Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism: A Response
Samuel Cardillo
The more I read about and think about the doctrine of Election/Predestination within the Evangelical tradition, the more I find it absurd to take it seriously as a biblical theme. I came away from reading J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism more convinced than ever about the irrationality of idea of Election as a distinctive teaching of the evangelical tradition.
The most obvious reason is because the idea of election is completely incompatible with the biblical view of the nature and character of God. Why is it important to point out the conflict between the biblical portrait of God and the nonsensical idea of Election? Simply because the doctrine of election is such a central teaching within Evangelicalism, no doubt because it seems to be a central part of the Apostle Paul’s theology; but at the same time it paints a completely false portrait of God — a portrait of a mean-spirited vengeful God who arbitrarily picks and chooses whom to save and whom to commit to eternal damnation.
Machen was a Presbyterian theologian and fundamentalist leader; a major theological voice of conservative Christianity. His book, Christianity and Liberalism was published in 1923 and has come to be a standard for reformed theology. The message of the book is that liberalism is not just a branch of orthodox Christianity, but a separate religion — a works-based system centered around feelings and optimism.
So to be clear, there is no doubt that Machen was and is still a respected representative of Evangelical Christianity, and therefore his views on the Bible fairly represent Evangelical thinking. Machen’s view on Election (although he never mentions the word “election” in his book) becomes clear in his chapter on “Salvation.”
“These modern ‘theories of the atonement’… ignore the dreadful reality of guilt, and make a mere persuasion of the human will all that is needed for salvation.”
The key word here is persuasion. Why? Because it points to the obvious question: Isn’t this how the gospel is typically presented and received — as a persuasion, an appeal, to the human will? Having come out of the evangelical tradition, the answer is most definitely yes. The typical (actually the primary) means of sharing one’s personal witness with another person is to do exactly that: to persuade another of “all that is needed for salvation.” So it’s difficult to take Machen seriously when he minimizes the element of persuasion in presentation of the gospel.
But that’s a minor point. The more important issue comes in his chapter on Salvation. He writes, “…the Cristian doctrine of salvation through the death of Christ is criticized on the ground that it is narrow.” [No argument there]. But he goes on to say that that Christian doctrine of salvation “binds salvation to the name of Jesus, and there are many men in the world who have never in any effective way heard of the name of Jesus.” [still no argument]. But then he points out the “exclusiveness” [his word] of the evangelical message, saying that “all other means were resolutely rejected. The early Christians demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion to Christ.” The question that certainly must occur to anyone who hears that argument is all too obvious; it is simply this — what about those who never heard about Christ? What about those who lived (even righteous lives) before Christ’s appearance on the world scene, and quite late in history at that? Can the claim of redemption available only through Christ be taken seriously? Is it really “exclusive”?
If Machen wasn’t clear as to his thinking on that question, what he says next makes perfectly clear his belief that those who have never heard the gospel message are without hope (p.124):
“Thus it must fairly be admitted that Christianity does bind salvation to the name of Christ. The question need not here be discussed whether the benefits of Christ’s death are ever applied to those who, though they have not heard or accepted the gospel message. Certainly the New Testament holds out with regard to this matter no clear hope” (my bold italics).
And if that weren’t enough, Machen goes on to say that the spread of the message of the gospel is a “terrible responsibility” for Christians, that “that message was at all hazards to be proclaimed while there is still time;” and that if that message “of salvation is not offered to all, it is the fault of those who fail to use the means that God has placed in their hands.”
Two problems (at least) are clear from this hard line taken by Machen and his followers (advocates of reformed theology) –
1. What about Christians who fail to share the message of redemption to unbelievers? What an unbearable burden that places on the head of the believer every time he or she fails to perform their duty of proclaiming the gospel message. The guilt of such failure must be overwhelming because the stakes are literally eternal! To Machen, the failure to present the gospel message to even a single person is to be at “fault” and to have “failed.” (again, Machen’s words).
2. His argument nullifies reformed theology’s teaching on Election. If (as Machen is clearly saying) the salvation of people depends on their hearing and accepting the gospel message, then how can it also be claimed (as reformed theology claims) that there is a certain and limited number of “elect” who will be saved? (John Calvin’s idea of “limited atonement”). This argument is convoluted on its own merit, but Machen himself (unwittingly) points out the problem when he writes “The Father, who spared not His own Son but offered Him up for us all.” By “all” does he not really mean all? Obviously he does not.
As brilliant and respected a theologian as Machen was in (and since) his time, his argument for election is disastrous, irrational, and absurd. As I’ve pointed out before, proponents of election can’t have it both ways — they can’t claim the God calls out, elects, predestines certain individuals that he chooses to save, but also places the obligation to reach those people with the gospel, knowing full well that they will fail miserably to carry out that obligation to God’s expectation. Or if humanity does carry out that obligation to the limited extent foreordained by God, can it not be reasonably claimed that God’s standards fall far short of what we might expect of him?
To understand how Reformed Christianity deals with the obvious problem of Election, one has to put aside all reasonableness in the debate. In their honest attempt to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect God, they must be willing to make an exception to the idea of God’s universal love and God’s sense of fairness; a true Calvinist must be comfortable with the idea that this same God rightfully and indiscriminately punishes the greater part of humanity (his own created beings). In short, one must put aside the idea that humanity’s God-given standard of fairness doesn’t apply to God himself — the author of that sense of fairness… that God is somehow above or outside of the moral guidelines that he has put in place as the standard for humankind.
To put it another way, in order to believe in the idea of election, one must be willing to reject any sense of God’s fairness, justice, rationality, and logic, as God is apparently “above” or somehow “beyond” those categories, and is not to be judged according to the normal human usage and meaning of those qualities. Or to put it in even simpler terms, our normal definitions of right and wrong don’t apply to God, which can only mean that those definitions are not universal definitions. And if that’s the case, how then can they have any reliable meaning?
What is at stake here is simply a right understanding of who God is.
Is he a God of arbitrary and ruthless carnage, indiscriminately choosing some for eternal blessedness but condemning others to an agonizing eternity? Or is he truly the supreme God of love who cares for all of his creation?
