John Gresham Machen famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

What I need first of all is not exhortation, but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge of how God has saved me. Have you any good news? That is the question that I ask of you. I know your exhortations will not help me. But if anything has been done to save me, will you not tell me the facts?
-- John Gresham Machen

#Saving #Firsts #Facts
What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Moving #Army #Today
The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more child-like will be our faith
-- John Gresham Machen

#Children #Progress #Theology
Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Christian #Optimistic #Heart
I'm so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Thankfulness #Christ #Obedience
The Gospel does not abrogate God's law, but it makes men love it with all of their hearts.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Heart #Men #Law
A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.â€™ (1923)
-- John Gresham Machen

#Mean #School #Perfect
I can't die now, I have so much work to do.
-- John Gresham Machen
The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations but also all of human thought.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Christian #Long #Connections
Jesus was certainly not a mere enunciator of permanent truths, like the modern liberal preacher; on the contrary He was conscious of standing at the turning-point of the ages, when what had never been was now to come to be.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Jesus #Age #Modern
Certainly it does make the greatest possible difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Thinking #Differences #Doe
Again, men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end ... It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of the truth
-- John Gresham Machen

#Book #Teaching #Men
In many respects, my work is very enjoyable, for I seem to get on pretty well with the fellows and enjoy the work of instruction as well as my own studies
-- John Gresham Machen

#Study #Instruction #Enjoy
Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it
-- John Gresham Machen

#Biblical #Criticism #Alternatives
I see with greater and greater clearness that consistent Christianity is the easiest Christianity to defend
-- John Gresham Machen

#Christianity #Consistent #Clearness
Afternoon classes - that evil invention!
-- John Gresham Machen

#Class #Evil #Afternoon
Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Divorce #Effort #Intellectual
Christ died"--that is history; "Christ died for our sins"--that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Two #Doctrine #Elements
Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Children #School #Years
In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Fighting #Men #Important
If we give the bureaucrats our children, we may as well give them everything else.
-- John Gresham Machen

#Education #Children #Giving

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