Machen is the Man of the Moment (Again)!

While looking at several blogs the other day I noticed, in two very different contexts, references to the importance of the J. Gresham Machen vs. Modernism controversy. The first reference was by Carl Trueman in regard to the situation at Oxford University in regard to the matter of one “liberal evangelical” suing one of the “conservative evangelicals.” Apparently all of this is taking place withint the context of the Church of Engalnd. You can read Trueman’s posts here and here.

Over at Shepherd’s Scrapbook, Tony Reinke has posted an article about the Emergent Church. He points out that for all the attacks that the Emergent churchmen (if they can be called “churchmen”) raise against the evangelical church as being stuck in Moderism, they are modernists. After quoting Kevin DeYoung, one of the authors of the forthcoming book Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be Reinke summarizes DeYoung’s arguement by saying “If Rob Bell is relevent, J. Gresham Machen should be.” This post can be found here.
The point of all this is that whether there is a division between two theologians at Oxford or a debate over emergent vs. non-emergent methodology we can still learn alot from Machen.