Special Machen Fix: Happy Birthday to Machen!

On July 28, 1881, John Gresham Machen was born to Arthur and Minnie Machen in Baltimore, Maryland.  Today we celebrate with a portion of Machen’s only autobiographical piece, “Christianity in Crisis,” published in the Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D. G. Hart.

I take a grave view of the present state of the church; I think that those who cry, ” ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace,” constitute the greatest menace to the people of God.  I am in little agreement with those who say, for example, that the Presbyterian church, to which I belong, is “fundamentally sound.”  For my part, I have two convictions regarding the Presbyterian church.  I hold (1) that it is not fundamentally sound but fundamentally unsound; and I hold (2) that the Holy Spirit is able to make it sound.  And I think we ought, very humbly, to ask him to do that.  Nothing kills true prayer like a shallow optimism.  Those who form the consistently Christian remnant in the Presbyterian church and in other churches, instead of taking refuge in a cowardly anti-intellectualism, instead of decrying controversy, ought to be on their knees asking God to bring the visible church back from her wanderings to her true Lord.

We can, if we are Christians, still be confident and joyous in these sad days.  This is not the first time of unbelief in the history of the church.  There have been other times equally or almost equally dark, yet God has brought his people through.  Even in our day, there are far more than seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to the gods of the hour.  But our real confidence rests not in the signs of the times, but in the great and precious promises of God.  Contrast the glories of God’s Word with the weak and beggarly elements of this mechanistic age, contrast the liberty of the sons of God with the ever-increasing slavery into which mankind is falling in our time, and I think we shall come to see with a new clearness, despite the opposition of the world, that we have no reason to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

What is True Worship?

Rev. Danny Hyde of OURC explains what true worship is in his sermon on the tabernacle.

Pray for the Persecuted Church in North Korea

According to news reports, North Korea is stepping up their executions of Christians.  Often these executions are conducted in public.  We who live cushy lives in the West must be diligent to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world.

Old, Grumpy, and (Actually) Reformed

Inspiration

Collin Hansen’s 2008 book, Young Restless and Reformed, has helped create a new Christian fad.  Ne0-Calvinism is a hot movement within American Evangelicalism, evidenced by  Time Magazine recently ranking Neo-Calvinism number three in a list of ten ideas changing the world right now.  Unlike the young, restless, and Reformed crowd, I think of myself as old, grumpy, and actually Reformed.

Old:  Being Reformed means being old, maybe not according to the calendar but according to our theology, piety, and practice.  I am in the same age-bracket as many of the Neo-Calvinists (not quite 30), but I do not identify with their young label.  Reformed Theology as confessed by Reformed churches goes back 350-450 years.  These confessions are summaries of what the Bible teaches, and not much has changed in our theology since these confessions were written. 

Grumpy: The way I see it, being Reformed means being grumpy, not regarding our inner disposition, but in terms of how we are perceived.  Historic Reformed worship probably seems uptight and boring to many people of my generation.  We do not have rock bands; we do not dance; we do not wave our hands to the music.  We sing Psalms and recite creeds.  Our worship is very serious because we serve a precise God.  We do not come to God flippantly.  We are invited into the presence of One who describes Himself as consuming fire, and we recognize that we would be consumed instantly apart from the mediatorial work of our Savior.  Our seriousness probably comes off as grumpy to most people.

(Actually) Reformed:  Many people have daily battles as to who or what gets to defined the term, Reformed.  I will leave that to others to hash out.  But from what I know about many of the Neo-Calvinists, merely holding to the doctrine of predestination gets you into the party.  Once inside, you can bring in charismatic theology, dispensationalism, and revivalism.  As long as you are predestinarian you can be considered a Calvinist.  The fact is, many of these people would not be received as members of Calvin’s church.  Actually subscribing a historic Reformed confession is a good place to start when calling yourself Reformed.

I am glad that many in my generation are rejecting the cheesiness of American Evangelicalism and seeking more depth in their understanding.  My hope is that they will come into Reformed churches and not just pick and choose aspects of our theology while peeking in through the windows.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: The Cause of the Strife at Princeton Seminary

Originally published in 1927.

It has already been pointed out what a very extreme measure was adopted by the last General Assembly with regard to Princeton Theological Seminary.  The Board of Directors, which has hitherto governed the insitution in spiritual matters and has preseved for it its distinctive character, is to be dissolved, and a new board of control is to be formed.  Thus Princeton Theological Seminary, as it has been so long and so honorably known, is to be destroyed, and we are to have at Princeton a new institution of a radically different kind.

What ground is assigned by the Committee in charge for such an extreme measure, for such a policy of “frightfulness,” with respect to an ancient and widely respected institution?

The answer is simple.  It is that there is strife within the institution, and that to settle that strife the institution must be reorganized.

In reply, we say that of course there is strife within the institution, but that the strife can be ended in a very simple way – a way that does not at all involve, as the action of the last Assembly does, the destruction of the Seminary and the founding, instead of it, of a new institution.

What is the cause of the strife at Princeton?  The answer is simple.  The strife is caused by the fact that certain members of a minority in the councils of the Seminary have been unwilling to recognize the rights of the majority.  Such recognition of the rights of the majority is the very foundation of ordered society; without it there can be no peace either in the Church or in the State.  It is that principle which has be violated by some of the minority in Princeton Theological Seminary; and the result is the condition which we all deplore.

Never was a minority more fairly of more courteously treated than the minority in Princeton Seminary.  Its rights were respectedc to the full; indeed, the only question is whether the majority both in the Faculty and in the Board of Directors did not err by an excessive forbearance; possibly if the majority had exercised its power in a more prompt and vigorous way, the present situation might have been avoided.  But that fault, if fault it be, was surely a fault in the right direction; and certainly it did not deserve the savage treatment which has been meted out to it by Dr. Thompson’s report.

At any rate, some members of the minority in Princeton Seminary were unwilling to recognize the rights of the majority; and to such unwillingness is to be traced all of the strife in which the institution has become involved.

The first notable instance of this attitude in the minority was found in President Stevenson’s failure to resign his position when it had become evident that he was hopelessly out of accord both with his Faculty and with his Board of Directors.  Possibly it may be objected that the Board ought formally and publicly to have requested his resignation.  But in countless cases, not only in educational institutions but also in individual congregations and in other bodies, such a measure does not need to be resorted to; an administrative officer, despite full conviction that he is right and the majority wrong, resigns his position in the interest of peace.  Never was a resignation, from such apoint of view, more imperatively demanded than the resignation of President Stevenson.  We hear much about peace at Princeton Seminary; but if it was really, peace, and not something else, that was desired, the resignation of the president was the means by which it was to be secured.

The second notable violation of the peace of the institution was of a more positive and public kind.  It was found in the letter which Dr. Charles R. Erdman published in The Presbyterian Advance for January 22, 1925.  That letter contained an extraordinary personal attack upon certain of Dr. Erdman’s colleagues in the Faculty.  In justification of the attack, no evidence has been produced; and yet no apology for the attack, or repudiation of it, has even been offered.  Naturally such an unprecedented public attack by one professor upon the character of his colleageues was made the basis of widespread newspaper publicity.  The publicity had many ramifications, but the great bulk of it – perhaps all of it – is to be traced ultimately to Dr. Erdman’s attack upon his colleagues in The Presbyterian Advance.  That attack it was that brought the institution into the undignified and misleading publicity which has given rise to such widespread regret.

Since the publication of Dr. Erdman’s letter, the supporters of the minority have done everything in their power to fan the fires of controversy and thus to prevent the institution from being at peace.   An instance of such activity is the newspaper agitation about Dr. Erdman’s alleged ejection from the alleged Faculty position of Adviser to the Student Association.  The students had formed or were forming a “League of Evangelical Students.”  The majority of the Faculty thought it was a splendid expression of  Christian convictions; it warmed out hearts, in these days when the devotion of so many has grown colld, to find these young men giving spontaneous expression to their beleif in the Bible as the Word of God and holding out a helping hand to their fellow students in other institutions who are struggling manfully against the drift of the times.  Dr. Erdman, rightly or wrongly, thought otherwise about the League; yet against the will both of students and of Faculty his supporters desired him to hold a position in which his attitude toward the League might have killed the whole movemnt at its birth.

But that is only one manifestation of the root of the whole trouble.  The real cause of the strife at Princeton is that some members of the minority, despite the most fair and generous treatment by the majority, have been unwilling to recognize the rights that a majority unquestionably has.

For such a situation there are two possible remedies.  In the first place, the majority may be ejected and the minority placed in control.  That is, in essence, the remedy that is involved in Dr. Thompson’s report and that has been approved in principle by the General Assembly of 1927.  Possibly it may bring “peace” at Princeton.  But it will do so at the expense of justice; and the result will be simply to drive men of conservative or evangelical views out of the Presbyterian Church.

The otehr remedy is that the continuity and relative autonomy of the institution should be recognized, and that the authority of the board that has maintained the distinctive position of the Seminary should be continued.  That solution, quite irrespective of the question whether the President’s policy or the policy of the Board is in itself right, is the only solution which is in accordance with justice.  So long as thoroughgoing conservatives are to be tolerated in the Presbyterian Chruch at all, they should be allowed to have at least one institution that clearly and unequivocally represents their view.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: How the Attack was made on Princeton Seminary

Originally published in 1927.

It was observed at the beginnning of this pamphlet that by action of the General Assembly of 1927 the Board of Directors of Princeton Seminary, to which the conservative policy of the institution has been due, is to be dissolved and control is to be placed in the hands of what is now a minority, so that the policy will be reversed.

In the process by which this result has been attained, the first important step was the coming of Dr. J. Ross Stevenson as president of the Seminary.  Dr. Stevenson was, indeed, received with cordiality by the Faculty, and for some years enjoyed the confidence of the Board of Directors.  But in the course of time it became evident that he was seriously out of sympathy with the traditions of the institution and with the policy advocated both by the Directors and by the Faculty.

Under these circumstances, two courses of action were open to him.  In the first place, he might have resigned his position.  In that case, the distinctiveness of the institution would have been preserved.  Dr. Stevenson would have been perfectly free to pursue his own policy elsewhere; for there are many institutions and agencies which maintain exactly the same complacent view of the present state of religion which we think is so dangerous in a president of Princeton Seminary.  But the distinctivenss of Princeton within the larger communion of the Presbyterian Church would in that case have been preserved.  The thoroughgoing conservatives in the Church would have been allowed to retain at least one institution that represented their view.

This choice was rejected by Dr. Stevenson.  Instead of recognizing the distinctiveness and relative autonomy of the Seminary’s life, instead of abiding by the principle of majority rule within the institution’s Board of Directors, he preferred to appeal from the policy of that Board to the larger tribunal of the General Assembly.  The result of such appeal is the action of last May, by which the Board of Directors is to be abolished, and, instead, there is to be a single board of control which will undoubtedly support Dr. Stevenson’s views.  This action, we think, is extremely unjust; and we are appealing to the Church at large to reverse the decision next year, before the reorganization of the institution is actually put in effect.

Such reversal would not necessarily mean that the General Assemlby is itself opposed to Dr. Stevenson’s policy or in favor of the policy of the Board.  But it would mean simply that the Assembly recognizes the right of various theological seminaries to maintain distinctive views within the larger communion of the Church.  Princeton Seminary is not the only seminary in the Presbyterian Church.  There are other seminaries; and they represent widely different points of view.  Why should the distinctiveness of no other seminary be interfered with except the seminary that most clearly maintains the full truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God?  Why should “Liberal” seminaries be left alone, and only this conservative seminary be destroyed?  The truth is that unless the disruption of the Presbyterian Church is to take place at once, the conservatives in the Church, no matter how extreme their attitude may be thought by others to be, must be allowed to have at least one seminary that clearly and unequivocally represents their view.  If the conservatives are to be retained in the church at all, they must have at least one theological institution, not that others think is sound, but that they think is sound.  Princeton Seminary is such an institution, and the interference with its distinctive character that is contemplated by the action of the last General Assembly would be an act of the greatest injustice.  Against such injustice, we appeal to the sense of fair play among the rank and file of the Presbyterian Church.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: Attack on Princeton Seminary, Continued

Originally published in 1927.

No doubt such a program is full of perils.  Might it not be safer for our future ministers to close their ears to all modern voices and remain in ignorance of the objections that the gospel faces in the modern world?  We reply that of course it might be safer.  It is safer to be a good soldier in comfortable barracks than it is on the field of battle.  But the great battles are not won in that way.

Thus we encourage our students to be fearless in their examination of the basis of the faith.  Let no one say that such a program is unduly negative – that it involves too much examination of opposing views, and too little positive presentation of the gospel that we believe.  Nobly do the graduates of Princeton Seminary refute any such accusation.  What is it that the Church values in Princeton Seminary?  Is it not the positiveness and definiteness fo the gospel message that our graduates proclaim; is it not that our former students, amid the vagueness of much modern religious teaching, know so clearly where they stand?  No, the teaching of Princeton Seminary is not negeative, but positive; all our examination of objections to the gospel is employed only as a means to lead men to a clearer understanding of what the gospel is and to a clearer and more triumphant conviction of its truth.

But the attainment of such conviction leads, for many men, through the pathway of intellectual struggle and perplexity of soul  Some of us have been through such struggle ourselves; some of us have known the blankness of doubt, the deadly discouragement, the perplexity of indecision, the vacillation between “faith diversified by doubt,” and “doubt diversified by faith.”  If such has been our experience, we think with gratitude of the teachers who helped us in our need; and we in turn try with all our might to help those who are in the struggle now.  Nothing can be done, we know, by trying to tyrannize over men’s minds; all that we can do is to present the facts as we see them, to hold out a sympathizing hand to our younger brethren, and to commit them to God in prayer.

We cannot, indeed, seek to win men by false hopes; and we cannot encourage them to think that if they decide to stand for Christ they will have the favor of the modern world or necessarily of the modern Church.  On the contrary, if we read the signs of the times aright, both in the Church and in the State, there may soon come a period of genuine persecution for the children of God.

“If I find Him, if I follow,

What His guerdon here?

Many a sorrow, many a labor,

Many a tear.”

Such, we are inclined to think, will be the  lot of those who stand against the whole current of the age.  It is not an easy thing to oppose a world in arms; nor is it an easy thing to oppose an increasingly hostile church.  But when one does so, with full conviction, what a blessed, inward peace!

Such is the peace to which many of our students have attained.  Small has been our part in such a result; it has been the work of God.  But by the blessing of God’s Spirit, through the use of whatever means, there has been emanating from Princeton during the last few years a current of warm Christian life that has refreshed those hwom it has touched.  It has found a noble expression in the new League of Evangelical Students; but it has found an even nobler expression in the experience of individual men.  Conviction has issued here truly into Christian life.

What shall be done with this type of warm and vital Christiantity that has been issuing from Princeton?  It may come squarely into conflict, at some points, with the present leadership of the church.  But because the fervent piety of our recent graduates of Princeton Seminary may be opposed at some points to the ecclesiastical machinery, it does not follow that that ecclesiastical machinery should be allowed to crush it out.  Long has been the conflict, during nineteen centuries, between ecclesiastical authority and the free and mysterious operation of the Spirit of God.  But under our Presbyterian institutions the tyrannical practices to which ecclesiastical authority has elsewhere resorted are an anomaly and a shame.  And so we have some hope that the present tyrannical proposal about Princeton Seminary may yet be rejected and that Princeton may yet be saved.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: Attack on Princeton Seminary, Continued

The following excerpt was originally published in 1927.  This piece should quell any notion of Machen being a Fundamentalist.

We have seen that Princeton Seminary stands in the first place for the complete truthfulness of the Scriptures as the Word of God, and in the second place for the Westminster Standards as containing the system of doctrine that the Scriptures teach.  In the third place, Princeton Seminary holds that both these things – the full truthfulness of Holy Scripture and the system of doctrine that our Standards set forth – need, and are capable of, intellectual defence. 

Hence we cannot agree with those who think that a theological seminary ought to devote less time to the defence of Christianity and more time to the propagation of it.  Certainly it is a grievous sin to propagate what is incapable of defence.  The basic question about any message that may be propagated is the question whether it is true; and that question has been raised with regard to the Christian message in such insistent fashion in the modern world that the challenge must above all things be squarely and honestly met.

In meeting the challenge, we are fully conscious of the magnitude of our task.  We cannot agree at all with those who despise the adversaries in this great debate, who think that the “critics” are to be disposed of with a few general words of adjectival abuse.  For our part, we have profound admiration for the great masters of modern criticism; we are fully conscious of their intellectual greatness; we respect them to the full.  Who would not admire the imposing reconstructions proposed by a Baur or by a Bousset, or the massive learning of a Schürer, or the brilliancy and versatility of a Harnack, or the incisiveness of radicals like Wrede in Germany or our own American Dr. McGiffert?  Certainly we respect such scholars, opponents though they are of all that we hold most dear.  Some of them may have respected us in turn; but whether they respect us or not, we shall continue respecting them.  They are wrong, we think; all their learning is devoted to the impossible task of reconstructing on naturalistic principles what was really an act of God.  But though they are wrong, they are wrong in a grand and imposing way; and they cannot be refuted either by a railing accusation or by a few pious words.

So we try to divest our students of the notion that there is any royal road to sacred learning; we try to divest them of the notion that they can lead the modern Church without a knowledge of the original languages of Scripture and without the other tools of research.  Above all we try to give them a sense of the magnitude of the modern debate.  We try, indeed, to lead them to faith; but we do not try to lead them by encouraging them to ignore the facts.  On the contrary, we believe that Christian faith flourishes not in the darkness but in the light, and that a man’s Christian conviction is only strengthened when he has examined both sides.  We do, indeed, encourage men to come to Princeton Seminary.  For them to do so, we think, is only fair.  Historic Christianity deserves, we maintain, at least a hearing before it is finally given up; it is not fair to hear only what can be said against it without obtaining any orderly acquaintance with what it is; and to learn what is is men should listen not to its opponents but to those who believe it with all their minds and hearts.  So we do invite men to Princeton.  But after they have studied at Princeton, indeed even while they are studying here, the more they acquaint themselves with what opposing teachers say, the better it seems to us to be.  We encourage our graduates, if they can, to listen to the great foreign masters of naturalistic criticism; we desire them to hear all that can be said against the gospel that we believe.