
"If we put what the Bible says about Jesus together, we can even now have contact with Him. I am bound to say that there was a time when I was greatly troubled in my faith by the defection of the modern world from Jesus of Nazareth as He is set forth in the Scriptures; but as I observe what is becoming of the world when the contact with Jesus is broken, my faith is no longer so much troubled by the argument from modern authority, and I have come to wonder whether, after wandering in devious ways, we shall not be forced to come again, as little children, to the Lord Jesus Christ as He is set forth in the Holy Scriptures and offered to us in the gospel." ("What the Bible Teaches About Jesus", 1927)
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