A.D.D. for The Young and Restless?

Published on by D. G. Hart

It started with such promise. The allies of the gospel were going to run a series of posts on Princeton Seminary to commemorate the institution’s bicentennial this year. Granted, the view of Princeton from TGC did not exactly do justice to the school’s Old School Presbyterianism. Even so, I was hoping that the anniversary might generate more attention for one of the best expressions of Reformed Protestantism with the greatest longevity . But so far, only three posts:

January 5 Old Princeton for New Calvinists

February 13 Old Princeton for New Calvinists: The Legacy of Archibald Alexander

March 19 Old Princeton for New Calvinists: 9 Lessons from the Life of Charles Hodge

So, to fill in for the lack of attention to Old Princeton, a word about New Princeton. As of October 8 comes news that the seminary has appointed M. Craig Barnes, a teacher, pastor and author and a columnist for The Christian Century magazine, president of Princeton Theological Seminary. The press release is here.

41 thoughts on “A.D.D. for The Young and Restless?”

  1. Maybe they actually read some works by Warfield and Hodge when preparing for their posts and learned they weren’t called “old” just because they were in the 19th century.

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  3. I wanted to know who the new dean at Westminster East will be. Gary North, in his old book Westminster’s Confession, claims that Westminster Seminary was never in continuity with old Princeton. He claims it was too Dutch, too amill, and that long before Clowney.

    Is Barnes somehow more of an “evangelical” than the Barthian Torrance?

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  4. D.G. – Is it odd for a guy with a Ph.D. in church history to be pastoring a church? I assume his church is PC-USA? Do you know him? I wonder if he is a contemporary of John Stackhouse at Chicago.

    I pick up copies of “The Christian Century” from time-to-time in the magazine bins at the Public Library. I think these are the folks Machen wasn’t too excited about.

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  7. MM. The influence of Van Til distinguishes Westminster from Old Princeton which was influenced by Thos. Reed’s common sense philosophy.

    Barnes studied and Princeton and he’s also a prof. at Pittsburg Theol. Sem. I’ve read that Bruce McCormack (C. Hodge Prof @ Princeton) who has reinterpreted Barth claims to be evangelical and his agenda is to legitimize his neo-Barth within evangelicalism.

    Here is a reviewer’s comment on Barne’s book “Searching for Home:” “Barnes has an incredible ability to pull together deep insights from scripture, literature, sociological trends, and his pastoral experiences to describe why the contemporary soul is so restless. Best of all, he provides a helpful and honest response to our deepest longings.”

    That sounds like comments people at my PCA church would make about “Kings Cross” by Tim Keller.

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  10. Although I would not recommend what he writes about election, I would commend to you Bruce McCormack;s work on union with Christ. Mike Horton, agrees with McCormack that “union with Christ” is NOT “more basic” than justification and the atonement. In other words, not all Barhians are alike, and Bruce Mccormack disagrees at many points with the Torrances (and Letham, and Garcia, and Evans).

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  11. Sometimes I wonder if any two Barthians are alike. I also wonder why Karl never told Thos. Torrance he had him wrong at points.

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  12. I am curious if anyone could point me in the direction of good beginner sources regarding the history of “Old Princeton”. I have read some of the theological works of Hodge, Warfield etc. but have not found something descent as far as a collective history. I could not remember if DGH had written something. This is all new to me.

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  13. David Calhoun’s 2 volume work on Princeton published by Banner of Truth…

    Also Mark G. see Paul Helseth’s work on “Right Reason and the Princeton Mind” – to say the Princetonians were common sense realists or rationalists cannot be accepted at face value, and Helseth offers very important qualifications.

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  14. Ken, yes, I’ve seen reviews of Helseth’s book and realize the Princetonians are often mischaracterized as crass common sense realists. I’ve never believed that was a fair assessment and hope to read Helseth’s book soon. My wish list is long and grows faster than my free time or income. I still think the Scottish common sense realism was influential and the influence of Van Til on Westminster and the OPC distinguishes those institutions from Old Princeton. Still, I think the influence of Old Princeton can be seen more in those institutions than just about anywhere else. Here I think I am following an old book on The Princeton Theology by David Wells.

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  15. Correction. The book I was thinking of was probably (?) by Mark Noll, not Wells. It was one of three books on 1) The Princeton Theology, 2) Dutch Reformed, and 3) Southern Reformed theology. I think they’re long out of print, although Noll edited a book (2001) titled “The Princeton Theology 1812-1921 : Scripture, Science, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield”

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  17. I would recommend Calhoun as well.

    http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/item_detail.php?4740

    http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/item_detail.php?4762

    Mark G was correct that there were three books by David Wells that are out of print but available via third party.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Princeton-Theology-Reformed-America/dp/0801097029

    http://www.amazon.com/Dutch-Reformed-Theology-America/dp/0801097010

    http://www.amazon.com/Southern-Reformed-Theology-America/dp/0801097037

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  19. Jonathan, thanks for the link. When Beeke writes this:

    To read of the conditions of our fellow human beings in this bondage is painful indeed. Yet, like the Holocaust and the present international atrocity of abortion, slavery must be faced in order that we may renounce it fully and strive to end all human trafficking that continues today.

    I wonder how he avoids recoiling at the Old Testament. His way of understanding slavery — shared by radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison — was the road to theological liberalism. I’m not saying Beeke is on it or that slavery is good. I’m simply asking for those who rush to condemn slavery in the starkest of terms to consider what this means for slavery in the Bible. It’s one thing to say that African slavery was bad but the enslavement of Hebrew daughters (Exodus 21:7) was okay. But it hardly goes with a blanket condemnation of slavery (nor for that matter does saying Hebrew slavery was okay go with modern sensibilities — Christian and secular — about slavery).

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  21. Mark G., I don’t know that I “condemn” polygamy. I regard it as a potentially difficult social relationship that a state could well want to regulate for the sake of lots of legal and economic reasons. I know in the church it would be a problem for officers since Paul requires pastors, deacons, and elders to be married to only one wife. On the mission field, this is a real problem since men who might be ready to assume leadership in the church can’t because of their polygamous relations. But I do not know that our churches on the mission field exclude husbands and wives in polygamous relationships from membership in the church. Plus, if we “condemn” polygamy, don’t we condemn Abraham, David, and Solomon.

    In other words, calling certain social arrangements evil (from polygamy to Communism) has repercussions for the sufficiency of Scripture that condemners don’t seem to take into account.

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  22. If I understand, you would not accept the argument that marriage between one man and one woman is a creation ordinance.

    It seems to me that in understanding what was allowed in the OT has to take into account the fall and that God apparently “allowed” certain things as a result of the fall. I’m thinking here of Jesus statment that although God hates divorce he allowed it because of man’s hardness of heart.

    I agree that, as I think you suggest, when we talk about “slavery” we need to be careful what we mean by the term. Slavery in the OT is not synomous with African slavery in the 19th century. I question whether slavery in the OT proves that God did not hate it, or that God would approve 19th century African slavery which could involve kidnapping and bondage in order to benefit certain other people.

    At the same time there was unjust slavery in the time of Christ and the Apostles which they did not crusade against. I don’t think that suggests that Jesus and the apostles condoned slavery. There were many other injustices in their political situation they did not speak against directly.

    I know of a man who claims to be a Christian and who is a practicing polygamist. I guess if he does it right that may not be adulterous????

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  23. Mark G – I would be careful trying to rationalize OT slavery. Keep in mind that God ordered his people to wipe out certain groups in taking over the promised land. Being killed is worse than being a slave. Sometimes God chooses to judge people and it will be a harsh judgment according to human sensibilities which tend to understate God’s holiness and overstate humanity’s goodness. We affirm a God who will ultimately judge His enemies in hell.

    D.G. – You’ve just been watching too much “Big Love”. Interesting insights on Polygamy. I think any man who chooses it has to be nuts.

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  25. EC. I believe the OT examples of God judging nations were typological of His ultimate final judgement. They were ultimate end times judgement brought into human history. They served a particular purpose at that time in redemptive history. I’d think on those grounds slavery in the OT has little or nothing to do with African slavery.

    Unless and,

    I hope we’re not saying that 19th century slavery is God’s inaugurated eschatalogical judgement on Africans. We start to sound like TV evangelists who attribute every disaster to God’s judgement on some category of people with which they have issues; i.e., the flooding in New Orleans on transvestites; Jamaica on it’s pact with the devil or whatever.

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  26. Mark G, your comment may answer your question. Marriage between one man and one woman is a creation ordinance. Polygamy is a concession to the fall. We still live in a fallen world. It may be possible to avoid an abolitionist outlook which seems to be shocked — shocked! — that evil exists.

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  27. Erik, I’m a big fan of H.L. Mencken’s quip that Christians are people who believe in three gods but draw the line at one wife. The Mrs. and I have enough trouble negotiating leaving and cleaving, I can’t imagine multiplying the problem with other leavers and cleavers.

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  28. Mark – What I am warning against is trying to explain away the reality of OT slavery by saying it was not as bad as 19th Century slavery. I recently watched a debate between a Christian and an atheist in which the Christian repeated over and over that slavery in the OT was no different than putting people in prison today. I cringed every time he said it.

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  29. D.G. – Try being married to an identical twin who lives next door to her sister. And I work with her sister! I spend 24 hours a day with an identical-looking human being. But I digress.

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  30. Darryl, too bad we can’t go to the pub and discuss, although I don’t like cigar smoke. Anyway, looks like we may agree. I think we can have an abolitionist view that is not shocked by evil, but should in fact that man is capable of horrendous evil and will even justifiy it. Perhaps it ought to shock us more that evil is not more prevalant than it is. But for common grace I don’t think Christianity could exist on earth.

    I stumbled onto the following on Charles Hodge and slavery and found it interesting. http://www.reformedblacksofamerica.org/blog1/index.php?itemid=237

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  31. Erik, Ah, okay. I agree. We can’t minimize the problem of slavery in the OT. It seems like the fact that the law regulated slavery with the Sabbath principle, etc. suggests the potential evils of OT slavery.

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  34. D.G. – The sister would just follow. I need to hear sometime how you manage your frequent moves with such a large library (Julie Sulc told me about it). Are you settling down at Hillsdale for awhile? Last time I moved (only 5 miles) it took me a week to box & move my books (collection and resale inventory which never seems to get sold).

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  35. I doubt that I am an abolitionist in the historical sense of the word. I don’t even know the historical abolitionists positions and am not really interested in it. I certainly have greater sympathies to Old Princeton than Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Beecher … I think we’re not communicating. I’ll gaurantee you I don’t hold to perfectionism. If I had to pigeon hole myself I sympathize most with Old School Presbyterianism but I’m strongly committed to Biblical Theology a la Vos, Ridderbos, Kline, etc. I see BT and ST as going hand-in-hand. I like reformedforum.org and TGC drives me crazy. I just think slavery in America was wrong and we’re still paying for it.

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  36. D.G. Hart: The Mrs. and I have enough trouble negotiating leaving and cleaving, I can’t imagine multiplying the problem with other leavers and cleavers.

    RS: Allow me to sort of interpret a Mormon fellow who had multiple wives and it will explain how leaving and cleaving can be done. I might add, however, that Mormons believe that it is the decision of the huband whether to raise the wife from the dead or not. So wives do have a motive in being a good wife. When one wife becomes a bit of a problem you leave that one for a while and go cleave to another one. On the other hand, when one reaches for the cleaver you certainly want to leave her. The leaving and cleaving is easy to do in that situation, but you simply have to change things a little in order to do it.

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  37. mark mcculley: Although I would not recommend what he writes about election, I would commend to you Bruce McCormack;s work on union with Christ.

    RS: I guess I would wonder how a person could be off on election and still have an accurate view of justification and the atonement.

    Mark Mcculley: Mike Horton, agrees with McCormack that “union with Christ” is NOT “more basic” than justification and the atonement. In other words, not all Barhians are alike, and Bruce Mccormack disagrees at many points with the Torrances (and Letham, and Garcia, and Evans).

    RS: I guess it depends on what “more basic” might mean in this context. Union with Christ is the basis on which God can be just and declare a sinner just (justify). The work of Christ in life and on the cross is what makes union and justification possible as He earned a perfect righteousness and paid a price that guaranteed that the elect would be saved in all aspects.

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  38. Mark, can we really have “an abolitionist view that is not shocked by evil”? I mean, the very term itself seems to imply the sort of absolutism that has a hard time conceiving that the poor we will always have with us. But there will always be the poor, the hungry, the enslaved, the slaughtered, the used and abused. In that sense, abolitionism didn’t really abolish as much as its ethos suggests. It may have outlawed certain things, but the evils persist. And so the echo of perfectionism still rings—no matter how many old school names and institutions and guarantees get dropped.

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  39. Like I tried to say above I don’t know much of anything about abolitionism. All I was trying to say is that as Christians we should stand for justice and righteousness even though we know that evil will not be eliminated in the cultural realm.

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