J. (John) Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was an important leader during the 1920s and 1930s in what emerged as the “Fundamentalist-Modernist” controversy, which significantly affected American Protestant Christianity and its churches. He was a thoroughly committed Reformed Christian, a New Testament scholar, whose writings and influence were substantial. Machen broke with his academic home, Princeton Theological Seminary, and was instrumental in establishing Westminster Theological Seminary (1929; Philadelphia), which sought to continue the theology of “Old Princeton”—the tradition especially marked by Charles Hodge and Benjamin B. Warfield.
But Machen was a complicated figure. This sterling biography by Richard E. Burnett focuses on Machen’s intellectual and formative development through his student years at Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University followed by time at German universities—Göttingen and Marburg. Machen came to join the faculty of Princeton Seminary, from which he had graduated, and faced numerous challenges and decisions as he taught Greek and then the New Testament.
Burnett’s close study of Machen is thoroughly grounded in Machen’s writings as well as paying substantial attention to Machen’s private correspondence. Burnett sets Machen’s life and thought in “a wider cultural, ecclesial, political, intellectual, and academic context” (3) than two other significant biographies: Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (1954) and Darryl G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (1994). Burnett focuses on Machen’s “first forty years, 1881–1921, rather than his last fifteen years” (3) in exquisite detail.
This granular look at Machen’s development leads Burnett to emphasize the importance of his struggles as he was transformed from a “modernist to an antimodernist” (3). Machen is known for his book, Christianity and Liberalism (1923) in which he argued that liberal theology—and historic Christianity are two different religions. “Modernism” as a movement to interpret Christianity in light of modern knowledge and associated with Liberal Theology became, says Burnett, “more subtle than many have realized.” In many ways, here, Burnett argues that “Machen remained a modernist for many years, ironically, and contrary to all his interpreters until now” (4).
Machen’s positive experiences in European universities led him to be mightily impressed with approaches to New Testament studies and biblical criticism, represented by scholars such as Wilhelm Herrmann and Adolf Jülicher. This was to shape Machen’s outlook on American education and theological education. Machen supported family friend Woodrow Wilson, who, as President of Princeton University, sought to modernize Princeton and to emphasize scientific approaches. When Machen joined the Princeton Seminary faculty, he had a strong interest in raising the seminary’s educational standards to be more “scientific” and modern—a “new Princeton.” Burnett describes Machen’s paths—accompanied by doubts and decisions along his way.
Broadly, from Machen’s arrival at Princeton in 1902 and through later years, Machen was “more sympathetic to the ideals of the New Princeton than he was to the legacy of Old Princeton” (530). Machen wrote an essay (1906) which expressed hope that the American universities would flourish and make “great scientific progress.” But by fall 1921, his “hope” had been transformed since he recognized a “tremendous defection” within American universities. In his theological setting as a professor in Princeton Seminary, Burnett notes that “as much as he came to admire and defend Old Princeton, Machen never agreed with its strictures against higher criticism” (536).
Machen argued that “the student of the New Testament should be primarily an historian.” This was displayed in his The Origin of Paul’s Religion and The Virgin Birth of Christ. To combat speculation and subjectivist interpretations, Machen focused “almost entirely on formulating arguments affirming the historicity of the events recorded in the New Testament” (557). He argued that “Paul’s religious life required not only description but explanation by historians as historians—and the only possible explanation was a supernatural one.” Yet this “went too far for most historians” (558).
Though “Machen had little influence on universities or his own church, the Presbyterian Church USA,” his witness “did not go unnoticed” (558). Machen’s theological critiques also led him to “a broader cultural critique” against “the dangers of a wider phenomenon he and many others referred to as ‘modernism.’” This would be expressed in “various threats to civil and religious liberty in America” to feature “an increasingly centralized and bureaucratic state and the dangers of its hegemony over the church and draconian control over other spheres, especially education” (559). This led Machen to found an Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in 1933. When the church’s General Assembly ordered it to cease operations and those associated with it to renounce their affiliation, and for presbyteries to initiate disciplinary proceedings against those who would not do so—Machen refused and was suspended from the Presbyterian ministry.
Machen left his post at Princeton Seminary, emphasizing that “a theological seminary is an institution of higher learning whose standards should not be inferior to the highest academic standards that anywhere prevail.” His vision—and hope—was that in “‘an age of specialization, specialists in the Bible’ is what Westminster Seminary will endeavor to produce” (562). At the Seminary’s first convocation, Machen announced that Princeton Seminary was “dead” and that Westminster would “endeavor by God’s grace to continue that tradition unimpaired.” (563).
Burnett’s masterful study enables us to hear Machen’s concerns—in his own words—and in words he shared about many topics in his private correspondence. Machen was a faithful correspondent with his mother in Baltimore and held the family’s pastor, Dr. Harris Kirk, in highest regard as he did his Princeton Seminary colleague William Park Armstrong. Fascinatingly, Burnett indicates that “it does not appear that he used the term ‘inerrancy’ while at Princeton” (518). Interesting throughout are Machen’s evolving views of B.B. Warfield.
We are greatly indebted to Richard Burnett for his dedication and long labors to bring new insights on Machen. His work will be influential in future assessments and provides important new understandings of this influential figure.
