Written by Michael A.G. Haykin |
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
We study the history of God’s people to see what God has been doing in the world, and so praise him for his mighty acts in the past, and trust that he will display his power and glory afresh in our day.

How We View History
In Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, one of the characters, Catherine Morland, states that history “tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me.”1In many respects, this statement is a good reflection of the contemporary Western attitude towards history. Generally speaking, men and women in the West rarely think of going to history for wisdom or direction or encouragement. History, at best, contains interesting and entertaining bits of trivia. But wisdom? No, that’s found by looking to the present and to the future. Yet, a popular Russian proverb warns: “He who dwells on the past loses an eye; but he who forgets the past loses both eyes.”2
It should also be borne in mind that the area of the West in which we are living, namely, North America, is even more allergic to the study of history than places like Europe, because there is less stimulus in the surroundings of North American culture and society to arouse historical curiosity. Of course, there are places like the old quarter of Quebec City that are rich in history, but certainly they are not as many as in other parts of the world.
Tragically, this attitude towards history is also characteristic of far too many Christians. Like their culture, they are in the grip of a euphoria that places ultimate value on that which is new and innovative. This mentalité inevitably involves a dislike of the past. Whatever value the inheritance from the past may have had for its own day, much current church wisdom would have us believe that that value is now so diminished that it can easily be discounted in any reckoning about how to do church. Not only is this mentalité folly—we have no idea of where we are going if we do not know where we have come from—but it is at heart a clear manifestation of worldliness! As what follows will show, however, it is vital for Christians to care about church history.
History Has Meaning
Men and women are historical beings immersed in the flow of time. One cannot escape the effects of history. Even to think ahistorically for any length of time is a considerable task.
Not only is it important for the individual to realize his or her historical nature, but it is also essential for the community, especially the Christian community. For the Christian community, history is the stage on which the drama of redemption is being displayed—at the beginning is the Fall, at the end is the Last Judgment. In between, the most crucial event of all, the entry of the eternal God into time as a man, Jesus Christ, the Word incarnate. From the perspective of the New Testament, the incarnation is the culmination of the history of salvation sketched in the Old Testament.3 The incarnation proves beyond a shadow of a doubt God’s interest in history, for it initiated a history of salvation that embraces not only Israel, but the entire world.4
From the Christian perspective, God is undoubtedly active in history. And it is right and proper to study history for that reason alone. Though it is impossible to trace in detail his footsteps across the sands of time after the eras covered by the Scriptures, it is blasphemous to deny that he is at work. His work may often be hidden, but it is biblical to confess heartily that he is providentially guiding history for the glory of his name and the good of his people.
Learning from the Past
But there are other good reasons for studying what we call church history, the history of God’s new covenant people. It has been said, “A wise man learns from his mistakes; a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others; a fool learns from neither of them.” Here, then, is one of the more obvious reasons for studying church history: to learn from the mistakes of the past. Again, to cite the words of a famous proverb: “He who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it.” Thus, for example, we can study the configurations of fourth-century Arianism that denied the full deity of the Lord Jesus to help us win those who have bought into the heretical views of Christ maintained by modern-day Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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Ramsey’s book is not one that taught me anything new. Instead, it’s a book that reminds me of a Puritan work. It takes a couple of significant thoughts and turns them over slowly in our minds, teasing out the implications in a way that can change our lives. Ramsey deals first with the limitations of being limited to one time. I liked this section, particularly when he discussed topics such as regret, changing seasons, rushing, and the feeling that time is passing quickly.

I had a sad moment this week.
We had our real estate agent come to our condo to take a look as we begin to think about selling our place. We’ve lived in only a few places since we got married 32 years ago, and by far, this is our favorite. To think of selling this place fills us with some sadness, even though we know it’s time.
Honestly, sometimes I want to be able to inhabit more than one place at a time.
I’m glad I had just read Adam Ramsey’s book Faithfully Present: Embracing the Limits of Where and When God Has You.
Ramsey talks about the two kinds of limitations that all of us face: location and time. We only live in one place out of 4.3 million unique towns and places on Earth. We are currently living in this specific moment among all the past and future moments. Our lives are short, and we will soon be forgotten. We can’t transcend our time and place. God calls us to be faithfully present in our time and place for his glory.
Ramsey’s book is not one that taught me anything new. Instead, it’s a book that reminds me of a Puritan work. It takes a couple of significant thoughts and turns them over slowly in our minds, teasing out the implications in a way that can change our lives. Ramsey deals first with the limitations of being limited to one time. I liked this section, particularly when he discussed topics such as regret, changing seasons, rushing, and the feeling that time is passing quickly.
The second section — place — is also timely for me. I’m leaving one place for another; I live in a body; I can maintain a limited number of relationships.
Ramsey’s book couldn’t have been a better one for me to read.
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Written by K.J. Drake |
Friday, July 7, 2023
To modify the core message of the gospel in order to receive what we think of as a proper hearing will lead to unfaithfulness. There are temptations within the evangelical church to compromise at the same places where theological liberalism was found defective: the doctrine of sin, character of God, and the accomplishment of the cross. The theocentric vision of salvation cannot be substituted for a human-centered mode of self-help or moralistic pursuit.

From Machen’s intervention in this now century-old controversy (see Part 1), twenty-first century American Christians should heed his warning and avoid temptations of minimizing or modifying the concept of salvation. We should reject adjusting the atonement, sin, and our view of God to meet the tastes or fads of the day, but rather have a clear-eyed focus on sin and the cross as the core of the gospel. Likewise, the dangers of sentimentality, now in therapeutic form, must be avoided and replaced with clear theological speech. Machen’s proper ordering of the doctrine of salvation and ethics should be imitated without giving into quietism or utilitarian applications of Christian doctrine. While theological liberalism is certainly not dead and gone, few are enticed to adopt it wholesale;[1] the more persistent danger is the unwary or unwise taking steps down the path liberalism tread ignorant of its inexorable downgrade towards unfaithfulness. In this article, I will offer a few entailments of Machen’s warning for the contemporary church.
Resist Accommodation
The beginning of the road to theological liberalism came with the attempt to accommodate the concepts of Scripture to modern values. What we have received in the Word of God is meant to be the guide to faithful life under Christ and by the Spirit for all ages. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). To modify the core message of the gospel in order to receive what we think of as a proper hearing will lead to unfaithfulness. There are temptations within the evangelical church to compromise at the same places where theological liberalism was found defective: the doctrine of sin, character of God, and the accomplishment of the cross. The theocentric vision of salvation cannot be substituted for a human-centered mode of self-help or moralistic pursuit.
See Sin Rightly
As with the failure of theological liberalism, the problems of the Church in late modernity begin with a distorted view of sin, which has been detached from the holiness of God. Sin, and therefore the forgiveness of sin, has increasingly been expressed in the therapeutic register. Carl Trueman has expressed the prevailing environment as “the cultures of psychological man: the only moral criterion that can be applied to behavior is whether it conduces to the feeling of well-being in the individuals concerned. Ethics, therefore, becomes a function of feeling.”[2] On this view, sin is that which makes me or others feel bad. This therapeutic faith can be traced partially to the liberal preaching that Machen challenged in the 1920s. As a historian of the social gospel has noted, “In many ways, Fosdick epitomized a broader movement toward exploring the psychological implications of religious faith, a movement that helped to spawn the wider development of therapeutic religious models in the aftermath of World War II.”[3] Such modifications can be observed in the contemporary Church through the popularity of pop psychologists like Brené Browne and her emphasis on shame, Jordan Peterson’s Jungian-tinged emphasis on personal responsibility, or the broader shift to speak of “brokenness” to the exclusion of guilt. These trends have a truth to them, but also error.
For instance, God does address our shame, and sin does cause brokenness. However, failure to see sin in a fundamentally theocentric frame, as Machen does, papers over its severity and cost. Sin rejects God, despoils our nature, and corrupts us entirely. Sin is the antithesis of all that is good, right, and true. Sin deserves death. Sin is not limited to the “really bad stuff,” but all thoughts, words, deeds, and inclinations of the human heart against the perfect divine will. One grasps the goodness of the gospel only after the terrible verdict against sin. “The account of that work is the ‘gospel,’ the ‘good news.’ It never could have been predicted, for sin deserves naught but eternal death. But God triumphed over sin through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”[4] Accounting for the multifaceted nature of sin is necessary and a helpful way of communicating the word of God to our culture, but we must not fail to speak of its fundamental revolt against the Holy God.[5] Preaching about sin must account for the whole life and bring all our collective and individual violations of the divine will to light. No room ought to be granted to “respectable sins” either of the culture or the Church.
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