Machen’s
Wars: aspects of the life of J Gresham Machen
The
year 2012 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of J
Gresham Machen, who died on January 1, 1937, at the age of 55.
Machen
was born, the middle brother of three, in Baltimore, Maryland on July
28, 1881, 16 years after the American Civil War or what he would
probably have known as The war between the States as although
Maryland is a border state, his mother was from Macon, Georgia.
Through
inheritances, he became wealthy as a young man. At one time and
another, his grandfather on his mother's side and his own father each
left him $50,000 and this in a day when a family could live well on
$3,000 a year. His financial circumstances freed him to study in
Europe and later to support Christian publications and Christian
work.
But
his family left him more than money. They gave him an inheritance of
Southern views, social connections and solid achievement. His
cultured mother wrote a book on The
Bible in Browning.
His father was a successful Baltimore lawyer and also wrote detective
novels. US President Woodrow Wilson was a family friend.
The
family were Presbyterians and Gresham was taught the Bible and the
Westminster standards from a young age. He would later say that at
twelve he had a better understanding of the Bible than many students
entering seminary. In 1896 he became a communicant member of the
church.
His
higher academic career began locally at Johns Hopkins in 1898, where
he studied for three years before doing post-graduate work in the
classics department. After a brief period studying banking and
international law in Chicago he enrolled at Princeton Seminary to
study theology, graduating in the Spring of 1905. He then spent an
important year in Germany, in Marburg and Gottingen, studying under
some of the leading liberal teachers of the day. On his return to
America he spent a year assisting in the New Testament department at
Princeton.
He
was eventually ordained as a minister in 1914, after discovering that
Christ “keeps a firmer hold on us than we keep on him.” He became
assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton that same year and
full professor in 1915. He spent 1918 and the early part of 1919 in
Europe serving with the YMCA in the Great War.
Machen
is best remembered for the battle he waged with others against
modernism, chiefly at Princeton and then Westminster Seminary. He
insisted that Modernist Christianity and Bible Christianity were two
different religions. Modernism doubted the truth of Christ's
resurrection and virgin birth, miracles and the Bible's accuracy, all
of which Machen defended.
His
most famous book appeared in 1930, his doctoral thesis on The
Virgin Birth of Christ which
answers objection after
objection. He began by showing that the doctrine was very old and
that differences in Matthew and Luke can be reconciled. He argues
that the virgin birth was a crucial element of the whole story of
Jesus: “Remove the part and the whole becomes harder not easier to
accept; the New Testament account of Jesus is most convincing when it
is taken as a whole.”
Eventually,
in 1929, Machen felt it necessary to leave Princeton and with others
to found Westminster
Theological Seminary
in (founded “to
carry on and perpetuate policies and traditions of Princeton
Theological Seminary, as it existed prior to the reorganisation
thereof in 1929, in respect to scholarship and militant defence of
the Reformed Faith.”) In
1933 he formed the Independent
Board for Presbyterian Missions.
He was suspended from the ministry for this, which led to the
founding in June 1936 of what he called the Presbyterian
Church of America,
known today as the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church.
It was less than six months later that Machen unexpectedly died in a
Roman Catholic hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota and so was with the
Lord, which is far better.
Here
I want to concentrate on three things
1. Machen's wars – serving
hot chocolate for the YMCA
2. Machen's wars – the battle with
modernism
3. Machen's wars – consolations in the midst of battle
No comments:
Post a Comment