R. Scott Clark Praises the Kinist J. Gresham Machen

Today R. Scott Clark, obviously having no sense of irony posted the following post on the Hiedleblog praising J. Gresham Machen, just a day after lambasting me for being allegedly guilty of the very same thing that he elsewhere exonerates Machen for being;

Machen Was Worth a Hundred of His Fellows

“We have lost a man whom our times can ill spare, a man who had convictions which were real to him and who fought for those convictions and held to them through every change in time and human thought. There was power in him which was positive in its very negations. He was worth a hundred of his fellows who, as princes of the church, occupy easy places and play their church politics and trim their sails to every wind, who in their smug observance of the convictions of life and religion offend all honest and searching spirits. No forthright mind can live among them, neither the honest skeptic nor the honest dogmatist. I wish Dr. Machen had lived to go on fighting them.’

Such was the tribute of novelist and former liberal missionary Pearl S. Buck who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. J. Gresham Machen was a critic of much of what she represented.”

BRAD ISBELL | “Some of Machen’s ‘enemies’ admired him” | March 21, 2023

Here is another quote from the Machen that Clark is affirming praise for;

“It is true some of them are ‘sticklers’ for the civil rights for negroes — it always makes me intensely angry to hear people talking glibly about equal civil rights for negroes when in many parts of the South those equal rights would mean that every legislator and every judge would be a savage of a type and white men would be more unsafe in parts of this country than in most parts of the world where at least protection of his home government is to some extent with him.”

J. Gresham Machen
Letter to his Mother

R. Scott Clark is a magnificent hypocrite because he has on his blog a whole entry defending the orthodoxy of J. Gresham Machen, despite what Clark considers to be a racist letter to his mother, while at the same time casting modern day Machen Kinists into hell by referring to them as heretics.

Machen’s Letter To His Mother Or What To Do With Dead Sinners?

Obviously, Clark would never step up to the microphone and declare that on the basis of Machen’s social order beliefs that Machen, who was a 20th century Kinist, was a “heretic.” And yet that is exactly what the arch-heretic R. Scott Clark has done with 21st century Kinists. So Clark condemns 21st century Kinists as heretics but begs for understanding for 20th century Kinists like Machen. Bottom line Scotty is that either Machen was a heretic for believing what he believed or I am and all modern Kinists are not heretics for believing the very same types of things that Machen believed. You can not have it both ways. Either we are all in hell (like Machen per Clarkian reasoning) or on the way to hell (like living Kinists) for being heretics.

After all Scott, no heretic ever made it into heaven. Now, lots of people who were in error on this or that issue are in heaven but no heretic is in heaven.

Hey Scott … does Machen’s letter above disqualify him from heaven?

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane