J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Speaker A: Chapter 9 Daily Life. The distance from

Speaker B: Machen’s apartment to the seminary building was

Speaker A: only a slight bit longer than the

Speaker B: distance the students walked from their living

Speaker A: quarters to the seminary. But it was diagonal, with reference to Philadelphia’s downtown street pattern. The student walk was straight up Pine Street.

Machen’s life was lived under constant pressure. In the Westminster days, where could he find time to do all that people

Speaker B: wanted him to do and thought that he ought to do? So when he walked to the seminary,

Speaker C: he tried to use as little time as possible. He would make a left diagonal crossing Chancellor Street, a right diagonal across 13th, and then at the corner of Locust. If the traffic light was green, he would cross Locust. If it was red, he walked on the near side of Locust until the traffic broke, and then diagonally across.

Speaker A: So on. He moved to the seminary in the

Speaker C: same pattern, the logic of which was to never stop moving, but to keep going on the side of the street he was on until traffic allowed him to cross.

Speaker A: He usually arrived slightly out of breath

Speaker C: just in time for the chapel service.

Speaker B: Sometimes he missed chapel and arrived for

Speaker C: his 11 o’ clock class.

Speaker B: The reason for this was that he

Speaker A: felt the only time he could write

Speaker B: was in the morning when he was fresh.

Speaker A: So he devoted the early morning hours

Speaker B: to writing before beginning his classes and the other duties of the day. It was in this way that The Virgin Birth of Christ was finished for publication in 1930.

Speaker A: Machen was a thorough believer in consultation with others.

Speaker B: Before any step of importance was made, he talked the proposal over with friends who might have an opinion in the matter. The consultants were always people who were in basic agreement with his objectives. He expected a frank statement, even though

Speaker A: it might differ from a majority opinion.

Speaker B: Sometimes the consultations were with a succession of individuals, but more often with a group assembled for the purpose. Often the discussion proceeded over the lunch table. A favorite place for such a luncheon was the Drake Hotel on Spruce street at Hicks, a mere block from the seminary.

When there was no group gathering, Doss

Speaker A: often invited an individual to lunch with him. Frequently it was the registrar who was

Speaker B: easily available, since he spent most of the day in his tiny office in the seminary building.

Speaker A: In the early afternoon of a usual

Speaker B: day, Doss would appear at the office of a public stenographer in the Otis Building on the northwest corner of Sansom and 16th Streets.

Speaker A: Her name was Grace L. Darragh, a

Speaker B: member of the Episcopal Church.

Speaker A: She must have devoted nearly one half of her time to Machen’s work. She understood and enjoyed him. The current file of his correspondence was

Speaker B: kept in her office.

Speaker A: When his mail arrived at Chancellor hall

Speaker B: in the morning, he read it and

Speaker A: stuffed the file of letters to be answered into the left hand pocket of his overcoat.

Speaker B: When he started for the seminary, now

Speaker A: in Grace Darrow’s office, he dictated the answers. If the answered letter was still needed,

Speaker B: he stuffed it into the right hand pocket of the overcoat next to the volume of the Loeb Classical Library.

Speaker A: Machen had not studied with Basil Gildersleeve in vain. He always carried a lobed volume with him to read in spare moments that were not available for other uses.

Speaker B: Chapter 10 Civil Liberties 1 of Machen’s most enduring qualities was his love of and support for the cause of civil liberties. He had spoken and written against the notorious Lusk Laws which were imposed upon New York State by its legislature in the Red hunting days after World War I. He was associating himself with a cause whose advocates were often of entirely different theological convictions than his own. Henry Sloane Coffin, for example, was one of them. But that did not deter him. He judged a cause by its righteousness, not by its defenders.

The regulation of pedestrian traffic on the streets and sidewalks of a city by the use of traffic lights annoyed him. He looked upon it as a diminution of individual liberties, which of course it is the use of both lights and bells for controlling pedestrians in Los Angeles, and he found demeaning. He hated to walk in that city. When an ordinance to compel observance of traffic lights by pedestrians and to confine them to recognized street crossings was proposed in the Philadelphia City Council, he appeared at a committee hearing to oppose the passage of the proposal.

During the last months of his life he expressed in an editorial in the Presbyterian Guardian his opposition to the then pending proposed child labor amendment to the United States Constitution. His objection was based upon his conviction that responsibility for the child should not be taken out of the hands of his parents and given to the State. This would subvert the divine ordinance concerning the training and education of the child. Because of this parental responsibility, he favored the support and use of parent controlled schools. He was happy to see this cause emphasized in the Christian Reformed Church.

These examples all illustrate his high opinion of the value of the individual and his convictions concerning the importance of allowing the institution set up by God for the purpose of performing certain functions to

Speaker A: carry out these functions without hindrance.

Speaker B: One of the areas where Machen was most completely misunderstood by his contemporaries was related to these convictions at the close of World War I, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United states became effective. The congressional legislation to enforce the amendment which prohibited the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages, was climaxed by the Volstead act, named for a representative who introduced it.

Machen was a ministerial member of the Presbytery of New Brunswick of the Presbyterian Church in the USA it was proposed that the Presbytery adopt a resolution urging the government to strictly enforce the Volstead Act. It was Machen’s conviction that an action of that nature was outside the powers of of the Church. It was the duty of the state to enforce its laws, and it was outside the powers of the Church to tell it how to do so. So Machen voted no on the resolution. From that time on he was represented as a friend and supporter of the brewing and distilling industries.

Not only was he falsely accused of encouraging the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but but it was also alleged that he derived income from investments in the capital stocks of firms producing beverage alcohol.

Speaker A: He had no such investments, nor had

Speaker B: his father had such before him. He verified this last named fact in an endeavor to discover where the rumor could have started. In any case, it had no basis in fact, but it was repeated on countless occasions and even in the classrooms of the Harvard Divinity School until the professor was given better information by a student years after Machen’s death.

Speaker A: Chapter 11 BB Warfield Machen had tremendous admiration for some of his predecessors and colleagues under whom he had studied and with whom he was later associated in teaching at Princeton. Francis Landy Patton had been the president of Princeton College and was president of the seminary. The office was created for him as a compliment when he was invited to return to the seminary from his tour of duty as president of the college and university. He occupied the chair of Philosophy of Religion. Machen admired his stalwart defense of the Christian faith and the ability with which he presented it.

Machen therefore regretted all the more deeply his concession of some ground on the doctrine of infallibility of Scriptures in the published version of those lectures, which appeared in 1928 under the title Fundamental Christianity. The invitation to Machen to teach at Princeton Seminary was initiated by the young professor of New Testament, William Park Armstrong, of the class of 1897, only eight years ahead of Machen. Armstrong’s abilities have been discussed on an earlier page.

Here it is of importance to note that Machen’s admiration for and loyalty to Armstrong made him willing to remain in an assistant professor’s chair in the Department of New Testament for over 14 years. The greatest admiration of all, however, was kept for Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield Even to an ignoramus, Warfield was an impressive figure. A University freshman walking down Mercer street

Speaker B: would see two tall, striking figures pass

Speaker A: him, enveloped in black overcoats and moving at a lively step. The freshman was impressed with the vigor, the determination, the solidity of the heavier one with the florid face and the most lively step. This was B.B. warfield. Warfield was the hero of the faith to Machen’s generation. Like Machen, he had found his mitier rather more slowly than some finding it. He carried it out superbly. He did not write a new systematic theology. He did not need to. What he did do was to defend the elements of the Reformed doctrinal system when they were attacked in a stream of articles. They were written for periodicals, for dictionaries, for encyclopedias, as book reviews.

Even today they make thrilling reading. After Warfield’s death, the most important were published in a series of 10 volumes. When they went out of print, a five volume set containing something like two thirds of the material was published by the Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. In addition, two more volumes of shorter writings have recently appeared.

Warfield’s writings are today in far greater demand than at the time of his death. His articles are exciting because they are executed with such accuracy that such thoroughness and such comprehensiveness there is no doubt about their meaning. Warfield made his thought clear.

While Warfield succeeded A.A. hodge as professor of didactic and polemic theology at Princeton Seminary, he did not long succeed him as one of the managing editors of the Presbyterian Review. Charles Hodges, Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review had been a distinctively Princeton organ from the day of its first publication in 1825 until it ended with volume 43 in 1871.

The Presbyterian Review was owned by six theological seminaries of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the Senior managing editor was Charles Augustus Briggs of Union Theological Seminary. Warfield became the junior managing editor of the volume for 1889. He immediately found himself uncomfortable working so closely with Briggs as this situation required.

The Presbyterian Review ceased publication with the last number for 1889. Warfield began plans for a quarterly under his control which would be loyal to the infallible Scriptures. Associate editors were appointed from each of the seminaries, which had been represented by by faculty members on the editorial staff of the Presbyterian Review, but Warfield’s was the directing voice. It was named the Presbyterian and Reformed review and published 13 volumes.

In 1903 it was succeeded by the Princeton Theological Review, whose editors were members of the faculty of the Princeton Theological Seminary. The old Princeton Review of Charles Hodges Day was back in modern form in a journal which was responsible only to Princeton.

The active managing editor of it became, in due course, Oswald T. Alice, one of Machen’s classmates in Princeton Seminary. Alice was a native of the Philadelphia area and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He pursued his theology at Princeton and entered the field of Old Testament. After graduate work at Princeton, he spent 3 1/2 years of residence at the of Berlin and secured his PhD in 1913 under Friedrich Delitzsch and Eduard Saschau. At that time already an instructor in Semitic theology in the seminary at Princeton, he became an assistant professor in 1922.

From 1918 on, however, he was the editor of the Princeton Theological Review, acting for the whole faculty. He loyally and effectively performed this colossal chore until, in 1929, the seminary was reorganized by the General assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the Princeton Theological Review came to an end with the issue for July 1929.

When the Westminster Theological Journal began publication in November 1938, its editors felt that they were in spirit and in fact carrying on the work which had begun with Charles Hodges Biblical Repertory and had suffered interruption in spirit from time to time, but was now seeing a further extension of its great mission.

Chapter 12 Germany and Mountains Chapter 12 Machen and Mountains Machen’s period of study in Germany was of great importance to him. Although he finally concluded that Christianity was not defensible on the platform of Wilhelm Hermann or of the other German professors under whom he studied, he found the experience of being a student in Germany a highly valuable one. In his Westminster Seminary years he encouraged students who wish to pursue graduate study beyond the regular theological course to pursue these studies in Germany. He gave two reasons for this. German was the language par excellence of theological study and discussion. It could be acquired more easily in Germany itself in the presence of the living language than anywhere else.

In the second place, the spirit and method of the German theologian could be better understood if observed firsthand by the student. It is usually difficult for an American student to realize that a theological treatise by a German researcher is often presented for the judgment and criticism of his peers, not as a final statement of truth open to attack only by men of ill will. This becomes more apparent on the scene in Germany.

Machen entered with excitement and vigor into the university life in Marburg and and later in Gottingen. There is still extant a large photograph of a reunion of members of the Burschenschaft Germania in which Machen appears in the regalia of the Burschenschaft along with the German members. He enjoyed the seriousness and the humor of the German university life professors who scheduled their lectures, as did some in Gottingen, at 7 o’ clock in the morning in the hopes that no student would appear amused him.

Mountaineering became one of Machen’s great enjoyments. In his earlier years he climbed in the Dolomites and became fascinated by the techniques of rock climbing. He came to know the area and the people so well that one of his greatest regrets in connection with the treaties that followed World War I was the cession to Italy of a large block of territory in the mountain region. Much of it was territory that had been Austrian for a long time and whose inhabitants were largely German speaking. The session seemed unfair to Machen. To him, justice was more important than diplomacy. It was a principle for which he had the highest regard.

In a later year, after World War I, Magen climbed the Matterhorn. It was a strenuous work for him, but intense joy also. The thrill of honest effort and visible

Speaker B: success was a pleasure.

Speaker A: Above all, the mountain was a reminder of the good hand of God. He brought back with him several large photographs of the mountain, one or two which graced the walls in Westminster Theological Seminary to the present day. The last climbing of his life was done in the Canadian Rockies in the summer before his death. They did not thrill him as the Tyrolean and Swiss efforts had done, but though there were not the sharp contrasts of the Alps, they were eminently worthwhile.