Because functional liberalism detests claims to authority that do not leave the ultimacy of the individual intact, they turn gospel-centered theology into “gospel-only theology.” The technical term for this is antinomianism. They forget that sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and that Christ came to save us from lawlessness (Titus 2:14) and for the obedience of faith (Rom. 1:5; cf. Gal. 6:2). 

During the summer of 2023, a group of cardinals from every continent posed a series of dubia (a Latin word meaning “doubts” in the sense of questions born of concern or reservation) to the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. The dubia addressed a range of pressing contemporary matters, from the possibility of women’s ordination to the blessing of same-sex unions. As one commentator put it, the cardinals ultimately wanted to know, “Is the Roman Catholic Church going to go the same direction as liberal Protestantism—adapting Scripture to suit contemporary culture, ordaining women, and accepting the legitimacy of same-sex unions?” The pope’s evasive reply provoked a follow-up from the cardinals, who reformulated the dubia to be easily answerable with a clear “yes” or “no.” As of the time of writing this article, there has been no further response.
Earlier that year, the Church of England voted to permit the blessing of same-sex “marriages” and civil partnerships.1 The move prompted a strong response from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), who condemned the development as a schismatic choice “to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith.” Furthermore, the bishops of GSFA denounced the Archbishop of Canterbury, no longer recognizing him as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), while calling for his global “admonishment in love.”
Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, in September of 2023—a year that will live in infamy?—the de facto bishop of the evangelical megachurch, Andy Stanley, hosted Embracing the Journey’s Unconditional Conference. The event was advertised as being “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” The conference featured speakers who either are in same-sex relationships themselves or are supportive of others in the same. While Stanley did tip his hat to the biblical teaching on homosexuality—saying, “It was a sin then, and it is a sin now”—he simultaneously undermined that position by affirming Justin Lee and Brian Nietzel, “two married gay men” whom Stanley called faithful followers of Christ. Apparently, Stanley thinks faithful followers of Christ can persist in flagrantly unrepentant abominations before the Lord (Lev. 18:22; 20:13), contrary to the solemn warnings of Scripture in many places (e.g., Rom. 1:26–27, 32; 1 Cor. 6:9–10).
What are we to make of this rapid, cross-denominational apostasy?2 The fact of this phenomenon is a clear example of culture reporter Megan Basham’s recent warning: “You may have wanted to avoid this subject, but you cannot avoid it any longer. [LGBT ideology] is coming to your church, no matter how solid you think it is.”3 Those who cannot see this are woefully ignorant of the times. Yet the cause of this phenomenon is anything but recent. Indeed, the “journey” that leads to this dead end (let the reader understand) is so well worn that one can see it from space.
We’ve Been Here Before: Christianity and Liberalism
J. Gresham Machen wrote his classic book, Christianity and Liberalism, 4 exactly a century before Catholics, Anglicans, and Evangellyfish failed to uphold biblical sexuality.5 The book’s title is none too subtle, though Machen’s point is sometimes missed in these days of decreasing reading comprehension levels. (To spell it out is no trouble for us and is a safeguard for you.) In his own words, “The chief modern rival of Christianity is ‘liberalism.’ An examination of the teachings of liberalism in comparison with those of Christianity will show that at every point the two movements are in direct opposition.”6
Machen is not saying that liberal Christianity is a terrible perversion of the faith; he is saying that liberalism is another faith entirely. To give an analogy, liberal “Christianity” is more like a virus than a sick or wounded form of the body of Christ. For a body remains a body, even when it suffers from illness or (self-inflicted) injury. But a virus is an alien entity that merely uses the body for its own self-perpetuation. If a Christian church is a body, therefore, liberalism is a virus.
We can see this distinction clearly when Machen addresses “the division between the Church of Rome [in his day] and evangelical Protestantism.” Protestants and Catholics have substantial disagreements, viewing the other body of believers as significantly ill or impaired. Still, Machen writes, “Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today! We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all.”7
Machen highlights many reasons why “liberalism is totally different from Christianity,”8 but the central reason is a matter of authority: “Christianity is founded upon the Bible. It bases upon the Bible both its thinking and its life. Liberalism on the other hand is founded upon the shifting emotions of sinful men.”9 By “shifting emotions,” Machen means the subjective assessments of men, which are tossed to and fro by the zeitgeist (Eph. 4:14). In this way, for liberals, “It is not Jesus who is the real authority, but the modern principle by which the selection within Jesus’ recorded teaching has been made. Certain isolated ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount are accepted, not at all because they are teachings of Jesus, but because they agree with modern ideas.”10
Machen concludes, “The real authority, for liberalism, can only be ‘the Christian consciousness’ or ‘Christian experience.’”11 This raises the question of how a Christian consensus could ever be established. Liberals are loath to appeal to church history, for that would bolster a decidedly non-modern verdict as well as trump their radical conception of the liberty of conscience. Thus, Machen writes, “The only authority, then, can be individual experience; truth can only be that which ‘helps’ the individual man. Such an authority is obviously no authority at all; for individual experience is endlessly diverse, and once truth is regarded only as that which works at any particular time, it ceases to be truth. The Christian man, on the other hand, finds in the Bible the very Word of God.”12
Christianity and Functional Liberalism
Whereas Machen wrote about Christianity and liberalism, we are writing something of an appendix on Christianity and functional liberalism.13 We call it “functional liberalism” (and not liberalism simpliciter) because, unlike the threat of Machen’s day, this strain of the virus does not share the same set of symptoms (even if it has a similar underlying cause). Machen’s liberals were modernists who openly denied the accuracy of the Scriptures, the reality of the supernatural, the necessity of the atonement, and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As E.J. Pace’s famous cartoon illustrated in 1922, liberal departure from the faith often happened in stages, with the truthfulness of the Bible being the first to go. A few such liberals are still around, but those who hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) are—thanks in large part to Machen and his heirs—not tempted to regard them as part of the body of Christ (1 John 2:19).
The problem we face today is of a slightly different sort. If liberalism entailed an overt denial of core Christian doctrines, the essence of functional liberalism is consent to doctrinal confessions on paper while subverting them in practice—whether by downplaying their significance, reinterpreting their meaning, or rejecting the logical implications. We are not the first to make this observation. Somewhere in the annals of D.A. Carson’s prodigious output,14 he gave a lecture in which he issued a strong warning along these lines: ‘The future of liberalism in the American church will not look like it did a century ago. Conservative seminaries and churches will not see brazen denials of the core doctrines that were the battleground of yesteryear. Instead, they will see people who claim to affirm the doctrines while undermining them through subtle but substantial reinterpretation.’15
At least the old liberals had the courage to say, “The Bible is false, the Trinity is bunk, Jesus isn’t divine, the cross wasn’t substitutionary, and the resurrection didn’t happen.” The new liberals—that is, the functional liberals—are worse in this critical respect: they claim to agree with the faith once for all delivered to the saints while simultaneously reinterpreting its doctrines into meaningless statements or else ignoring the same as they press ahead with whatever they want to do.
A Case in (North) Point
Take the statement of faith for Stanley’s Northpoint Community Church as an example of what we have been describing. All the usual suspects are there, including a clear statement that the Bible is “inspired” and “without error.” But, as Sam Allberry points out in his write-up on Stanley and the Unconditional Conference:
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We must guard against chronological snobbery—the proud view that people in past generations were not as smart as we are, and were gullible and unenlightened. The biblical authors knew how the natural world works, and yet unapologetically write about miracles. Doctor Luke knew where babies come from and knew that dead people stay dead. The fact that he still wrote about the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus isn’t evidence that he was naïve. Instead, it points to the historicity of these events. 

I don’t know about you, but when I think about people or things from the past, I have a bit of a mixed response. There is an element of loyalty and pride and affection, but this accompanied by the awareness that there is a disconnect between then and now. For example, when I hear about the exploits of my ancestors from my parents, I admire what they did and appreciate their wisdom and character and all their positive attributes. But at the same time, there is a part of me that thinks, “They were great for their time, but probably not for today.” I think this is true of how we view our ancestors and national heroes, and it can also be true for the way in which we view the Bible. We may like some of the things we read, and maybe attached to some parts of it, while at the same time thinking that other parts aren’t really meant for 2022.
In some ways, it is understandable that we think the Bible is not really relevant for us today. After all, the most recent document in the Bible (John’s Revelation) was written more than 1900 years ago. How could things written so long ago be useful for us today? And if they aren’t really useful, why should we read the Bible at all in 2022?
In this article, I argue that humility demands that we accept the relevance of the Bible for our lives today. This is rooted in the fact that we understand and believe the Bible to be God’s Word written by human authors.
Accept The Relevance Of Our Eternal God
The Bible, as understood by Christians, is God’s Word. It is the way the sovereign Lord of the universe has chosen to reveal himself to us. Since the Bible is God’s Word, there is no doubt that we should unreservedly accept it as being authoritative over our lives. And at the same time, we should also accept that the Bible is relevant to us (no matter what the year) because it is the revelation of the eternal God who is the author of time. Although the historical reality is that the Bible was written in a time without smartphones and aeroplanes and the internet, it was inspired by the Spirit of God who knew what advances in technology would come in the 20th and 21st centuries (and even in the 23rd century if Jesus doesn’t return till then!). When God revealed himself to Moses and David and Isaiah and Paul and John, he was very aware of what the social, political, and cultural issues which would face people in India in 2022.
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In his law God has prescribed a state of harmony which ought to prevail in human society; slander breaks this harmony and thereby upsets human society itself, supplanting mutual respect and love with suspicion, hatred, and strife. Where it has occurred, amends are to be made, fault acknowledged and repented, and the proper harmony restored as quickly as possible, with the aid of external assistance or punishment by church or civil authorities if necessary (Matt. 18:16-17).

In its widest sense, slander refers to any speech that harms the reputation of another person. A distinction must be made between how the word is used in law and how it appears in considerations of ethics. In law defamation is the broad category of communications that do reputational harm, with slander and libel being its respective forms that are classified according to the means of defamation. Slander means statements that harm another’s reputation through the transitory medium of audible speech. Libel occurs through a lasting medium such as literature, visual art, or a recorded broadcast.[1]
In ethics slander often has the same meaning as defamation does in law: i.e., it is the generic term for the broad category of reputation-injuring communications. It is also used in narrower senses as well, the strictest of which is to refer to false claims that are willfully intended to harm another’s good name. Several distinctions are in order. Law takes cognizance of the medium in which defamation occurs because courts are obligated to determine not only if defamation has taken place, but also what damages are needed to remedy the offense. It recognizes that certain forms of defamation are likely to produce greater harm because of their longer duration and wider distribution, and thus makes the distinction between libel and slander, as well as between those offenses that are severe enough to merit civil damages and those that are not. It does this because its aim is to provide temporal order and justice in the public affairs of this life, not to morally renovate citizens as private individuals.
God’s law, however, is intended to provide its subjects with a manner of living that is pleasing to him and in accord with Man’s proper moral nature and relations. Aiming to set men in the most intimate relationship with God and to make them like him for all eternity, it has much higher demands and aims than merely human law. Where human law may punish slander lightly, if at all, even where it deems it has occurred, God’s law regards any speech that wrongly disparages another as a grievous offense. “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22).
Scripture therefore does not distinguish between transient and lasting forms of defamation, and for that reason we may discuss all of it as slander, distinguishing rather between its wider and narrower meanings than between its technical forms. Where human courts are prone to error and severely limited in what they can know and do, God’s perfect knowledge and justice mean that he will punish all sins of slander without partiality and will render them what they are due (Ecc. 12:14; Matt. 12:36; Rom. 2:16). His law does not refuse to admit any claim for lack of evidence, nor make a distinction between claims that are actionable and those that are not.
A word must also be stated about intentions and practical effects. In law speech may be considered defamatory if its actual effect is to defame someone else’s character, even where that was not the publisher’s intention. A distinction is made between what is defamatory per quod and what is defamatory per se. In the former case a statement is defamatory only when considered in light of facts that are external to the statement itself. An example is ‘A just birthed a son’ where it is public knowledge that A is unmarried. If something is defamatory per se it is explicitly, unambiguously harmful, as in the statement ‘A is a forger,’ since the felonious and dishonest activity of forging is always reprehensible.[2]
(It might seem that in the realm of moral behavior, God, knowing the thoughts of our hearts (1 Sam. 16:7; Jer. 17:10), would not be censorious of defamatory speech that was not intended to harm its victim. Yet Christ says, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matt. 12:36), and so in such matters we must take great care that we do not inadvertently slander someone.)
Continuing along ethical lines, slander is committed in the third person: a person is insulted or berated to his face, but he is slandered to other people. It may be direct or indirect, aimed either at its victim (‘Nadine is a liar’) or at her through a condemnation of her behavior (‘Nadine lied at yesterday’s gathering’). It may be precise (‘statement X was false’) or general (‘Nadine lies all the time’), and either explicit or implied.
Key to understanding the nature of slander is a consideration of its relation to the truth and to the circumstances in which it occurs. In its purest form slander involves making false claims about someone that the slanderer knows are false and that are specially calculated to destroy that person’s reputation. It is the malicious, intentional propagation of known falsehoods, or what is otherwise known as calumny. When slander is done surreptitiously it is known as backbiting (comp. Ps. 101:5; Prov. 25:23); when it involves revealing someone’s secrets or is part of a persistent campaign of defamation it is known as talebearing (Heb. rakil; comp. Lev. 19:16; Prov. 11:13; 20:19 in KJV). Yet slander also occurs where there is no good proof of a disparaging claim’s truth or falsity, when a slanderer ought to have known a claim was false and refused to attempt verification, or where true statements are presented in a false light, especially by being divorced from other, clarifying truths. In sum, slander occurs when someone either carelessly or intentionally makes misleading claims about another that expose that person to a lowered reputation.
There are two complications in cases of apparent or alleged slander. One is that humans, being sinners, do commonly engage in misbehavior that merits denunciation. There are false teachers, swindlers, thieves, etc., about, and others have not merely the right but also often the duty to condemn them and their behavior openly in the hope of bringing them to repentance and of warning others against them. It is wrong to bear false witness – but the corollary is that we are obliged to bear true witness (Zech. 8:16; Eph. 4:25); and if someone truly has a bad character that can only be done by acknowledging that bad character where the circumstances require it. The evil of slander is not that it portrays someone in a bad light as such, but that it does so unjustly. There are a great many people who deserve to be exposed (Jer. 29:8-9, 15; 1 Thess. 5:21; 1 Jn. 4:1; 2 Jn. 7-11; Rev. 2:2) and their reputations lowered so that their would-be victims might be spared their depredations.
The second complication in cases of possible slander is that of ambiguity. The same term sometimes means vastly different things to different people and in different circumstances. Consider the term redneck as applied to rural Southerners. There are circumstances in which this would be a real slander worthy of the name. If lawyer A from Donalds, South Carolina (population: approximately 320) applies at a prestigious New York firm and his current employer describes him to the recruiter as a ‘redneck’ – well, that will be the end of that, and poor A will be consigned to continuing his practice in South Carolina. But if one were to go to the local farmhands and day laborers and describe that same man as a redneck they would demur, probably on the grounds that his education and the nature of his employment make such a thing simply unthinkable. Indeed, some of them might be offended at the suggestion that he is worthy of such a term of high praise. In short, the same term will have a different meaning depending on the speaker, audience, and circumstances, and will range from making one an untouchable to being an enviable compliment.
These complications mean that it can be difficult to distinguish slander from just censure. Consider an example. Suppose that A says that B is a liar. There are a few possibilities in such a case:

It may be that A knows B is not a liar and is maliciously trying to destroy his reputation because of rivalry.
It may be that A has no idea whether or not B is a liar and that in his determination to do him harm he is latching on to an effective disparagement without regard for its veracity.
It may be that B was a liar, but that he has repented and made amends, and that A has not mentioned these mitigating factors because he wants to portray him as badly as possible.
It may be that B is a liar, but that this has no relevance to the matter at hand, and that A mentions it simply because he hates B and wants to avail himself of any opportunity to harm him.
It may be that A truly believes B is a liar, but that he has been deceived.
It may be that B is a liar and that A is bearing true testimony to his character that is beneficial to his audience and relevant to the matter at hand.

Scenarios 1 through 4 would be examples of culpable slander, with 5 representing a case of inadvertent slander and 6 being a case of justified denunciation.
In Scripture slander is regarded as a serious offense. The ninth commandment forbids bearing false witness against a neighbor (Ex. 20:16), and Lev. 19:16 forbids slander and connects it with behavior that threatens the neighbor’s very life. Ps. 101:5 says that whoever secretly slanders his neighbor will be destroyed, and slandering the saints is one of the essential activities of the evil one, who is called the devil on that account.[3] Christ states that wrongly disparaging anyone is liable to civil punishment and eternal condemnation (Matt. 5:22). Slander was one of the depravities to which pagans were given up by God (Rom. 1:30), and in some cases slander is even regarded as blasphemy and as a mark of the evils of the last days of difficulty (2 Tim. 3:2) and of false teachers (2 Pet. 2:10-11) – which is unsurprising when we consider that James says that those who speak evil of others thereby speak evil of God’s law and stand in judgment of it (Jas. 4:11-12). One of the prophetic denunciations of Israel was that she was a society in which people would “by a word make a man out to be an offender” (Isa. 29:21) and thereby unjustly destroy the reputations of the righteous. The Pharisees were notable for slandering Jesus (Matt. 9:34; 12:24), as did other Jews (Lk. 7:34; Jn. 8:48-52); it was by the false accusation of blasphemy that the Jewish leaders found a pretext for having Jesus crucified (Matt. 26:59-66).
In his law God has prescribed a state of harmony which ought to prevail in human society; slander breaks this harmony and thereby upsets human society itself, supplanting mutual respect and love with suspicion, hatred, and strife. Where it has occurred, amends are to be made, fault acknowledged and repented, and the proper harmony restored as quickly as possible, with the aid of external assistance or punishment by church or civil authorities if necessary (Matt. 18:16-17). Recognizing the damage it can cause, Scripture enjoins us to “put away . . . all slander” (1 Pet. 2:1; comp. Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8), thus indicating both a better way of conduct and the sad fact that this evil remains a temptation for the redeemed (2 Cor. 12:20). Let us pray that we are all given grace to keep ourselves above such wrongdoing, for in the heightened mood of the present time it is easy to lapse into it, and only God’s grace will suffice to keep us from stumbling so.
Tom Hervey is a member, Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Simpsonville, SC. The statements made in this article are the personal opinions of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of his church or its leadership or other members.

[1] Comp. the South Carolina Court of Appeal’s opinion in Kim Parrish, Appellant, v. Earl Allison, Respondent
[2] Most of the information in this paragraph is reproduced from the South Carolina Supreme Court’s judgment in Holtzscheiter v. Thomson Newspapers, Inc.
[3] The Greek διάβολος, from which our devil is derived, means “a calumniator, false accuser, slanderer” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).
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