“Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.” ~ Erica Jong

Quite a number of contemporary theologians have made the observation that J. Gesham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was first released in 1923. Machen explained that he had written this work in order “to show that Christianity is not a ‘life,’ as distinguished from a doctrine. It is not a life that has doctrine as its changing symbolic expression. It is the other way around. It is a life founded on a doctrine.” In the introductory section, Machen asserted that many of the modernist theologians “preferred to fight their intellectual battles in…a condition of low visibility.” Explaining the dire need we have for clarity in definition, Machen wrote:

“The purpose of this book is not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible, in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself. Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time; there are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Francis L. Patton has aptly called a ‘condition of low visibility.’ Clear-cut definition of terms in religious matters, bold facing of the logical implications of religious views, is by many persons regarded as an impious proceeding.”

There is no more pressing need that we have at present than the need to define our terms.

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