f The Wittenberg Door: Notable Quote: J. Gresham Machen

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Commenting on Christendom, culture, history, and other oddities of life from an historic Protestant perspective.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Notable Quote: J. Gresham Machen

J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) on the “historical Jesus” . . .

. . . If the saving work of Christ were confined to what He does now for every Christian, there would be no such thing as a Christian gospel − an account of an event which put a new face on life. What we should have left would be simply mysticism, and mysticism is quite different from Christianity. It is the connection of the present experience of the believer with an actual historic appearance of Jesus in the world which prevents our religion from being mysticism and causes it to be Christianity.

It must certainly be admitted, then, that Christianity does depend upon something that happened; our religion must be abandoned altogether unless at a definite point in history Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of men. Christianity is certainly dependent upon history.

Christianity & Liberalism, pg. 120–121

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1 Comments:

Blogger Eddie Eddings said...

Amen to that!

9:34 PM  

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