Dr. Roark is Assistant Professor of Religion at Wayland Baptist College, Plainview, Texas. Behind the present study lies a doctoral dissertation on Machen, submitted at the University of Iowa.
J. GRESHAM MACHEN: THE DOCTRINALLY TRUE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
by
Dallas M. Roark
At the concluding service of the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America in June, 1936, a tired but jubilant man preached a stirring sermon entitled “The Church of God.” In it he said.
On Thursday, June 11, 1936, the hopes of many years were realized. We became members, at last, of a true Presbyterian Church; we recovered, at last, the blessing of a true Christian fellowship. What a joyous moment it was! How the long years of struggle seemed to sink into nothingness compared with the peace and joy that filled our hearts! . . . With that lively hope does our gaze turn now to the future! At last true evangelism can go forward without the shackle of compromising associations.1
With these words J. Gresham Machen summed up the resolution of many years of struggle. At long last his desire for a true Presbyterian Church had been fulfilled. Yet, what a small fragment of organized Presbyterianism was a part of his “true” Church!
The man who uttered these Words concerning the organization of a true Presbyterian Church had for years been a leading Presbyterian, a New Testament scholar with great intellectual acumen, a stringent critic of religious liberalism2 a man with a positive Word on the relationship between Christianity and culture, and one who sought to maintain the freedom and liberty of education against the inroads of conformity and governmental control. In these respects he was in direct contrast to the usual picture painted of the fundamentalist personality.3
Machen stood before the General Assembly of the newly formed Presbyterian Church of America in 1936 as a man who had once had the reputation of being a major spokesman for conservative Protestantism. However, now his reputation remained intact only for those in this Assembly and for a few others standing wistfully on the outside. In spite of his jubilant words, he was now a member of a small fragment of American Presbyterianism which he described as a “true Presbyterian Church.” What was the motivating force that brought this man out of the main body of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A? What was the reason for his attacks upon the institutions of the Presbyterian Church as well as upon his colleagues within the Presbyterian Church?
A number of answers have been given to these questions. Stewart G. Cole, in The History of Fundamentalism , presented a picture of Machen as a demagogue of temperamental idiosynerasies. 4 On the other hand, Ned B. Stonehouse, in his J. Gresham Machen,5 presents the disciple ’s point of view. He portrays Machen’s strong defense of the Reformed faith and his unwillingness to compromise with liberalism in any form.
Another interpretation of Machen’s role in the Presbyterian Church comes from Lefferts A. Loetscher. Loetscher has declared that Machen’s fatal flaw lay in his doctrine of the Church, which Loetscher believed to be not truly Presbyterian but Anabaptist.6 A word will be said about this view later in the paper. Still another interpretation of Machen is that of Edward J. Carnell. Carnell maintains with Loetscher that the “issue under trial was the nature of the church, not the doctrinal incompatibility of orthodoxy and modernism.”7 Carnell concludes that Machen, while honoring Reformed doctrine, did not honor the Reformed doctrine of the Church. Carnell’s interpretation points at the problem but does not fully explicate it.
The other interpretations are superficial in their treatment of Machen. We must find a thesis that does justice to the man.
It is my thesis that J. Gresham Machen’s actions within the Presbyterian Church must be interpreted in the light of his desire for a doctrinally “true Presbyterian Church.” For Machen a “true Presbyterian Church”8 meant essentially that all teaching or accredited officers of the Church must give unqualified subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is the requirement that the Presbyterian ministry, broadly considered, be true to what Machen regarded to be the obvious interpretation of Presbyterian doctrine .
It is impossible to give a biographical sketch of Machen in the length of this paper but there are certain things from his life that give direction for understanding our thesis. From his earliest youth Machen learned to love the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism. At an early age he wrote to his mother, who was visiting in Georgia, “Poply gave me two catterkiserms one litte one one bige one. . . . and I study some in them every day . . . I have leart a goodeel since you heard me last. . . It seems to me that on Sunday I can never get a nuf off my cattercisum. I like it so much and Poply always heres me on sunday, and some tims in the Week.”9 In later years, Machen often remarked that he knew more about the Bible and the Reformed Faith at the age of twelve than a great many theological students did in the era in which he lived.10 Not only did Machen memorize and treasure the Catechism but the Westminster Confession of Faith came to be regarded by Machen as one of the finest creedal expressions in existence.
Machen’s theological education was quite important for our thesis. Perhaps there is significance in the fact that he went to Princeton rather than to Union Theological Seminary, for example. It is difficult to document the actual transfer of attitude from teacher to student, but it is true that one can see the same attitudes and ideas in some of the faculty members as that expressed in this thesis. The Princeton of Machen’s day was summed up in an address by Francis L. Patton at the Princeton Centennial of 1912. Patton said;
Now Princeton Seminary, it should be said, never contributed anything to (the) modifications of the Calvinistic system. She Went on defending the traditions of the Reformed theology .... She simply taught the old Calvinistic Theology without modification: and she made obstinate resistance to the modifications proposed elsewhere, as being in their logical results subversive of the Reformed faith.11
There were two men, among others, who influenced Machen during his stay at Princeton. They contributed to his education and are, in part, forerunners in the doctrinal attitudes which culminated in Machen. We shall look briefly to see their presentation of ideas which Machen later propounded.
First, Francis L. Patton. One of the most influential men in the life of Machen during his years at Princeton Was Francis L. Patton. As a source of influence on Machen, he was important for two things: a book and a heresy trial.
In 1869 Patton published The Inspiration of the Scriptures. It main exposition was concerned with plenary inspiration. Patton propounded the doctrine of inspiration that was called “Plenary Verbal Inspiration.” 12 Patton’s approach to the doctrine was the same approach as that later championed by Machen.
The second fact for which Patton is important to us was his involvement in a heresy trial.13 In 1873 Patton became editor of the Interior, a Presbyterian journal published in Chicago. Soon after, the editorials began to warn against the latitude taken by some concerning the standards of the church. In particular, Patton was concerned about the Reverend David Swing who was at that time pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and who had been a New School man before the reunion in 1870. After a number of editorial exchanges in the Interior, Patton presented formal charges of heresy against Swing on April 13, l874.
The trial itself was not successful for Patton, but the points of view expressed in the charges are important for us. Patton’s charges against Swing give something of a precedent whereby we can better understand Machen and his bid for full subscription on the part of the teaching ministry. Patton made two charges against Swing. First, he held that Swing “has not been zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of the gospel; and has not been faithful and diligent in the exercise of the public duties of his office as such minister.”14 Next, he charged that “he does not sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this Church as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.”15 The second charge is the same used by Machen with reference to the Affirmationists in his struggle for a “true Presbyterian Church.”
Second, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Warfield’s importance is expressed in three episodes. First, Warfield is known for his article on inspiration in the Presbyterian Review, expressing a doctrine that was to win Assembly support as an interpretation of the Standards on the doctrine of the Scripture. The article maintained that Scripture is without error “when the ipsissima verba of the original autographs are ascertained and interpreted in their natural and intended sense.”16 This was the same doctrine later taught by Machen and expressed in his writings during his productive career. Second, Warfield had found it intolerable to work jointly with Dr. Charles A. Briggs as joint editors of the Presbyterian Review. Briggs held a different view of inspiration than that of Warfield. Warfield later founded the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, a journal which he dominated and which was more conservative. Third, in the 1890’s when the Presbyterians were contemplating revision of the Standards, Warfield was not silent about the revision committee’s report and his fear was expressed in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review:
“when the proposed revisions are incorporated into the Confession, shall we still have a Confession which is Calvinistic and can be accepted?”“ Livingstone, in his study on Warfield, describes Warfield’s tendency to withhold compromise. He declares that Warfield remained “dissatisfied with anything less than a theory of complete verbal inspiration.”“ His approach to the subject of plenary inspiration was exactly that which Machen followed later.
Upon completion of seminary training the normal step for Machen would have been ordination. There was doubt in his mind concerning his future and a hesitancy about ordination. Pursuing his education in Germany under the great German liberals, Wilhelm Herrmann, Johannes Weiss, and Wilhelm Bousset, Machen’s doubt increased for a time. It was not until he was thirty-two years old that he could fully commit himself to ordination. This indicates something of Machen’s “high” View of the ministry, which is one of the key features of his doctrine of the Church. His ordination, therefore, holds special significance. It meant, first of all, that he had conquered his problem of doubt. He was convinced of the truthfulness of Christianity. Second, Machen put off ordination until he could solemnly and conscientiously affirm in a true and literal sense “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”19 On this basis he could wholeheartedly subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms “as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.”20 This nine-year delay of ordination significantly portrays for our thesis his serious concern for doctrinal conformity. It was not a matter of taking the ordination vows with tongue in cheek over certain items. Instead, Machen Wanted to and did affirm the whole system of doctrine of the standards. This was for him the only “true” Presbyterian way. In due time he called into question those ministers who could not do likewise.
Even in the matter of romance, it is significant to note that Machen’s only romance was cut short over the matter of doctrinal conformity. Stonehouse does not mention the young lady by name, but the romance blossomed in the summer of 1920 and lasted for about a year. In the realm of religious conviction it would have been a trying marriage because she was a Unitarian. Stonehouse concludes that not only could he “be counted upon in the public and conspicuous arenas of conflict but also in the utterly private relations of life to be true to his dearly-bought convictions.”21 The doctrinally true church was important here too.
Machen’s fight for “a true Presbyterian Church” began actually in 1914, the year in which J. Ross Stevenson was elected to the presidency of Princeton Seminary. The battle with Stevenson was a long one and it continued until 1929, when Machen lost it. When Stevenson became President in 1914, he felt that the seminary should reflect the Church as a whole. Machen, Warfield, and others sought to maintain the seminary on its Old School lines and the confession and creed as these standards were interpreted by the conservatives.22 The issue was basically between that of a catholic ideal of the seminary and a particularistic ideal. The first real clash did not come until 1920 when a Plan of Union was promoted by Stevenson. This Plan of Union involved some twenty denominations, and it called for an organization to be known as “The United Churches of Christ in America.” There was to be no organic union at the moment, but the ultimate goal was church union.
Machen published his first article against the plan in 1920, and his views were accepted by many of the faculty. The rejection of the plan was made on a doctrinal basis. The statement promoting the Plan of Union was a very general one.
Whereas We all share belief in God our Father, in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Savior; in the Holy Spirit, our guide and comforter; in the holy Catholic Church, through which God’s eternal purpose of salvation is to be proclaimed and the Kingdom of God realized in earth; in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as containing God’s revealed Will; and in life eternal. . . . ”23
Machen’s reaction to the statement was that it was vague, contained no clear statement of the deity of Christ, and he charged that the phrase “containing God’s will” would allow a person to accept the statement though he felt the Bible contained only one sentence declaring God’s will. He concluded the article by stating that
not some but practically all, of the great essentials of the Christian faith … all those things which seem dearest to the heart of the man who has been redeemed by the blood of Christ ...24would be omitted. To accept such a union would subvert the doctrinal truth held by the Presbyterian Church
. In 1921 Machen wrote a second article on the subject of the plan of union; Machen charged that denominational creeds would soon be submerged.
It is said, however, that the individual churches are permitted to retain their creeds. But how are they permitted to retain them? They are permitted to retain them as ‘purely denominational matters’ and, in accordance with the contemptuous language of the Second Declaration, the day is looked for when ‘the importance of divisive names and creeds and methods will pass more and more into the dim background of the past.’ In other words, we are permitted to believe for the present in salvation through the blood of Christ, provided we keep our belief in the background and permit other men to think they can be saved by their own lives, in accordance with the Plan of Union and the tenets of modern liberalism.25
Thus, Machen was convinced that the Plan of Union would ultimately do away with the precise interpretation of the Presbyterian Standards. Consequently, he rejected the plan personally and carried on the battle in his own Presbytery of New Brunswick to defeat the plan. His efforts were effective in that presbytery and in due time the Plan of Union was also defeated in the majority of the other presbyteries.
The next skirmish that illustrates something of Machen’s controlling principle, the desire for a doctrinally true Church, centers around Dr. Charles Erdman. Actually, the real issue has been obscured by a well-publicized feud at the time. 'When Machen resigned from being stated supply at the First Church, Princeton, Dr. Erdman was called to succeed him. During Machen’s ministry there, Dr. Henry van Dyke, professor of English literature at Princeton, gave up his pew in the Church because of what he termed Machen’s “bitten schismatic and unscriptural preaching.” He said further,
We want to hear about Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, not about Fundamentalist and Modernists, the only subject on which your stated supply seems to have anything to say, and what he says is untrue and malicious.26
When Dr. Erdman came to the pulpit at First Church, Princeton, Dr. van Dyke returned to his pew. At this juncture The Presbyterian printed an insinuating editorial linking Erdman’s evangelicalism with the “rationalism of the university represented by Dr. van Dyke. . .”27 It seems that Erdman assumed that the editorial was written by Machen inasmuch as Machen was an associate editor, but Machen maintained that he had not known of the editorial beforehand and that nothing of his was printed in The Presbyterian without going over his signature.
In replying to the editorial, Erdman charged that there would be no division in the Princeton ranks “Were it not for the unkindness, suspicion, bitterness, and intolerance of those members of the faculty who are also editors of The Presbyterian.”28 At the time, Machen was the only editor from the faculty. The attack could only be interpreted as being directed at Machen. It is my feeling that the personal aspect has been overplayed. Whatever the cause of friction between Erdman and Machen and between Erdman and the other faculty members, there was a real issue that was not basically personal but which involved a difference in views as to how much doctrinal deviation and difference one could tolerate in the Presbyterian Church. Machen and others of the faculty opposed Erdman, not because he himself was personally unorthodox, and this is important to remember, but because Erdman supported programs, plans, and people who were not themselves strict upholders of the Presbyterian standards. A majority of the faculty29 were opposed to Erdman because of his support of the Plan of Union that Stevenson promoted. They felt that the ecumenism of the plan would force the Presbyterian standards into the background. When Erdman sought the moderatorship of the General Assembly in 1925, he was opposed by many of the faculty because of his willingness to receive support from the signers of the Auburn Affirmation.30 ln essence Erdman was a “denomination” man while Machen and his followers were not willing to co- operate with Affirmationists or even those who worked with them. One of Machen’s problems was that he was fighting against a “denomination” in the technical sense of the word.31 For Machen and the faculty, this was indicative of Erdman’s willingness to compromise.” When Erdman received support from the Affirmationists, the cleavage was driven deeper between Erdman and Machen and Erdman and the other members of the faculty.
The conflict between Erdman and Stevenson, on the one hand, and Machen and his group, on the other hand, led ultimately to the reorganization of Princeton Seminary. This issue involved Machen in one of the most momentous decisions of his career in the Presbyterian Church. Princeton Seminary was governed by two boards, the Board of Trustees, and the Board of Directors. With the growing tension in the Seminary, the Board of Trustees, who were generally opposed to the polemicism of the faculty,33 and a minority of the Board of Directors, appealed to the General Assembly in 1926 to make a special investigation of Princeton.34 The proposal was accepted. Because of the investigation, Machen’s confirmation to the chair of apologetics was delayed pending the report of the investigating committee. It seems evident that the Board of Directors, the more conservative of the two boards, wanted the president to resign; but Stevenson, in order to achieve his goal of an all-inclusive seminary reflecting the Church, wanted the merging of the two boards, which act would give approval to his policies.”
When the reorganization of the Seminary did take place in 1929, Machen was at a crossroads for decision. His decision here again supports the thesis set forth that he wanted a “doctrinally true Presbyterian Church,” which is, in essence, a church composed of the teaching officers giving full subscription to the doctrinal standards of the Church. When the plan was adopted by a decisive majority, and “two signers of the Auburn Affirmation were appointed to serve on the new Board. " Machen interpreted this action as meaning the destruction of “old” Princeton. It is apparent that the appointment of two signers of the Affirmation did not constitute total apostasy, but for Machen it was the beginning of a trend that would lead ultimately to apostasy. In June 1929, Machen wrote to his mother, “One question I have decided, I am not going to serve under the new Board.” He also suggested that the destruction of “old” Princeton might be the calling forth of a new evangelical Seminary, which “might be the beginning of a really evangelical Presbyterian Church.”37 He expressed his viewpoint, as he lost this round in his fight for a. doctrinally true Presbyterian Church, in a letter to the chairman of the administrative committee saying he could not serve because
by serving under the new board I might lead evangelical people in the Church to attribute significance to that declaration of purpose and that I cannot conscientiously do.38
The third major skirmish that points up Machen’s fight for a doctrinally true Presbyterian Church within the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. was the issue of modernism in the Foreign Mission Board. With the appearance of the book, Rethinking Missions many were concerned about the status of Presbyterian foreign missions. With the name of Mrs. Pearl Buck associated in an approving way to the ideas of the book, Machen and others were concerned for some action in the General Assembly. He presented an overture to the Presbytery of New Brunswick calling for action concerning the stand of Mrs. Buck, along with other proposals, The overture was embodied in a pamphlet written by Machen, Modernism and the Board of Foreign Mission of the Presbyterian Church 'in the U.S.A. It was a basic appeal to the Board to purify itself of all modernists on the field. In the foreword to the work, Machen declares that the presentation of the overture was in keeping with his sacred trust as a member of the presbytery. Further, the work requested that the General Assembly elect to the Board of Foreign Missions only those who were doctrinally sound and would insist on doctrinal soundness of the missionaries,
When the General Assembly failed to adopt any measures that suited the conservatives toward reforming the mission program, Machen and H. McAllister Griffith called for an early organization of an Independent Board of Foreign Missions.”41 The new board was organized in October, 1933, with Machen as president. Machen’s demand for strict subscription must, of course, be seen as over against the small number of Presbyterian missionaries who could be classed as modernists. The overwhelming number was orthodox in doctrine. The report made by Donald G. Barnhouse, a conservative, after his tour of the mission fields was that the total number of liberals was very small. The proportion was something like two to a hundred.42to instruct the Board of Foreign Missions that no one who denies the absolute necessity of acceptance of such verities by every candidate for the ministry can possibly be competent to occupy the position of Candidate Secretary.”40
For Machen’s connection with the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions he was tried by the Presbytery of New Brunswick for violation of his ordination vows, disobeying the rules and lawful authority of the Church with contempt of and rebellion against his superiors in the church in their lawful counsels, commands, and corrections. He was judged guilty. After two unsuccessful appeals, one to the Synod and the other to the General Assembly, Machen concluded that the only alternative was a new church. He declared:
I speak, of course, only for myself; but to me it seems now entirely inevitable that those who love God’s Word and make Christ the Lord of their lives will continue the true spiritual succession of the Presbyterian Church in America by a body separate from the existing organization .... The Church of which we will be members (the new one) will not really be a new Church. It will be Presbyterian through and through, being faithful to that great system of doctrine from which the present Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. has turned away.43
With the founding of the Presbyterian Church of America, Machen still did not have a doctrinally true Presbyterian Church. The new Church was torn over the issue of dispensationalism and premillennialism. Machen regarded it impossible to be a true Presbyterian and believe in dispensationalism. He declared that “dispensationalism of the Scofield Bible seems to us to be quite contrary to the system of doctrine taught in the Westminster Standards.44 He further declared that if a man accepted the Scofield notes in their real meaning “he is seriously out of accord with the Reformed Faith and has no right to be a minister or elder or deacon in The Presbyterian Church of America.”45
Concerning premillennialism Machen concluded that it was contrary to Scripture46 but it was not a subject that was defined in the standards. Because of the vagueness of the standards he did not regard it as being incompatible with true Presbyterianism.
We can see something of Machen’s interest in conformity in the adoption of standards for the new Presbyterian Church of America. As a background it must be remembered that in 1903 the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had added two chapters to the Confession, one on the subject of the Holy Spirit, and the other on the subject of the love of God and missions. They had also adopted a Declaratory Statement with regard to the predestination passages and other minor amendments. Prior to the adoption of the standards of the new church in 1936, Machen wrote an editorial stressing the importance of omitting the 1903 Amendments.47 “These amendments are extremely bad in themselves, and they were adopted by the U. S. A. Church in the interest of indifferentist church unionism.”48 In the editorial of The Presbyterian Guardian for November 28, 1936, Machen declared that the outstanding action of the second General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church of America
was the adoption of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms as the doctrinal standards of the church without the compromising amendments and Declaratory Statement which the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. adopted in 1903 .... ”49
Commenting further, he declared:
It would have been a calamity . . . if those highly objectionable 1903 Amendments had been adopted in any way whatsoever. For the Presbyterian Church of America to have had those compromising amendments as part of its doctrinal standards, no matter for how short a time, would have been a very serious lowering of the flag.50
The last episode that we will consider in Machen’s struggle for a doctrinally true Presbyterian Church was brought to light at the third General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church of America, which met in June of 1937. At this Assembly the young church voted to withdraw its support from the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and voted to establish a new board. If the following statement can be depended upon, it will show how decisive was the desire for a doctrinally true Presbyterian Church which possessed Machen. The New York Times declared that the Reverend Charles J. Woodbridge, retiring secretary of the Independent Board,
startled the assembly with the implication that the faction now in control of the Independent Board was in a considerable measure responsible for the death of Dr. Machen on January 1. 51
Shortly before his death Machen was replaced as president of the Independent Board by the election of Harold S. Laird. Woodbridge described the central issue involved in Machen’s replacement and the Asse1nbly’s vote of no-confidence in the Independent Board as being the issue of “independency versus historic Presbyterianism."52 Woodbridge then continued to say that following Machen’s
displacement “Dr Machen told some of us that this was the greatest blow he ever had to stand in his life.”53
Six weeks later came the journey to Bismarck .... The physician who attended Dr. Machen in his last hours attributed his death largely to the fact that some severe shock had left him in a weakened physical condition. Those of us who were closely associated with Dr. Machen during those last six weeks know what that shock was.54
If this statement stands, then the great shock to Machen was to discover that his beloved Independent Board, for which he had given up his standing in the main Presbyterian body, had been taken over by those who were not true Presbyterians. Accordingly, if this statement is true, then death itself was hastened by the shock of recognizing that his ideal was not being realized even among the small fragment of the doctrinally true Presbyterians. The shock of seeing no hope for his treasured ideal possibly lessened his will to live.
[To be continued]
Footnotes
1. J. Gresham Machen, “The Church of God,” The Presbyterian Guardian Vol. II (June, 1936), p. 98.
2. Machen defined his use of the term liberalism in Christianity and Liberalism. “. . . the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism-that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. The word ‘naturalism’ is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning.” Christianity and Liberalism, New York:Macmillan Co., 1923, p. 2. Henceforth, in this paper the term “liberalism” will be used in Machen’s sense.’
3. Edward J. Carnell, “Fundamentalism.” A Handbook of Christian Theology, New York: Meridian Books, 1958.
4. Stewart G. Cole, The History of Fundamentalism, New York: Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1931, p. 126.
5. Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1954.
6.Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1957, p. 117.
7 .Edward John Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959, pp. 114-116.
8.Henceforth, the term “true Presbyterian Church” is used in Machen’s sense of the term.
9. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. -11.
10. Ibid., p. 249.
11. The Centennial Celebration of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America at Princeton, New Jersey, p. 349
12. Francis L. Patton, The Inspiration of the Scriptures, Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869, p. 72.
13. Though Machen never participated in, or initiated, any heresy trials, he regretted a few years after that the Auburn Affirmationists were not brought to trial. He certainly regarded himself as a guardian of orthodoxy.
14. The Great Presbyterian Conflict, Chicago: George MacDonald and Co.,1874, p. 93.
15 Ibid., p. 99.
16 Loetscher, op. cit., p. 31.
17. Ibid., p. 47.
18.William Livingstone, “The Princeton Apologetic as Exemplified by the Work of Benjamin B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, (Yale, 1948), p. 246.
19. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1927, p. 356; Cf. Stonehouse, p. 197.
20. Ibid., p. 356.
21. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. 320.
22. Edwin H. Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1940, pp. 65_66.
23. Ibid., p. 27.
24. J. Gresham Machen, “The Proposed Plan of Union,” The Presbyterian (June 10, 1920), p. 8.
25. J. Gresham Machen, “The Second Declaration of the Council on Organic Union,” The Presbyterian, (March 17, 1921), p. 8.
26. New York Times, Jan. 4, 1924.
27. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. 376; cf. Machen, Documents (appended to a. state-ment used in connection with the Statement by J. Gresham Machen). Printed, not published, Nov. 23, 1926.
28 . Machen, Documents, p. 12.
29. Loetscher, op, cit., p. 139.
30. Machen, Documents, p. 27.
31. Cf. Listen Pope, Millhands and Preachers, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 117-14O.
32. J. Gresham Machen, Additional Statements, Printed, not published, Dec. 18, 1926, pp. 16-17.
33. J. Gresham Machen, “The Attack Upon Princeton,” Printed, Dec. 1927, pp. 24-5.
34. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. 383.
35.Machen, The Attack Upon Princeton, p.16.
36. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. 441.
37. Ibid., p. 442.
38 .Ibid., p. 443.
39. Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry After One Hundred Years, by Commission of Appraisal, W. E. Hocking, Chairman, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932.
40. Machen, Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (printed by author, no date), p. 1. Machen did have at particular person in mind when he referred to the Candidate Secretary. He was Rev. Lindsay S. B. Hadley, who was a signer of the Auburn Affirmation. It should be noted here also that Charles R. Erdman was president of the Board of Foreign Missions. Machen’s request that the General Assembly elect only those who would insist on doctrinal soundness, doctrinal conformity, is a further indication of the difference between two men who were personally orthodox. Erdman could overlook some deviation, Machen could not.
41. Stonehouse, op. cit., p. 482.
42 The Presbyterian Guardian, Vol. I, (Nov. 18, 1935), p. 64.
43 New York Times, May 30, 1936, p. 32.
44 The Presbyterian Guardian, Nov. 14, 1936, p. 42.
45 Ibid.
46. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, New York: Macmillan Co., 1923, p. 49.
47. The Presbyterian Guardian, Nov. 14, 1936, p. 45.
48. Ibid.
49. The Presbyterian Guardian, November 28, 1936, p. 69.
50. Ibid., pp. 69-70.
51. New York Times, June 3, 1937.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.