J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Camden Busey: Welcome to Christ the Center, your weekly conversation of Reformed theology. This is episode number 358. My name is Camden Busey. I’m the pastor of Hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Gray’s Lake, Illinois. Delighted to be back with you today.

We have one of our regulars, Jim Cassidy, who was the organizing pastor at South Austin OPC there in Austin, Texas. Welcome back, Jim. It’s good to talk to you this morning.

Jim Cassidy: As always, good to be here, Camden.

Camden Busey: We have a really fun episode this morning and we’re really excited to speak this morning with James W. Scott. Jim Scott, who is the publications coordinator for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, specifically for the Committee on Christian Education. Welcome to the program, Jim. It’s great to talk to you today.

James Scott: Thanks. I’m glad to be here.

Camden Busey: Jim has written two articles that were recently published in the Westminster Theological Journal, probably well issue volume 74 back in 2012. You can find the first one, which was written Machen’s Lost Work on the Presbyterian Conflict, Part one, the Historical Evidence, and then Part two came out in the issue following, which looks at the literary evidence.

We’re going to talk about J. Gresham Machen. We’re going to talk about Edwin Ryan. We’re going to talk about Ryan’s, well, supposedly Ryan’s book, the Presbyterian Conflict, and a whole host of historical issues surrounding that book, whether or not Machen indeed wrote a book on the Presbyterian conflict and whether or not Edwin Ryan used that in the creation of the book that is published under his name. So it’s kind of an interesting unfolding narrative and story that we’re going to open up today as we look at these two articles from the Westminster Theological Journal.

But before we do mention them, I should say that Christ the Center is listener supported. We do rely on the generous support of all of our listeners to help us produce and distribute all of our programs free of charge. I really encourage you this time of year especially to visit us online. Today at Reformed Forum. We just had our Reform Forum Theology Conference. It was a wonderful time, but it was kind of a loss leader for us.

So we really encourage you to visit us online so that we’re able to continue doing what we love to do and replenish some of our funds so that we can get into some new projects, including Reformed Academy and maybe some even future events we would like to do next year. But we really need your help. I’m not just saying that in vain. Please visit us today@reformforum.org don donate we want to thank everybody for their support of what we do here at Christ the Center and our organization, Reformed Forum. Now, Jim Cassidy, I should ask, what did you think when you first saw these in the Journal?

Jim Cassidy: Yeah, it was kind of one of those moments where you go, well, it’s about time. It was really exciting. So the thing that really wasn’t fair was that at the end of part one, you were kind of left with a. With a cliffhanger.

Because you’re reading all this evidence and you’re starting to see the theory and the thesis developed and proven and supported. And then you get, well, now for. I believe the first was kind of the external circumstantial evidence. And then the second article was the internal documentary type of evidence. And so you’re just like, oh, I gotta wait another six months before the second article comes out. You gotta be kidding me. So when it finally came out, I grabbed it. It was the first article I read.

Camden Busey: Oh, sure.

James Scott: While I was working on this, the Journal instituted a policy of length articles. And this. I had actually submitted it as one article, but it was way too long for their new policy. So I suggested dividing it up into two. And that’s why it came out that way.

Camden Busey: Well, it worked out well. I know Carolyn Weirstra also has a book on or a lengthy article on OPC history with the Penile Conference. I wonder if the same thing happened with her. But yeah, the first part here was roughly 40 pages. Just the first part.

James Scott: Right. Even that’s too long. Yeah.

Camden Busey: However, it nonetheless is all entirely interesting and as it documents in great detail the correspondence between Machen and several others and this story. Could you, Jim, get our people up to speed? What is the general course of events here? What was Machen up to nearing the end of his life? And why has this particular issue become such a controversy?

James Scott: As you know, Machen was very much involved in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and also first Princeton and then Westminster Seminaries and all the issues involving liberalism and eventually the two institutions being the newest new ones being established. But this basically came to an end when Machen was suspended. And the suspension was upheld at the 1936 General assembly of the PCUSA, which finished up at the beginning of June 1936. And then within two weeks, the Presbyterian Church of America, which is now the opc, was established.

And so we get to the middle of June and all the issues had basically been settled, and it was summer, and this is the time when professors would do their. A lot of their writing. And so he basically had until the 1st of October to work on something and the question, well, what was he writing? There’s clear evidence that he was writing something, but there’s no, sorry, say, hard evidence in terms of a manuscript or book or anything or notes.

Camden Busey: Nothing was found.

James Scott: So then he. In October, the seminary classes began again. And then November, there was a second General assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America. And then he was busy with other things, working on another book. And then he died Suddenly of pneumonia, January 1, 1937. And there are snippets of evidence which have been discovered over the decades since then suggesting he was working on a book on the Presbyterian conflict of the 20s and 30s. But there’s no evidence in Machen’s papers to substantiate that.

Camden Busey: And we should say that all of his records, his archives, are they now stored with the OPC they formerly were with the Westminster Library. Is that the case?

James Scott: No, the Machen papers are all in the custody of Westminster Theological Seminary, not the OPC archives.

Camden Busey: I see. Yeah, I knew they were down there. I didn’t know if they had been moved at some point, but that’s helpful. So what got you interested in this project and why did you start to look into studying this particular issue of what Machen was writing there toward the end of his life?

James Scott: I was working, and still am working in the OPC offices. And Don Duff was the stated clerk of the General assembly for quite a number of years. And he and I would talk often about many things and occasionally, maybe two or three times over a 10 or 15 year period, this whole matter came up. And I don’t remember the context, but it was very intriguing to me.

I thought, you know, this would be something that I would enjoy looking into just because it’s a, you know, it’s a mystery. And also I have a great deal of respect for Machen and if I could, right or wrong, let’s say, involving him, I thought that would be worth my efforts.

Camden Busey: Yeah, certainly. It’s certainly an interesting hypothesis and no doubt Don Duff would be aware of it. But also other people have mentioned some of these things, but to this point there hasn’t actually been any collection of evidence or indication that Machen was indeed writing a book on the conflict. And it has perhaps been used by someone else over the years. How did this develop? Did it just go unnoticed for many decades? And how did this become part of the lore of OPC history, although it wasn’t, you know, documented in any way?

James Scott: Well, I think you have to give all the credit to Charlie Denison, who was the historian of the opc. Without him, I don’t think any of this would ever have come to light. He, as historian, or even before he was historian, actually even back to when he was a seminary student, would talk with all the, let’s say, the founding fathers that were still alive of the OPC in the seminary and learn all he could about things, talking with Paul Woolley, others.

One of them was Everett Divaldi. And I think it was in talking with that he first got an inkling that Machen was writing something during those final months of his life. And that planted the suspicion in his mind that something happened. Because just a few years after Machen died, this book came out written by Edwin Ryan with actually the very same title, the Presbyterian Conflict. Could there be a connection between those two things? Certainly.

And then at some point after that, he began to find some documentary evidence that would support this. But by this time, this would be during the 90s, particularly the late 90s, he came down with cancer. That’s Charlie Dennison. And if he had not had cancer, probably he would have investigated this more himself. But then he died in 1999 and there wasn’t anybody to follow up on all the various leads.

Camden Busey: It’s quite the mystery, it’s quite an unfolding tale. And I must say, the way you’ve written it in the journal is really fascinating on how it unfolds and the evidence starts to pile up. I think this might be the closest thing that we get to some sort of a mystery novel in the film theological world. But it’s a wonderful tale and I’m excited to share this with the listeners.

Now you mentioned Everett Divalde and Edwin Ryan and who were they and what were their relationship? What was their relationship to Jay Gresham Machen back in the 30s?

James Scott: Well, Edwin Ryan was Machen’s right hand man, 1936. He was probably the closest person to Machen, both, well, professionally at least. He was also a personal friend. He was the first general secretary for the Committee on Home Missions, 1936-37. And that brought him into connection with Everett Devalde, who was seeking to plant a church in Cincinnati, Ohio. And so they had quite a bit of correspondence back and forth about planning the church there, also establishing the Presbytery of Ohio in 1936. Now, as far as Machen, Everett Davelli was a student of Machen, first at Princeton, then at Westminster. He was very, very interested in Machen’s books. He had autographed copies and he was always praising Machen for his books and showing interest in what was coming out and things of that sort. And that’s how I think he learned what Machen was working on, by just asking Machen, what’s the next book coming out?

Camden Busey: This is before the Internet, obviously, so you would have wanted to pump people for information on future publications. And you certainly was interested. Now, were they students of Machen as well, and did they have other relationships with him outside of the opc? Were they involved with the Westminster Seminary at all?

James Scott: Yes, Ryan was a student of Machen originally. He had come to Princeton Seminary basically to answer his own personal religious questions. He wanted to find what he thought was the best, strongest defense of Christianity. And so he went to Princeton and he became, I guess you could say, a disciple of Machen at that point.

He went off to Germany for a year of study with a fellowship from Princeton, came back. He was an assistant pastor a Presbyterian church in Westfield, I think it was New Jersey. And while he was there, his fundraising talents appeared. He convinced two of the people in that church to donate $1,000. Oh, my each, which in those days was a very large sum. The seminary, of course, was strapped for money, and this was quickly noticed. And he was then hired by the seminary as their field representative, which is to say a fundraiser. And so he served in that capacity for the seminary, but he did other things. He was soon named to the board of trustees, the seminary Machen had a weekly radio program which Ryan organized as well.

Jim Cassidy: Now, the practices of Machen, when it came to writing, as you’re building your case here, there’s some relevant information about when he wrote, where he wrote, clerical assistance, things like that. Could you talk a little bit about how that plays into the whole story?

James Scott: Well, the seminary originally was housed in a converted private dwelling on Pine street in Philadelphia, and there was no room there for any offices. So Machen’s work was done in his residence, which is in a chancellor hall, it was called. It was sort of a hotel apartment complex up on the 22nd floor. So his desk was there, his books were there, his library, everything. That’s where he worked.

Camden Busey: When did he write? You mentioned that he would no doubt have been writing in the summertime.

James Scott: Well, that’s right. He had the months of August and September without much else to do. Another thing to remember is that even during when school was in session, the matron still devoted the early morning hours each day to writing.

People have sometimes thought that, oh, he was too busy to work on anything, particularly in the mid-30s there. But the fact of the matter is that he set aside time in the Morning. According to Paul Woolley, who knew Matrons activities as well as anybody. They had lunch together, often together, just the two of them. By the way, Machen. Excuse me. Woolley wrote that every morning Machen would spend a few hours writing and then walk to the seminary in time for the chapel at 10:30. Or if he was just too busy writing to get there for his first class at 11am so we do know that even when he was busy teaching that he still devoted two or three hours every morning to his writing projects.

Camden Busey: That’s helpful. So it would have been natural that he was writing. He also had some correspondence with the publisher, didn’t he? That seemed to indicate that he was working on something. Or at least something was going to be published imminently.

James Scott: Yes, he had carried on correspondence with his editor, whose name was Ellen Shippen, at Macmillan in New York. And early, I guess I would say in the spring of 1936. They were discussing his plans for publishing what would become the Christian View of Man. Which was basically a series of his radio messages that had all been written.

But he wanted to edit the manuscript put into book form. We do know he didn’t actually get to that until November of 36 and actually got it all finished and off to the publisher shortly before he died. But in talking with her or corresponding with her, I should say he would speak in the. And she would speak occasionally in the plural of possibilities of manuscripts. And we know of one that I just mentioned. But there. What was the other one that’s not indicated.

And one of the things I try to argue is in the article is that Machen’s correspondence was always saved. You look in his papers that we still have and you can follow the correspondence back and forth between Machen and various other people.

Camden Busey: He’d do this with carbon copies. So either letters he received he would save and file away. Or letters he wrote he’d still have a copy of them, right?

James Scott: That’s correct. He employed a professional sonographer who actually would keep his current correspondence. And oftentimes there are places in this correspondence where you would expect something to have been written that would talk about what he was writing. And those letters are all missing with one exception.

The other place where there is a lot of evidence about what’s going on here, as you see, Edwin Ryan destroyed all of his papers. Remember that one year he was the general Secretary for the Committee on Home Missions. So his papers written in that capacity were kept in the files of the whole missions committee, the opc, not in his own personal collection. So we have in the OPC archives a lot of his correspondence.

Now, even there, a lot of some things might be missing. But there’s one very short letter he wrote to Everett Divaldi, which he says, quote, he says is very busy. This is in August 26, 1936. Manchin is very busy writing the book on the Presbyterian conflict, unquote. What I suspect is that Ryan went through his papers and also the Machen papers, all Machen’s papers, shortly after his death, removing anything that would be indicative of this work, but that he missed this one little latitude of Eldi.

Camden Busey: Right. And so Ryan would have been able to do that because of his access to Machen’s house, well, his apartment and his close involvement with Machen as his

James Scott: assistant and close friend. You have to understand that Ryan was not just a personal friend. That is, they would. He would often be, or sometimes at least would be invited to Machen’s house for dinner, just the two of them. But also he was a friend and confidant of the Machen family, particularly Arthur Machen, who is Grissom Machen’s brother and who was. Who was a lawyer down in Baltimore

Camden Busey: and the eventual executor of Machinist, executor of Machen’s estate.

James Scott: And there’s some evidence that Arthur Machen employed Ryan to organize Machen’s papers and effects.

Camden Busey: There’s also seemingly some other evidence here. We have some documents from a memorial service that Everett Divaldi spoke a few days after Machen’s passing. We also have some mention of a book on the conflict in Arthur Kushke’s diary. He was a student at the time and had overheard Machen speaking about the book he was writing. Does that seem to corroborate the fact that Machen indeed would have been busy writing that particular book? Not just a book or not just collecting his radio addresses for the publisher out in New York.

James Scott: Yes, there are basically three documents. First, I’ve already mentioned the letter from Ryan to Davaldi of August 26, 1936. The reason he wrote that was he was trying to tell. See, Davaldi had invited Machen to speak at his church in Cincinnati. Machen had agreed to do that. That correspondence, by the way, is missing. That’s where I suspect Machen may have said something about his writing, what he was busy doing at the time.

But duvalde had this brilliant idea that since it was his job to get the Presbytery of Ohio going, that it would be. It would be nice if it were. If the constituting meeting if it was held the day after Machen was there, speaking in Cincinnati so that Mason could stay over another day and be present when the presbytery was established. So he wanted to invite Machen to do that. But Ryan replied to Davility that he didn’t think Manchen would want to do that because he was so busy writing this book. So there’s very clear evidence there that Manchen was in fact writing this book on the very subject of Presbyterian conflict.

But then Manchen did agree to come out and stay an extra day. And there’s actually quite a bit of evidence as to what Manchen did on those days. That would be September 13 and 14. And that Machen didn’t. That D’ Abelli did, in fact, have a lot of opportunities to talk personally with Machen on those occasions. And what I. It’s unimaginable to me that Duvelli did not talk to Machen about whatever Machen was working on when he was writing. And then that would explain why two days after Machen’s death, this would be on January 3rd, Devaldi read a memorial statement in his church, which has been preserved, in which he said that Machen had actually finished writing a book, which he even had a title for the conflict, and that Duvelli was quite sure that it would be published in his words shortly. Now, this information could only have come from Mason himself.

Camden Busey: So the letter from Ryan to Devaldi itself even presupposes some prior knowledge that Divaldi would have had about this writing because he mentions the book. But then also the personal correspondence between Devaldi and Machen during his time in Cincinnati seems to demand. And given the fact that Develdi was just fascinated and really wanted to know everything about Machen’s writings, and then the memorial service all seems to pile up. The fact that Machen had, in fact, written a book, at least a substantial portion of a book, and it was ready to be published very soon.

James Scott: Yes. Now, there’s one. One question that arises in all this, and that is, if Machen was writing this book, if Ryan knew about it, Duvelli knew about it, why didn’t anybody on the Westminster faculty seem to know anything about it?

Camden Busey: Right. Right.

James Scott: And why did any of the students know about it? I mean, why was just these two guys.

Camden Busey: Well, Kushki and some students might have known a little bit at some point.

James Scott: This has always been a puzzle, but it turns out that there is good evidence that there was some knowledge of it, and that is that Arthur Kwiske, who was the librarian at Westminster for quite a number of years was a student, a first year student at Westminster Seminary in 1936. And he kept a diary. And it turns out that according to his diary, that on the first day of the dining club, which would be October 1, 1936, that Machen appeared and talked to the students basically about what he had been doing during the summer.

And it’s basically his summer vacation, his. His vacation in July when he had gone to the Canadian Rockies to do mountain climbing. And he talked about climbing the various mountains and so forth. And then Kushke adds that he spoke about, quote, or at least he mentioned a book he will write on the church split. Now it sounds there like maybe he hadn’t started writing it yet. But I try to show that probably Kushki misunderstood what Machen had said. Probably had said that while vacationing he had decided to write this book when he returned. And Kushke didn’t understand that he had returned in August and was writing it then, not that he had returned and that he would get to it as soon as he could in October.

Jim Cassidy: So now we have a missing manuscript. Manuscript that seems by the evidence that you propose to have been taken by Edwin Ryan, is that the type of thing that would be keeping with Edwin Ryan’s character?

James Scott: I think it is. Now, Edwin Ryan renounced Machen and the machen movement in 1947 and returned to the PC USA. Because of that, he has been much reviled by people in the Westminster and OPC community. However, I would not use that as evidence that he could have done something like this.

I think we have to be careful. And his return to the PC USA was for various other reasons and they don’t necessarily mean that he was an unethical person. However, in doing my research, I uncovered I think about 10 instances. These are documented instances of unethical self promoting behavior. Instances where he would do unethical things to promote what he thought were good causes. And so it would seem that he would have been willing to do this sort of thing. This is not just my own view. We knew the other people who knew him. For example, Paul Woolley had a very strongly negative view of him as a man, as a Christian, in terms of his ethics and so forth.

Camden Busey: Now, you’ve already mentioned the fact that Ryan was gifted in his promoting abilities, his fundraising abilities and presumably his networking skills and charisma and all the things that typically go along with those kinds of abilities. Can you speak about Ryan’s view for the OPC early on, even before it was called the OPC when it was the PC of A. And how did that eventually pan out and get him involved in just a whole host of other things, particularly universities. But I think it’s interesting and indicative to set the stage for what his vision was early on.

James Scott: Part of the genius of Machen was that people with various theological emphases could all see themselves in Machen. He seemed to appeal to people of a wide variety of theological interests, for example, people who are very strongly Reformed, whether of the Scottish or Dutch variety, as well as people who were in the. More in the broader American Evangelical Presbyterian tradition. So he sort of held everybody together.

And Ryan was one of these people who. He was more of the American Presbyterian stripe. And so his vision for the church, for the. What was in the pca, was that it would be a large, rather broad, but basically Evangelical Presbyterian church. He assumed that when the church was first established in June 1936, that a whole host of conservative churches in the PC USA would leave that denomination and join the PCA. That never happened for various reasons. Primarily, I think, because that would mean a loss of their property. And they didn’t see if they could. They didn’t want to do that.

Jim Cassidy: So it seems as if Ryan himself had some visions of grandeur.

James Scott: Oh, certainly. Oh, yeah. He thought this was the beginning of a great new movement. However, very few churches actually joined the, you know, Matron’s church, shall we say. And all the great majority of the ministers were guys just out of seminary who were very enthusiastic about being a true Presbyterian church. So Ryan was interested in using the PCA, which became the OPC in 1939, sort of to galvanize a larger movement both within the reform world and even in evangelicalism more broadly and among the fundamentalist churches. A broad movement, even a broad church eventually, that would uphold the gospel in a general sense, I guess, be Presbyterian in a general sense, but not necessarily very strictly Reformed as understood by the Westminster faculty.

And so there was a struggle then in the late 30s and early 40s, culminating, I think, in the Clark controversy in the mid-40s, between these two forces, between those that want a very theologically narrow, strict OPC led by people like Van Till, Cornelius Van Til, and people like Edwin Ryan, who wanted a broader church. And Ryan did things like he led a. The establishment was called the Committee of Nine in the OPC to figure out ways to broaden the appeal of the church and make it more of a force in the general culture. And this was opposed, almost might say subverted by Cornelius Van Till. And he convinced the General assembly to squash this. And so that certainly turned off Ryan.

But Ryan’s next attempt was to establish a Christian university along the line, the line, these general, broadly evangelical lines. And so he worked to establish the Christian University association, started in 1943. And he became the general secretary of the association hunting until he was relieved of his duties in 1946. And his idea there was again to have a broadly based evangelical university. Trouble was that the board of this association was controlled by ministers and professors of a very more strict.

Camden Busey: They didn’t share his vision.

James Scott: Didn’t share his vision. And so Ryan engaged in various, even underhanded, maneuvers to try to broaden this association, which is why he was finally relieved of his duties. But the whole idea of this university was he didn’t begin to have the resources, particularly financial resources, to do it.

Camden Busey: Well, Ryan eventually became vice president or president of several institutions throughout the rest of his life. But I think that issue with. What was it? The cua, the Christian University association, is most indicative because that, I think of all the issues that you present in terms of Ryan’s character is the most telling and most egregious.

There are many issues in which he seemed to claim credit for himself in naming the opc, in running Machen’s funeral, in puffing himself up, it seems in the way that it’s presented. But this issue with the association is most egregious. You mentioned the fact that they had a board that was not necessarily amenable and on board with Ryan’s vision. But this was also an organization where you could serve on the board so long as you subscribe to the theological confession, as well as donate at least $5 a year. Is that correct?

James Scott: There was a membership, an association membership, where that was true, and there were hundreds and hundreds of members. And in order to become a member, which is this. You understand this association is basically a donor base. To be a member, you had to donate $5, which is still sizable back then. Sounds crucial today, but in those days, that was. This was the mid 4. This was a fairly decent amount of money. And then they would make you a member of the association.

And the association had very limited powers, but it could. One thing it would do is it would approve board members. It couldn’t nominate board members, but it could approve them. And so Ryan tried to use the. He tried to. He tried to use the membership in ways that would go beyond the constitution of the association. And he tried. This is pretty impressed. Most telling, he tried to pack this membership with people that he thought would support him, but in doing so to get around the five dollar membership requirement and the way he did that was through an accounting trick. If people would donate more than $5, he would take that money that was beyond the $5 and he would use that for his. For the membership fee, if you want

Camden Busey: to call it that, for his sympathizers

James Scott: friends who could get in there basically free then. So there were maybe a couple hundred people like that who didn’t donate a penny, but could be accounted as such by this transfer of funds. And this was discovered by the treasurer, who was Leslie Sloat at the time. And this was an obvious ethical lapse. And Sloat and another member of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, I think was McClelland, right? McClelland. Was it Clelland McClelland? They were going to bring charges against

Camden Busey: Ryan, but they confronted him privately first, right?

James Scott: According to Matthew 18, yes, they confronted him privately. I think it was based by phone. And by a strange coincidence that very day then he wrote a letter of resignation renouncing the jurisdiction of the opc. So he got out of there as fast as he could before charges could be brought against him.

Camden Busey: Right. And then what was it a week later or so that he joined the PC usa, or was it a little longer than that?

James Scott: A little bit later than that. He expressed interest in coming. He had to be actually had to be reordained. I see in the Presbytery of Philadelphia of the PC usa.

Camden Busey: Now this is probably several years in the making, but this was at least high motivation to get out at that moment, correct? I mean, he no doubt would have been dissatisfied.

James Scott: Well, you have to understand a number of things here. First of all, his theological vision, or ecclesiastical vision was being denied in the OPC. And also, very importantly, here’s a man in his mid-40s who now was without a job. He had quit his job as field representative at the seminary to become the general secretary of the Christian University association, but he had lost that position. So he didn’t have a job. He didn’t really have any prospects. He wasn’t really by this. He wasn’t really the pastoral type. So he didn’t really have any prospects in the opc. So what was he going to do?

And then here he was with these charges looming over him. So you can understand why he would look elsewhere. And it may be also at this time that he was, he claims that the reason he went back was he had been making this big study of ecclesiology and decided that on high moral Grounds and theological principle that it was wrong to formation his followers, to lead the PC usa. There may be some truth in all that,

Camden Busey: but the evidence seemingly, that he renounces jurisdiction the day of this confrontation.

James Scott: Theological justification follows ethical necessity.

Jim Cassidy: So you have a fascinating theory here about how the manuscript could have gone missing. How would Edwin Ryan have had access to the manuscript? And how is it, do you think, he could have gotten his hands on it to begin with?

James Scott: Well, as I said, Machen’s. All of Machen’s papers, anything he was writing, notes, whatever, was all in his apartment. Ryan was very close to Arthur Machen, the executor of Machen’s estate. They went out, they were the two guys, along with Arthur Machen’s wife, who went out to North Dakota to see Machen when he became ill out there.

Now, Machin actually died before they could get there, just by a few minutes. But they rode back together on the train and probably discussed what they were going to do in this situation. And my suspicion is that an arrangement was made. Excuse me. An arrangement was made that Ryan would help out Arthur Machen in working through Machen’s papers, through his effects and so forth. That while Arthur Machen was in Baltimore, that Ryan would attend to matters up in Philadelphia, which would probably mean looking through his papers to see what needed to be attended to, either in connection with the seminary or in connection with the church. And he probably asked Ryan to maybe organize things.

We do know that Machen’s papers soon were moved down to Baltimore. And my guess is that Ryan organized those things. All his books were left to Arthur Machen with the instructions to give whatever he thought would be useful to the seminary, to the seminary, which he did. The seminary was about to move out to its present location in the summer of 37. And so my guess is that they probably stayed in Machen’s apartment until they could be moved out. So Ryan was the one person, probably, as far as I know, anyway, who was probably given access to Machen’s residence, to his papers. And my suspicion is that when he found Machen’s manuscript and maybe note, probably notes as well, and he thought, oh, something’s got to be done with this. And he may have thought. Well, originally, he may have thought this needs to be edited and published. And at some point, you know, I could rework this and use it to my advantage.

Camden Busey: Now, there’s quite a bit of external evidence. It is circumstantial, but there’s a large list of it, 40 pages that Jim documents in the part one of the article. Well, the first article, which is part one of this overall case, you can read that in the Westminster Theological Journal. So we’ve seen the fact that it’s known and certainly documented that Machen was writing a book, that he was writing one specifically on the Presbyterian conflict, and that he was feverishly working at it. And in fact, it was really near to publication, almost ready to be published, and then he passed away. We’ve also seen Machen’s writing habits, and that backs up the fact that this book was ready to go. We’ve looked closer at Edwin Ryan and seen that he had some dubious exchanges and a history of some questionable behavior. It would seem to indicate. Indicate that he in fact was capable of such a thing as we’re presenting. And the fact also that he would have had opportunity to look at Machen’s manuscript to find it, as well as to expunge any evidence in the correspondence that might have indicated the fact that Machen was or had written this book. But that’s all the circumstantial evidence. So let’s look now at the literary evidence. Let’s look actually at the book that’s in question, which is the 1940 publication, the Presbyterian Conflict, published under the name of Edwin Ryan exclusively. What kinds of things might we be able to do by looking at internal evidence? What are some of the procedures we could take or some of the ways that we could at least open this book and study it internally, now that we’ve seen all the things pointing at it externally?

James Scott: Okay, first I’d like to correct one point.

Camden Busey: Oh, please.

James Scott: I think Machen, by the time he died, had nearly completed, not quite completed, but nearly completed the first draft. I don’t think he had gotten anywhere beyond that.

Camden Busey: So Develdi might have been a little overly optimistic.

James Scott: Yes.

Camden Busey: But there was definitely a substantial portion of the book that was.

James Scott: Oh, yes, it was very substantial. Substantial. And so I think what Ryan did was he not only augmented the book mentioned manuscript, but he also revised and edited a little bit, both for just for editing purposes and also to give his own slant of things a bit.

And as you. As you look at the book, you see that about a quarter of it was unquestionably written by Ryan. And I say unquestionably because it either relates events that occurred after Machen’s death or refers to things written after Machen’s death, or also in a few cases, it has some very. Has some discussion of Machen himself, which is very flattering that of course, Machen wouldn’t have written. So how do we figure out what Machen maybe had written in the book? And Ryan, how do we do source criticism, you might say, right, like jedp.

Camden Busey: But here we have M and R.

James Scott: You know, in our circles, we’re very suspicious of that sort of thing. And how can we possibly do that? And with good reason. And there are a number of things I try to do here. And first thing I do is I look for internal evidence of things that would have been written in 1936 rather than 1940 or shortly before that.

I could say that there is very definite evidence from a letter that we’ve uncovered that Ryan did his writing from about August 1938 through January 1940. So he would have started a couple years after Machen had written in 1930, August to October 1936. And we don’t have to look any farther than the first paragraph of the book. The very first sentence of the book refers to, quote, the theological struggle which has just ended in the PC USA. Well, that struggle ended in January 1936. Now, that would have been just before Machen was writing, but it would not have been just before ryan was writing 1938. 39.

Camden Busey: Yeah, roughly three years later.

James Scott: That’s right. It’s also inconsistent with the very next sentence where there’s a little note that the Presbyterian Church of America was, quote, now called the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Now, that church was renamed in February 1939 as a result of a lawsuit by the PCUSA, which was successful. So that at the very beginning of the book, you see this inconsistency in this statement, which fits much better with Manchin writing in 1936.

Another indication, there’s a short chapter on various efforts in the PC USA to unite with other denominations, and those are described as taking place in, quote, the past two decades. That involves three churches. In two cases, those union discussions went back just into the 30s, but there was one over in the Presbyterian Church in the US which would be the Southern Presbyterian Church that started in 1917. Now, the past two decades would bring that up to about 1936 or 37. So that would fit Machen writing, but not Ryan about three years later.

Another indication is the chapter on the decisive 1936 General assembly of the PCUSA. Here, that is a very emotional chapter in which the author argues the issues involved, but does not really describe what happened very much. Now, that doesn’t look like a historian looking back at the situation. That looks like someone who was intimately involved defending his position, which was. That would be, in other words, Machin Perhaps to me, the most interesting, although perhaps the most obscure point would be the fact that there is a reference to the League of Evangelical Students. This is almost like a passing remark which the author says that there are 58 schools or chapters at various schools who are members of the League of Evangelical Students. Now, why would anybody say 58?

Camden Busey: Never around?

James Scott: That’s a very exact number. Well, okay, now we know we can, you know, we can figure out if we can trace the membership of this league. We can figure out when this was written. And it turns out that the publication put out by this league, which came out three times a year, most, most for most years, had on its cover a list of all the member chapters. So I spent quite a bit of time counting them all up, putting all the evidence together. And it turns out that the number of schools increased gradually. And it was actually in late 1936, maybe September, don’t know exactly when, that the number 58 was reached. And by the time that Ryan was writing 1938-40, the membership was about. Was 60, 61 in that range. So it looks like this reference refers to the situation very exactly, very precisely of when Manchin was writing.

Camden Busey: Right.

James Scott: Now, I should also point out Machen was intimately involved with this league. Ryan was not.

Camden Busey: So Machen would have known that.

James Scott: Yes. Now, another interesting thing is that this very short description has a very upbeat account of this league. Everything’s going great guns. Well, again, that was true in 1936, but the league declined badly and rapidly in the late 30s, 38 to 40. It was almost ready to collapse. And in fact, it just about did in the early 40s. And they joined it with another student organization. So this description of the League and its membership number very precisely fits someone writing in the fall of late summer and fall of 1936. So those are all very interesting.

Now, trying to look at the question of what did Ryan write versus Machen? This is how I approached it in terms of source criticism. As I said, there are certain material which Ryan must have written. So what I’ve done is I, in my articles, I compare that material with the other material about 3/4 of the book which Machen could have written. And when you do that, you find time and time again that the Ryan material looks very much like an interpolation into the surrounding material. Now, if Ryan had written the entire manuscript himself, there wouldn’t be this discontinuity right at the time that Machen died.

Camden Busey: Right, right, right.

James Scott: Almost like something added later. It’s difficult to explain that right now because you have to really have the whole text in front of you and look at the exact wording. But let me just give you one example which I think is pretty clear. In chapter three, the author says he’s going to give a few facts showing that Princeton Seminary had changed. That’s followed by a three page critique of Bardianism, which seems sort of bizarre.

Camden Busey: Well, Jim Cassidy here might think that’s only a few facts for him that’ll go by so fast.

James Scott: But then right after that, the author says that he gives us, quote, another way in which the change in Princeton was shown. Now what is this three page essay on Bardianism doing there? It doesn’t belong in this brief description of a few facts, but what it is, it reflects. It’s put in there because one of those facts was that Princeton had just named a Bardian as their new president. And so Ryan saw this as an opportunity to put in something he had written or had, I guess, on Bardianism, which showed his theological acumen. I think we need to understand that Ryan was not really an academic, although he was close to being one. And I think he had aspirations that were unfulfilled in that respect. And this is just one little opportunity to, I’d say, show off his knowledge of theological matters.

Camden Busey: He was more of an academic administrator.

James Scott: He was an administrator, yes.

Camden Busey: And fundraiser.

James Scott: Fundraiser. Use an administration, basically where we did as leader as well.

Camden Busey: Now we find a bunch of discrepancies and differences in literary style. And many of those discontinuities there that you’ve already mentioned, all those are documented in the article, of course, part two. But I found also some interesting things here with the footnotes and the way that some of the sources were referenced and the versions of sources that were referenced, what sort of things there are arise that seem to indicate there might have been two authors to this work.

James Scott: Ryan, a few years later in the 40s, wrote two books. Not of any great note, but he did write two books. And if you look at the footnotes in those books, they’re very careful, very full citations of sources. So that was obviously his preferred style. He was, I must say, a careful not, you know, he was, he could express himself well, very careful writer.

But then you look at this presterian conflict and look at the footnotes there and the source citations are very sketchy, incomplete. Oftentimes you think, well, why was this? And what I think happened was that here Machen was very hurriedly in August and September, October of 1936, writing this manuscript and he didn’t want to Take time to write out all these footnotes in great detail and so forth, but. So he would just write down sketchy references to them a couple times. For example, here it just refers to Machen pamphlet. Well, Machen wrote a number of pamphlets. He would know what he was referring to. That’s not the sort of thing that anybody else would write down, just Machen pamphlets. You’d at least give the title of the pamphlet so you’d know which one you’re referring to.

And the fact that there is confusion there is shown by the fact that when the OPC Historians Committee put out a reprint of this book in 1992, they tried to fill out a lot of these footnotes and in a few cases, actually put in the incorrect pamphlet.

Camden Busey: Oh, my.

James Scott: Wow. Now, when Ryan came along to this, he had two options. He could either fill out these hundreds and hundreds of footnotes, or he could just leave them the way they were. And what he added, he could just add similar sketchy footnotes. And he chose the latter route. And I think the reason was that he was. I think he was just lazy or too busy or whatever. He wasn’t interested in this sort of pedantic sort of thing, spending all this time on that.

Jim Cassidy: So, Jim, this is quite the expose, quite a scandalous thing. And in many ways, have you gotten any type of pushback or criticism from those who may want to support Edwin Ryan and his character and name?

James Scott: I have not. However, it may be that no one of that sort has seen it. I’ve seen my articles.

Camden Busey: Now, you mentioned in the 80s that the family did not want the book to be republished. Is that totally incidental, or is it an issue over rights? But it was republished because it had gone out of copyright, correct?

James Scott: Yeah. The book was in the public domain when it was reissued, almost exactly when it was reprinted.

Camden Busey: So should we read into that? Anything you don’t want to?

James Scott: Well, yeah. I mean, the family had become basically moderate or deliberate in their theology, and the book was sort of an embarrassment because Ryan’s own views had changed.

Camden Busey: I see.

James Scott: They wanted the book to sort of. They would prefer to have the book forgotten because it represented, let’s say, the old, young, foolish Ryan versus the more mature, later Ryan. I had some correspondence with Ryan’s daughters, particularly Abigail Ryan Evans, who was a very interesting woman. Still is, actually. She was one of the first women students at Princeton. She became a minister in the pcusa. She actually taught at Princeton. She was, in fact, the chairman of the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton. She just recently became a Professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center. Her specialty, or specialty would be is, I guess you could say the spiritual care of geriatric patients. I was in contact with her basically to find out if there were any Ryan papers around that I could look at. I didn’t tell her for what reason I wanted to.

Camden Busey: Right. And the Princeton archives are sparse.

James Scott: I found out from her that they had all been destroyed. There is one small box of material at the. At the Princeton Seminary library, which I went to and went through, but there’s nothing there that’s really very helpful. What’s there is basically Ryan’s own interpretive reflections on his life. Not any documents that would show what was going on.

Camden Busey: Right. And tapes of him talking about things.

James Scott: Yes, I did. Yes, there were some tapes that. That are there also that I listen to. They’re in very poor shape, by the way. I had to hold the tape record up to my ear just to hear them. Very scratchy. But it’s also another interesting source. But again, this is all Ryan interpretation. It’s pretty short in facts.

Jim Cassidy: Oh, it’s quite interesting that Princeton Seminary has, I believe, an annual Edwin H. Ryan lecture still in his name and his honor.

James Scott: I wasn’t aware of that. That’s interesting. After he retired as a president or vice president, academic type, he was hired by Princeton to be an assistant to the president, in which capacity he was basically, again, a fundraiser for the institution.

Camden Busey: I mean, there’s so much evidence here, and we’ve only been able to share it in a certain way on audio. I do encourage people to take a look at both of these articles in order to get all the details in the way that it unfolds literarily. It’s been fascinating. But just for the sake of the listeners, those people who might be driving around or exercising, can you just offer your conclusion, just your final few sentence conclusion. Given the evidence of what actually happened, now that you’ve looked at everything, you looked at external and internal evidence, what seems most plausible in terms of what happened with Machen and Edwin Ryan?

James Scott: I believe that the evidence is overwhelming that Machen was writing something about the Presbyterian conflict. Most likely he was, in fact a nearly complete rough draft of a book. There’s no explanation really for how. Why this would have disappeared from Machen’s papers other than that someone took it. And the only plausible candidate for that is Edwin Ryan. And the fact that a book on that very same subject appeared just three or four years later, written by Edwin Ryan, makes it look very much like he was, in fact a writer and that therefore that is a plausible case that the book was based on this Machen manuscript. And when we look at the book itself, trying to analyze whether there’s evidence of it having a Machen foundation, let’s say there’s actually quite a bit of evidence that that’s in fact the situation.

Camden Busey: It’s a rather compelling case and once again, a serious issue and certainly a scandalous issue. But it’s all documented. If you’d like to read, read it. You can find part one in the Westminster Theological Journal, issue 74 in 2012 on pages 217 to 255. And part two is in the issue following. So both of these articles are available from the Westminster Theological Journal. You can take a look at them there. But Jim, it’s been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for writing this article, doing all of the legwork and the study and the investigation, and then also for speaking with us today. It’s been a pleasure.

James Scott: Thank you.

Camden Busey: We want to point people back to the website. Of course, you can visit the opc@opc.org and you can also read New Horizons and other publications that Jim is helpfully assisting and coordinating. And you can find out more information about the Committee on Christian education online at. OK. You can also visit us online@reformedforum.org and there you’ll find information about all of our programs as well as upcoming events and other projects that we hope to promote. We do also encourage you to visit our new website, Reformed Academy. It’s a new open source project. We’re trying to promote Christian education in collecting resources and offering a structured way to learn. So visit us online@reform.com academy as well as reformedforum. Org. We want to thank everybody for listening. We hope you join us again next time on Christ the Center.