I’m listening to an audio-essay of J. Gresham Machen’s “The Important of Christian Scholarship” (HT: Phil Gons), and this sentence stood out to me: “But because argument is insufficient, it does not follow that it is unnecessary.” I’ve placed it in bold below so that you can read it in context.
The Importance of Argument
Certainly a Christianity that avoids argument is not the Christianity of the New Testament. The New Testament is full of argument in defense of the faith. The Epistles of Paul are full of argument—no one can doubt that. But even the words of Jesus are full of argument in defense of the truth of what Jesus was saying. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” Is not that a well-known form of reasoning, which the logicians would put in its proper category? Many of the parables of Jesus are argumentative in character. Even our Lord, who spake in the plenitude of divine authority, did condescend to reason with men. Everywhere the New Testament meets objections fairly, and presents the gospel as a thoroughly reasonable thing. [Read more…] about The Importance of Argument