Dr. J. Gresham Machen's Response to Old Liberalism

In the early 20th century, Dr. J. Gresham Machen responded to the old liberalism that promoted Christian life without much emphasis upon doctrine. Machen reminded the church that healthy doctrine leads to healthy righteous living, and healthy living is the result of healthy, or correct biblical doctrine. He wrote the following:

The facts that are rehearsed are not, indeed, bare facts, but facts with the meaning of the facts. "Christ died" is a fact; but to know merely that fact never did good to anyone; it never did anyone any good to know that a Jew, who was called Christ, died on a cross in the first century of our era. But it is not in that jejune [lifeless] way that the fact was rehearsed by the primitive Jerusalem Church; the primitive message was not merely that Christ died, but that Christ died for our sins. That tells not merely that Christ died, but why He died, what He accomplished when He died, but why He died, what He accomplished when He died, it gives not merely the fact but the meaning of the fact.

But when you say "fact with the meaning of the fact" you have said "doctrine." We have already arrived, then, at the answer to our question. Christianity at the beginning, we have discovered, was not a life as distinguished from a doctrine or a life that had doctrine as its changing intellectual expression, but just the other way around, it was a life founded upon a doctrine.