Machen Chapter 7

 Machen Chapter 7 - "The Church." This chapter addresses the issue of liberally-minded teachers being accepted into the church as teachers and preachers. The issue Machen has with this is not so much that these people want to spread what they want to teach, but rather their dishonesty in it all. Their desire is to spread their message, but they do it through a dishonest way of pretending they agree with the specific church's doctrine but then proceeding to teach otherwise.
      I thought it was interesting that Machen brought up the point of tolerance. Tolerance in our modern American society is much-used word, but I didn't realize it was on the radar of those in Machen's generation. Machen is not saying that, while evangelicals clearly do believe that the liberal "theology" is wrong, that they should not have be allowed to share what they believe. He is simply saying that there is no place for it in the evangelical church. He mentions how tolerance under certain authority such as governmental should be promoted; however, a voluntary organization such as religion (a church), should not be required to be "tolerant" of another belief, as that shakes the very ground the organization was built on.
     I appreciated Machen's balance here, and was actually a little surprised to how much 'grace' he gae to liberals. His argument was on the basis of honesty, which I also found intriguing.
     Considering Biblical as well as the ancient history of the church, the dealings with "false teachers" has tended to be very severe. Paul has some pretty harsh words for those people in his letters. Others in history were accused of heresy. While there must be a balance and an aspect of love for all humans, I might be so bold as to say God has used severe treatment of these false teachers as a way to preserve the Gospel. Of course I do not think this means we should imprison or exile people, it is a duty of Christians to call it like it is: a false doctrine. Not only must we publicly recognize it, but then deal with it as well: it has no place in the evangelical church.
      How might one do this? This would of course depend on the context.
      But it must, first and foremost, start with the church being in agreement of the need to preserve the holy doctrine of the Gospel.


In conclusion, while I don't necessarily agree with everything Machen says, and at times his arguments became a little repetitive, I believe the book was an effective one in recent church history. It was used to call out liberalism for what it was, contrast it to Biblical doctrine, and give Christians a practical response to implement as a result. It is difficult to judge books written in past generations because there is so much modern perspective/bias that influences, but we can only do the best we can to understand where the author is coming from in his time of life and take the good that we can learn from.