J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

Transcription

Camden Bucey: Welcome to Christ the Center, your weekly conversation of Reformed theology. This is episode number 882. My name is Camden Bucey. As usual, I’m in the Reformed Forum office studio in Libertyville, Illinois, and we’ve got a great panel. We are locked and loaded today. All star panel, so to say at least, of OPC people. Let me introduce to you first we have Danny Olinger, who serves as the general secretary for the OPC’s Committee on Christian Education. Danny, welcome back. It’s great to see you.

Danny Olinger: Thanks for the invite.

Camden Bucey: Yes, well, we had to have you on. We’re going to be speaking about Machen today. And to do that, we also have none other than Mr. John Muether. John is a previous historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He serves as professor of church history, dean of libraries and other activities at Reformed Theological Seminary. Welcome, John. It’s good to see you as well.

John Muether: Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

Camden Bucey: You bet. And we also have with us his partner in, I won’t say crime, I will say his partner in defending all things good of American presbyterianism. We have Dr. Darryl Hart. Of course, Darryl teaches. He’s a professor, assistant professor of church history, associate professor, sorry. He teaches church history at Hillsdale College and. And has written a tremendous amount of books, many books on American Presbyterianism and related subjects. Welcome back, Darryl. It’s great to see you as well.

Darryl Hart: Thanks, Camden. Good to be with you.

Camden Bucey: You’ve become quite the podcast pro in recent years and we’re happy to steal you away from one or at least

Darryl Hart: a third of the American population. A podcast pro these days?

Camden Bucey: I think so. So the last time I was on Presbycast, I was eating chicken wings. It is a Friday afternoon as we record, and I probably that might be a natural activity this time of on a Friday, but we’re going to be at least try to hold it together a little bit as we speak about J. Gresson Machen. And we’re going to be doing so looking and focusing more specifically at his earlier years, maybe we could say the early Machen or the younger Machen, especially his time studying in Germany, his background, his familial background, and considering really the crisis that Machen had and trying to understand that in context, to understand it historically and then to discuss just a little bit of other takes and other interpretations on Machen’s life really stemming from that big event in his early to mid twenties, I should mention I want to provide at least a bit of a background to listeners who may be wondering. But there recently has been a publication of a new book, Machen’s the Transformation of a Modernist in the New Princeton by Richard E. Burnett as a forward by Mark Knoll. It’s published by Eerdmans. So we’ve all read this book. And John and Darrell and I were recently at the Presbyterian Scholars Conference in Wheaton, Illinois, just a few weeks ago, and Darrell and I were part of a panel discussing Burnett’s book. John was there. John has written a review of the book. John, is your review going to be in the Westminster Journal or is that one of the another publication? One of the O.P.

John Muether: you’re right. It’s the Westminster Theological Journal.

Camden Bucey: That’s what I thought. WTJ And Daryl, you’ve written a review that was published. I can’t remember. I think it was New Horizons. It wasn’t OS New Horizons. Yes. Danny is the editor of that. I have not published my remarks, although I’ll probably after this episode, I’ll probably put my remarks up on the Reform Forum website. But we were able to deliver our comments and Danny, of course, has been to the conference, the Presbyterian Scholars Conference, before he’s presented on his biography of Gerhardus Vos. And I’m certain Voss will come up in this conversation today. So we’re speaking about this particular issue and we have this particular panel together for the purpose of providing maybe not an official, but it’s more of like an OPC centric view of the matter. So certainly Burnett’s been on Thinking in Public, I believe, is the name of Al Mohler’s program. If you want to have a more extended conversation or interview with and listen to that with Dr. Burnett and his take, you can do so there. We’re going to speak in house today and perhaps maybe that’ll lead to further conversations down the road. But at least today on this program, we’re speaking in house from the perspective of our ecclesiastical ties and talking about Ma as an OPC person and connecting that back to a bit of his history. So let’s start this way, if we may, after I’ve done our general introductions. But I would like maybe if somebody I’m just going to toss this out there, maybe Danny, maybe Daryl. Any of you would like to just offer us a brief sketch about Machen’s importance in American Protestantism. I think that’s an issue. Maybe you would be good to speak to Darrell because you’ve raised this question in your review. How important is Machen? And especially if we if we stop the story maybe in 1928, is, is it is the answer different, you know, is. Is Machen significant because of what happens starting in 1929? What might we say about Machen prior to that? And would he be a figure maybe like William Park Armstrong, where a few nerds know who he was and. And. But. But the masses maybe wouldn’t have heard about him?

Darryl Hart: Well, I mean, I would say. I mean, the more I read Machen, which I had to do a lot more last year for the 100th anniversary of Christianity and liberalism, the more impressed I am now, people may think, well, you were always a Machen boy, so there’s no surprise there. But the more I teach American history here at Hillsdale College, and the more I see how pervasive progressive and modernist thought was during Machen’s time or leading up to him beginning after the Civil

John Muether: War,

Darryl Hart: I’m really gobsmacked as the Brits or the kids say that Machen stood up and challenged it. And this wasn’t merely in domestic affairs, but even in foreign policy. And that’s where I think the missions controversy also fits in. At the same time, people don’t really remember Machen in those categories. They think of him much more with the fundamentalist controversy, so called. And as a, you know, Sidney Ahlstrom’s Religious History of the American People, which is still a pretty good book, although it’s about 50 years old now. Sheesh. But calls Machen’s Christianity liberalism, the chief theological ornament of American fundamentalism, you know, so in that sense, he’s regarded as an important voice in those controversies. But for Presbyterians and for evangelicals, Machen’s involvement in starting Westminster was huge. A lot of people who eventually went on to teach at Fuller or found Fuller Seminary, for instance, had studied with Machen either at Princeton or Westminster. George Marsden’s history of Fuller Seminary is very good on kind of showing that trajectory of Machen’s work, even though those people didn’t necessarily follow him in that way.

So for Presbyterian history and evangelical history, I do think Machen is an important figure. And again, I think it’s the institutions. But whether it’s Princeton, where he taught, obviously, or Westminster, which he helped to found in a significant way, or the OPC as well, which is further iteration of Machen’s concerns. You know, a number of people have been involved with the OPC at different times. The OPC’s relationship to the CRC during that period of 1950 or even 1936, actually all the way down to. For 40 years, down to 1975 or so. And, you know, the CRC, for all of its problems, was a kind of intellectual bellwether for evangelicals for a time. And so, you know, the OPC played in those circles in part because of Machen’s work and influence. So, you know, I think from a point, bigger perspective of American religion or something, I don’t. You know, the denominational histories are in decline. Denominations themselves as a category are in decline. At an earlier time, it was easier, I think, to identify Machen as a significant figure in American Protestantism. But because American Protestantism seems to be in overall in decline, it’s. Maybe Machen doesn’t rise to that level the way he could have.

Camden Bucey: Yeah, no help. That’s helpful. We’ll have links to all of the reviews in the episode description if you’d like to read them and read fuller treatments of this. This matter. It was an interesting and provocative question for me to think about, you know, because the reason I was prompted to think about this is because of the treatment in this book. Burnett, in large measure, stops the story in about 1928. And so it’s interesting to think about all that’s leading up to that point, but then not interpreting or understanding Machen according to what happens later. And at least most of what we’re Talking about in OPC history always starts from 1936. And Machen is really a mythic figure for us, not for fictional. But he provides a founding narrative and a storyline that in many ways helps shape and form our identity. So our entry point into Machen, often historically for the average OPC person, is through 1936, and then also to a large degree, depending on who you are and what your concerns are. The founding of Westminster theological seminary in 1929, and you can add also the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions in there as well. If Jeff McDonald were here, he’d also want to add the League of Evangelical Students, but that’s a fourth one that gets forgotten sometimes. But the other issue here at stake is when we’re looking at the earlier Machen, we’re looking at him studying, particularly in Germany, which we’ll get to after we talk maybe about his family upbringing and his early life, his background. The big question, the provocative question of this new book is really whether Machen transformed from being a modernist to being a fundamentalist, or we might say, anti modernist. The suggestion in this book is that Machen was a modernist early on, based on his correspondence largely to his mother, but to other people and his particular interests and his understanding of modern and contemporary forms of scientific inquiry and biblical studies. And these types of things that Machen was a modernist and he came later in life to convert and to become what we as OPC. People often think about him in 1929, up through to his death in January 1937 as a fundamentalist. That’s a term Machen didn’t necessarily care for or didn’t use love for himself. But by that we mean an anti modernist or a conservative Bible believing Christian brothers. What are your thoughts on this provocative suggestion, your take on this argument or the principal argument in this book? Would you prefer to reframe it, add some color or some correction to the way I’ve placed it? What do you think about Burnett’s main point?

Danny Olinger: Oh boy. So you’re talking about mation significance in regard to, you know, the opening question. In many ways we have to be drawn, I think a little bit to Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Because if Luther was combating a Catholicism that gone corrupt, then Machen was combating a mainline Presbyterianism that had gone corrupt and he was willing to take a stand for it. And that brings into view, I think, the parallels with what happened in Luther’s Life. So in 1517, Erasmus came out with the Greek New Testament and Luther loved it. He just immediately he wanted to be identified as a Christian humanist, wanted to go back to the primary sources, love the Greek New Testament. It didn’t mean that he adopted the tenets of Italian humanism in regard to anthropology and other things. And it didn’t mean that that was what was defining to him. What was defining to him was justification by faith alone. That was the material cause of the Reformation. And the formal cause is how do you decide that question? Sola scriptura. Well, if Machen Machen loved the new methods, if you want to call him a modernist in regard to scientific research, so be it. I mean, yeah, of course there’s not a single biographer that’s ever disagreed with that. But to say that is the defining aspect of the first 20 years of up, you know, up until 1928, 29, it’s unbelievable. I mean, because everything he writes from 1905 forward carries in it the argument that he’s making against liberalism as another religion. He’s like Luther. He sees the defining issue as being theological and being in regard to Jesus Christ and what he’s done. So I. I’m just dumbfounded by this. I want to be fair. I don’t want to seem like I’m just an op beating up on someone who has a different take. But this is something that I just. It forced me to go back and read Machen firsthand. And I just don’t see where this is coming from.

Camden Bucey: Yeah, one of the. In regards to this study, whenever you’re talking or raising the question of is so and so a modernist or not, you obviously need to define that word. And at least in the introduction, Burnett brings up a definition of modernism that perhaps, in my opinion, might be more contemporary. He provides this definition up front, and I found that his basic premise, or the argument, was akin to more recent studies such as that of Bruce McCormick speaking about Barth being orthodox yet modern, and of James Eglinton speaking about Bavinc being orthodox yet modern. And so I don’t mean to say it’s a repetition, just changing the names in these studies, but it’s of that stripe of a study to begin with. And that I think if you’re setting things up like that, where you’re looking at maybe more sociological definitions or historical, socio. Historical definitions of modernism, it can be useful from one perspective, but from another, it might cloud the real issue. And Danny, I think you raised the point right there already from Achen, when you’re reading especially Christianity and Liberalism, which was published in 1923, by the way. So this is right in the middle of all this. This isn’t outside the purview of the dates that Burnett’s treating. It’s so obvious that his core concern is to protect and maintain a supernatural religion, and not just a Kantian type that would say that you can have a supernatural religion in another dimension or another sphere, such as God existing in the noumenal realm, and then the phenomenal realm is maybe the realm where we engage in all of our modernist scientific inquiry. Now, Machen wanted to go a step further, and I don’t want to lead the witnesses here, but that might lead us into some discussions of VOs, but. But the concern was to protect a supernatural Christianity in which God acts in history. He does not act in God’s time for us, in some other dimension or realm, such as Barth might say, with regard to geshicht, but God acts directly, revealing himself and acting in the works of creation and providence in our time and in our space. That’s the core concern for Machen. And so then the question, if you want to use the terms that Machen and Stonehouse and others of the early OPC were using, that’s how they defined a modernist. Somebody who was, in effect, denying those things, denying the five fundamentals, but the people that denied those fundamentals were people that were rejecting these core tenets of the faith. And to summarize it, it’s an issue of naturalism and supernaturalism. You guys got any follow up to that?

Danny Olinger: Yeah.

Camden Bucey: John?

John Muether: Ye, if I may. You mentioned that Burnett sets up early in the book a definition of modernism and he relies on Shaylor Matthews book, the Faith of Modernism. And he describes these things, these six distinct aspects.

Danny Olinger: I won’t read them all.

John Muether: Yeah, exactly. But they are very elastic. It’s a very elastic definition. And it’s much like the point you made at the panel discussion. It’s like the way in which Bavinck is orthodox but modern. You know, he’s in touch with modern times. And Burnett makes a point about how much Machen loved his undergraduate experience at Johns Hopkins and fell in love with the modern German model of education. This shapes his modernism. And he goes on to say that this Machen remained a modernist for many years, contrary to all of his interpreters up until now. And somewhere he puts in, he remained a modernist for decades. Well, as Danny says, the math doesn’t add up. You just can’t see that. Whatever interest he had in this early on, of course Burnett is making a big deal about his letters home, his enthusiasm in Germany and things like this. But at the very end of the book he returns to Shaler Matthews and he says this Matthews articulated the position of many liberals. Modernism has no confession. So suddenly it’s a very different definition. He’s moving the goalpost here and you’ve got somebody you know. Machen would never have said that. So he. By that definition, Machen was clearly never a modernist. Now, in the former definition, maybe Machen was a modernist, but so would Warfield have fit that very vague and elastic definition, someone who is interested in modern science and. Willing to engage the modern world. So Burnett is just. He’s forcing, I think his interpretation in by. By way of overreading some enthusiasm in Machen’s early life. His letters home are more reliable to Burnett than Machen’s own later bibliographical reflections.

Camden Bucey: Yeah, and I think the reason for that is there’s an interpretive assumption, or at least a decided position, that there’s in effect an earlier and a later Machen. That’s the hermeneutic, I think that that’s at work and to. Just to tie up what you’ve just said, John. And Machen’s fascination with an interest in modern scientific inquiry, his time in Germany was very enlightening. Because of the German research institution, the German research university. We might not be familiar as Americans, but The model that we typically think of when we think of a big university, that’s a German model that was unusual early on in America. And Machen’s hope, to quote the title of this book, according to Burnett, was to realize such an institution at Princeton University and I guess by extension at Princeton Seminary. There’s some discussion of how those two relate in the book as well. But that’s the hope that people would be studying these things in new modernist, advanced ways and techniques.

Darryl Hart: The other thing I would add on that point, it seems, I do think that a lot of the words and devices that Burnett uses are a little bit imprecise, if not a little bit of a bait and switch at times. But in this case, to recognize that Machen was a modernist is in some ways to recognize what people saw a long time that Machen was an elite, well educated figure who would never would have identified with fundamentalism the way. So, you know, people did recognize that Machen was a kind of intellectual among fundamentalists and didn’t really fit the category. But you know, Burnett wants to call it modernist. The other factor of this too, as I’ve thought about the book more, is that Princeton has a long history of trying to harmonize faith and reason. I mean, Christianity, Christians have done that for a long time, obviously. But you know, Princeton was doing it with common sense realism of Scottish philosophy back in 18th and 19th centuries. And in some ways that that was the criticism from some Dutch American or just Dutch Calvinists. The way that they did that, the way that, say, George Marsden contrasted Kuyper and Warfield, but. And whether the Princetonians were naive about it, but the way Burnett presents it, it makes it seem like this was kind of extraordinary that Machen would be, would be thinking about intellectual life the way he did. But you know, the new thing perhaps that Machen is doing is that he studied as an undergraduate and did a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins, which is one of the foremost beginning of research university movement in the United States. But, you know, that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that all that other, all those other pieces of Princeton theology weren’t there as well and that Machen didn’t find a kind of congenial home when he makes that transition.

Camden Bucey: Well, we mentioned his studies at Johns Hopkins, we mentioned some of his correspondence, particularly to his mother. Darrell, would you be willing to maybe provide a brief sketch of Machen’s family background and upbringing? Anyone could chime in, of course, but from where does Machen come and what difference does that make? Prior to his studies in Germany. How is the man formed?

Darryl Hart: Well, I mean I really. You should at some point have Katherine van Drunen on who did a dissertation on the Machen home and education that Machen received as a, as a boy. Some of it in homeschooling, but some of it also in a, a private school in Baltimore. But I mean, his parents were Southern. I mean that’s what a lot of people start off as. Fathers from Virginia, his mother from Georgia. I still, I don’t remember how they met. Baltimore had a lot of elite Southerners in it. And Machen grew up in one of the gem neighborhoods in Baltimore, the so called Mount Vernon district. And his father was a very important attorney in Baltimore. Try like, argued more cases before certain courts. In some ways very impressive figure, as was Machen’s brother, who also went into law.

Danny Olinger: So.

Darryl Hart: And on the other side, the Gresham side, his grandfather was, as I understand it, a mayor of Macon, Georgia, also an industrialist of some kind, owning certain kind of, I don’t know, railroads and whatnot, early forms of it in the South. And from what I also understand, when Machen inherited wealth, it came from the Gresham side of the family, not necessarily from the Machens. So he grew up in a very privileged setting and you know what, went off to Johns Hopkins and loved college life. I mean, a big part of Burnett’s claims have to do with the, the talk that Machen had to give is when he was studying in Germany. This may be jumping ahead of where you wanted to go, Canada, but describing Johns Hopkins to his German peers, other students, and I don’t know if any faculty were there for it. And to Burnett’s credit, he translated it from the German that Machen had to write it in in order to present it. And there’s a, there’s about a third of the page in the book that does talk about Johns Hopkins as you know, this committed to intellectual freedom in ways that sound very progressive, you could argue. But so much of that essay as well is describing campus life and what it was like to be a student and go to basketball games, football games, be part of a fraternity. All this kind of campus life that is, as I understand it, is far removed from the research university model. I mean, it’s like you go to college to have a good time. And Machen, I think he lived at home probably when he was at university because the Machen’s lived so close to where the original campus of Johns Hopkins was. But still Machen was entirely involved in campus life and I think part of what happened to him when he went to Princeton Seminary, he was frustrated with having to take all these lecture courses, not only because they were lectures as opposed to seminars, but also because he couldn’t go to all the games and all the festivities surrounding college sports that he wanted to do. So Burnett kind of misses that, that component of Machen’s college experience which makes him much like most college male college students today than we might think.

Camden Bucey: Sure. I think that’s a really important point. That especially with his letters to his mother, the thing we really need to remember is this is a young man writing from the heart and he’s emotional at times. And as I was reading all of these sources, I was tempted. I was always trying to remind myself, don’t over interpret these because imagine me reading emails or letters I wrote when I was 22 or 23 or 24. How seriously would I take my own words?

Darryl Hart: What do you mean, 68?

Camden Bucey: Yeah, exactly. Real quick, this, this is a little factoid tidbit, but John, was it you and or Danny or both of you that were suggesting to me it’s quite possible Matron was at the first college football game?

John Muether: Well, no, I think it’s possible that Warfield was Warfield.

Camden Bucey: This would have been Princeton versus Rutgers.

Danny Olinger: Right? Right.

John Muether: I actually inquired at the university athletic department if he was on the roster. Actually wasn’t. But

Camden Bucey: I.

John Muether: Well, imagine he and Mikash were both on the sidelines watching the game.

Darryl Hart: Sure.

Camden Bucey: Well, maybe that’s the origin of his beard. And the fluffy hair is like pre helmets. So this is serving another function.

John Muether: Right.

Camden Bucey: Who knows?

John Muether: Camden, I want to follow up on something you suggested a minute ago about his Machen’s love for the new Princeton. Machen comes to Princeton as a student and then as a faculty member. And Wilson, Woodrow Wilson is at the university and Wilson is administering a sleepy rural theological school and he transforms it into a modern university largely by secularizing it. And a lot of what he does, Machen applauds. This is Princeton University becoming like Hopkins following the German model. And that’s the new Princeton that he’s excited about. And Burnett goes on to compare that to the mythological sense that a lot of us have about old Princeton Seminary. And Burnett is mixing categories here. When Machen becomes a professor, when Machen’s hired at the seminary very early on and within the first couple years he is, and this is Burnett’s language, he’s persuaded of the distinctive calling that the seminary has. So he’s not saying he’s not an advocate of the so called new scientific spirit at the seminary. And Burnett is constantly conflating the university and the seminary in terms of the

Camden Bucey: old and new,

John Muether: which is a complete category mistake.

Camden Bucey: Those are separate institutions.

John Muether: They were always separate institutions.

Darryl Hart: Right.

Camden Bucey: They might have shared some people at times or supporters, but they were separate institutions. It’s not as if one was a department of another or that they somehow were merged or linked and then separated. It was always.

John Muether: Machen had, and every biographer has noted this had vocational uncertainty. But once he. Once he settled in at Princeton, it didn’t take him long. It seems that he felt committed to the Princeton cause as it was articulated in the curriculum and the plan for the seminary. And he saw that as a distinct mission. And he was eager to be part of that program. He wasn’t fomenting the discontent, nor is there evidence that Warfield ever thought he was.

Danny Olinger: So in the book, Burnett makes a big point about Daniel Colt Gilman. There’s 10 pages about his presidency at Johns Hopkins and what he brought into the. The modern university. Which is true. Well, there’s connection with. With Machen’s family in that Minnie Machen really advocated for Sidney Lanier to be appointed to John Hopkins. Sidney Lanier, the great poet. And Minnie had grown up with Lanier’s wife, Mary Day. They were best friends in Macon and they both ended up in. In Baltimore. And Lanier had been. So Baltimore post Civil War was becoming the place where if you’re in the south and it’s devastated Baltimore and the industry was thriving, this was the place to go. And it was really a Southern city. And so there’s a sense in which Lanier was speaking against the industrialization and writing these poems. But he also writes a poem, the Symphony, that talks about music being that which is the gospel and that which lifts humanity. And this would have appealed to someone like Gilman, who was, my understanding, was somewhat of a deist. And so Lanier actually ends up being appointed as a lecturer at John Hopkins, but he has tuberculosis at the same time, goes off into the mountains of North Carolina and he dies in 1881. So Burnett makes a big deal about Gilman and about Machen’s praise. I actually think it’s the other individuals at John Hopkins at that time. And that was who ended up being Machen’s main teacher, Gildersley, Basil Gildersleeve, who was also very close to the Machen family, but in a different sense than what Gilman was in that Gildersleeve was a ruling elder at the church that Machen grew Up in and was baptized in. Gildersleeve was at the Franklin. Was it Franklin Square? What was it, Darrell?

Darryl Hart: The Franklin Street Presbyterian Church.

Danny Olinger: Franklin Street Presbyterian Church. And he was not only that, he was Confederate officer. So you have to think in terms of Machen’s family. Machen and his brothers are all named after family members. The family is very big. And so the two uncles that Machen adored, I believe was James Machen and Thomas Gresham were also Confederate officers. And so there’s a big sense in which this is looming large over the family. And the Franklin Street Church is known as the Southern Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. That’s confessional. And here’s Gildersleeve in it. And so when Machen goes off to Johns Hopkins, he comes under Gildersleeve’s thumb as a classicist and just absolutely adores him. I think when Machen goes off to Germany, he’s melancholy about Baltimore, he’s melancholy about the South. He’s melancholy about the individualism and the freedom that he loves so much about growing up and watching John McGraw and the Orioles play baseball. This is what I don’t have any sense whatsoever reading Burnett, that this ever even touched his mind because all he can think is, I’ve seen something with Daniel Cole Gilman in which this defines generous Machen going forward. So, you know, that’s one of the things that I think that comes into play that if you read the letters and you read Machen and other things, I just think, see, my contention would be the Pre World War I Machen’s melancholy about Baltimore and the lost World. Post World War I, he’s starting to hope for heaven. I think that that war changes him in regard to where his eschatology is, in regard to maturity. And so I just. Basically, I’m articulating, in other words, Charlie Denison’s thesis in Charlie’s wonderful article that he put forward.

Darryl Hart: And just to chime in on that, though, that in the lectures I gave at Mid America, which I’m trying to get published on Christianity, liberalism, but going back and working on that and comparing Machen to some of the other modernists and what the modernists did with the blood and guts of the Bible, the Old Testament sacrificial system, but which leads up to the crucifixion itself, they just kind of skirt over that. It’s not merely a question of supernaturalism, it’s a question of a kind of. I mean, ancient religions were pretty bloody and gory and classicists were very much aware of that. And it didn’t scare them off the way it did. People who were continuing to read that material and then thought, wow, this is really kind of weird. And modernist provides a way of trying to, like, kind of make all of that sweet and nice in the Bible and make it merely about not the letter, but the spirit of things. And I just think Machen’s classical background was a very important way in which he. That augmented his understanding of the supernatural character of Scripture. Because what makes the supernatural so important is you need a resurrection from the dead after this very, very gory death that Christ suffered.

Danny Olinger: Yeah, I totally agree with that. One thing I wanted to correct, to be more precise, I think I would say that it’s his ordination in 1914. See, one thing that’s often lost upon us, he was still a member of the Southern Presbyterian Church up to that time. It’s not a question of his struggling about the faith. It’s a question, I think, of being ordained in the Northern Presbyterian Church. So I actually think that that’s going on in regard to the delay in being ordained. It’s whether to stay in the Southern Presbyterian Church or not. Which, again, brings into view Baltimore. When we have Machin student notebooks, he doodles about Baltimore, he dreams about Baltimore. He loves it so much. And see, I think that this is something that you have, you know, it’s right there in regard to what he’s struggling with. And it’s not a question of the gospel ministry, you know, going. Going and siding with Warfield and Hodge and the rest of the Princeton conservatives. It’s more a question, I think, of these elements of his upbringing and culture and in the relationship to culture, the church and culture.

Camden Bucey: Yeah, I think on this point, there’s also something important to say, this understanding or this interpretation. It’s important to look into Machen’s crisis when he was at Marburg in Germany, and specifically when he’s studying under Wilhelm Hermann. So Hermann, not a conservative guy, and you can study Hermann, look him up on, you know, theological encyclopedia somewhere, and you can read about his particular views. Hermann wrote a really significant and important book on, like, a mystical union with Christ, among other things. And Machen was really struggling with trying to make sense of how someone with a modernist, someone with such unorthodox, heterodox views, could at the same time exhibit what appeared to be a very profound piety. So he’s trying to understand how these two things can hold together and to fast forward toward the end of Burnett’s book, Burnett, in a sense, criticizes Machen or at least points out that Machen was indeed battling all these anti supernatural modernists. But Burnett points out, echoing other people, I think it was Lyman Abbott or somebody. I don’t have it at my fingertips. They were pointing out that Machen was missing an entire category of modernists, that there were supernatural modernists, or at least people who did not deny the supernatural, though they were modernists. And the suggestion, I think it’s more of a suggestion, it’s implicit, but it’s pretty strong, is that if Machen only would have understood this category, American Presbyterians like Fitch and Hibben and Miller, or his earlier professor, Wilhelm Hermann, if he only would have understood how to make sense of reality that way, that you can be kind of a mystic and keep your supernatural religion in another realm or another dimension, and then maintain your history and your experience in this world and leave that for your modernist pursuits, you could be happy. So for Burnett, it seems like the conclusion is embracing something of a dimensionalized Christianity. That’s at least how I read it. And one of the biggest figures who’s done that is Karl Barth. It’s a little bit anachronistic. It’s not historically anachronistic to think about Barth and Machen overlapping. They did historically, but Bart at least didn’t come to great recognition in the United states until the 1940s. And that’s a subject of another discussion we could have regarding one of Machen’s warrior children, Cornelius Van Till, and his interpretation of Bart. We can talk about that some other time, but I’d love for you three to weigh in, perhaps, maybe, Darryl, if you want to start, you could talk about Machen’s study in Germany and the crisis that he was encountering. You’ve interpreted this largely as a vocational crisis. But what’s Machen wrestling with at this time, and how are we best to understand that?

Darryl Hart: Well, I mean, the best categories I could come up with way back when, when I was working on this was the vocational one. And also the recognition that in Germany, but Europe more generally, but German universities were different, that the study of theology was part of the university. Study of theology in the United States was either in divinity schools, which were professional schools, or seminaries, which were also professional schools and separate from universities. And. And so Machen saw that, wait, you can do theology in a university and the theology faculty can be part of this research university? Wow, isn’t that great? And, you know, it was sort of like an extension of Hopkins in the sense of, wow, couldn’t you? What if you added a theology faculty to Hopkins, which of course would have created all sorts of problems without an established church. But that’s how I saw it. And it also, I think Machen thought very highly of universities and higher education and thought that kind of the place where religion did show up in universities was often in religion departments or philosophy departments where oftentimes in the Victorian world it could be sentimental and romantic views of Christianity and not a very hard headed approach that, you know, kind of took seriously the graphic elements of Scripture, the graphic elements of Roman and Greek literature and myths. So again, I think Machen was trying to sort those sorts of things out and that is, is a big part of, of it. I’m not, I don’t want to deny that there may have been at times a crisis of faith in the. But I, I, but I still didn’t see anything like, is it true going on with Machen?

Camden Bucey: Yeah. Even in his assessment, his letters back to his mother regarding Hermann, when he’s wrestling with this, like, how do we make sense of this guy? Even there he’s acknowledging his heterodox views. I mean he fully recognizes that this man is out of step with what he professes. And I don’t see any indication that I have not read all the Machen’s correspondence, of course, but I have no indication that Machen ever wavered or doubted in the historic veracity of the claims of Christianity that the Bible was true. The struggle for me seemed to be more vocational, but also just understanding how like it’s almost unsettling when you see someone who’s heterodox, so out of step with historic Christianity, but yet exhibiting on the surface this pious form of religion. I think that’s troubling to me. Yeah, you’re expecting orthodoxy to match up with orthopraxy, at least in some regard. And to find someone that’s not that way, especially if you’re a young man, you’re trying to make sense of this.

John Muether: John Camden Machin’s not the first one to have struggled with this. This was Hodge’s experience hearing Schleiermacher. He was bedazzled by Schleiermacher and his piety that didn’t fit his theology. Yes, but what Burnett seems to assume is that Machen’s exposure to. His study of history and his sense of historical consciousness required affinity with skeptical

Camden Bucey: views of the Bible.

John Muether: And in saying that, and here’s. I’m creating an opening for Danny here. What Burnett ignores is everything Voss taught Machen about history. Because that’s the point Voss was most eager to challenge.

Camden Bucey: Danny, can you follow your lead blocker into the hole here?

Danny Olinger: Oh, man, of course. Thank you, John. Wow. Yeah. So I came away from preparing for this reading Mache and thinking he really gets an A for understanding boss and things here. So with Hermann. So Hermann’s reputation at the turn of the century was he was the theologian in Germany who had built upon Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Camden Bucey: Barthes says, you know, that’s quite Lutheran, Neo Kantian.

Danny Olinger: Yes. And he also was the one who was saying that Schleiermacher was the greatest theologian in the history of the church since the development of the New Testament canon. But he also said he didn’t want to talk anything about metaphysical questions. He didn’t want to talk theology. And so there was this divorce between theology and practice in. And you see, Machen, throughout his Entire mature from 1911 forward, Machen is always writing about how doctrine and life must go together. That’s a gigantic emphasis in Jesus and Paul. But I take this quote from the undisputed intellectual history of Machen that everyone should read, Defending the Faith by DG Hart. This is DG Hart’s analysis of the origin of Paul’s religion. In sum, by stressing the differences between Christianity and other religions, critics urged Machen cut Paul off from history. That’s the issue here. And what. What is going on is all these men who were in Germany and others were saying that you have the historical development of cultures and that must be taken into account in Christianity, otherwise you are turning an eye to history. And Machen said, no. Machen said the determinative factor in history is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s an event that happened in time. And in that sense, he is saying the exact same thing that Gerhardus False was saying. And Gehardus Voss said famously in the biblical theology that we live just as much in the New Testament as did Peter, Paul and John. Hermann and others would lose their mind with that statement because it totally cuts off everything that Schlagemacher was about and everything about the development of cultures and people. And Machen is saying it’s the event, character that defines Christianity and it becomes the basis for what we believe and what we practice. And he was saying that in 1911, in Jesus and Paul, it’s right there. You can just go and read it. And that becomes the basis for the origin of false religion. I mean, it’s. It’s. In his 195015 address on. On history and the faith it’s in Christianity, liberalism, there’s elements in the virgin birth. I mean, this is what’s defining to Meache. So five years after he had Hermon, he was already arguing against Hermon. He was already denying Hermon’s thesis.

Camden Bucey: Exactly. So this act is so critical to get that point that Danny’s making a point that no doubt he was taught by Voss and others. But this is the point he’s carrying through. God is acting supernaturally in history, not in another dimension. He’s not somewhere else with ethical implications for our present life, but he’s actually acting in our time and space. He’s entering, interjecting into and actively doing so into our world. That distinguishes Machen and all of the OPC early people, all the fundamentalists from Barth, from Hermann, from Kant, Schleiermacher, all of these other people who don’t necessarily deny the supernatural, but they’re dimensionalizing it, that they separate it or quarter it off into another realm called different things by different people. Barth has a whole construct or a whole understanding of God’s time, God’s time for us and then our time. Well, to use those categories, Machen is saying God acts supernaturally and redemptive historically in our time, not in God’s time for us, and not only in God’s time, but in our time. That’s what he’s insisting upon. If we don’t understand that, if we don’t get that point that Machen’s making, you’re not going to make any headway on the question of his interaction with or his assessment of or understanding of modernism.

Danny Olinger: Well, Cam, here’s something following up on that. So Burnett says over and over again, so when you come to Jesus and Paul, you come to the origin of Paul’s religion, you come to history and faith. That the dominant thing here is Machen’s emphasis upon meeting the modern historians where they are and the modern methods that Machen is using, not the content that’s going on here. I want to read a letter that J. Gresson Machen wrote in 1926 to a publisher to help get Gerhardus Voss Books, the Self Disclosure of Jesus published. Because this comes into play in both the Jesus and Paul 19:11 and in the Origin of Paul’s religion. The messianic self consciousness of Jesus is a defining part of Machen’s argument. So this is what Machen writes. And this goes to the fact that Princeton Seminary was already utilizing the methods that Machen would utilize. He says, I am venturing to introduce you to my honored teacher and colleague, the Reverend Gardus Fossil, professor of Biblical theology in Princeton Theological Seminary, who has prepared a manuscript on the Messianic consciousness of Jesus. It is possible that the wording of the title may be somewhat changed. I scarcely know of any book that I’ve been so eager to see appear as a book on this subject by Dr. Voss. His lectures on the subject when I was a student at the seminary have been to me one of the really basic things in my preparation for life and in my guidance and everything have tried to do. And I feel sure that my experience is similar to the experience of many others. I cannot imagine anything more vitally important and more clarifying than his treatment of the subject. That was true of his lectures as I heard them. And I should think that would be even more clearly true of the present book. You go and look at Machen’s arguments in Jesus and Faith. It’s the exact same thing that Voss is doing, only Machen’s building upon it. And he’s dealing with the German theologians just like Voss did by name. I just think. I think of Voss. So Voss goes to the gymnasium in Amsterdam. And then he goes and studies in Germany at Berlin and Strasbourg. Do you know what his brother is doing, Bert? Why Voss is doing that? Bert, who also goes to the gymnasium, Bert, gets hired by Daniel Colt Gilman to be a professor of German at Johns Hopkins university in the 1890s. You don’t think Gertrude Voss was not utilizing this method when J. Gresson Machen was a student? I just don’t even know where to begin.

Darryl Hart: You know, I’m not sure that I ever knew that about Voss’s brother at Hopkins.

Camden Bucey: It’s an important numbers.

Darryl Hart: That’s really intriguing.

John Muether: Well, Camden, what Danny just said about Machen’s time at Princeton Seminary was more than this book says about Machen’s time as a student at Princeton Seminary Seminary.

Darryl Hart: Right.

John Muether: It’s remarkably absent the influence of Voss or the influence of Warfield. I think, Darrell, you observed in your book that Machen was a lackadaisical student at Princeton. And Burnett repeats that about five times in his book. The one takeaway from your book he seemed to have. But you can’t account for Machen if you don’t explain the influence of Boss. And

Darryl Hart: I mean, I. I would only qualify that lackadaisical character of Machen’s time at Princeton. He just. I don’t think he felt challenged by it in the same way that he had it at Hopkins. And he had. I mean, he had sufficient time to pursue a master’s in philosophy at the. At the university as well, which I don’t think came up very much at all. Like Jerry Ormond. Ormond, the philosopher with whom Machen studied. I don’t have the book in front of me, but I don’t recall seeing that name. But also, Machen liked campus life at Princeton, and he went to all sorts of games. He did all. And he rode his bike everywhere. He rode up to New York City all the time. He went ice skating on the. On the Delaware Canal, which was very close by. He had a great time. It was sort of like, you know, kind of a country club for him while he was there. And he got two degrees to boot.

Camden Bucey: He kind of carried that life along even after he was a professor in terms of opening his. His apartment at least, and having parties and playing checkers and doing all the. All of those things. He was beloved and in many regards, kind of an older brother in that regard. Significant. What about Harris Kirk? We haven’t raised him yet. John was speaking about him earlier, but we haven’t talked in detail. If my memory serves me, he was his childhood pastor. Correct.

Darryl Hart: He came later.

John Muether: Later.

Darryl Hart: About the time when Machen was. I. I think when Machen was in. At University 01, you say, Dan. So it was about the time when Machen was graduating from. Well, what, that he would have been. No, it would have been about the time he’s graduating from Hopkins.

Danny Olinger: I think he was taking his leap year in Chicago, was it?

Darryl Hart: Right. And I think Kirk was very close to Minnie Machen, Machen’s mother. And there was a biography by a guy named. Last name is Miller. I don’t remember his. For Donald Miller, I think. Was the man who wrote it published by Mercer University Press. And. And Kirk. I mean, Burnett seems to interpret Kirk as a kind of pro university guy. But I read that biography and I read Kirk’s sermons, and I thought, man, this is Victorian sentimentality writ large. And it was not where Machen’s vibe was at all. I didn’t think. And I do think Machen respected him as a friend of the family and his pastor at home. But I just didn’t think that Machen saw this guy as kind of where he thought intellectual Christianity should be.

Danny Olinger: When Burnett talks about Kirk’s the biography, he’s also talking about the origin of Paul’s religion. And he makes this statement which some conservative reviewers seem surprised that Machen made such free use of modern criticism. One remarked, he has no indiscriminate denunciation for the work of higher criticism, which is accurate. But if you go back and actually look at the review, and again, this is part of what troubles me and I wish, because I wanted this to be good, because I really want to learn about Machen. So when you actually go back and read the review, and this was by Edgar Work, who was the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian in New York City, and he wrote a review in the Biblical review. Work says of Machen he has no indiscriminate denunciation for the work of higher criticism. But now listen to what is not included, what follows in the quote. He demands nevertheless that the critics shall defend themselves and show adequate reason for their destructive views. There are revealing phrases and clauses such as modern pantomizing liberalism and lordly disregard of dates that emphasize the murky light in which higher criticism often moves. If any critic who has an essay to discuss New Testament literatures caught making undue assumptions as to text or fact, the author has him quickly on the hip. You know, that’s such a. I mean, praise work. That’s such an accurate description of the origin of Paul’s religion. But that’s not what we’re reading here with Burnett. We’re reading, oh, Machen took it easy because he didn’t want. He was actually more sympathetic to this than could be. I think what you get is Machen just putting a wonderful polemic, stating things positively rather than going scorched earth. And I think that’s what makes Machen so readable a century later.

Darryl Hart: Yeah, and the same thing I think you see at the end of the virgin birth when Machen’s trying to. He’s assessing how important the doctrine is. And you know, this is after. This is five. It’s published five years after the major controversy at the 1925 General assembly when the presbytery of New York still refuses to go along with virgin birth as one of the necessary and essential doctrines of the confession. And Machen’s really careful not to go too hard on people who have questions about it, reservations about it. He doesn’t think anybody should be in the ministry in that category, but he doesn’t think someone’s faith is on the line if they have reservations about the virgin birth, etc. It’s remarkably even pastoral. And so Machen was not a fire breather to echo what Danny was just saying, even in scholarship.

Camden Bucey: So let’s, let’s try to assess the hole here. We’ve laid a lot out there and certainly there’s a lot more we could say. And we can have certainly additional conversations. And I want to respect everyone’s time, especially on a Friday late afternoon in the Eastern time zone. Who knows what you get, what parties you guys are going to.

Darryl Hart: It is the hour.

Camden Bucey: If you’re anything like Machen, you got to ride your bike to some party somewhere. Hold on. But here’s the big question I at least want to ask and get your take on. In what ways does Machen’s early life challenge or reinforce the traditional narrative of his role as a founder of the OPC and perhaps even Westminster Theological Seminary? Burnett’s posing of the question. We’ve already listed some criticisms and tried to reframe things a bit. But the bigger, the bigger issue is is there additional light to cast on his struggles at Marburg, his struggles early on, or his desire for to see better scholarship more in the German university model, one way, shape or form? Does any of that challenge or does it reinforce the typical ways that conservatives have understood Machen through the lens of Westminster and the orthodox Presbyterian Church?

Danny Olinger: I think that when Machen gets to the plan of Union in 1918, 1920 and into the conflict with after the publication of Christianity Liberalism, he’s making the argument that what’s best for the world is Presbyterianism because it’s the most faithful statement of doctrine. It’s the most consistent statement of biblical truth and the particularism of election and regard to the work of Jesus Christ. He’s not backing away from that at all. Prior to that, he is engaged with ideas of teaching methods and things that are more general. He’s not engaged with the problems of Presbyterianism as a whole. He’s much broader in his conception. But the events force him to die to certain things and they do force him to die to his standing in culture. I think that when he is young, he does have this pristine standing in culture in which he is friends with the most famous people in the culture in many ways, the theologians and the politicians and he in being forced to. Is Jesus Christ’s death upon the cross that which defines Christianity and is non negotiable? Those type of things were being, you know, the Presbyterian Church were being tossed aside. His taking a stand for that in the word of God alienated him from the very thing that he defined him in many ways up in the first maybe 25 years of his life. And so I think it’s more in terms of his being outcast that you think in terms of what we learn from this in regard to being disenfranchised.

Camden Bucey: Yeah.

John Muether: Camden Machen had a complicated intellectual journey More complicated than Hodge and Warfield. He grew as a churchman. But these are all things that have been stated by Stonehouse and in Darrell’s book. This is not a. What’s good in Burnett is not a new interpretation. He does highlight those Marburg years and Machen’s being dazzled by Hermann and these sorts of things. But the growth of Machen as a churchman is something that previous biographers have given due consideration to.

Darryl Hart: I would only add one of the oddities of the book’s reception, which hasn’t really received a lot of reception yet. I haven’t checked in a couple weeks, but I haven’t seen any. Any reviews at Amazon or any ratings at Amazon that could have changed by now. But you know scholars like Mark Null, who was on the panel. No, I guess George was on the panel. Was Mark on the panel?

Camden Bucey: Both. Both were. And Mark wrote the foreword to the book as well when he started things off.

Darryl Hart: Right. Thanks. They’re both pretty positive. And it kind of surprised me in a way, because I think using the powers of historical scholarship, you could raise serious questions in a number of moves that Burnett makes. But I guess I came to me even during our conversation here, that and what. This is one of the reasons why I like the book in very qualified ways. But I hadn’t read Machen correspondence for a long time, and Burnett packs this full of correspondence up to a certain date. He doesn’t get beyond, I can’t remember when. It kind of closes off. And it makes me think that people like George Marsden and Mark Noll really hadn’t read much Machen correspondence, that they hadn’t spent any time with Stonehouse, who does also have a lot of correspondence in his book. And I didn’t have correspondence in mine because that wasn’t what the genre of a university press monograph would allow. And so what that correspondence, I think does is it humanizes Machen and it allows people to see a struggle in Machen’s personal life, even if we all think that Burnett maybe misinterpreted that struggle. And in that sense, I think in the OPC first generation, but also beyond. Machen is so highly regarded and such a heroic figure that we tend to forget his human side. I mean, this is a big part of what I do as a historian, I think, is to recognize the foibles of people as much as their strengths. And I think if you recognize foibles, it makes their accomplishments all the more significant. I don’t see a lot of foibles in Machen. I’m not suggesting that, oh, there were a lot of skeletons there or a lot of warts, but I do think he was a real life human being. And even to go to the point that we talked about earlier, he said things off the cuff in correspondence that he wouldn’t have said in public. And so you can run with that and say, see what he thought about Warfield, but I think that’s unfair. But it does also acknowledged that he was a human being. He had feelings, he had emotions. He didn’t always check himself, at least in those kinds of communication. And I think that’s a valuable consideration is to see somebody who we regard so highly in the opc Machen, but also to recognize that he had a human side, which shouldn’t be a surprise to him because he’s not divine, but. But still, I think that’s a useful part of the book.

Camden Bucey: Yeah, I really appreciated the book on that point as well. Loving, you know, providing and giving fuller access to a lot of the correspondence up to. I think it might have been 28 or so, maybe earlier. I couldn’t find any references after that. But John had made the point to me in private before. It largely stops when his mint, when his mother passes.

Darryl Hart: Right.

Camden Bucey: That’s when the correspondence stops.

Darryl Hart: And by the way, one of the things that I don’t think people have really put together, even Burnett, but I think maybe Marsden and Noel as well, is, you know, Machen has a reputation of being a fighter and cocky and knowing who’s right, who’s wrong and just kind of, you know, wading into these controversies and not really thinking about, you know, how to. How to pursue it. And actually what the correspondence revealed to me, going back again this time, and I don’t think I saw it as much the first time, was what an insecure guy Machen was at times. Am I teaching well? I’m losing the students. All this kind of. Can I get the book done on time? Will I meet these deadlines? Oh, no. He was always kind of fretting about what was going on in his life and that’s not the way I read it. That’s not the character of a guy who says, no, I got this and those guys are wrong and I’m going to put them down, et cetera, et cetera. There’s not that side in this correspondence.

Camden Bucey: Well, maybe you just validated Burnett’s concern that Machen truly was a modernist. He’s a modern in the sense that he had lots of anxiety living the modern life. Danny?

Danny Olinger: Yeah, I’d love to Hear what your thoughts are. What do we learn from the early life of Machen?

Darryl Hart: Yeah, you’re the official historian.

Camden Bucey: I just stand on the shoulders of you three and others and I’ve got the title. I don’t have the expertise necessarily, but I do think the book raises some significant questions about Machen’s place in 20th century theology. I was intrigued to read it. I’m not a trained historian, everyone should know that. And so I come at things from a very different perspective. Not a contrary one, but just a different one. As a trained systematic theologian. I’m a systematician who loves biblical theology. So I come at the questions. My natural tendency is to ask different things like I’m very concerned with history. I want to know dates, I want to know places, I want to know cause and effect, I want to know influence. I love intellectual history, all that stuff. But my natural inclination is the theological. And I think that’s really for me the biggest point of this book. And it’s missing that understanding of what Machen was so concerned about. Like why did Machen fight this fight? And it does come back to Hermon. And I think that really unsettled him to see perhaps a preview of his future battles. Trying to make sense of modernists as people, as individuals, but also as people who espouse certain theological views. And the battle is very evident in his earlier writings, but it’s writ large and famously so in Christianity and liberalism. But so much of what Machen wrote there and what Machen wrote, the origin of Paul’s religion, what Voss wrote in the self disclosure of Jesus and other places, all of this is, is of the same concern. All of these books, Voss, Machen, Stonehouse, Van Til, they’re all promoting and fighting the same fight. And to me that’s the biggest point here that I think that’s. That’s what’s actually vindicated in the correspondence and in Machen’s struggle as he was unsettled and realized that there’s something really deep and significant here that we need to reckon with. And the answer to man’s plight in this world as we are born in guilt and sin and misery, in a state of sin and misery. The answer is a Christ, a redeemer who comes, who takes our nature, who assumes our nature, lives for us, dies for us and is raised again for us in our time, in our place. So I don’t see, I didn’t come to the end of this thinking that there is an earlier and a later Machen in this sense that the Machen we have typically understood predominantly through the lens of the OPC in Westminster. I don’t find that contrary to the earlier Machen, although obviously there’s a development. We can speak of an earlier and later Machen in terms of his own personal development, but I see it as much more of an organic development rather than or I should say a progression rather than a disjunction. So I’m not reading Machen the Student at Marburg as theologically contrary to the Machen of 1936. And I appreciate the book, if for no other reason, that I got all the correspondence and it made me think about that much more deeply. So there’s value in that for the reader who wants to take a look at that and question it. But I would certainly recommend reading the primary sources and reading Stonehouse’s biography first, the person who knew him, the best of anyone who’s ever written about him, and Darrell’s monograph, of course, Defending the Faith. So I don’t know what do you think of that? Or does anyone have any final remarks or comments they’d like to make on the subject?

Danny Olinger: I think we all four would be agreed that Machen’s hope was Jesus Christ raised from the dead.

Camden Bucey: I think it’s a very that was his final word. I tried to make that point in my remarks at the conference that Machen’s hope was not the modern German research university, but his final words were recorded in a telegraph to Murray, and he wrote, so thankful for active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. That’s the hope, the hopes in Jesus, who he was and what he did for us in our time and in our space. That’s the heart of it all. And you got to understand that. No pun intended, Darrell, but you’ve got the heart of it all here, too. Well, brothers, this has been a great conversation. Thank you for indulging us and for staying long on a Friday, becoming evening and night soon. But this has been, in my opinion, an important conversation. The book we’ve been talking about today, Machen’s the Transformation of a Modernist in the New Princeton by Richard E. Burnett. Again, we’ve spoken with three of us have Burnett directly at the conference, the Presbyterian Scholars Conference, and we’re wanting to offer somewhat of a not a this isn’t a symposium. Perhaps we could do that another day. But wanting to offer more of an OPC kind of perspective on the matter, we hope that was interesting and beneficial to everyone. If people would like to find out more about our panelists and the books that they’ve written and and other publications. Visit us online and find the description here to this podcast@reformedforum.org there we will have all the links, the pertinent links to the various books, as well as other resources on the subject. While you’re there, you can check out our news and updates about new publications, including a new newsletter, several new books, all sorts of interesting things going on. Reform Forum. But I do want to thank everybody for listening and for watching. We hope you join us again next time on Christ the Center.