The Great Evangelical Disaster

Time was, lives were forged by fire. Pltypus understood that (even though none of the SIN folks can ever hope to understand that). It was the same for J. Gresham Machen. It is the same with Francis Schaeffer. These two fought and bled in their time. They thought big thoughts and saw the end of reason. They ranted in intellectual circles and struggled for reality on their knees.

Machen fought for authenticity in his time. His religion was a deeply supernatural one. He didn't think that a nostalgic affection for grandmother and apple pie was what was needed. He saw through the haze of fundamentalist zeal and saw only nostalgia and an inability to tackle the challenges of the Liberals head-on. Machen, in fact, identified more with the passion of the Liberals than the no-brained militancy of the fundamentalists - he especially abhorred the eschatologically minded shitheads with their charts and tables. Machen was tireless. He spoke on radio and I had the privilege of reading his radio-transcripts recently. The tiny book recording those talks burned in my mind. His God was holy and powerful. His God did not bow before movements, human opinion or science. His God did not need self-appointed "defenders" employing Kantian logic. His God did not need self-appointed "contenders for the faith" defending the sanctity of Holy Writ. His God was the thunderer who is awesome and majestic. Machen preached the same thing everywhere he went. He travelled by train and his sidekick Ned B. Stonehouse. On his last journey, he was still planning to preach in the next church. But he was exhausted and was dying in the train. He told Stonehouse, "Isn't the Reformed Faith grand?" His religion was grand because he believed and served a Great God. Time was when, men who lived through the fire aspired to greatness and grandeur...

Today, Machen is paraded around and prostituted by the descendents of the same fundamentalists that he abhorred during his lifetime. They used him as a weapon against the liberals, against the emergents and against anyone that they disagree with - anyone who threatens their grandmother-and-apple-pie religious habits. They see zeal in Machen and they missed out on his cool-headedness. They try their utmost best to remake Machen into their image. They did not understand his studies across many disciplines - history, psychology, linguistics, etc. They wanted a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher and they turned Machen into one. One particularly narrow-minded SIN fundamentalist recently wrote a piece on Machen to support cock-sure theology masquerading as objective-certainty. Machen was never interested in objective-certainty per se. He was interested in the supernatural origins behind the objective truths. He was not interested so much in "The Theology of St. Paul" as he was in the GOD who was behind the same Pauline theology. He was not defending "The Virgin Birth of Christ" because it fitted with the grandmother-and-apple-pie religion that he was brought up in. He was preaching "The Virgin Birth of Christ" because the supernatural birth of the messiah spoke of the supernatural origins of Christianity that is far above the normal reasoning of tiny minds. He was sold out to this God and enraptured in His presence and power. He echoed Schaeffer's concerns in "Escape From Reason". He understood Spurgeon's quip - "Defend the Bible? I'd sooner defend a lion!" He wasn't an apologist. He was a preacher who preached about a Great God. Today, tiny minds set up blogs with audacious dedications to the name of Jesus Christ, thinking that they are defending the faith with their insipid meditations and powerless anathemas (mostly against people that they don't even understand in the first place). When the gods and heroes have exited the scene, the clowns come out to play...

Francis Schaeffer began life as a fundamentalist within the narrowest camp of the Bible-Presbyterians. He wrote his books (see the post before this one for Pltypus' intro to them) and taught his L'Abri students. In his time, he engaged the most challenging thoughts of his time and triumphed over them by his unshaking faith in his Great God. He did not dismiss views that he disagreed with. He faced them head on and with candour, wit, humility and respect. He did not fight caricatures of Heidegger, Camus and Kierkegaard. He faced them each as they really are (in other words, he read their works and considered their views - unlike the SIN morons who only read the caricatures in their Van Til/Clark handbooks!). At the end of his life, Schaeffer could no longer endure the suffocating crap of fundamental-evangelicalism. He actually found the spirituality and religious atmosphere of the Orthodox and Catholics far more appealing. Fundamentalism-evangelicalism had devolved into a ghetto, a disaster, an elitist club of handbook-quoting, gay-bashing nonsense. He wrote "The Great Evangelical Disaster" and spent his last days in a Catholic hospital. He struggled. He fought. He lived through fire.

Today, like Machen, Schaeffer is prostituted and paraded by fundamentalists as "apologetics". They use his books as a gun and quotes from his writings as bullets to fight the liberals, the emergents, the existentialists, the absurdists, etc. They knew nothing of the fire in his bones. They knew nothing of his sleepless nights struggling against the great minds that he held in respect - but had to respectfully disagree. They quote his works with a devillish glee and a disdain for their foes that Schaeffer would not have identified with. They fight caricatures as they themselves have become caricatures. Schaeffer was a giant who fought other giants. It is still true what Nietzsche said - "The errors of great men are far greater than the achievements of little men!" The little men are ruling the blogosphere today with their handbooks and their abject fear of "wrong thoughts, wrong beliefs". It's ok to be tiny - as long as you subscribe to the "right beliefs" (meaning: you buy the accepted handbooks and regurgitate them).

[Listen to Frank Schaeffer describing his father, Francis Schaeffer's turn against the fundamentalist ghetto towards the end of his life.]