Your Weekly Machen Fix: Statement to the Committee to Investigate Princeton – Part 1

This piece was submitted to the Committee Appointed by the Action of the General Assembly of 1926.  It reveals Machen at his warrior best as he seeks to defend himself against personal attacks as he was refused promotion at Princeton.  This statement is contained in the Selected Shorter Writings edited by D.G. Hart.  Check back next week for another excerpt.

 

Warrior

After twenty years of service in Princeton Theological Seminary as instructor and assistant professor, I find myself by the action of the last General Assembly subjected to the extraordinary indignity of having the propriety of my promotion to a full professorship questioned if not as yet actually denied – an indignity almost without precedent in the entire history of our church.  The indignity was aggravated by the grounds on which, according to the address of the chairman of the Committee on Theological Seminaries, presenting the majority report, unfavorable action had been advocated before the committee, in particular by the public appearance against me on the floor of the Assembly of two of my colleagues in the faculty of the seminary, President Stevenson and Professor Erdman. 

 

In presenting the majority recommendation to postpone confirmation of my election, the chairman of the committee is credibly reported to have said that there were charges that the professor-elect was “spiritually unqualified to hold the post in question and teach goodwill to students, that he was temperamentally defective, bitter and harsh in his judgment of other and implacable to brethren who did not agree with him.”  Almost equally derogatory to my good name were the speeches of my colleagues, President Stevenson and Dr. Erdman.  President Stevenson not only reported a conversation in which he had said to Dr. Maitland Alexander: “You know this man has serious limitations,” but also opposed the confirmation of my election on the ground that I was implicated in certain objectionable actions of the faculty.  Finally, Dr. Erdman said: “What is questioned is whether Dr. Machen’s temper and methods of defense are such as to qualify him for a chair in which his whole time will be devoted to defending the faith” – thus using language which recalls somewhat a public attack, which, as will be seen in a moment, he himself had made upon me a year and a half before.  It is obvious, I think, that by the action itself, as well as by the grounds upon which it was advocated, I have been subjected to serious obloquy.  

I cannot, therefore, accept the light estimate which Dr. Erdman placed upon the matter at the conclusion of his speech before the Assembly.  ”It seems pitiful and painful,” said Dr. Erdman, “that we are delaying the Board of Foreign Missions to debate a little question of this kind as to whether we shall decide now or next year in the case of a professional appointment.”  Perhaps the unparalleled indignity to which one of his colleagues, who has served the seminary with him for twenty years, has been subjected may seem to be a “little matter” to Dr. Erdman, but it does not seem to be a little matter to the one whose good name has thus been attacked.  And I am not sure even that it should seem to be altogether a little matter to the Presbyterian church, for not only does it entail derangement for at least an entire year of the work of one of our largest seminaries but also it involves principles of rather far-reaching importance.  

In view of these considerations, I very respectfully request the committee to receive my present statement, with the appended documents.  If, indeed, the position of professor in Princeton Seminary were within the electing power of the Assembly, I should not presume to appear in my own behalf, for then the Assembly could freely choose the man whom it deemed best fitted for the position and other persons would have no right to complain against their being passed by.  But as a matter of fact, the Assembly has no such electing power.  It cannot elect a professor, but can only veto an election made by the board of directors.  Such a veto throws the work of the institution for the time being into confusion and is a very extreme measure.  Obviously, recourse should be had to it only for the most imperative of reasons.  In the case of an election, the burden of proof rests upon those who favor the entrance of any particular person into an office; in the case of a veto, it rests upon those who oppose the person already elected.  

I shall not, of course, make the slightest attempt to establish my own fitness for the chair of apologetics and Christian ethics in Princeton Seminary.  According to the board of directors I am a fit person, but whether the board was wise in choosing me I certainly do not presume to say.  I am keenly conscious, at any rate, of many faults and failings; no doubt I have made many mistakes.  If the professorship of apologetics and Christian ethics demands an incumbent who shall even approximate perfection, then obviously I am not the man for the place.  But I do request the privilege of defending myself against certain specific charges which have been brought against me.  

In such defense I am seriously embarrassed by never having been confronted with my accusers of furnished with a copy of the precise charges against me.  I have heard vague rumors of charges that have been made – and most extraordinary they seem to me to be – but they have been made almost exclusively in my absence.  My good name has been gravely injured without any opportunity having been given me to cross-examine or even to answer in any way those who have carried on the attack.  I regretted very much, therefore, that the testimony of persons who appeared against me in the Committee on Theological Seminaries was not given full publicity on the floor of the Assembly and incorporated in the record of its proceedings.  Without questioning in the slightest the propriety of the chairman’s action or the considerateness that he exercised in his effort to keep my name from being discussed at length before the Assembly, I may yet say that it seemed to me more desirable from my point of view that the charges against me should be made fully known to the church.  In that case opportunity might at least have been given to refute the charges if they were false.

As it is, I can deal only with such indications as to the nature of the charges as appeared in the public speeches of the chairman of the Committee on Theological Seminaries and of President Stevenson and Dr. Erdman.  

Tune in next week for Part 2.