Does scholarship "quench the Spirit"?

      "Is not the Gospel a very simple thing, it may be asked, and will not its simplicity be obscure by too much scholarly research?  The objection springs from a false view of what scholarship is; it springs from the notion that scholarship leads a man to be obscure.  Exactly the reverse is the case.  Ignorance is obscure, but scholarship brings order out of confusion, places things in their logical relations, and makes the message shine forth clear.

       There are, indeed, evangelists who are not scholars, but scholarship is necessary to evangelism all the same.  In the first place, though there are evangelists who are not scholars, the greatest evangelists -- like the Apostle Paul and like Martin Luther -- have been scholars.  In the second place, the evangelists who are not scholars are dependent upon scholars to help them get their message straight; it is out of a great underlying fund of Christian learning that true evangelism springs."

- J. Gresham Machen, extract from an address entitled "The Importance of Christian Scholarship" given at the Bible League Meetings in London June, 17, 1932.