This is an article written by Alex Tseng Shao Kai and posted by wts: Vol. 4 Issue 1 - Christianity & Liberalism: 100 Years: Telling The Truth Gospel: The Reception of... by Shao Kai Tseng
Summary:
Alex talked about how Machen's book got into China via Samuel Boyle's (包義森, 1905–2002) translation which began in 1940. Later edition (2003) was prefaced by the late Jonathan Chao (趙天恩, 1938–2004, [who was responsible for working with Stephen Tong to create the theological series in Taiwan, HK, etc. which later turned into Tong's famous book series]). There's also an interesting relationship with these names: Boyle was introduced to Charles Chao (Jonathan's father) by Lorraine Boettner & J. G. Vos. [Geerhardus Vos' son] And thus Boyle and Chao went on to establish RTF (the Reformed Translation Fellowship Press).
The translation of Machen's book was the crucial response that helped China's Christians when the communist took over in 1949, as the American (instead of German) liberal theology also made its way to China at the beginning of 20th century through China's protestant organizations like the YMCA (1870s) and the NCCC (National Christian Council of China-1913 中華全國基督教協進會). CIM (China Inland Mission) in 1926, withdrew from the NCCC due to its advocacy for the social gospel. The NCCC later (1950) adopted a proposal by the social gospel proponent 吴耀宗, 1893–1979, co-founder of the Three-Self Patriotic movement, to cut off all ties to foreign Christian groups and swear allegiance to the Communist Party. This was how American theological liberalism got involved in China's progressivism. The conservative church leaders and missionaries in China against this movement stood out in the widely circulated 1955 article, "We, Because of Faith 我們是為了信 仰 (Youtube Reading)" by 王明道, 1900–1991, AKA the "dean of the Chinese house churches." Another important book by Wang was Discerning the True Gospel (《真偽福音辨》). This book became like the Machen's version in China against liberalism and relentless critique of the social gospel.
However, the arguments for Christianity and Liberalism grounds on established academic research as the author spent a year in Germany exposed to challenges of Liberalism first-hand as a student; while Discerning the Gospel exhibits didactic and homiletic tones with pietistic content. Fraught with threats, warnings, and derogatory remarks against "false prophets", offering very little theoretical analysis of the social gospel. As a result, most conservative Chinese Christians, being more accustomed to Wang's rather than Machen's approach, were more driven by pietistic impulses that tended to be anti-intellectual. They even equated "theology" with "liberalism", and deemed all academic and critical attempts at understanding the faith to be apostate.
Evangelical Chinese churches were waning in academic theology until the 1970s, when Chinese alumni from Westminster Theological Seminar in the 60s, including Jonathan Chao, launched a campaign for theological education. This led to the founding of China Evangelical Seminary in Taiwan (1970) [中華福音神學院] and the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong (1975) [中國神學研究院]. It gained support from local churches and foreign missionaries after the influence of the 1974 Lausanne Congress and the founding of the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization [世界華人福音運動] in 1976. Jonathan Chao founded numerous underground theological training centers across mainland China. Also founded China Missions [Ministries 中國福音會] International which brought books and cassette tapes to the mainland featuring sermons and theological seminars by his close friend and ally, Stephen Tong, who popularized Reformed theology in Chinese churches.
Alex's 2 caveats:
- Machen's intent, stated at the beginning:
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. 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…, but it is always beneficial in the end.
"Despite this explicit statement, many Chinese readers, and in fact many American readers as well, still approach the work with an anti-intellectual mindset." ~ Alex. As the book stated, that to be clear-cut in definition of terms and having logical implications are regarded as impious proceeding. Fair-minded theological debate regarded with suspicion. The language in Christianity and Liberalism was presented with derogatory rhetoric found in Discerning the Gospel, by many Chinese church leaders. Such is contrary to the intent of the author.
2. Avoid relying on Machen's volume as if an inspired text. For one thing, Christianity and Liberalism was in large part a response to a specific sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Thus, Machen was addressing a specific brand of American liberalism. Fosdick, not Schleiermacher, and mischaracterizing Kant's critique of metaphysics as an "attack upon the theistic proofs." [Kant wasn't trying to attack faith, he was merely separating faith from knowledge to show that God's existence cannot be a matter of theoretical/speculative reason, i.e. the ontological argument is a logical fallacy that falsely assumed that existence is a predicate.]
Liberalism was not monolithically guided by ‘Enlightenment naturalism.’ ~Alex. Earnst Troeltsch (1865-1923) and Emanuel Hirsch (1888-1972) fought against the naturalistic consciousness (Later Ritschlians kind) (i.e. without God, reducing Jesus to just another rabbi, Bible just another text) in order to promote divine immanence in history: "re-enchantment" or "sacralization." [Christian Nationalists also fight against a secular public square they see as hostile to faith. ~ with help from Deepseek AI.] Weberians described "naturalistic consciousness" in terms of "disenchantment", which was only a first moment in the development of theological modernism. A second and more predominant moment was that of re-enchantment, transcendentalization of nature and history, and much of that immanentization went too far. This form of re-enchantment has re-appeared in some conservative Christian circles in America under the rubrics such as "Christian Nationalism." [Christian Nationalists also fight against a secular public square they see as hostile to faith. ~ with help from Deepseek AI.]
Study liberalism for yourselves, such is the true intent of Machen.
-End of summary.
It's interesting that here we learned that Christian Nationalism is actually a liberal/postmodern concept of immanentization which Machen considered the core error of liberalism.
Deepseek AI remark of Christian Nationalism:
This is not just an academic exercise. The reason to study liberalism is to recognize its intellectual patterns, even when they appear in your own camp.
The warning is that Christian nationalism, in its effort to combat secularism, can inadvertently adopt the very "immanentizing" framework that Machen identified as the core error of liberalism. It risks making the nation and its history a new source of revelation, functionally blending faith with political identity in a way that can subvert the transcendent, supranational, and counter-cultural claims of the gospel.
In short, the connection is that Christian nationalism is, in a philosophical sense, a conservative imitation of liberal theology's re-enchantment project, and recognizing this lineage is crucial for a coherent theological critique of it.
I haven't comprehensively read Machen yet, so I think it's time. See if this matches what Alex was trying to say, that American Christian nationalism is actually a the core error of liberalism.