Machen On "Dumbing Down" The Bible

There will perhaps, however, be an objection to the terminology that we are venturing to employ. “Justification,” it will be said, is a distressingly long word; and as for the word “doctrine,” that has a forbidding sound. Instead of such terminology surely we ought to find simpler words which will bring the matter home to modern men in language such as they are accustomed to use.

 This suggestion is typical of what is often being said at the present time. Many persons are horrified by the use of a theological term; they seem to have a notion that modern Christians must be addressed always in words of one syllable, and that in religion we must abandon the scientific precision of language which is found to be so useful in other spheres. In pursuance of this tendency we have had presented to us recently various translations of the Bible which reduce the Word of God more or less thoroughly to the language of the modern street, or which, as the matter was put recently in my hearing by an intelligent layman, “take all the religion out of the New Testament.” But the whole tendency, we for our part think, ought to be resisted. Back of it all seems to lie the strange assumption that modern men, particularly modern university men, can never by any chance learn anything; they do not understand the theological terminology which appears in such richness in the Bible, and that is regarded as the end of the matter; apparently it does not occur to anyone that possibly they might with profit acquire the knowledge of Biblical terminology which now they lack. But I for my part am by no means ready to acquiesce. I am perfectly ready, indeed, to agree that the Bible and the modern man ought to be brought together. But what is not always observed is that there are two ways of attaining that end. One way is to bring the Bible down to the level of the modern man; but the other way is to bring the modern man up to the level of the Bible. For my part, I am inclined to advocate the latter way. And I am by no means ready to relinquish the advantages of a precise terminology in summarizing Bible truth. In religion as well as in other spheres a precise terminology is mentally economical in the end; it repays amply the slight effort required for the mastery of it. Thus I am not at all ashamed to speak, even in this day and generation, of “the doctrine of justification by faith.”*

*Machen, J. G. (1925). What Is Faith? (161–163). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.