Category: J. Gresham Machen

Machen Day (on the Julian Calendar almost)

Published on by D. G. Hart12 Comments

Celebrations of Machen’s birthday (July 28, 1881) took me to an undisclosed location where Internet access was impossible. In the spirit of jaywalking, limited government, and Reformed theology, here is Machen on friendship:

Now I know perfectly well that friendships cannot be made to order — it is far too subtle a thing for that: it has its roots too deep down in the human soul. All that we an do is to remove obstacles that may stand in its way.

The first of such obstacles — and one that stands in the way not only of intimate friendship but also of all Christian intercourse — is intolerance. I am not speaking so much of intolerance for different views on quest of theology — though where there is a real religious devotion to Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of the World, tolerance is certainly a virtue — but rather of intolerance for different ways of giving expression to the common Christian faith. One man can give day and hour of his conversion, and loves to have the name of Jesus always on his lips; to another, Christian experience seems a deep and holy mystery, which must not be breathed except to sympathetic ears. One can conceive of no Christian activity other than that of preaching the gospel, and regards as part of the wisdom of this world which is foolishness with God the researches of the Christian scholar; another is filled with a deep longing for knowledge as to the way things actually happened in the time of Christ and the apostles, and is inclined to look rather askance upon the more emotional temperament of the evangelists. To one, Christianity seems a thing that is diametrically opposed to the arts; another loves to give his faith poetical expression, to bring it into some kind of connection with literature. This diversity will be a stumbling block until we remember Paul’s words about diversity of gifts but the same Spirit. We must learn to thank God that he did not make all men alike — especially that he did not make all men like us. Let us do our own work, in the special sphere and in the special way for which our gifts may fit us; but let us not disparage the work of that other man of entirely different habits of thought. Christ came to save not only the ignorant man but the scholar; not only the scholar but the ignorant man. Let us thank God that he raises up various instruments to accomplish his infinitely various work. (“The Christian and Human Relationships,” 427-28)

Golden Oldie (part three)

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

From Make War No More?: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of J. Gresham Machen’s Warrior Children

J. Gresham Machen may not be the gold standard for twentieth-century Reformed orthodoxy but he does stand out not only in every account of American Presbyterianism but in most accounts of religion in United States as arguably the most important defender of historic Christianity. Some of the reasons are circumstantial. Machen happened to be teaching at a seminary, Princeton, that was firmly linked to the Protestant establishment and that had a long history of educating conservatives in other denominations. This placed Machen at the center of a the fundamentalist controversy when it erupted in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. with support and admiration from non-Presbyterian conservatives. If he had been teaching at Columbia Seminary in South Carolina or at Wheaton College, the reporters who covered the religion beat in America would likely have been less interested than in a Princeton professor. Other reasons for Machen’s reputation stem from those attributes he brought to bear in his circumstances. His writings show remarkable acumen, courage, and even fairness to his opponents. In addition, Machen carried on in his battles with liberalism for the better part of two decades and, not being content with celebrity or individual effort, recognized the importance of establishing institutions to sustain a Reformed witness. As a man of his times and a person who distinguished himself from his contemporaries, Machen was, in the words of the novelist, Pearl Buck, “worth a hundred of his fellows who, as princes of the church, occupy easy places and play their church politics and trim their sails to every win, who in their smug observance of the convention sof life and religion offend all honest and searching spirits.” That is why Buck, whom Machen had opposed, wished that he had lived longer so he could “go on fighting them.”

Yet, for all of Machen’s accomplishments, the verdict on his efforts has been mixed even among conservative Presbyterians and evangelicals. Much of the discomfort with Machen surrounds his flair for controversy. Of course, critics such as Robert Moats Miller, the biographer of Harry Emerson Fosdick, might be expected to focus on the unflattering aspects of Machen’s career. In fact, Machen’s combativeness was so extreme for Miller that he could, without qualification or fear of misinterpretation, in a respectable academic journal refer to Machen as “quite loony.” Ernest R. Sandeen, one of the first American historians to give fundamentalism an even-handed inquiry would not let his impartiality extend to Machen whose belligerency was supposedly characterized by “perverse obstinacy.”

But when scholars with ecclesial ties to Machen demonstrate a similar unease with his combativeness, the problem is particularly grave. On the fiftieth anniversary of Machen’s death, Mark A. Noll, then an elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, observed that the cost of Machen’s contentiousness was “large.” He “undermined the effectiveness of those Reformed and evangelical individuals who chose to remain at Princeton Seminary, with the Presbyterian mission board, and in the Northern Presbyterian Church.” Furthermore, according to Noll, Machen “left successors ill-equipped to deal with the more practical matters of evangelism, social outreach, and devotional nurture.” George M. Marsden, in a piece for Princeton Seminary Bulletin expressed similar reservations to Noll’s about Machen’s “cantankerousness.” Even though Marsden was a son of the OPC and his father had been a prominent official in the OPC and at Westminster Seminary, he still could not warm up to Machen’s propensity to fight. Marsden conceded that Machen’s critique of liberalism had merit, but he “had a personality that only his good friends found appealing, and he stood for a narrow Old School confessionalism and exclusivism that many people today find appalling.”

One last example of an Orthodox Presbyterian who could not stomach Machen’s combativeness is John R. Frame, for many years a professor at Westminster (in Philadelphia and at California) and a minister in the OPC. In his book, Evangelical Reunion Frame indicated his discomfort with the militancy that had characterized the OPC since its founding, and more recently in his infamous article, “Machen’s Warrior Children,” he registered a complaint similar to Noll and Marsden: “The Machen movement was born in the controversy over liberal theology.” “I have no doubt that Machen and his colleagues were right to reject this theology and to fight it,” Frame added. “But it is arguable that once the Machenites found themselves in a ‘true Presbyterian church’ they were unable to moderate their martial impulses. Being in a church without liberals to fight, they turned on one another.”

Aside from the merits of these assessments, the verdicts of Noll, Marsden, and Frame all point to a curious phenomenon among those in the second generation of Orthodox Presbyterians – that is, an unwillingness to fight for the Reformed faith combined with a strong dose of theological and ecclesiastical pacifism. None of these scholars thought Machen was wrong to oppose liberalism per se even if each person might assess the strength’s of Machen’s critique differently. But beyond the errors that liberalism posed, like many who were associated with the institutions that Machen founded – the OPC, Westminster Seminary, and the Presbyterian Guardian – these scholars were unprepared to go. Combating liberalism, then, was apparently acceptable because it was obviously wrong. But opposing errors among evangelical or Reformed Christians was apparently unacceptable for many in the second generation. Indeed, the views of Noll, Marsden, and Frame were not unusual among conservative Presbyterians during the 1970s and 1980s. In the OPC particularly, the reasons for contending for the Reformed faith looked increasingly pointless and the church sought ways to escape its rut, first by seeking a merger with the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, and then with the Presbyterian Church in America. In less than forty years, the fight had left the OPC and with its departure had come reassessments of Machen, his role in the controversies of the 1920s and 1930s, and even his legacy.

Lutherans Did Not Spook Machen

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

Thanks to Gene Veith for the reminder:

Moreover, even among those who, unlike the Roman Catholic Church, hold that the Bible is not only an infallible rule of faith and practice but the only infallible rule of faith and practice, there have been great differences of opinion as to what the Bible teaches.

These differences do not concern merely one or two small details, but they are so extensive that they have led to the establishment of various systems of doctrine, each of which, be it remembered, claims to be the system taught in the Bible.

The Lutheran system is one system; the Arminian system, widely held in the Methodist churches until it gave place to the completely destructive Modernism which generally holds sway there now, is another; the Reformed system (often called, chiefly by its opponents, the Calvinistic system) is still another.

Which of these systems of doctrine, which of these ways of interpreting the Bible, does the ordination pledge require ministers and elders and deacons in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to hold?

There can really be no doubt about the answer to that question. The ordination pledge requires the candidates to hold distinctly the Reformed or Calvinistic system. That is the system which is set forth with a clearness which surely leaves nothing to be desired in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, which are the Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Be it noticed that the candidates do not subscribe to the Reformed system of doctrine merely as one allowable system among many allowable systems. They do not even merely subscribe to it as the best system. But they subscribe to it as the system that is true.

Being true, it is true for everyone. It is true for Methodists and Lutherans just as much as Presbyterians, and we cannot treat as of no moment the differences which separate us from Methodists and Lutherans without being unfaithful to the Word of God.

Does that mean that we cannot have Christian fellowship with our Methodist or our Lutheran brethren? It means nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we can have very precious Christian fellowship with them.

At that point I want to utter a word of personal testimony. I just want to say that in these struggles of the last few years against blatant unbelief in the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., one of the most precious gifts that God has given me––and I have no doubt but that many of those with whom I have been associated would say the same thing- has been the Christian fellowship that I have enjoyed with many of my Lutheran brethren, especially those of the “Missouri Synod.” How often, when I have felt tempted to be discouraged, has some message come to me from them bidding me be of good courage and remember that the battle is the Lord’s! How often have I in turn rejoiced when I have thought of the way in which that noble Church [I mean the Missouri Synod] cultivating Christian learning at its great Concordia Seminary and bringing up its people truly in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, has stood firmly against the unbelief and indifferentism of the day!

Will those brethren be offended if they read what I have written regarding my devotion to the Reformed Faith and my belief that it is the system of doctrine taught in God’s Word?

I feel rather sure that they will not. You see, one of the things that unite me so closely to them is that they are not indifferentists or interdenominationalists, but are profoundly convinced that it is necessary to hold with all our souls to whatever system of doctrine God’s Word teaches.

I wish indeed that they were adherents of the Reformed Faith, as they no doubt wish that I were a Lutheran. But I stand far closer to them than I should stand if they held the differences between the Reformed and the Lutheran system to be matters of no moment, so that we could proceed at once to form an “organic union” based upon some vague common measure between the two great historic branches of the Protestant Church.

New Year's Sobrieties

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

In observance of the seventy-seventh anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s death (Jan. 1, 1937), what follows is an excerpt from a Westminster Seminary commencement address (1931) that reflects a measure of sympathy for an otherworldly Roman Catholicism that embodied it in significant cultural expressions, and has the added benefit of exposing the provincialism of evangelical Manhattanophiles.

About one week ago I stood on the one hundred and second story of the great Empire State Building in the very city of New York. From there I looked down upon a scene like nothing else upon this earth. I watched the elevated trains, which from that distance seemed to be like slow caterpillars crawling along the rails; I listened to the ceaseless roar of the city ascending from a vast area to that great height. And I looked down upon that strange city which has been created on Manhattan Island within the last five or ten years — gigantic, bizarre, magnificently ugly. It seemed like some weird, tortured imagination of things in another world. I came down from that building very greatly impressed.

But as I reflected upon what I had seen, there came into my mind the memory of other buildings that I had contemplated in the course of my life. I thought of an English cathedral rising from the infinite greenness of some quiet cathedral close and above the ancient trees. I thought of the west facade of some continental cathedral, produced at a time when Gothic architecture was not what it is today, imitative and cold and dead, but a living expression of the human soul; when every carving in every obscure corner, never perhaps to be seen by human eye, was an act of worship of Almighty God.

As I revived these memories, certain thoughts came into my mind. The modern builders, I thought, can uplift the body; they uplifted my body in express elevators twelve hundred and forty feet in record time. But whereas the modern builders, in an age of unbelief, can uplift thee body, the ancient builders, in an age of faith, could uplift the soul. As one stands before the tower of a medieval cathedral — with one century laying the foundation there below, another century contributing its quota in the middle distance, and another century bringing the vast conception to its climax in a spire greater than the twelve hundred and forty feet of the Empire State Building; one is uplifted not by some rebellious tower of Babel seeking to reach unto heaven by human pride, but rather on the wings of faith, up and up until one seem to stand in the very presence of the infinite God.

I am no medievalist, my friends; and I do not want you to be medievalists. I rejoice with all my heart in the marvelous widening of our knowledge of this mysterious universe that has come in modern times; I rejoice in the wonderful technical achievements of our day. I trust that you, my brethren will never fall into the “Touch not, taste not, handle not” attitude which Paul condemned in his time; I hope you will never fall into that ancient heresy of forgetting that this is God’s world and that neither its good things nor its wonders should be despised by those upon whom, through God’s bounty, they have been bestowed. I trust that you will consecrate to God not an impoverished man, narrowed in interests, narrowed in mind and heart, but a man with all God-given powers developed to the full.

Moreover, I cherish in my soul a vague yet glorious hope — the hope of a time when these material achievements, instead of making man the victim of his own machines, may be used in the expression of some wondrous thought. There may come a time when God will send to the world the fire of genius, which he has taken from it in our time, and when he will send something far greater than genius — a humble heart finding in his worship the highest use of all knowledge and of all power. There may come a time when men will wonder at their former obsession with these material things, when they will see that these modern inventions in the material realm are in themselves as valueless as the ugly little bits of metal type in a printer’s composing room, and that they true value will be found only when they become the means of expressing some glorious poem. (“Consolations in the Midst of Battle,” Selected Shorter Writings, 203-205)

Where Did He Learn that Evangelicalism Is the Same as Presbyterianism?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

When I read Pete Enns on evangelicalism, I sense that he thinks of it as if it were the PCA (or the OPC), that these are really “evangelical” denominations. That is, he sees in evangelicalism a narrowness and uniformity that would make sense if, as Roger Olson sees the world, Reformed Protestants really did dominate evangelical institutions or as if Edwards and Whitefield were still the dominant flavor and Finney, New School Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Baptists, dispensationalists, charismatics, and even Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers never happened. Enns also seems to think that evangelicalism actually has mechanisms admission and discipline (though he’s not in favor of the latter) that denominations have. He reflects an attitude that was dominant at Westminster Seminary in the 1980s and 1990s when administrators and faculty were in active pursuit of an evangelical niche in the seminary market. (How exactly Westminster, the seminary that Machen the separatist founded, was going to compete either with Gordon-Conwell or Fuller was a mystery.) That attitude took a significant turn during the Enns controversy. But Enns himself does not seem to have abandoned it. He recently wrote:

A common characteristic of Evangelical ecclesiology is the view, either explicit or implicit, that Evangelicalism is in some meaningful sense the clearest and most faithful expression of the Christian faith—which implies it is the version God most approves of. Other traditions are often looked down upon as either compromising “the clear teaching of Scripture” or lacking in some other crucial way.

The challenge to maintain some sort of Evangelical identity amid ecumenical discussions is a real one, but not necessarily impossible to pull off. How that might work itself out is not for me to say, but, in our ever-shrinking world, Evangelicalism cannot afford to be seen as anything other than in serious dialogue with other Christians communions. The global Christian faith must work toward a deep unity in basics amid diversity of various local and ecclesiastical traditions.

Evangelicalism is not a church and has no ecclesiology. Hello. And that is both its genius and its curse. It can keep an institution like Wheaton College going even while its boundaries ever shift to incorporate those who have Jesus in their hearts. It’s experience, not Scripture; it’s experience period. What’s the church?

This means that evangelicalism is precisely the ecumenical conversation for which Enns longs. He has found his home. The dialogue and openness are happening all around him. And yet, he keeps thinking that evangelicals are out to get him in the same way that conservative Presbyterians took issue with his views on Scripture.

His desire for “Openness to Different Ecclesiastical Traditions” should include a willingness on his part to let Presbyterian Church Americans or Orthodox Presbyterians to be exactly what they are — communions of Reformed Protestants. If he’d regard evangelicalism as loose and conservative Presbyterians as narrow, he could revel in the melting pot that evangelicalism is. And if he did that, he might understand that the OPC and the PCA are not really evangelical (since they cannot incorporate evangelicalism’s girth). And that might also allow Enns to recognize that he was always an evangelical who was not a good fit at an institution founded (even if confused about) to be Reformed.

What Machen Should Have Said

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

About the value of Christian education (if he were a neo-Calvinist):

This, then, is the point. The war between Christ and Satan is a global war. It is carried on, first, in the hearts of men for the hearts of men. Through preaching and teaching in the church and in the home, through the witness borne individual men everywhere, the allegiance of men is turned away from Satan to Christ. But the warfare is also carried on where you might least expect it. It is carried on in the field of reading and writing and arithmetic, in the field of nature study and history. At every point Satan seeks boys and girls, as well as men and women to take the attitude that he got Eve and Adam to take at the beginning of history. Everywhere and at every point Satan’s theme-song is: “Let’s be broad-minded; at the beginning of our research your hypothesis about God’s creating and directing the course of history is as good as mine and mine is as good as yours. Now let’s
be open-minded and find out from the facts, whose hypothesis fits reality.”

And now the reason why we are willing as Christian believers in general, and as Christian parents in particular, to sacrifice so largely for the sake of having Christian schools is that we want our children with us to see the vision of the all-conquering Christ as he wrests the culture of mankind away from Satan and brings it to its consummation when the new heavens and the new earth on which righteousness shall dwell, at last appears.

We would have our young men and women become true soldiers under Christ as with him they go conquering and to conquer every domain of life for Christ. When they thus become good soldiers of Christ, they will be free and be truly themselves. They will share in the trophies which Christ wrests from Satan’s power: “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:22) (Cornelius Van Til, Essays on Christian Education)

Well, maybe Van Til would not have been so antithetical in testimony before Congress. But since neo-Calvinists keep telling us that religion must not be cordoned off behind the church parking lot fence, that dualism is anathema, that we need more religion in public, I wonder why it would wrong to think that Van Til would have said this in Congress. Not that there is anything with saying this in Congress. It is a free country. But this is clearly not the way Machen chose to address matters of public life, whether education or the Sabbath.

In which case, it is striking how Machen did address the Christian school teachers (in the quotation that neo-Calvinists love to cite). This is how the talk begins (no antithesis, just American politics):

The Christian school is to be favored for two reasons. In the first place, it is important for American liberty; in the second place, it is important for the propagation of the Christian religion. . . . In the first place, then, the Christian school is important for the maintenance of American liberty. We are witnessing in our day a world-wide attack upon the fundamental principles of civil and religious freedom. In some countries, such as Italy, the attack has been blatant and unashamed; Mussolini despises democracy and does not mind saying so. A similar despotism now prevails in Germany; and in Russia freedom is being crushed out by what is perhaps the most complete and systematic tyranny that the world has every seen.

But exactly the same tendency that is manifested in extreme form in those countries, is also being manifested, more slowly but none the less surely, in America. It has been given an enormous impetus first by the war and now by the economic depression; but aside form these external stimuli it has its roots in a fundamental deterioration of the American people. Gradually the people has come to value principle less and creature comfort more; increasingly it has come to prefer prosperity to freedom; and even in the field of prosperity it cannot be said that the effect is satisfactory.

The result of this decadence in the American people is seen in the rapid growth of a centralized bureaucracy which is the thing against which the Constitution of the United States was most clearly intended to guard.

Machen goes on for several pages to discuss various legislative initiatives at the state and federal level. Still no mention of God, theology, w-w, or the antithesis except the one between liberty and tyranny:

But someone will say, Congress will never in the world be so foolish as that; the amendment does give Congress that power, but the power will never be exercised. Now, my friends, I will just say this: when I listen to an argument like that, I sometimes wonder whether the person who advances it can possibly be convinced by it himself. If these stupendous powers are never to be exercised, why should they be granted? The zeal for the granting of them, the refusal of the framers of the amendment to word the amendment in any reasonably guarded way, show plainly that the powers are intended to be exercised; and certainly they will be exercised, whatever the intention of the framers of the amendment may be. I will tell you exactly what will happen if this amendment is adopted by the states. Congress will pass legislation which, in accordance with the plain meaning of the language, will be quite unenforceable. The exact degree of enforcement will be left to Washington bureaus, and the individual family will be left to the arbitrary decision of officials. It would be difficult to imagine anything more hostile to the decency of family life and to all the traditions of our people. If there ever was a measure that looked as though it were made in Russia, it is this falsely so-called “child-labor amendment” to the Constitution of the United States. In reality, it can hardly be called an amendment to the Constitution. Rather is it the complete destruction of the Constitution; for if human life in its formative period — up to eighteen years in the life of every youth — is to be given to Federal bureaucrats, we do not see what else of very great value can remain. The old principles of individual liberty and local self-government will simply have been wiped out. . . .

Against this soul-killing collectivism in education, the Christian school, like the private school, stands as an emphatic protest. In doing so, it is no real enemy of the public schools. On the contrary, the only way in which a state-controlled school can be kept even relatively healthy is through the absolutely free possibility of competition by private schools and church schools; if it once becomes monopolistic, it is the most effective engine of tyranny and intellectual stagnation that has yet been devised.

For Machen, education was primarily a family matter and it needed protection from the ever-reaching arm of the state:

I believe that the Christian school deserves to have a good report from those who are without; I believe that even those of our fellow citizens who are not Christians may, if they really love human freedom and the noble traditions of our people, be induced to defend the Christian school against the assaults of its adversaries and to cherish it as a true bulwark of the State. But for Christian people its appeal is far deeper. I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of the earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism. If, indeed, the Christian school were in any sort of competition with the Christian family, if it were trying to do what the home ought to do, then I could never favor it. But one of its marked characteristics, in sharp distinction from the secular education of today, is that it exalts the family as a blessed divine institution and treats the scholars in its classes as children of the covenant to be brought up above all things in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Kuyper too feared state overreach and on this they agreed (though I don’t think Machen would have cared for Kuyper’s progressive reforms as prime minister). But when thinking about public life Machen did not wield the antithesis the way that Kuyper and neo-Calvinists do. I suspect that a major difference on this score is that Kuyper, being European and therefore much more philosophical than Americans like Machen, looked at most things philosophically, or he tried to see things whole. Machen, whose background both at home (legal) and in the church (Old School), thought about matters much more as an attorney and so what was legal according to the constitution of something. The U.S. Constitution secured religious freedom. The church had a definite constitution that prescribed its functions and defined its ministry. American constitutionalism may have had a weak philosophical basis (or so I’ve been told since my mind doesn’t really work philosophically). That didn’t trouble Machen. He tried to play by those rules and those rules governed both God’s friends and enemies, at least within the borders of the greatest nation on God’s green earth.

Postscript: for those wondering where Machen defended communists, they need look no farther than his essay, “The Relation between Christians and Jews”:

Tolerance, moreover, means not merely tolerance for that with which we are agreed but also tolerance for that to which we are most thoroughly opposed. A few years ago there was passed in New York the abominable Lusk Law requiring private teachers in any subjects whatever to obtain a state license. It was aimed, I believe, at the socialists, and primarily at the Rand School in New York City. Now certainly I have no sympathy with socialism. Because of its hostility to freedom, it seems to me to be just about the darkest thought that has ever entered the mind of man. But certainly such opposition to socialism did not temper in the slightest degree my opposition to that preposterous law. Tolerance, to me, does not mean merely tolerance for what I hold to be good, but also tolerance for what I hold to be abominably bad. (Selected Shorter Writings, 418-19)

Interesting to see that Machen’s reason for opposition socialism is not the law of God, w-w, the cosmic contest between God and Satan oozing out of 1789, but a love of freedom. But of course, Machen is no libertarian.

Machen Had His Chance and Blew It

Published on by D. G. Hart57 Comments

Or so the neo-Calvinists and theonomists would have us believe. You see, in 1926 Machen testified before Congress as the representatives were deliberating on the formation of the Federal Department of Education. Machen’s testimony is here. What should be noted is that Machen appeared before Congress as a representative of the Sentinels of the Republic, a libertarian organization formed by Massachusetts small government types (this was no Christian Democratic Party). Even though identified as a minister in the Presbyterian Church and a professor of New Testament at Princeton, Machen avoided any attempt to make Christianity the norm for public education, especially when it came to teaching morality in schools. Here is an intriguing exchange:

SENATOR FERRIS: For my own information I wish to ask what you regard as the basic element or elements in moral conduct. Perhaps that is a foolish question.

DR. MACHEN: The basic elements in moral conduct?

SENATOR FERRIS: Yes, sir. What is the basis. I judge from your remarks that experience received minor consideration.

DR. MACHEN: Yes, sir — Well, I am an adherent of a certain religious group. We have our definite notion as to the basis of morality, and it is in my belief altogether a religious one. I intend to proclaim that basis of morality is the will of God as revealed by God, and I am interested in the right of all others to maintain that as the only basis of morality. I belong to what is often called a very strict sect, the Presbyterian Church, but it is a sect which has always been devoted to the principles of liberty; and I am unlike a great many of my fellow citizens — tolerance to me means not only tolerance for that with whichI am agreed, but it means also tolerance for that to which I am most violently opposed.

I was thoroughly opposed, for example, to the Lusk laws in the State of New York which were intended to bring about the closing of the Rand School in the city of New York. I cannot imagine anything more harmful than the Rand School; there is nothing to which I am more opposed, which I think more subversive of morality; and yet I was absolutely opposed to any such law as that. I believe in liberty, and, therefore, when I believe I have a right to proclaim the basis of morality which I think is only in the will of God, I also claim the right for other persons to proclaim whatever else they may hold with regard to it. But to proclaim in our public schools that morality is only the result of human experimentation — “this is the conduct which Uncle Sam has found in the course of American history to be right” — that, I think, is subversive of morality; and I do not believe that anyone can encourage moral conduct in others unless he has first in his own mind the notion of an absolute distinction and not a merely relative distinction between right and wrong.

I do not know whether that at all answers your question.

SENATOR FERRIS: I am just wondering whether there is any such thing as moral conduct in the United States Congress or among the citizens of the United States apart from a distinctively religious basis. I am just wondering whether the public schools have any function in the way of teaching morality which is not distinctively religious in its basic idea.

DR. MACHEN: I think that the solution lies not in a theoretic teaching in the public schools as to the basis of morality, because I do not think you can keep that free from religious questions; but I do hold that a teacher who himself or herself is imbued with the absolute distinction between right and wrong can maintain the moral standing, the moral temper of a public school.

SENATOR FERRIS: Is the ethical culturist ruled out from the consideration of morality in his views and conduct?

DR. MACHEN: I am not ruling out anybody at all, sir — the ethical culturist or anyone else.

SENATOR FERRIS: No; but if religion is the basic element in all morality, then can we have a morality that is not founded on a religious idea?

DR. MACHEN: I myself do not believe that you can have such a morality permanently, and that is exactly what I am interested in trying to get other people to believe; but I am not at all interested in trying to proclaim that view of mine by any measures that involve compulsion, and I am not interested in making the public school an agency for the proclamation of such a view; but I am interested in diminishing rather than increasing the function of the public school, in order to leave room for the opportunity of a propagation of the view that I hold in free conflict with all other views which may be held, in order that in that way the truth finally may prevail.

If Machen had wanted to take every thought captive, if he believed that the United States was founded on biblical teaching, why did he whiff on a softball that is right in a neo-Calvinist’s wheelhouse. Why nothing on no neutrality? Why nothing on the antithesis between the followers of Christ and the followers of Satan? Maybe he was a coward. Or maybe he distinguished between his duties as a churchman and those of a citizen in a republic that gave no preference to any religion.

I wonder if the transformationalists get goosebumps reading this Machen.

Seeing the World through Kuyperian Lenses

Published on by D. G. Hart170 Comments

Speaking of childish notions, when I was a youth my mother told me I should only have Christian friends. She and my father never enforced this policy. But growing up in a fundamentalist home gave me a pronounced wariness of “the world.” It also meant that I tried to fashion my childhood heroes according to pious wishes.

Case in point: Richie Allen. He was the 1964 rookie of the year who played third base for the Philadelphia Phillies. He was my favorite player. Some might say that the Phils provided few options, but Tony Gonzalez, Tony Taylor, and Johnny Callison all had appeal. What set Allen apart was the long ball. He could hit towering homers over the quirky architectural features of Connie Mack Stadium.

To justify my fondness for Allen, I turned him into a Christian. Yes, I truly believed for a good 18 months or so that Richie Allen was a born-again believer. Why? Because I was not supposed to show such admiration for non-Christians. Wonderful solution then to turn Allen into a Christian hero. But that bubble burst during one telecast of a Phillies game when the camera panned the dugout and there sat Richie doing what he did frequently — smoking a cigarette. I was devastated because in my fundamentalist w-w I knew that a Christian did not smoke (or that if they did they were in serious trouble). Up went my first man crush in nicotine-infested smoke. (Not that anyone cares, but I continued to root for Allen and this may have been the beginning of my 2k life where I separated what was common from what is holy.)

Recent comments at Old Life by neo-Calvinists about Machen the tranformationalist (along with Bill Evans’ assessment of 2k) have reminded me of my attempt to make the world fit my conception of it. I don’t deny that Machen had his Kuyperian sounding moments. What the neo-Calvinists have yet to do, though, is actually account for those Old School Presbyterian hours in Machen’s writings. Could there have been a tension between Machen the postmillennial Calvinist and the Old School, amillenial church reformer, the way I experienced cognitive dissonance between my loyalty and love of my Christian parents and my baseball rooting interests? Could — horrors — Machen and Kuyper actually disagree in some important ways, ways that reflect the different trajectories of Old School Presbyterianism and neo-Calvinism? Recent neo-Calvinist sightings at Old Life suggest that no such tension may exist. Abraham Kuyper hung the moon and all Reformed Protestants must follow to his decrees.

This is an odd way to read Machen (though it does seem to fit the w-w pattern of forcing reality into ideal schemes) if only because folks close to Kuyper and his legacy have no trouble spotting important differences between the archbishop of neo-Calvinism and the fundamentalist Machen (at least that’s how neo-Calvinists used to regard him). I posted this before, but Jim Bratt’s comparison of Kuyper to American Presbyterianism is useful for noticing the variety of Reformed Protestantisms:

Put in Dutch Calvinist terms: if forced to choose, Machen would let the Christian cultural task give way to the confessional church; Kuyper would force the confessional church to take up the cultural task. Put in American Presbyterian terms, Kuyper had some strong New School traits where Machen had none. To be sure Kuyper’s predestinarianism was at odds with the New Schools Arminian tints and his movement had a low impetus for “soul-saving,” but his organizational zeal was like Lyman Beecher’s in purpose and scale, his educational purposes at the Free University recalled Timothy Dwight’s at Yale, and his invocation of the “city on a hill” to describe the church’s place in a world recalled the charter image of Puritan New England which was ever the New Schools’ aspiration. In fact Kuyper honored New England as the “core of the American nation” and shared its definition of Christian liberty as a communal opportunity to do the right thing. At that Machen would only shudder. He indicted the “angry passions of 1861″ by which New England trampled on southern rights, and defined Christian liberty as the individual’s protection from the wrong thing. When put to the test, Machen endorsed the political model of Thomas Jefferson. At that Kuyper would only shudder back. (“Abraham Kuyper, J. Gresham Machen, and the Dynamics of Reformed Anti-Modernism,” Journal of Presbyterian History Winter 1997 75.4, 254)

Does this prove that Machen didn’t mean what he said to Christian school teachers? Hardly. But it does reflect a historical interpretation that takes into account far more than an isolated quote or two, one that also situates both Kuyper and Machen in particular church and political contexts. And here Bratt is useful again for highlighting the political differences between the two men. In his new biography of Kuyper, Bratt identifies the neo-Calvinist leader with the sort of progressive politics that dominated the Transatlantic world at the beginning of the twentieth century:

For all their differences, however, progressive movements shared three motifs. All yearned for a fresh form of politics to replace decrepit regimes. All felt liberated from the dead hand of laissez-faire orthodoxy to intervene in the economy — at least to blunt the hardest edges of the new industrial order, at most to move toward real “democracy” in economic as well as political life. And all anticipated that these changes would unleash a new personal vitality that would lead (one more crucial assumption) to a more harmonious society. Kuyper shared everyone of these hopes. (Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat, 299)

In contrast, Machen’s politics ran in the exact opposite direction of progressivism. All the major reforms of American Progressives, women’s suffrage, prohibition, child labor reform, public education reform, Machen opposed. The reason was that Machen was a Southern Democrat who took a libertarian line on most political matters, informed by the Southern tradition of States’ Rights and strict construction of the Constitution.

Does that mean that Kuyper is a bad Calvinist or that Machen is one? I frankly suspect that Kuyper would have not doubted Machen’s Calvinism despite his Southern Democratic instincts (or 2k views for their stress on the church as the kingdom of Christ). Kuyper believed that uniformity was the curse of modern life and wrote an essay with that title. Kuyper likely acknowledged what many of his his adherents cannot, namely, that other forms of Calvinism, just as legitimate as Kuyper’s, exist, and that they do not need to be squeezed into a tube of neo-Calvinist uniformity. Does that make Kuyper 2k? David VanDrunen has well answered that question. But it does echo the kind of willingness to tolerate diversity that neo-Calvinists’ most vociferous critics cannot summon.

Seriously?

Published on by D. G. Hart114 Comments

Of course, Old Life is a place where you don’t mess with Machen. So it will come as no surprise that Peter Leithart’s recent objections to Machen’s dying words will receive some vinegary blow back.

It is said that as J. Gresham Machen died, he spoke of the comfort he took in the imputation of Christ’s active obedience, which ensured his standing before God.

I don’t know if that was actually Machen’s dying thought. But leave that to the side. I can see the point, but I can’t help but find this disturbing on two grounds. First, nowhere in the Bible is comfort linked with imputation. The closest analogy is Psalm 32:2, which pronounces a blessing on the one to whom God does not reckon sin. Otherwise, imputation in the full theological sense never plays that role.

Second, when the Bible does talk about comfort, the comfort comes from persons. Sometimes from other humans (e.g., Genesis 24:67), often from God. His faithfulness in the past, His word, His promises for the future, but especially God Himself, the God of all comfort, comforts.

“I am comforted by the imputation of Christ’s active obedience” is doubtless often a circumlocution for “I am comforted by my faithful Lord Jesus who is with me by His Spirit.” But the way we say things matters, and de-personalizing and doctrinalizing comfort can, contrary to the best intentions, distance the suffering from the God who comforts.

Aside from a certain amount of reverence for Machen, can Leithart really be that tone deaf? This has nothing to do with kicking a man when he’s on his death bed. It does have to do with trying to obfuscate a relatively simple Reformed belief (which is what those of us who observed Federal Vision always thought their MO was — to raise enough questions, debate enough definitions, cite enough biblical texts to wear out their opponents).

If you take seriously the guilt of sin and its ongoing influence in the life of the believer, you would be inclined to take great comfort in the active obedience of Christ. As Machen explained (can you believe it, he’s not talking about w-w?):

That covenant of works was a probation. If Adam kept the law of God for a certain period, he was to have eternal life. If he disobeyed he was to have death. Well, he disobeyed and the penalty of death was inflicted on him and his posterity. Then Christ by His death on the cross paid that penalty for those whom God had chosen.

Well and good. But if that were all that Christ did for us, do you not see that we should be back in just the situation in which Adam was before he sinned? The penalty of his sinning would have been removed from us because it had all been paid by Christ. But for the future the attainment of eternal life would have been dependent upon our perfect obedience to the law of God. We should simply have been back in the probation again.

Here we begin to understand why Jesus’ passive obedience is not enough – if divorced from his active obedience. The passive sufferings of Christ discharged the enormous debt we owe, due to our sins and the sin of Adam. In effect, Jesus’ passive obedience alone would bring our account from hopelessly overdrawn back to a zero balance – our debt would be retired. But having our debt retired and our sins forgiven does not get us into heaven; it simply returns us to the starting point. More must be done if we are to gain heaven. Righteousness must be completely fulfilled, either by us or by a representative acting on our behalf.

Moreover, we should have been back in that probation in a very much less hopeful way than that in which Adam was originally placed in it. Everything was in Adam’s favour when he was placed in the probation. He had been created in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. He had been created positively good. Yet despite all that, he fell. How much more likely would we be to fall – nay, how certain to fall – if all that Christ had done for us were merely to remove from us the guilt of past sin, leaving it then to our own efforts to win the reward which God has pronounced upon perfect obedience.

But if you think of faith as faithfulness, baptism as regenerational, and salvation as familial, then the forensic character of Christ’s work might seem like an abstraction.

At the same time, why Leithart thinks Machen de-personalized Christ’s work is beyond me. How much more personal could doctrines be that described what Christ actually endured and did in his bodily existence and death on the cross? “My faithful Lord Jesus who is with me by His Spirit” sure seems to abstract from the Christian what Christ actually did. Then again, figuring out Peter Leithart even if intellectually invigorating has never been easy.

We Are Making a Difference (even if Bill Evans Can't See)

Published on by D. G. Hart553 Comments

The Ecclesial Calvinist tries to correct the historical record by claiming that Machen and Van Til are more transformational (and less 2k) than some think. I do believe that Van Til’s record is mixed since he drank so deeply at the well of neo-Calvinism. At the same time, Van Til’s involvement in the OPC, which was hardly a transformationalist church (just ask Tim Keller), and Van Til’s vigorous work for the church would certainly complicate Evans’ invocation. Not to mention that Evans does not seem to recognize that he is no transformationalist on the order of Van Til’s rhetoric. For instance, Evans features this quotation from Van Til:

He knows that Satan seeks to destroy his Christian culture by absorbing it into the culture of those who are still apostate from Christ. He knows that the whole course of history is a life and death struggle between the culture of the prince of the powers of darkness and his Christ, who has brought life and light into the world. He knows that he must fight the battle for a Christian culture first of all within himself and then with those who seek to destroy his faith and with it all true culture. He knows that the weapons of this warfare between a Christian and the non-Christian culture are spiritual. He would deny the norm of his own culture and be untrue to his own ideal if he descended to the coarse and the uncouth, let alone to the use of physical force, as he engages his foes whom he wants to make his friends and brothers in Christ.

But when it came to the 2012 election, apparently Evans didn’t have this same knowledge:

If human redemption ultimately depends on divine activity at the end of history, then one should not try, as some have put it, to “immanentize the eschaton” in the here and now. Both Jews and Christians learned that lesson long ago as the biblical holy-war tradition was eschatologically conditioned and spiritualized. Jews wisely decided to eschew the apocalyptic impulse of the Jewish Wars in the first and second centuries, and to wait for the messiah to come and set things right. Christians did much the same thing as holy warfare motifs were understood in terms of spiritual conflict in the present and the second advent of Jesus in the future (and yes, I’m quite aware of the post-millennial scenario that achieved some popularity in more culturally optimistic times or recently as an incentive to action among Christian Reconstructionists).

When it comes to theonomy, 2k sounds pretty good to Evans.

Nor was he so confident of what Van Til knew when Evans commented on homosexuality:

It seems to me that there is a lot of soul-searching to be done. To be sure, at this point even a low-key statement of biblical morality comes across as narrow-minded and intolerant, and there is probably not much that can be done about that in the short term. But the problems are more complicated than the substance of biblical morality. First of all, we have come across as hypocritical. American Evangelicalism is, by and large, thoroughly compromised on the issue of heterosexual marriage. . . . Second, we are often perceived as majoring on condemnation rather than compassion. Having lectured every year to undergraduates on the Apostle Paul’s view of homosexuality, I’m convinced that many Evangelicals have tended to misread him in two ways—on the moral status of homosexual behavior and the appropriate response of the church.

That doesn’t sound very every-square-inchish.

But what is oddest about Evans’ recent brief against 2k is the notion that somehow he represents the mainstream of the Reformed tradition (I am not sure one exists since so many different hands and so many different circumstances informed the Reformed churches in so many different lands):

In short, what seems to be emerging is a “Reformed” theology of culture tailored for deeply pessimistic times. Like most theological and historical revisionisms, it is worth discussing. But let’s just not confuse it with the mainstream of the Reformed tradition.

The gasp you may have heard was your vinegary writer when reading a man who is in a secession church — an immigrant one to boot — talking about mainstream Reformed. Evans teaches at Esrkine Theological Seminary, an institution with roots in the original Reformed secession — the Associate Presbytery of 1733 where Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine walked away from the mainstream of the Scottish Kirk (letting goods and kindred go in Luther’s words) for the sake of the gospel and the freedom of the church. Of course, the Reformers had already left the mainstream to pursue reform (and boy did the church need it — still does). But after 1733, secession, or exiting the mainstream, was what various Reformed heroes thought necessary to protect the ministry and integrity of the church. The Afscheiding among the Dutch in 1834 left the national church to be faithful to the Three Forms of Unity. Thomas Chalmers almost a decade later led another secession group out of the Scottish Kirk, this time the Free Church, again to protect the gospel and to reject infidelities in the mainstream churches. Abraham Kuyper in 1886 would reluctantly and mournfully do the same because of the compromises in the Dutch Reformed Church. Rounding out this list was J. Gresham Machen and the OPC’s 1936 break from the PCUSA.

The historical record once again shows that being outside the mainstream is not a bad thing but may actually be what conservative Reformed Protestants and Presbyterians do. It also shows that since the Reformation churchmen and laity have considered the task of the church to be more important than the kind of social good they could accomplish from inside the mainstream churches. They also believed that sacrificing cultural connections and influence was price to be paid for faithfully ministering God’s word.

Which is why Evans other point about 2k being the theology for pessimistic times is odd. Has he not heard? Christians have always lived in pessimistic times. That’s the nature of being aliens and exiles. That’s what happens when you worship in the church militant. Sure, Christians are optimistic about going home to be with their Lord. But they’re not optimistic about making their home here, this side of glory.

And that is why Evans does not seem to be able to recognize that 2kers do want and try to make a difference in this world. The difference is what constitutes difference. 2kers are not impressed, the way Evans appears to be, with political engagement or attempts to win the culture war. 2kers, in fact, know that we are always in a battle and that culture wars often distract from the real warfare which is spiritual and that can only seen by faith and not by sight. But for some reason, the efforts of 2kers to remind the church of its higher calling, to avoid identifying the cause of Christ with “conservative” politics or Western Civilization or the politics of identity, do not impress Dr. Evans.

But maybe J. Gresham Machen will and the words he spoke to future ministers:

Remember this, at least — the things in which the world is now interested are the things that are seen; but the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal. You, as ministers of Christ, are called to deal with the unseen things. You are stewards of the mysteries of God. You alone can lead men, by the proclamation of God’s word, out of the crash and jazz and noise and rattle and smoke of this weary age into the green pastures and beside the still waters; you alone, as minsters of reconciliation, can give what the world with all its boasting and pride can never give — the infinite sweetness of the communion of the redeemed soul with the living God. (Selected Shorter Writings, 205)

When the transformationalist can say that about the ministry of the word compared to the temporal blessings of this life, we can have a conversation.