Sola Scriptura is not only the formal principle of the Reformation; it is the formal principle of all Christian theology. The task of Christian theology is to articulate with clarity the judgments of divine revelation. The Christian theologian is, first and foremost, a recipient of the revealed word. The Scriptures do not contain undeveloped raw materials that need to be improved upon, clarified, and polished for more relevant applications. 

The Lord Jesus Christ promised that he would build his church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). This promise, however, did not come with a guarantee that the church would never be in danger of theological drift and corruption. Rather, both Jesus and the apostles warned us that false teachers and even false Christs would arise. They would seek to deceive the people of God like wolves in sheep’s clothing, enticing the saints with all manner of deceptive anti-Christian philosophies substituting imposter gospels for the true one.[1] This alluring deception can take many forms, and no generation of Christians can rest on the assumption that sound doctrine is safe from assault.
Sola Scriptura: Background of the Doctrine
Historically, one of the most notorious departures from the true gospel came in the complex development of late medieval Roman Catholicism. With the gradual ascent of the Bishop of Rome to a place of preeminence combined with the belief that bishops were the successors to the apostles of Christ, many came to believe that the formal traditions of papal declarations, creeds, and councils carried the full weight of divinely revealed truth. This opened wide the gate for all manner of false doctrine to masquerade as truth, even when untethered entirely from the teaching of holy Scripture. Like the Pharisees of old, the Roman Catholic magisterial authorities had departed from the divinely given testimony of the prophets and apostles and were “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:7).
This widespread departure from the faith “once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) ultimately sparked the Protestant Reformation. Men like Martin Luther, Uldrich Zwingli, and John Calvin sought to recover true catholicity from the corruptions of Roman Catholicism. Many rightly regard the doctrine of justification by faith as the material principle of the Reformation—the central issue (the main matter).. For the Reformers, justification is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone (solus Christus) by faith alone (sola fide), through grace alone (sola gratia), and for the glory of God alone (soli deo gloria).
If justification was the material principle of the Reformation, then the issue of authority was its formal principle. What authority gives shape (form) to the doctrinal matter of the church? Is the content of the true Christian faith to be determined by the magisterial, top-down authority of an ongoing apostolic office (the bishops) with one preeminent head (the pope) or only by the inscripturated word of prophets and apostles in the Old and New Testaments? For the Reformers and their heirs, Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) meant that all Christian teachers (including popes and bishops), all Christian assemblies (including councils), and all Christian theological truth claims (including creeds) are to be judged by the words of Scripture. Martin Luther’s legendary speech at the Diet of Worms, when he was asked to recant his writings, encapsulates this commitment: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”[2]
Scripture Alone is What Exactly?
In order to grasp the significance of sola Scriptura for theological method, we need to consider what exactly the slogan is claiming. I often ask my students to fill in the blank: Scripture alone is _______. Many write something like “the only authority for the faith and life of the church.” While this response reflects a right instinct, this articulation of sola Scriptura is incomplete. Neither the Reformers nor their heirs believed that Scripture is the only authority in the faith and life of Christians. Rather, the Reformation emphasized the need for, and put to good use, other sources of theological and religious authority.
As a renewal effort, the Reformation prioritized the preaching of Scripture by qualified men who occupied the biblically defined office of pastor/elder/overseer. Preaching was certainly grounded in the authority of Scripture, but to follow Scripture’s own teaching meant recognizing the genuine—albeit secondary—authority of the men occupying the teaching office of the church. Additionally, the Reformers themselves had an interest in retrieving the teaching of the church fathers[3] and the ecumenical creeds,[4] because they recognized that such teachings have a regulative function in the life of the church to varying degrees. Furthermore, the Reformers and their heirs made a habit of drafting and affirming confessions of faith, which were intended to regulate the acceptable doctrine and practice of the faithful.
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The fact that Father is a personal name for the first person of the Trinity, grounded as it is in the biblically revealed doctrine of eternal generation, further cements the argument that Father is a name predicated properly of God. God is a Father eternally as the source of the eternal and uncreated Son. Thus, fatherhood is not a mere human denomination applied primarily to biological males with children. It is the other way around. Biological males are named father analogically in reference to their children. God is Father first in reference to his only begotten Son.

Editor’s note: The following essay appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Eikon.
The one true and living God is named Father in many texts of both the Old and New Testaments. Isaiah cries out to God on behalf of Israel, saying, “O LORD, you are our Father” (Isa. 64:8).  Jesus taught his followers to address God as “Our Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). Paul says that Christians, who have the Spirit of God, cry out to God as “Abba, Father,” the very same cry by which Jesus addressed God in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was crucified (see Rom. 8:15 and Gal. 4:6, cf. Mark 14:46).
Even so, the very notion of the fatherhood of God is a subject of much theological confusion, often characterized by muddled arguments, which leave in their wake befuddled minds. The cultural landscape of the Western world, with its ideological gender insanity, is not helping matters. Since the name Father is inescapably masculine, and since God is not a biologically sexed being, confusion over the fatherhood of God is not surprising in our cultural moment. But it is nonetheless troubling! Christian theology is increasingly affected by a rising tide of influence from thinkers who wish to dismiss or diminish the theological significance of masculine names for God (and their accompanying masculine pronouns). This rising tide is battering the ramparts of sound doctrine with many different waves. That is, not all dismissive and diminishing voices are making the same arguments, but the variety of arguments have the same overall effect: the erosion of sound doctrine.[1] Furthermore, it seems to me that all such arguments have at least one common error, a failure to understand with precision the various ways Scripture predicates truths of God generally and the ways it names God as Father specifically.[2] Clear thinking coupled with uncompromising conviction must mark the way forward.
This essay will argue that Father is a divine name predicated of God properly, not figuratively. As such, it names God in two ways — personally and essentially — both of which find analogical correspondence in human fatherhood. This argument will be advanced in four movements: (I.) First, I will survey the scriptural significance of names in general and divine names in particular. (II.) Second, I will give a robust account of theological language, which is intended to be a synthesis of classical Christian theism concerning how Scripture norms the Christian doctrine of God. (III.) The third section of the essay will situate the name Father in this classical account of theological language, demonstrating it to be a properly predicated name in two ways: personal and essential. (IV.) In the final section of the essay, I will draw on the theological account of Father as a divine name to suggest some limited points of analogical correspondence between divine and human fatherhood.[3]
1. The Scriptural Significance of Names
For medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas, the category of divine names referred to any predication made of God in any way. Thus, all distinctions between different kinds of speech about God are made under the heading: “The Names of God.”[4] The Reformers and post-Reformation Reformed Orthodox theologians took a somewhat different approach. For them the category of the names of God was much narrower than Thomas’s. They treated the divine names as designations for God found explicitly and verbally in the biblical text. Names are ascribed to God in a proper way, meaning they are not mere metaphors or figures of speech. Furthermore, what the Reformed consider to be a divine name is the kind of designation for God that can be fittingly used as the grammatical subject of a sentence, which seems to be one of the chief ways a name is distinguished from an attribute.
The reason for this narrower account of what constitutes a divine name is the Reformation’s emphasis on the unique authority of Scripture as the very word of God written (sola scriptura) and the commitment to letting the text of Scripture regulate dogmatic formulation of the doctrine of God. As Richard Muller observes in his magisterial Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, “From the time of Zwingli onward . . . the names of God provided the Reformed with a primary source and focus” for theology proper as a whole. He goes on to suggest that the reason for this move is a “fundamental biblicism”[5] and a conviction that the divine names offer a primary exegetical pathway into theology proper as a dogmatic locus.[6]
The Reformed focus on the biblical divine names did not mean that they were in fundamental disagreement with Aquinas about the nature of theological language predicated of God. Rather, as will be shown, there was a high degree of agreement between Thomas and the Reformed Orthodox. Nor did this emphasis mean that Reformed thinkers gave no attention to broader dogmatic themes in the doctrine of God, such as divine attributes and Trinitarian relations. Far from it, they are known for their robust and lengthy accounts of these matters. Rather, they emphasized the divine names in order to facilitate such dogmatic considerations. Seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian Petrus Van Mastricht, for example, offers an extensive treatise on the divine names and the relationship of names to the rest of the doctrine of God. He says, “The nature of God is made known to us by his names.” He goes on to explain that the names of God (1) reveal the divine essence, (2) distinguish the true God from false gods and creatures, and (3) disclose his properties (attributes and eternal triune relations).[7] Following the example of our Reformed forebears, let us consider the theological significance of the divine names revealed in Scripture.
The Significance of Names in Scripture
In Scripture, a person’s name signifies something more than the particular phonemes (sounds) or graphemes (written letters) by which a person is identified. Two general truths about the significance of names should be observed. First, names are given by one with authority to one under authority. In Genesis 1:26, God names mankind (אדם, a name designating both the genus of humanity and the specific name of the first male human created). Adam, who is given dominion over the animals on the earth, names the animals (Gen. 2:19-20). Significantly, Adam also names the woman as a particular type of human (Gen. 2:23) and later gives her the specific name, Eve (Gen. 3:20). Furthermore, parents, who have authority over their children, give names to their children, who are to honor and obey their parents (Ex. 20:12, Eph. 6:1).
Second, the name of a person generally signifies some truth about the person so named. The name woman signifies that she is created from the man (Gen. 2:23), and the name Eve is derived from a Hebrew word meaning “living” because she is “the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20) humanity. In the case of parents naming their children in Scripture, names often signify some feature about the child’s birth.[8] In other instances, the names of children reflect some prophetic expectation based on divine revelation.[9] Still other times, a child’s name reflects something of the circumstances in the land where the child is born.[10] There are even times in Scripture when a person’s name is either changed by God or some new name is given in addition to a prior name because the person’s life has been changed by God.[11] In all such cases, the common thread is the revelatory significance of a given name.
The Significance of Divine Names in Scripture
The names of God in Scripture are similarly significant. First, since names are given by one in authority to one under authority, it should not surprise us to find that God names himself in Scripture. This pattern of naming signifies the fact that God is not beholden to anyone. He is not given names by his creatures but reveals his names to his creatures. The paradigmatic passage for understanding this truth is Exodus 3:1-15, the historical narrative of the call of Moses at the burning bush. Here it is abundantly clear that the act of naming the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a divine prerogative. Moses asks God his name, and God answers,
“I AM who I AM. And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you.’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “The LORD [יהוה], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations’” (Ex. 3:14-15).
Moses could not choose a name for God based on some mere metaphorical association drawn from the creaturely realm, nor based on his own reason, preference, or imagination. If Moses would know the name of God, it would have to be made known to him by revelation from God. “What is your name?” says Moses. “This is my name,” says the LORD.
The burning bush passage is paradigmatic in that it states clearly what is implied in many other passages involving divine names. For example, In Genesis 16:13, Hagar calls the name of the LORD “You are a God of seeing” (אל ראי, El Roi). There is no account of Hagar asking God his name, nor any indication that the LORD said to Hagar, “This is my name: El Roi.” Nevertheless, Hagar’s naming of God is in response to God’s revelation of himself. Hagar fled from the presence of Abram and Sarai and was desperate and alone in the wilderness where she believed she and the child in her womb would surely perish. It is then that the LORD “found her” and spoke to her words of promise and instruction. She would bear a son who would live and flourish, and she should return to Sarai and bear the son for Abram. Note that the LORD found Hagar, not the other way around. The name by which Hagar referred to God—“God of seeing” — was a response to his revelation of himself. Thus, the late nineteenth-century Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck was right when he said, “We do not name God; he names himself,” a sentiment he further clarified by saying, “What God reveals of himself is expressed and conveyed in specific names. To his creatures he grants the privilege of naming and addressing him on the basis of, and in keeping with, his revelation.”[12]
Secondly, as with scriptural names in general, divine names signify truths concerning the nature of God. Again, the burning bush passage demonstrates the point. When Moses asks God his name, God says, “I AM WHO I AM” (אהיה אשׁר אהיה, Ex. 3:14). He goes on to offer the most prominent name for God in all of Scripture, the LORD, which in Hebrew is four letters (יהוה, YHWH), the famed tetragrammaton, the sacred name. This name, the LORD, is to be the name by which God is known “forever, throughout all your generations” (v. 15). Though the details are disputed, it is generally agreed that the name YHWH is grammatically derived from the name “I AM,” expressing the same truth in the third person. Pre-modern theologians and exegetes tended to see this name as revealing the aseity of God, the fact that God is not dependent on anything external to himself for his being and existence. Thus, he reveals himself by the name of being itself. All other beings receive their existence from God, but God has his existence from no other. In other words, God exists from himself (Latin, a se).
The enduring influence of the Hellenization thesis might lead one to think that the notion of aseity is too philosophical and foreign to the context of the passage itself.[13] Thus, some prefer alternative interpretations.[14] Good work has been done, however, demonstrating that the Scriptures presuppose philosophical commitments concerning the nature of being and existence (metaphysics) and that the Hellenization thesis is drastically overstated.[15] Furthermore, the exegetical case for linking the divine name (“I AM” / “the LORD”) to the aseity of God is quite strong. It is undeniable that God chooses a form of the being verb to answer Moses’s question about his unique name. This indicates that God’s name is irreducibly ontological, revealing the mode of his existence, which is altogether independent. Who is God? He simply is! Put differently, he is the existing one who receives his life from none, but possesses it fully of himself (a se, cf. John 5:26). Furthermore, the visible manifestation of God as a flame seems to correspond to the verbal revelation of the divine name. When Moses first sees the burning bush, his curiosity is aroused by the fact that “the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed” (Ex. 3:2). In his eighty years of life, Moses had undoubtedly seen a flame before, and he had probably even seen a flame burning in a bush before. But he had never seen a flame burning in a bush that did not consume the bush as fuel. This utterly unique flame-bush relation provoked Moses to say to himself, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned” (v. 3). In every observable case of burning flames, the flame is dependent on fuel to burn. Take away the fuel, extinguish the flame. But this flame does not consume fuel. It is a self-burning flame, just as the great “I AM,” whose presence is represented by the flame, is the self-existent God. God’s name (“I AM” / “the LORD”) reveals an attribute of his nature (aseity). Whether revealing the attributes of God’s nature or the eternal relations of the three distinct persons, names predicated of God reveal truths about God.
This section has shown the significance of names in Scripture in general in order to make some basic observations about the significance of the names of God in particular. Names are given by one in authority to one under authority. As such, no creature can name God. Rather, God names himself and reveals his name to creatures. Names also reveal certain truths about the one named. The names by which God makes himself known reveal his attributes and Trinitarian relations.
2. Classical Theological Language: A Conceptual Map
The purpose of this section is to synthesize the insights of a massive theological tradition regarding the ways that Scripture predicates truth of God. This tradition’s roots extend from the patristic period through Western medieval theological scholasticism and into the Reformation and post-Reformation eras of Christian theological reflection. Many have referred to the Christian doctrine of God as expressed by this tradition as classical theism. Standing on the shoulders of giants, I hope to offer a conceptual schema that is descriptive of Scripture’s various modes of discourse with respect to theology proper. Insofar as the schema is faithfully descriptive of Scripture’s own modes of discourse, it should also be prescriptive in the sense that it helps readers of Scripture recognize the nature of the language being deployed in a given scriptural context where truths about God are being conveyed.[16]
Analogical Language in Scripture
All true creaturely language about God is analogical. This claim is a recognition of two facts. First, God has chosen to reveal himself truly to creatures in a way that can be understood by creatures, namely through created words. Second, words predicated of God do not mean exactly the same thing in God as when predicated of creatures. Rather, words predicated of God are true of God in ways that transcend the limits of created reality. In any analogy, two things correspond to one another in ways that are similar and dissimilar. In the case of analogical language predicated of God, the two things, words and God, do not bear an exact similitude with no remainder. Rather, the fullness of God’s being transcends the capacity of meaning conveyed by finite words.
The idea that all language about God is analogical stands in stark contrast to two alternative proposals. First, the theory of analogical language stands in contrast to the theory of univocal language. If words spoken about God are univocal, then the meaning of the word discloses exactly what is true about God without remainder. The implication of this theory is that God can be comprehended intellectually (i.e., exhaustively understood) by finite creatures. Most theologians in the classical tradition have recognized that this would blur the Creator/creature distinction by reducing the being of God to the level of creatures. Second, the theory of analogical language stands in contrast to the theory of equivocal language about God. If words spoken about God are equivocal, then the meaning of a word does not disclose anything true about God. To equivocate is to express two altogether different things with the same word. To hold a theory of equivocal language about God would be to embrace a kind of functional deism in which all speech about God is merely a blind guess concerning the reality of one who is utterly unknowable. The analogical theory of theological predication affirms the fittingness of created words spoken about God to reveal truth concerning him (John 17:17) while acknowledging that the LORD’s being is ultimately beyond all comparison (Isa. 46:5, 9) and his ways “inscrutable” on account of his infinite glory (Rom. 11:33).
The distinction between univocal and equivocal language has roots in Aristotle, who, in his Metaphysics, proposed the notion of analogia as a middle way of predication. This feature of Aristotelian thought makes its way into Christian theology through early medieval thinkers like Boethius, who wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.[17] However, it was Aquinas who applied these categories explicitly to the doctrine of God and gave the magisterial description that would be firmly fixed in Christian theological discourse moving forward.
Thomas considers the divine attribute of wisdom and observes that the term wise is not predicated of God and man in exactly the same way. Wisdom in man is a quality distinct from his essence and existence. Whereas in God, wisdom is identical to his essence and existence, per the doctrine of divine simplicity. Furthermore, we can fully comprehend the meaning of the term wise when applied to man, but we cannot fully comprehend the meaning of the term wise when applied to God, who is incomprehensible. From this, Thomas concludes:
Hence it is evident that this term wise is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same rule applies to other terms. Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures. Neither, on the other hand are names applied to God and creatures in a purely equivocal sense, as some have said. Because if that were so, it follows that from creatures nothing could be known or demonstrated about God at all; for the reasoning would always be exposed to the fallacy of equivocation. . . . Therefore, it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, i.e., according to proportion.[18]
It is unsurprising that later Roman Catholic theologians would follow Thomas with respect to these distinctions, but some are quite surprised to learn that the Reformed theological tradition takes the notion of analogical language as a given. John Calvin warned of the limitations of creaturely comprehension of the immeasurable and spiritual essence of God, explaining that divine revelation is accommodated to our finite mode of understanding. He writes, “[A]s nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us.” In this way, Calvin explains, God “accommodates the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.”[19] Nearly one hundred years later, the successor to Calvin’s chair at Geneva, Francis Turretin, would state plainly that the attributes of God are “not predicated of God and creatures univocally. . . . Nor are they predicated equivocally. . . . They are predicated analogically.”[20] Bavinck could summarize his account of the nature of theological language by saying, “Our knowledge of God is always only analogical in character, that is, shaped by analogy to what can be discerned of God in his creatures.”[21]
Proper and Figurative Predication
Serious Christian thinkers must acknowledge the basic truth of God’s transcendence and creaturely limitations when speaking of God on pain of collapsing the Creator/creature distinction. A commitment to the analogical theory of language about God has proven to be the most consistent way that classical Christian thinkers have accomplished this. While all scriptural predications of God are analogical, not all analogical predication in Scripture functions the same way. Some analogical predications are proper, and some are figurative.
The simplest way to describe the difference between proper and figurative predication is to consider which direction the analogy runs between God and creation. The analogical theory of language indicates that there is a comparison between a term predicated of creatures and the same term predicated of God. There is similarity and dissimilarity. The analogical predicate is proper if the notion has its origin in God and its analog in creation. The predicate is figurative if the origin is in creation and the analog is in God.
Let us return to Aquinas’s discussion of the divine attribute of wisdom. The term wise is true of God in himself even when there is nothing else in existence that can be called wise. When God creates men and angels and gives them the capacity for wisdom, the term wise can be predicated of such creatures by way of participation. Divine wisdom precedes creaturely wisdom, and divine wisdom is the infinite perfection of which creaturely wisdom is but a shadow. Because wisdom is in God originally and in creatures derivatively, the term wise is predicated of God properly.[22] The analogy runs from God to creatures.
On the other hand, when a term is predicated of God which is true of creatures in a primary way, that term is understood to be figurative with respect to God. For example, when Scripture ascribes human body parts to God, we are to recognize that such body parts are proper to human beings and only spoken of God as a figure of speech. Proverbs 5:21 says, “For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.” Because Scripture plainly teaches that God is an infinite, invisible, immaterial spirit, we know that eyes are predicated of God figuratively. The figure of speech refers to the perfect knowledge of God with respect to all the ways of men. Eyes are predicated of God figuratively to reveal his comprehensive knowledge, which is true of God properly. The analogy runs from creatures to God.
All figurative language is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. It communicates what is true of one thing in terms proper to another thing. Metaphor can take many specific forms. Simple metaphor is the identification of one thing by the name of another thing. “The LORD is my rock” (2 Sam. 22:2) is a prime example. Simile is a type of metaphor that makes the comparison with the words “like” or “as.” When he judges the kingdom of Judah, “The LORD is like an enemy” (Lam. 2:5). Metonymy is a metaphor in which a concrete object symbolizes an abstract quality, such as a divine attribute. When the psalmist says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Ps. 45:6), throne symbolizes God’s sovereignty. Theological anthropomorphism (in the form of a man) is a metaphor in which human body parts are ascribed to God in order to reveal some truth about him (see Prov. 5:21 above — “the eyes of the LORD”).
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Where feminism questions the place of the maleness of Jesus in the bigger story of the Christian gospel, transgender ideology undermines the very reality of his maleness altogether. Whether or not Jesus was a man, a woman, or some non-binary “other” becomes an open-ended question in the worldview of contemporary gender theorists.[6]. What is one to do in the face of such destructive ideological trends that undermine the truth about Jesus?

From its very beginning, true Christianity has been threatened by false teachers that disguise themselves with the terminology of the Christian faith but define the terms in radically different ways. These are the wolves in sheep’s clothing that Jesus and the apostles warned us about (see Matt. 7:15 and Acts 20:29). In Machen’s day, the most threatening wolf among the sheep was classic liberalism in the mold of Schleiermacher, Strauss, Von Harnack, and Rauschenbusch. Such thinkers and their disciples had feasted on the fare of enlightenment modernism and were feeding it in large supply to the unsuspecting masses. In our day, the modernist presuppositions of that age have given way to postmodernism with a plethora of ideologies that are hostile to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Many of these ideas find happy expression under the banner of “progressive Christianity” where they are comfortably peddled with historic, Christian labels. But make no mistake, the labels are not defined in historic, Christian ways. As with the liberalism of Machen’s day, the progressive ideas of our own day are not really a version of Christianity but a different religion altogether.
Major Ideological Challenges to Orthodox Christology
Many are the challenges facing true Christianity generally, and Christology specifically, under the present-day banner of progressive Christianity. In Part One, I summarized the major critiques Machen leveled against liberal Christology. In this second part of the essay I will briefly survey just three of these destructive ideas and how they impact Christology in particular. I will follow this with a summary of three historic, orthodox Christological convictions evident in Machen’s chapter on the person of Christ because no matter the specific form of the doctrine of wolves, the doctrine of the true sheep is consistent from age to age. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). His sheep hear his voice; he knows them, and they follow him (John 10:27). Just as Christ himself does not change, neither does his trusted and true voice to his beloved sheep.
1. Religious Pluralism
One of the banner truths of progressive Christianity today is religious pluralism. According to the ideology of pluralism, all religious truth claims have validity as pathways to ultimate fulfillment. The real test for the legitimacy of religious truth is not the distinctive claims of a particular religion but the common ground they all share. For example, a Muslim may regard Muhammed as the greatest and only infallible prophet, a Buddhist may seek nirvana through transcendental meditation, and an orthodox Christian may seek heaven through faith in Jesus and forgiveness of sins. These evident differences, however, are not the heart of true religion according to pluralism. The heart is to be found in certain moral principles they all share, rooted in love for one’s fellow man. By prioritizing the common principles of love and basic morality (what true Christianity understands in terms of general revelation, common grace, and natural law) over the particularizing doctrinal claims of each tradition, pluralism seeks to eliminate any claim of uniqueness on the part of Christianity or any other religion.
It is not difficult to see how pluralism directly affects the historic doctrine of the person of Christ. Orthodox Christians in every age have believed and confessed that the Lord Jesus Christ, who became truly human, is also truly God from all eternity. Christians affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, that the one true and living God exists eternally as three distinct persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One of these divine persons, the Son, “took on flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) as Jesus of Nazareth. The eternally begotten Son of God became the temporally born Son of Mary—two distinct categories of sonship, one and the same Son. If pluralism is true, however, then the historic Christian doctrines of Trinity and incarnation cannot be true. If the eternally divine Son became a man and opened the way for his sheep to have eternal life, that particular way is unique among all other claims. That is, if the New Testament claims about the deity of Christ are true, then its claims of exclusivity are necessarily true as well. If, as pluralism would have it, the New Testament claims of exclusivity are not true, then the deity of Christ is necessarily untrue also, and the historic Christian doctrine of the incarnation becomes mere myth or metaphor.[1]
2. Feminism
Another dominant ideological force of progressive Christianity is feminism. The general narrative that women have been subjugated by men throughout history—and that the chief moral aim of mankind ought to be liberation of women from this oppression—has made its way into the discourse of Christian theology at the hands of feminist theologians. Noting the prevalence of masculine names, imagery, and language for God in the Bible—God as warrior, God as “Father,” male pronouns for God, etc.—feminist theologians have sought to “liberate” Scripture from the “androcentric patriarchy” of the cultural ethos in which it was written. This inevitably resulted in a feminization of God-talk that took many forms—appealing to the language of “goddess,” searching for biblical and theological warrant to call God “Mother,” and the explicit use of feminine pronouns for God.
Direct re-thinking of Christology was not far behind the broader trends of feminist theology. Feminist theologians were quick to raise the question of whether a male savior could savingly represent females and whether female priests and pastors (a non-negotiable commitment of feminist theology) could adequately represent a male Christ to their flocks. Thus, the maleness of the incarnate Lord is presented by feminist theologians as a serious problem to be solved rather than a positive aspect of the good news. Some find the maleness of Jesus to be irreconcilable with feminist principles and thus abandon any semblance of Christianity altogether.[2] Others see the problem in the patriarchal worldview of Christian interpretations of Jesus’ maleness, so that the entire theological and philosophical foundation of traditional Christianity must be upended and re-written before a male savior can have any significance, much less saving benefit for women.[3] This upending of the foundations must reach, not only to the interpretations of holy Scripture, but into the very presuppositions, intentions, and claims of the Scriptural authors themselves.
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The true joy of embracing the truth far exceeds the comfort derived from the accolades of men, both in this age and in the age to come. It is for this reason that Machen spoke, taught, and wrote with such clarity in defense of orthodoxy for the love and glory of Jesus, the only legitimate object of saving faith. Like Machen in the twentieth century and like Peter in the first century, may Christians today confess with sincere faith that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16) contending earnestly for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

In Matthew 16:13–17 Jesus asked his closest followers two questions of enduring significance. (1) “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (v. 13) and (2) “Who do you say that I am?” (v. 15). The first of these questions was answered with a variety of opinions from mistaken but admiring crowds. “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (v. 14). Of course, there were others answering the question in Jesus’s own day who were not so admiring. Many accused him of blasphemy (Matt. 9:3), demon possession (John 7:20), and even of occultic demon manipulation (Matt. 12:24). Whether generally friendly or openly hostile, the variety of public opinions about Jesus of Nazareth all fell woefully short of the truth. Each opinion was the product of the reasoning faculties of Jesus’s contemporaries aided by the faulty presuppositions of their experience and worldview and not the result of divine revelation. When the Lord Jesus himself pressed the question personally to the disciples, it was Peter who spoke the truth about Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). This answer, the true confession, was not the result of Peter’s reasoning faculties nor the natural outworking of his presuppositions. The truth of this conclusion was grounded in the fact that it was divinely revealed: “Blessed are you, Simon bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven” (v. 17).
In his enduringly relevant classic, Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen argues convincingly that the theological commitments of liberalism amount to a fundamentally different religion than Christianity.[1] Nowhere is this fact more clearly illustrated than in the comparison between liberalism’s doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ as compared to that of orthodox Christianity. As the Enlightenment ran its course in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, some philosophers and biblical scholars had taken an openly hostile view of Jesus, regarding him as a false prophet with a deluded mind or an egotistical agenda (e. g., H. S. Reimarus and L. Feuerbach).
Others, however, though fully committed to enlightenment methods and ideas, attempted to maintain a reverent view of Jesus. Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example, had argued that Jesus was the chief exemplar of a pure and unfettered God-consciousness, the experiential feeling of absolute dependence.[2] For American liberal theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, Jesus was both the greatest preacher and the most prolific actor with respect to radical social action, ushering in the kingdom of God by breaking the chains of systemic social sins and liberating those oppressed by the systems.[3] This was the species of enlightenment ideology embraced by the liberalism of Machen’s day.
Like those who hailed Jesus as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, liberal preachers and theologians wished to maintain some reverence for Jesus as an exemplary figure, even as the first and quintessential Christian, but their rejection of the authority of divine revelation inevitably resulted in their failure to believe and confess the truth about Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Therefore, just as the religion of liberalism is altogether different than Christianity, so the Jesus revered by liberalism is an altogether different figure than the Jesus of the true Christian faith.
Machen’s treatment of the person of Christ is the subject of Chapter five of Christianity and Liberalism. Before considering the gospel message of salvation in Chapter six, Machen says, “We must consider the Person upon whom the message is based. And in their attitude toward Jesus, liberalism and Christianity are sharply opposed.”[4] Over the course of some thirty pages, Machen states, re-states, and defends the thesis that true Christianity regards Jesus of Nazareth as the object of faith while liberalism can, at best, regard him as the example of faith:
The modern liberal preacher reverences Jesus; he has the name of Jesus forever on his lips; he speaks of Jesus as the supreme revelation of God; he enters, or tries to enter, into the religious life of Jesus. But he does not stand in a religious relation to Jesus. Jesus for him is an example for faith, not the object of faith. The modern liberal tries to have faith in God like the faith which he supposes Jesus had in God; but he does not have faith in Jesus.[5]
In the remainder of Part 1 of this essay, I will summarize Machen’s trenchant critique of the liberal view of the person of Christ in four parts to set his argument forward as an example of the kind of courage, clarity, and winsomeness needed to “contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Part 2 of the essay will offer a summary of a few of the ideological challenges facing orthodox Christology today followed by a reminder from Machen of the unchanging truths of orthodox Christology, which function as the right answer to falsehood in every age.
1. The Jesus of History is the Christ of Faith
Machen’s critique of liberal Christology’s belief in Christ as a mere exemplar of Christian faith can be broken down into four distinct themes. First, liberal Christology is based entirely on a historical-critical methodology that posits a sharp dichotomy between the Christ of orthodox Christian faith and the Jesus of history. This dichotomy is usually traced back to the German scholar H. S. Reimarus, who sought to use the methods of historical-critical research to separate fact from fiction in the accounts of the actions and words of Jesus found in the canonical gospels. This undertaking, eagerly embraced by other enlightenment thinkers, would later come to be called “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.”[6] Fundamental to the quest was the philosophical argument that an ancient historical record cannot be trusted as fact since the truth of what is being claimed cannot be demonstrated in the present. If historical truth itself cannot be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated from historical truths. Nothing universally binding, and certainly nothing supernatural, can be based in the claims of history, however true those claims may be. This idea is what G. E. Lessing called the “ugly broad ditch” that could not be crossed.[7]
Machen rehearses the claim of Lessing’s “ugly broad ditch,” observing that, “for modern liberalism, a supernatural person is never historical.” He notes that, for liberals, “The problem could be solved only by the separation of the natural from the supernatural in the New Testament account of Jesus, in order that what is supernatural might be rejected and what is natural might be retained.”[8]
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Because the Advent season is upon us, it is particularly fitting to focus on the fact that the Holy Spirit glorified Christ by bringing to completion the miracle of the incarnation. When the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is going to conceive in her womb and bear the promised Messiah, she wonders how this can possibly come about since she is a virgin (Luke 1:34). The angel tells her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

This advent season, should Christians focus less on Jesus and more on the Holy Spirit? Do we emphasize Jesus so much that we sometimes neglect the Holy Spirit? After all, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christ-mas and the resurrection of Jesus at Easter. We refer to the gospel of our salvation as the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we refer to our Bible and our sermons from the Bible as Christocentric. Even the name of this website is “Christ Over All.”
Too Christocentric? What About the Spirit?
According to one common narrative, Western Christianity has seen a revival of pneumatology in the last century. The Holy Spirit, so the narrative goes, was neglected in Christian worship and theology from the days of the early church until the Pentecostal renewal movements of the early twentieth century. Since that time, however, the Holy Spirit seems to be center stage in much contemporary Christian worship and theological reflection. It is common to see this historical narrative framed by the metaphor of the classic fairytale of Cinderella. Overlooked, neglected, and long uninvited, Cinderella finally showed up to the ball and stole the show. A well-worn explanation for this so-called neglect of the Cinderella Spirit is the church’s overemphasis on the person of Christ.
A survey of this so-called revival of pneumatology will reveal that the new emphasis on the Holy Spirit has often resulted in new theological commitments. These commitments are not fresh articulations of the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) but departures from it. Pneumatology has been the doorway for declaring that people of non-Christian faith traditions can be saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ.[1] Others have posited pneumatology as the way to know the feminine side of God, a kind of balance to the masculine names of the Father and the Son.[2] Still others have seen the ongoing work of the Spirit to be a kind of liberating of the people of God from the strictures of the cultural ethos that dominated the human authors of Scripture.

Thus, for some, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, emphasis on holy, bears unholy fruit (see Gal. 5:22–23). Rather, such pneumatology becomes the theological justification for a sexual ethic that celebrates gay, lesbian, transgender, and polyamorous sexual expression.[3] If a tree is known by its fruit, the tree on which much contemporary pneumatology grows has a bad root—Satan masquerading as an angel of light rather than the Holy Spirit manifesting his presence and power (2 Cor. 11:14).

So, I ask again, do we run the risk of neglecting the Holy Spirit because of our worshipful obsession with the person of Christ? To borrow the Apostle Paul’s favorite negation, “May it never be!” The problem in our lives, our churches, and our society is not that we focus on the Lord Jesus too much but that we focus on him too little. In fact, if our doctrine of the Holy Spirit is regulated by holy Scripture (which the Holy Spirit inspired) rather than by the imaginations of men, we will see that the individuals, churches, and traditions most in step with the Holy Spirit are those who emphasize Christ most! The reason for this is straightforward. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes… he will glorify me” (John 16:13).
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