False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.

— J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937), Theologe

Topics: Doubt & Hard Questions, Witness & Mission

J. Gresham Machen

John Gresham Machen war ein US-amerikanischer presbyterianischer Neutestamentler und Theologe, der in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts am Princeton Seminary und später am Westminster Theological Seminary lehrte. Als profilierter Denker im Fundamentalismus-Modernismus-Streit wandte er sich scharf gegen theologische Liberalisierungen, was nach heftigen Richtungskämpfen zu seiner Suspendierung vom geistlichen Amt und der Mitgründung einer freikirchlichen presbyterianischen Denomination führte. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet er als argumentationsstarker Verteidiger der historischen Zuverlässigkeit der biblischen Berichte sowie als Verfasser eines weitverbreiteten Lehrbuchs des neutestamentlichen Griechisch.

All quotes by J. Gresham Machen (20)

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Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.

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Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

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All quotes · lumen.bible