July 7, 2024: Sunday School

Order of Service

• Prayer Requests
• Pastoral Prayer
• Video Lecture — Christianity and Liberalism (Dr. Stephen Nichols, Ligonier Ministries)
• Group Discussion
• Closing Prayer

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Sermon Title: Christianity Versus Liberalism — Machen's Defense of the Faith

Scripture: No single Scripture text; lecture and discussion drew on Jude 3, 1 Thessalonians 1, Habakkuk 1, and Matthew 4:4

I. Historical Context for Machen's Christianity and Liberalism (1923)

A. Modernism defined: unfettered belief in human progress rooted in a denial of original sin

1. Man viewed as basically good; evil attributed to bad social structures
2. Rapid technological and scientific progress (1880s–1920s) fueled optimism and self-sufficiency
3. Result: perceived irrelevance of God, sin, and redemption

B. Academic accelerants to modernism

1. German higher criticism denied the Bible as the Word of God; Scripture recast as one community's religious expression
2. Comparative religions introduced in universities, treating all religious texts as equally valid
3. Darwinian evolution provided an alternative account of origins, popularized culturally by the 1925 Scopes Trial

C. Harry Emerson Fosdick's 1922 sermon — Shall the Fundamentalists Win?

1. Fosdick was promoted nationally by Rockefeller funding (National Vespers radio program)
2. Fosdick equivocated on each of the five fundamentals: inerrancy of Scripture, Virgin Birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily second coming, and miracles
3. His argument: accommodating modernist sensibilities is necessary to keep Christianity culturally relevant

II. Machen's Thesis: Liberalism Is Not Christianity

A. Liberalism is the accommodation of Christianity to modernist sensibilities — not a variant of Christianity but outside orthodox bounds B. Machen addresses each major doctrine: Scripture, God and man, Christ, salvation, and the church C. The answer to modernism is not compromise but proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ

1. Machen draws a parallel to the Reformation: just as Rome substituted the traditions of men for Scripture, modernism substitutes new cultural elites and experts for the Word of God
2. The Reformation recovered two pillars — the authority of Scripture and the true Gospel; Machen calls the church to the same recovery
3. Machen's goal is not merely polemical but constructive: showing what Christianity is not in order to show what Christianity is (see Jude 3)

III. Application and Discussion

A. The pattern repeats: cultural prosperity and progress consistently coincide with spiritual drift, as seen in Israel (cf. Habakkuk 1; Amos 6) B. Modernist assumptions are no longer novel controversy but are now embedded invisibly in the culture — making Machen's clarity more urgent today than in his own era C. The slide away from confessionalism on the American frontier (departure from Westminster Standards, London Baptist Confession, Thirty-Nine Articles) removed doctrinal guardrails and opened the door to liberalism D. The focal point of Christian unity and mission must remain Jesus Christ, not cultural accommodation (cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:5 — receiving the Word with full conviction by the power of the Holy Spirit)