http://www.reformedliterature.com/machen-christianity-and-culture.php
I wept for joy over the power and beauty of Machen’s sentiments.
“The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man. We are accustomed to encourage ourselves in our discouragements by the thought of the time when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. No less inspiring is the other aspect of that same great consummation. That will also be a time when doubts have disappeared, when every contradiction has been removed, when all of science converges to one great conviction, when all of art is devoted to one great end, when all of human thinking is permeated by the refining, ennobling influence of Jesus, when every thought has been brought into subjection to the obedience of Christ.”
“But by whom is this task of transforming the unwieldy, resisting mass of human thought until it becomes subservient to the gospel–by whom is this task to be accomplished? To some extent, no doubt, by professors in theological seminaries and universities.”
And yet many of our best and brightest theological professors at our seminaries are telling us that in the common realm there should be no expectation that human thought should be subservient to the Gospel because it is not possible for human thought to be subservient to the Gospel in the common realm.
God Help us if the one place that Machen looked to for guidance has now become the place that is telling us that there is no such thing as uniquely and distinctly Christian answers for the resisting mass of human thought in the common realm.
