Doctrinal truth

The new edition of themelios is out (read it here), and Trueman has an excellent editorial on Machen's Christianity and Liberalism.

Indeed, one overarching concern in Christianity and Liberalism is simply the vital importance of Christian doctrine to the church: doctrine, he makes clear, is the very heart of Christian testimony. Claiming to honor the Bible without synthesizing the Bible’s teaching into doctrine, into systematic theology, is not really honoring the Bible at all, for the Bible teaches truth, truth which is coherent and can be articulated; and regarding with indifference those things which the Bible clearly sees as important is, in some sense, the worst sin of all.

It's been a long while since I read Christianity and Liberalism (although Trueman has encouraged me to go back to it), and so I can't remember whether Machen develops the point that one of the important aspects of doctrinal formulation is that it states negatives as well as positives. In systematising and articulating the Bible, the theologian articulates what the truth is, but also, by necessity, articulates what is not true. Not the most popular idea to offer up at this time, but a true one, nonetheless.