Wednesday, July 20, 2011

What Is Ben Reading - J. Gresham Machen

This isn't a blog post or newspaper article, this is a book I'd like to share. I'm assuming for those of you with those fancy iThingy e-Reader devices would prefer to see this in digital book format. For all I know there's one available, but I'll leave it to you to search for yourselves. I can promise you it's definitely worth the read. In fact, I think I'm gonna sit down and read it again as it's been a number of years.

J. Gresham Machen's "Christianity and Liberalism" is available online. 

The book was written in 1923, around the time the word "fundamentalism" was becoming more widely used. Although it should be noted that fundamentalism back then had a far different meaning than it does today. Fundamentalism once referred more to what we would now call a firm stand on historic Christian orthodoxy rather than blind dogmatism. The issues addressed in this book are surprisingly pertinent to todays issues. 

The thrust of his argument is that the Liberal interpretations and ideas of Christianity are really not Christianity at all, but an entirely different religion. As he makes his case he demonstrates why orthodoxy is so important, because at some point crossing the boundaries into heresy means stepping into the realms of something that isn't recognizable Christianity anymore.

Anyway, it's a fairly straightforward read and definitely one to keep in your personal, uh, "e-library"...or something.

No comments:

Post a Comment