Calvinism and Six Lectures Delivered in Theology Seminar

 

 

Reflection on:

J. Gresham Machen, the Reformed

Tradition, and the Transformation of Culture     

 

            J. Gresham Machen was one of the most influential evangelical scholars of the twentieth century; his work on The Vu-gin Birth of Christ remains an outstanding piece of scholarship, but he was more than an academic scholar and played an important part in church politics. Dr Hart, who is librarian at Westminster. Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, discusses Machen's contribution to understanding the relationship between the church and contemporary culture.

            For Machen the hallmark of Reformed thought is the idea that Christianity involves the transformation of culture as well as the proclamation of the gospel. He was right when he mentioned that the transformation of culture is proclaimed of the gospel, we, as the believers who live in this age and the task of the church is about proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

            In the view of Machen, Liberalism or liberal Protestantism was an altogether different religion from historic Christianity he declared that liberalism was un - Christian. meaning of unchristian for him that liberalism departed from traditional christian understanding of God, the Bible and sin and grace.

            In his conclusion, he encouraged all churches must have the responsibility about their task, which its radically doctrine, radically intolerant and radically ethical. Gresham Machen on the nature and task of the church as a way of understanding better the cultural implications of the Reformed tradition.