Your Weekly Machen Fix: Statement to the Committee Investigate Princeton Pt 2

This is part two of a piece that Machen wrote in 1926 to defend himself against character assassination.  It reveals him as an earnest contender of the faith.  Part one can be accessed here.

According to the chairman, it had been asserted in the presence of the committee that I am spiritually unqualified to hold the post in question and teach goodwill to students, that I am temperamentally defective, bitter and harsh in my judgment of others and implacable to brethren who do not agree with me.  Obviously, this characterization of me – which, if true, casts a serious stain upon my moral character – is of too general a kind to be refuted until information is given as to the specific facts upon which it is based.  I am sure, at any rate, that it is not acquiesced in by all the students who have attended my classes during the last twenty years.  On the contrary, I have been greatly touched by the many expressions of gratitude and affection from alumni and students of the seminary that have come to me in the trying days since the last meeting of the Assembly.  Those expressions have led me to hope, despite the recent attack upon me and despite my own consciousness of faults and failures, that my life has not been altogether in vain.

But obviously I am not qualified to testify with regard to my own personal characteristics.  All that I desire here to do is to set forth the facts as regards the one specific matter which has given rise to the chief objections to me and has therefore been the occasion for the appointment of the present committee.  I refer to the disagreement between President Stevenson and Dr. Erdman on the one hand, and myself, with the majority of the faculty, on the other.  That matter will be treated in its broader aspects in a statement to be presented with supporting evidence by another member of the faculty.  Here I shall endeavor to present it principally as it concerns the personal relationships between Dr. Erdman and myself.

In doing so, I shall endeavor to show (1) that there is a serious divergence of principle between Dr. Erdman and myself, and (2) that personal unpleasantness was introduced into the discussion of this divergence not by me but by Dr. Erdman.

"I need my Machen fix!"

The divergence of principle appeared in the clearest possible way so early as 1920, when President Stevenson and Dr. Erdman advocated a “Plan of Organic Union,” which, as I have publicly pointed out, relegated our historic Confession of Faith to the realm of the nonessential, and sought a basis for church union in a preamble couched in the vague language of modern naturalism.  The adoption of that plan by the presbyteries would have resulted logically in driving out the Presbyterian church not only myself but also every man of evangelical convictions who detected the real nature of what had been done.  It would be difficult, therefore, to imagine a more serious divergence of principle than that which appeared at that time between President Stevenson and Dr. Erdman on the one hand and the majorty of the faculty, including me, on the other.

But there was no reason why that divergence of principle should have resulted in unpleasant personalities, and I certainly did nothing to introduce such unpleasant personalities into our relationships at Princeton.  I continued to have the highest personal respect for Dr. Erdman, and there seemed to me to be not the slightest reason why he should not continue in the pleasantest personal relations with his colleagues.  The fact that he differed from the majority of the faculty about important matters of ecclesiastical policy did not at all prevent me from regarding him as an honored member of our body and as a valued associate.

In 1924, Dr. Erdman was nominated for the moderatorship of the General Assembly.  I was opposed to his election and voted for the other nominee, Dr. Clarence Edward Macartney.  Apparently this action has been made the basis of attack upon me; for in The New York Herald Tribune of June 3, 1926, in the report of President Stevenson’s speech at the last Assembly, it is said: “Dr. Stevenson frankly accused Dr. Machen of opposing Dr. Erdman in the moderatorship election last year…”  It is perhaps unnecessary to ask whether this newspaper report is at this point verbally accurate; for in any case, my opposition to Dr. Erdman’s candidacy for the moderatorship, both in 1925 – the year to which Dr. Stevenson here refers – and also in 1924, has certainly been the underlying cause, even where it has not been the express ground, of widespread attack upon me throughout the church.

"I gotta have my Machen fix!"

But was it a crime to oppose Dr. Erdman as a candidate for the moderatorship?  If it was, then certainly I stand convicted; but to hold that it was is, I think, to destroy all liberty of conscience in the church.  My opposition to Dr. Erdman’s candidacy for that particular position was necessarily involved in convictions that are at the basis of my whole life; for me to have made an opposite decision would have been to desert what I was fully convinced was my duty to the church and to God.

Tune in next week for Part 3 of this exciting series!