Written by Lucy S.R. Austen |
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
Elizabeth had seen God as a stern judge, waiting to penalize anyone who failed to understand his direction. Instead, A Slow and Certain Light describes him as a guide “who has been there before and knows the way,” who can be trusted not to let us wander off and get lost. It characterizes him as a good shepherd, “the God who carries lambs in his arms.”

Seeking God’s Will
Of the many books Elisabeth Elliot wrote, her best-known is surely her first, Through Gates of Splendor. The 1957 multibiography is first and foremost a narrative of how five families came together to plan a missionary approach to a little-known people group in rural Ecuador, and how the plan ended in the deaths of five of the missionaries, including Elliot’s husband Jim. But the book is also an exposition of the then-twenty-nine-year-old Elliot’s beliefs about the will of God.
The first mention of God’s guidance appears just a page into the book, and his clear leading is described again less than a page from the end. In between, God’s will is characterized as covering both the big picture (“Christ said, ‘Go ye’; their answer was ‘Lord, send me.’”1) and the individual details (“He asked God specifically to show him his next move.”2) We see God’s will discovered through prayer, Bible reading, circumstances, and the impressions of the inner self.

This biography takes readers on an in-depth journey through the life of Elisabeth Elliot—her marriage to Jim Elliot, her years of international missions work, and her prolific career as a writer and speaker.

Seeking and obeying the will of God had been a constant emphasis throughout Elliot’s life. She had grown up in a world saturated in the Keswick Holiness tradition, with its stress on giving the whole person, inside and out, to God. She took this teaching seriously, responding to an altar call for salvation at age ten and another at twelve to make clear her commitment to God’s will for her life. Her letters home from boarding school and college reflect this focus; they are liberally sprinkled with requests for prayer that God’s will for her time at school be fulfilled, that she can have the strength to attain all that God has for her, that she be preserved from mistaking God’s guidance and stepping out of his plan for her life.
The fear of missing God’s direction caused Elliot much grief. A letter to her mother written not long after her college graduation shows her understanding of God’s will in greater detail:
More than anything else in the world I fear myself. I can trust God to be unchangingly faithful—I could trust Him to keep me and guide me if I could honestly say I desire nothing save His own, complete will. But how do I know that that is all I desire? How can I know a heart that is deceitful above all things and DESPERATELY WICKED? God judges those who are disobedient. We must suffer. Oh, suppose I should, by allowing feeling to overcome faith, miss His direction? Why must I struggle thro’ a maze of thought and feeling which spring from myself and my own soul, in order to reach Him? These are the thoughts that continually recur.3

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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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The painter, not just the canvas, is in view for the Christian writer. He speaks the truth truthfully, sincerely, as he knows it before God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. He says with Job, “My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely” (Job 33:3). And with Augustine, “What I live by, I impart” (quoted in James Stewart, Heralds of God, 10). We err if we finely craft content but not our lives. Christian writing is done from a higher art.

The Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) is not simply insightful in its content, but delightful in its craft. As dwarves with rare jewels, these authors didn’t just discover golden nuggets of wisdom; they shaped them, forged them, hunched over their obsession, inspected them, held them up to the light, cut them, and framed them into sentences poetic and memorable.
We are wise to enter their mines and learn their skill, not just to discover beauty but to adorn it beautifully. Briefly, then, I want to travel into the mountain of these sages’ eloquence, exploring the deeps of their craftsmanship. Notice what was spoken of one such sage:
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10)
Handcrafted writing, beautiful writing that adorns God’s wisdom, weighs and studies, arranges with great care, and seeks out words of delight and writes words of truth uprightly.
Weigh the World, Study Scripture
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying.
First, to write well, this master-jeweler prepared well. Superior gifting did not alibi sloth. That the Preacher possessed superlative wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:16) did not shorten his preparation. He pored over the wise sayings of others; he wrote wise sayings of his own. And we, with lesser wisdom and ability, also measure and ponder, read and study, roast the truth over in our minds, never tire to hunt each morning for fresh discoveries in the forests of God’s Book.
Particularly, we do not just study how to write, but what we write about. We must have knowledge to teach. Here, some of us step along a cliff’s edge, tempted to preoccupy oneself with how we say over what is said. Many have lost their footing. Pride drags much of man’s toil over the edge to shatter upon the rocks. I grimace when I discover myself painting, like the worst of modern art, indistinct displays of my own artistry, instead of the landscape or the glories beyond.
No, the writing life gropes for metaphor and imagery and beauty because it has heard creation singing God’s praises and has seen his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we love God’s diamonds more than our metal rings and sentences that hold them. In all things, his Son must have preeminence (Colossians 1:18). The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as [the reader’s] servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). So, first, we weigh and study and place all in the light of God and his truth.
Arranging the Flowers
The Preacher did not merely weigh and study, however; he “taught the people knowledge, . . . arranging many proverbs with great care.” He made straight, he put in order, he composed. He forged proverbs, wisdom compressed into Hebrew poetry, what Robert Alter calls “the best words in the best order” (The Art of Biblical Poetry). He engraved the truth to be remembered, considering both style and structure. He knew that to add order was to add beauty and force. He knew a proverb or poem could be less or more than its parts.
Whether compiling proverbs of others or composing his own, he saw that truly beautiful writing has pleasing cohesion. One note out of place disrupts the recital — and is detected even by those who have never heard the music before. How? Because beauty has its anatomy, its symmetry, its mathematics, its order. Assonance, alliteration, metaphor, contrast, and more — the science of lovely prose.
Our God is a God of order and beauty, and he will not have his children fight. Beautiful writing is not a collection of notes struck on a whim, but a symphony; not a handful of casually picked flowers, but a pleasing bouquet. Marvel has their Avengers; Christian eloquence her Arrangers — of words and phrases and paragraphs and chapters. Such writers position their thoughts, others’ thoughts, and (most importantly) God’s thoughts into the vase with “great care.”
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