The Table Video

Prof. Dariusz Brycko examines Princeton Seminary Professor J. Gresham Machen’s protagonist role in the fundamentalist/modernist controversy and the founding of many Evangelical colleges, universities, and seminaries in reaction to the schism between Evangelicals and mainline Protestant theologians.

Transcript:

A few words before I begin about Machen. I’m an early modern historian. I specialize in reformation that my degree from Calvin is in reformation, but I recently became a little more interested in more current events and issues, if you can call things current relating to early 20th century.

Mostly because, well, I’m an Orthodox Presbyterian, and I found in that church a lot of hospitality for intellectual minded Christians. Also, because I have an increasing number of questions about the question of Christian education, and where is Christian education going? Before going to Calvin I attended Gordon-Conwell, and Moody Bible Institute, and small Bible school Upstate New York, Word of Life. I feel that I got a big overview of what Christian evangelical and fundamentalist education at the end of 20th century is all about, and that made me kind of reflect about the possibilities for a future, which is the very topic of this fellowship that we all had here this semester.

So without any further ado, let me just start my presentation. Yes, I hope we’ll have a chance to talk and discuss, and ask questions after we are done, or after I am done. The discussion of our topic, Christian scholarship in the 21st century, prospects and perils, would seem incomplete without reflecting on the recent history of the controversies that formed and reshaped American religious, and secular scholarship in the 20th century.

In this essay I would like to discuss the philosophy of Christian scholarship offered by J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, and one of the main protagonists in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, which resulted in a schism between American Protestants, and the founding of many new Bible colleges, institutes, seminaries, and Christian universities including your own Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

George Marsden in his book titled “Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism” argues that most of the early opponents to liberalism who became leaders in the fundamentalist, and later evangelical movements where in some way connected to Machen. The list of familiar people and institutions Machen directly influenced is long, so let us just mention a few such as Harold Ockenga, founder of Fuller and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminaries, Christianity Today, and he was also a pastor of the historic Park Street Church in downtown Boston.

The list includes Carl McIntire, popular broadcaster, and founder of the Bible Presbyterian Church. Francis Schaeffer, well-known Christian intellectual whose L’Abri community in the Swiss Alps became an intellectual refuge for European Evangelicals. And even, again, your own Samuel Sutherland, the president of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, under whom the institute received accreditation, and founded Talbot Seminary.

Further, Cedarville and Bryan Colleges both offered presidency to Machen. Columbia Theological Seminary and Southern Presbyterian offered him New Testament professorships, and Canada’s Knox College asked him to be its principal. Also, Machen was one of the main founders of the Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia which came into existence not only due to his initiative, but also family fortune.

Finally, if we add the National Association of Evangelicals, and Moody Bible Institute that asked him to speak, and zealously sought his support, it seems safe to say, that the renaissance of academic pursuit among conservative evangelicals all the way until 1950s, 1960s could be in large measure credited to Machen.

And understanding that, I think, hopefully, makes us all, well, interested, or at least want to know what was Machen all about, what was his theological approach to Christian education. Having that in mind let me introduce my thesis, which I think just appeared on the screen. In my thesis I would like to argue that being aware, or with the awareness of Machen’s influence on the early fundamentalist and evangelical movements I would like to argue that Machen’s intellectually robust, and culturally militant view of Christian scholarship successfully overcomes the anti-intellectualism of fundamentalists, as well as the triumphalism of Reformed cultural transformationists.

So basically what we’ll concentrate on will be kind of twofold. First, we will discuss the anti-intellectualism of fundamentalists, and how Machen responded to it, and, also, what were specifically Machen’s views on Christian education that seem differ from his co-fellow religionists in the Reformed Church that are associated with Kuyper and Kuyperian tradition. Before we do that let me just briefly review the literature on the subject. It is important to know that Machen did not present his views on Christian scholarship in any systematic manner, therefore, the analysis of his philosophy of education can at times be challenging yet it is not impossible. Machen extensively addresses the issue, and on his opinions on scholarship are spread throughout his speeches, essays, books, and book reviews.

We also possess a transcript of Machen’s testimony before the U.S. Congress against the act proposing to form the U.S. Department of Education. Very fascinating document if you want to pick it up, and read it I highly encourage you to do so.

When it comes to secondary literature we have a few biographies of Machen, and other helpful sources dealing with his theology. However, Machen’s philosophy of education has received only some treatment, and continues to be a topic that deserves further attention especially in the light of recent discussion about the value of Christian education, and the nature of evangelical scholarship in general. Perhaps the most insightful analysis of Machen’s views of science can be found in D.G. Hart’s book “Defending the Faith: “J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis “of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America,” which we’ll later bring into our discussion, but we also find the older yet still very helpful analysis of George Marsden as he offers insights on Machen’s use of commonsense realism, his southern influences, and traces the decline of Machen’s popularity among evangelical to two causes.

The first cause was in the early 1960s critique made by the president of Fuller, Edward Carnell, who said that Machen lacked vision, and greater involvement with non-Presbyterians. The second cause Marsden gives for Machen’s declining popularity was the growing influence of the 19th century Dutch Reformed perspective embodied in the writings of Abraham Kuyper.

So that’s what kind of got us to today, and if you talk to a lot of young, modern, well, young evangelicals today, often they will not know Machen, or they will simply maybe know about his apologetic writings, but they will have a very selective knowledge of Machen. I guess at the end of 20th century, Machen kind of became pretty much only known among Orthodox Presbyterians, which was a very small denomination.

Okay, so to the body of my argument here, and the first part of it we’ll address the question of intellectualism among fundamentalists and evangelicals. Machen has often been labeled a fundamentalist, and in many ways he was as the majority of his doctrinal convictions were shared with those who, early on, represented the fundamentalist camp, and expressed their views in the Fundamentals of Faith, a set of 90 essays published in 12 volumes between 1910 and 1915 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

Machen was also a major source of inspiration, and intellectual ammunition for the fundamentalist, and later neo-evangelical camp in its struggle against liberal efforts to redefine the historic Christian faith.

However, there are also some differences between Machen and the fundamentalists. First of all, Machen was graduate of Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago and Princeton, with foreign studies at Marburg, Germany under Wilhelm Herrmann with whom also Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann trained. Politically, Machen was a democrat with a strong libertarian bent, standing against the religious mainstream of his day.

By opposing prohibition, he also opposed prayer and Bible teaching in public schools, and openly promoted the rights on non-Protestant, and not Christian religious minorities and sects in America. Machen was also a Southern gentleman, coming from the upper Baltimore elites with high family connections including the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, who was a close friend of the Machen family.

However, Machen’s Ivy League education, and almost we could say aristocratic background, uncommon political views was not what really set him apart from most of the fundamentalists. It was rather the growing anti-intellectualism, and non-confessionalism of the fundamentalist camp that kept him from fully identifying with the movement. This is well-illustrated by the fact that in 1927 Machen politely declined to become the president of nondenominational university named after William Jenkins Bryan, the prosecutor in the famous Scopes monkey trial. In his letter declining the offer Machen wrote, Hence I never call myself a fundamentalist.

There is, indeed, no inherent objection to the term, and if the disjunction is between fundamentalism and modernism, then I’m willing to call myself a fundamentalist of the most pronounced type, but, after all, what I prefer to call myself is not a fundamentalist but a Calvinist. That is the adherent of the Reformed faith.

There are numerous reasons why Machen declined this particular offer, and these are better understood in the context of the entire letter, but is apparent from the quoted text that when asked to lead a non-denominational fundamentalist university, Machen made it clear that he preferred to be identified with a particular Protestant confession. This point should not be underestimated when seeking to understand Machen’s approach.

However, for the purpose of this presentation we will not delve into Machen’s eschatological, and confessional stance as they seem little less essential to his views on Christian education, which go beyond Presbyterian and the Reformed identities. We would like to emphasize here that Machen turned down the chance to preside over an institution so closely associated with the Scopes trial. Machen knew William Jenkins Bryan, and Bryan asked him to testify in the trial, but Machen withheld his support from a cause that did not seem essential in the battle against liberalism.

Hart argues that this act showed Machen to be committed to the university world, and confirmed his stand against anyone who would separate Christianity from science, even fellow believers. For Machen, the dialogue about faith and science was essentially to refuting the liberals, and thus to preserving the historic Christian faith, because science has the ability to verify that the Christian faith is based on historical facts confirming the truthfulness of Christian religion.

In Machen’s view, the trueness of Christianity was deeply rooted in actual historically verifiable events, and in this sense theology as science was not different from any other scientific inquiry. After all, both theology and chemistry are concerned with the acquisition, and orderly arrangement of truth.

Thus using biblical interpretation to disqualify the claims of science whilst to mention unacceptable. That being said, we note here that Machen was not arguing that faith in God could be acquired and/or limited to simply an intellectual argument or ascent. For Machen as for other conservative Presbyterians, faith ultimately comes only by the mysterious, creative power of Holy Spirit enabling one to trust in Christ’s atoning work, and follow his commands.

It was the fundamentalist’s insistence on literal six-day creation that alarmed Machen the most. Not because some Christians were holding to this interpretation, but rather because fundamentalists turned it into the litmus test for proving one’s Christian orthodoxy.

In Machen’s view, this position hurt the Christian cause because it minimized the significance of the earlier mentioned Fundamentals of Faith, which included let’s remind them which were the Fundamentals of Faith.

There were Christ’s divinity, Christ’s second coming, virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the infallibility of the Bible, and the historical reality of miracles. For Machen that was in the core of the battle, and he wanted to concentrate on these fundamentals, which were he believed essential to Christian faith while six-day creation was not.

Machen felt that fundamentalists had a low view of natural revelation, and left no room for academic discussion about the findings of science, and how they could relate to the biblical interpretation. To be sure, Machen saw the dangers of naturalistic evolutionism, but he also believed that science must have an important voice in the discussion even if cannot be treated on equal basis with the biblical revelation.

The anti-intellectualism of fundamentalists also became evident for Machen by the stress on personal experience of salvation, suggesting that spiritual intimacy, and subjective experience somehow carried superior value to the knowledge acquired through toilsome study of Bible, original languages, and theology.

He was convinced that religion without science will lead to superstition or false religion based on feelings and emotions, the very definition of religion that liberals tried to advocate. Against revivalism and pietism, Machen argued that education and knowledge were necessary for effective preaching because religion is primarily doctrine-oriented, and experience must follow, never the other way around. He writes, Men are not saved by the exhibition of our glorious Christian virtues.

They’re not saved by the contagion of our experiences. We cannot be the instruments of God in saving them if we preach to them thus only ourselves. No, we must preach to them the Lord Jesus Christ, for only through the gospel, which sets him forth that they can be saved. Because faith consists of trust, Machen rejected the so-called simple faith proclaimed by revivalist preachers, for it is impossible to trust someone unless we first determine whether he or she is even trustworthy. In Machen’s view, we must possess knowledge to have true faith in Christ. He writes, What these advocates of simple faith, which involves no knowledge of Christ really mean by simple faith is faith, perhaps, but it is not faith in Christ.

It is faith in the practitioners of the method. End of quote here. Moving on, I assume you can follow the block quotes that I’m reading here. Machen worried that many conversions that take place upon so-called simple faith are nothing else but a psychological manipulation that produce false conversions in contrast to the biblical examples of true conversions which always contain a doctrinal element.

He recalls Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, which included facts about Christ, not just an account of Peter’s own personal experience. The conversion of the jailer in Philippi where Paul and Silas preach to him the word of the Lord, and the words of Jesus when he addressed the theological inquiry of the Samaritan woman about the proper place of worship.

We ought to note here that although Machen was a proponent of highly educated clergy, he did not argue that all evangelists must necessarily be scholars. However, at the same time, he maintained that evangelists who are not scholars are dependent upon scholars to help them to get their message straight, and that’s exactly how he puts it.

And that the most powerful evangelism in the history of the church has been done by scholars, and he calls here Luther, Paul, and others. Machen refused to overlook the anti-intellectualism of the fundamentalists with whom he shared so much in common because he was convinced that it would hurt the movement, leading to the decline of theology, and spread of populism in Christian faith and practice.

Moreover, as surprising as it may at first sound, the anti-intellectualism was one of the main critiques of liberalism as well. I should say that it was the main critique of liberalism as well. So to tolerate it among fundamentalists would simply not be right, not be fair. Granted that the liberal expression of anti-intellectualism was different, nevertheless, Machen could not ignore the fact that both the fundamentalist and liberals were guilty of it. Machen criticized liberal theologians for abandoning the grammatical historical method of biblical interpretation allowing the Bible to become an ineffectual and useless book, a collection of inspirational stories describing various human emotions.

For Machen, Christianity was either based on historical facts, or it was philosophically bankrupt. Perhaps able to sustain morality for a while, but not the gospel. He once wrote that a gospel independent of history is simply a contradiction of terms, and that the foundation of the church is either inexplicable, or else it is to be explained by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, but if the resurrection is accepted than the lofty claims of Jesus are substantiated. Jesus was then no mere man, but God and man.

God come in the flesh, end of quote. Further, Machen argued that modernists degradated science by excluding from it the sphere of religion. This separation of reason from faith led to decadence of the academic community producing horrible Frankensteins whose knowledge and skill hurts humanity. Machen writes, I think we can say that science alone, unless something else falls with science, is bound by inexorable logic to result just exactly in that decadence, which it so distresses. In fact, science has served to improve enormously the technique of tyranny in our days as over against the cruder tyrannies of fire and sword which reigned in the past. It is in the accordance with an inexorable logic that Hitler is practicing fiendish wickedness in Germany today in the name of science.

If we consider that Machen wrote these words before World War II we have a reason to stand astonished by his prophetic voice. By the way, he also has a lot to say about Stalin, and what’s happening in Russia, what’s happening in Italy. As someone who grew up in communist Poland that really has a deep impact on how I read Machen.

The anti-intellectualism of the liberals also became evident to Machen by their widespread acceptance of modern pedagogical method. Machen observed that liberals were preoccupied with the method of study, and emphasized practical rather than theoretical knowledge. This issue surfaced during the dispute with Charles Erdman, professor of practical theology at Princeton.

Erdman, supported by the new president of Princeton, Ross Stevenson, advocated a curriculum that would downplay the study of biblical languages, and reduced core biblical and theological courses for the sake of practical electives, with strong emphasis on pastoral care, and spiritual formation. This reform Machen strongly opposed, lamenting that seminary would not produce specialists in the Bible anymore, but rather congregational CEOs, if we were to use a contemporary term, and ultimately churches will become social clubs more than places where we study the scripture.

For Machen, the modern pedagogical obsession with the method of acquiring knowledge instead of the knowledge itself was defeating the very purpose of education. He writes, The modern conception of the purpose of education is that education is merely intended to enable a man to live, but not to give him those things that make life worth living. Also, the main role of the academic instruction had been reduced to the developing of the faculty of mind, and no longer with transmitting of knowledge.

All of this, Machen ironically concluded, led modern educators to a great discovery. The great discovery being that it is possible to think with a completely empty mind, which pursued, pursuit of that knowledge with an empty mind would lead American education to complete disaster where shameful superficiality and ignorance of the most basic facts about the world will become a new norm.

I have to say I experienced that recently being in a college classroom and asking students the difference between First and Second World War, and they couldn’t tell me. They also didn’t know that America was part of NATO. The problem of that wasn’t the fact that they didn’t know it, they didn’t even care. So, again, as someone from Eastern Europe that made me a little alarmed, but.

Making this argument about superficiality and ignorance of the future American generation Machen writes, We shall have never a true revival of learning until teachers turn their attention away from the mere mental processes of the child, out into marvelous richness and variety of the universe, and of human life.

Not teachers who have studied the methodology of teaching, but the teachers who on fire with love of the subjects that they are going to teach are the real torchbearers of intellectual advance. End of quote. Unfortunately, this pedagogical anti-intellectualism is something Machen also observed among fundamentalists, whose Bible colleges and institutes often sought after quick and practical education for the sake of evangelism, and mission work or spiritual formation, rather than training reflective, and critical thinking graduates.

This deeper training was something he seeked to achieve with the newly founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Now moving to our next question. What makes education Christian? The first one was what makes education intellectual, scholarship intellectual. The second part would be what actually makes education Christian. Presbyterians in America were not always strong advocates of distinctly Christian education, and in many cases were comfortable supporting public and private schools that did not possess explicit Christian identity.

This was not the case with the Dutch Reformed churches, which much earlier came to advocate the distinctly Christian education. In large measure, the growth of Christian scholarship among the Dutch is credited to Abraham Kuyper, the renowned Reformed theologian and politician who, in 1901, became the prime minister of Netherlands.

Politically, Kuyper introduced a new model of society in which various religions and social groups enjoyed separate yet equal spheres of sovereignty. This political system enabled the Dutch Reformed to develop a network of Christian schools, including the well-known Free University, or Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Kuyper’s political model fell out of grace, as Dutch society perceived it as highly divisive. Despite this setback, the Dutch Reformed continued to promote Christian education supplying powerful theological justification for it. Further, many followers of Kuyper immigrated, and became some of the most outspoken supporters of Christian scholarship on the American continent, and some of them sit among you today.

They have wrote a lot about it, so I will simply direct you to them, but they also had a deep impact on philosophy of cultural involvement, which was held by many mainline evangelicals such as the late Chuck Colson. Again, we do not have time to fully discuss Kuyper’s and Kuyperian view of Christian scholarship here, but simply know the presence of excellent resources on the topic such as even Nicholas Wolterstorff’s recent book, “Educating for Shalom.” And, of course, there are many others.

That being said, we do not want to point out that the Dutch Reformed philosophy of Christian education was I guess I want to say. That being said, we do want to point out that the Dutch Reformed philosophy of Christian education was partially due to the… I wrote a word that I have hard time pronouncing now. It happens to people who are not native speakers. Amiable, my wife’s gonna help me.

Amiable, friendly or positively disposed. I’m so happy to have an American wife when I’m doing these things. She reads everything I write. Let’s just use word friendly. [laughter] No, I read it before it just slipped. So friendly political situation in which churches with government’s help were able to fulfill their cultural mandate in the sphere of culture and education, something which became very important for the Dutch, especially during the Second World War, during which the Dutch churches took a stand against Nazi Germany and German Lutherans who failed to oppose, and sometimes even supported Hitler.

Perhaps of their initial success, Kuyper and his followers assumed a triumphalist tone in proclaiming their ideas, apparent in his famous speech where he said, “There is not a square inch in the world domain “in our human existence over which Christ, “who is sovereign over all, does not cry mine.” And more explicitly when he writes, Calvinism means the completed evolution of Protestantism, resulting in both a higher and richer state of human development. I don’t know if you ever realized that, but if you’re not a Calvinist, you know, you kind of are missing on the completed evolution of Protestantism and higher, and richer state of human development.

Perhaps that’s why so many Calvinists are so obnoxious. [laughter] I’m one of them so I can joke about it. No Polish jokes, though, only Calvinist jokes. Further, Kuyper writes, The worldview of modernism, with its starting point in French Revolution, can claim no higher than that of presenting an atheistic imitation of the brilliant ideal proclaimed by Calvinism, therefore, being unqualified for the honor of leading us higher on.

Kuyper’s triumphalism was not out of the ordinary for the intellectual elites of the early 20th century, and in many ways embodied the optimistic expectations of those who thought that the approaching era would be a Christian century, or as it was in the case of Kupyer a Calvinist century. Kupyer’s triumphalist Calvinism, and high expectations of the Reformed Protestantism went way beyond the church and evangelism becoming a worldview that penetrated political, social, and cultural convictions, seeking to transform the whole of human society. Without a doubt, Machen and Kuyper shared much in common.

As Calvinists, they both were committed to the historic Christian faith, and adhered to the creeds of Reformed and Presbyterian churches. They were also influential in their day part of the upper class with political, religious, and cultural connections. Finally, in 1898, Kuyper delivered the famous Stone Lectures at Princeton, which continued to be discussed when Machen attended, and later started teaching at Princeton.

In Machen’s speech titled “Christianity and Culture” delivered in 1912, and that’s important here because this is very early on in Machen’s life. At the opening of fall semester we can hear echoes of Kuyper’s triumphalistic transformational imperative. So what I’m gonna argue here is that early Machen is actually influenced by Kuyper. However, later Machen moves away from Kuyperian ideas forming his own views on faith, culture, and Christian scholarship.

It has been observed that Machen’s non-military service with YMCA in France during the First World War had a powerful impact on him. Experiencing the horrors of war far from the comforts and luxuries of American life planted doubts about whether the 20th century really would bring peace, prosperity, and growth of Christian faith. His optimism continued to wear out later after he returned to America, and carefully observed the rights of Nazi Germany, the spread of Marxism, and Fascism.

Further, the reorganization of Princeton Seminary, and the Presbyterian churches acceptance of the Auburn Affirmation made him realize that the challenges facing the church might have been greater on the inside of the church rather than on the outside of it. For those of you who don’t know, the Auburn Affirmation was a document which was signed by Presbyterian Church, which basically declared that it is no longer essential for Presbyterian ministers to believe in the Fundamentals of Faith, which basically meant that in order to preserve the peace and the unity of the church, Presbyterians said it is okay if our ministers will not believe in resurrection, and fallibility of the Bible, miracles, and so on, because that’s just an interpretation of the Bible, and that definitely made Machen realize not only that it’s not gonna be Christian-centric, Christianity might altogether disappear from the mainstream or from of American life. Machen, on his own apart from Kuyper developed a vision that no longer directly burdened the church with the task of cultural transformation.

Instead, it set before the church the spiritual goal of proclaiming the gospel. Although Machen no longer saw a direct role for the church to effect culture, this did not mean that he withdrew from, or avoided political, and cultural involvement in the society. Quite to the contrary. Machen’s political and social activism continued when he addressed a number of political, and social issues including prohibition, jaywalking, prayer in school, environmental preservation, and the establishment of the Department of Education against which he testified before the U.S. Congress. However, his activism was motivated here more by his libertarian and civic rather than his religious sensibilities.

As Hart puts it, Machen was not implying that Christianity is unrelated to any range of activity beyond the ministry, or fellowship of the church. Instead, he was raising a question about the much more important, difficult, or much… Let me see. Raising question about the much more difficult issue of how Christianity is related to these other areas of human life. Christians, even Reformed ones may actually give different answers to the questions about the best form of government, culture on religious diversity in a single nation, or the value of mountain climbing. End of quote.

The conviction that Christianity was not able to provide a sufficient basis for public faith in a pluralistic American society, came from Machen’s deep conviction that the historic Christianity was fundamentally narrow, exclusive, and partisan, and as Christians who were politically involved were in a danger of being intolerant, or in treating the Christian faith instrumentally to promote morality or American culture.

The spiritual aspects of Machen’s Christianity becomes evident in his commencement speech, titled “Consolation in the Midst of Battle,” delivered at Westminster Theological Seminary in 1931, when he said, Remember this, at least, or, yes, remember this at least. The things in which the world is interested are the things that are seen, but the things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal.

You, as ministers of Christ, are called to deal with the unseen things. You’re stewards of the mysteries of God. You alone can lead men by the proclamation of God’s word, out of the crash and jazz and noise, and rattle and smoke of this weary age into the green pastures and besides the still water.

You alone, as ministers of the reconciliation, can give what the world with all its boasting and pride can never give, the infinite sweetness of the communion of the redeemed soul with the living God. Furthermore, Machen argued that the spiritual direction of the church needs to be accompanied by strong militant approach, which as he argued stands in the continuity with the New Testament witness.

He writes, Every really great Christian utterance it may be almost said is born in controversy. It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to really great heights of the celebration of truth. The theme of spiritual militancy of the church finds its best application in Machen’s view of Christian scholarship, and facing the fact before God delivered before the league of evangelical students, Machen compared the situation in which the church found itself to the biblical battle of King Hezekiah described in 2 Kings.

He warns believers against the dangers of complete annihilation if they do not seek their refuge in the Lord. He writes, Do you think that this is happy or blessed age? Oh, no, my friends. Amid all the noise and shouting and power and machinery, there are hungry hearts. The law of God has been forgotten. The stark slaver is stalking through the earth. The decay of free institutions in the state, and a deeper slavery still in the depths of the soul. It is when we read words such as these that we see Machen no longer possessing optimism, and triumphalism of his earlier days, or of Kuyperian Calvinism.

Instead, he holds to a pessimism that can be overcome only if Christians seek to refuge in God by claiming his revealed word, and openly challenging the world with it. Rhetorically, he expresses this challenge in militant terms. Machen is not interested in negotiating with modernism because he ultimately sees it as anti-Christian, and anti-academic in nature, seeking to destroy not only the Christian historic faith, but scholarship altogether, thus he calls for battle, and for conservative Protestant theologians who are committed to the biblical truths, and serious intellectual engagement to aid the evangelistic work of the church.

He writes, Evangelists, if they are real evangelists, real proclaimers of the unpopular message of the Bible that the Bible contains, are coming more and more to see that they cannot do without those despised theological professors at all.

It is useless to proclaim a gospel that people cannot hold to be true. No amount of emotional appeal can do anything against truth. The question of fact cannot permanently be evaded. Did Christ or did he not rise from the dead? Is the Bible trustworthy or is it false? However, theologians are not the only ones that can be involved in truly Christian scholarship.

For Machen, all academics, to some extent, are able to participate in it. That is if they continue to take into consideration Christian revelation in their academic work. He writes, A Christian boy or girl can learn mathematics, for example, from a teacher who is not a Christian, and truth is truth however learned, but while truth is truth however learned, the bearings of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian, and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlines not a part, but all of the curriculum of the school.

True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life. Those are the great central convictions that underlie the Christian school. So then, for Machen, non-theological sciences, or disciplines can be effective, effectively practiced by non-Christians as all truth is God’s truth. However, he believed that modernity’s anti-religious bias had rendered this impossible.

Therefore, Christian academics need to take a stand not only to defend Christianity, but also the integrity of faith and science. This is the need that drives Machen’s philosophy of Christian education, rather than some biblical imperative to make Christian education binding or compulsory.

In Machen’s view the home and the church are the main venues of religious instruction, and even the establishment of Christian schools should not undermine them. On a practical level, Machen argued, that Christian education must be all comprehensive, and in clear contrast to secular science, which does not take divine revelation into consideration. This comprehensive approach to Christian education must originate with doctrine, and not with general Christian ethos of the school. In other words, Christian education is not so because it is done by Christians, but rather because of its content, an institution that seeks to promote Christian culture, civic society, gender equality, or social justice as its primary goal is not what Machen had in mind.

Instead he saw the Christian scholarship as based on a set of non-negotiable principles, which are expressed in scripture, and the historic confessions. And anyone departing from these in the name of academic freedom practices a scholarship which cannot call itself Christian. Machen sets as an example here the classic Roman Catholic system of education, which roots the whole academic curriculum in the context of an established doctrine. Scripture and the creeds guide students into discovery of the natural world, and form the dialogue with the non-Catholic, and secular culture. Further, the study of ancient languages, authors, logics, and metaphysics is essential as a prerequisite for any fruitful academic labor.

This model of Christian education sees the world as already integrated, whereas, sciences are consecrated to the person, and the work of Christ and his church, and where the students who are broad in their interests, cultured, well-rounded are always ready to defend the hope that they have in Christ.

So to wrap up Machen’s very militant, very defensive justification for Christian education. Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century distortions of the gospel, Machen’s response to his liberal, and fundamentalist contemporaries on the topic of Christian scholarship offers some relevant insights, especially at the time when we look into the future of Christian scholarship. Our goal in this presentation has been to demonstrate that Machen offered an intellectually robust, and culturally militant view of Christian scholarship that successfully overcomes the anti-intellectualism of fundamentalism, and the triumphalism of the Reformed cultural transformationalists.

To this end we discussed the question of what makes scholarship truly intellectual, and how fundamentalists by their insistence on literal six-day creationism, revivalism, and adoption of modern practically oriented pedagogy puts to question their commitment to science. Secondly, we addressed the question of what makes scholarship truly Christian, and we determined that Machen moved away from Kuyperian triumphalism, and also relieved the church from seeking direct transformation of culture since in his view Christianity was inept for the task of introducing desirable social change without violating the rights of others, and compromising its own exclusiveness identity.

Further in the face of the modern hostility toward historic Christianity among secularist academics, and liberal theologians, Machen argued for the necessity of narrowly defined Christian scholarship. For Machen, Christian scholarship becomes essentially not only for the proper functioning of the church, but also for the science itself.

Just as the church is in desperate need of well-educated scholars who would defend the historic Christian faith, and her truth claims, so also science needs to be practiced in an unsecularized form. Machen held that faith and science both must relate to each other, and neither would be able to find truth, or worse, science without religion would fall into decadence, and religion without science will become a superstition. Due to the reactionary nature of Machen’s philosophy of Christian education, he adopts a militant tone, which is helpful in communicating great urgency as well as the antithetical relationship between the church and the world. Further, Machen’s definition of Christian scholarship is narrow, pointing to doctrinal orthodoxy, and ecclesiastical commitment rather than to the general religious ethos of the school, or its honorable heritage.

Community-oriented goals such as preservation of liberty, civic society, or culture are not the direct task of Christian scholarship nor of the church, just as they’re not the goal of even nonreligious academic work, but rather by-products, or desirable side-effects of education. Chasing after results of education, no matter how noble they are instead of its principles is a dangerous exercise in utilitarianism, defeating the purpose of scholarship, and rendering it inherently unreliable.

At the same time, liberty, civic society, tolerance, and open dialogue are naturally and organically preserved when good scholarship is practiced, and most effectively when Christian scholarship is practiced. Therefore, while it is not the direct task of Christian education to promote these values, they are indeed promoted when Christian scholarship is practiced faithfully.

I would like to conclude with one more quote from Machen, which I think memorably captures his commitment to Christian scholarship when he writes, Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness, but in the light. Intellectual slothfulness is but a quack remedy for unbelief. The true remedy is a consecration of intellectual powers to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you.

Audience Member: Etymology seldom is the source of very much help philosophically, but sitting right in the middle of the word education is the root word D-U-C-T or duct that which limits the flow of something to a specific pathway.

It seems that the modern liberal educational view is we exist always without limits. We explore everything, we are autonomous. There are no laws or rules restricting us. It seems to me that we’ve lost a high ground of education by failing to point out that the entire story of the Bible, actually, beginning to end is one of bringing form and structure.

We read in Genesis 1:2 the earth was without form, and education, leading people into the correct pathway, or ducts that they will be pursuing for the rest of their life is in a sense bringing order, the law and the gospel laid out in the scripture bring order and direction. I think that Machen did a very good job in a sense by gaining a genuine understanding of what education is.

Today it seems most people go in the opposite direction. At his time at Johns Hopkins where he learned what education was and imbibed it, it was indeed finding intelligent pathways. Today it seems that the burden of education is let’s break down all walls, let’s not have any pathways, let’s reject certainly all law and all doctrine.

Okay, thank you. I assume that was a comment not a question, so thank you. I have nothing to add I think I agree, so. Anyone else, I think, Dr. Walters, sir?

Dr. Walters: Dariusz, it was a really interesting presentation of Machen, and I, in all candor, like him much better now than I did before an hour ago.

Okay, good.

Dr. Walters: But I was surprised by where he ends up as you presented.

I’m sorry.

Dr. Walters: I’m surprised by where he ends up in this all. It looks at the end there as if, I mean, his weariness of the church and Christian scholarship getting involved in social issues it looks as if it becomes a sort of inner spirituality at the end.

Well, he was too committed to kind of classical Presbyterian expression of faith to become a mystic or, you know, inners. I think he was still very much a patriot, or caring about not only American society, but society in general, but I think he felt that that had to come from his civic duties, or his broadly, you know, kind of patriotic.

Yeah, he didn’t feel that he could push some of these things because he was a Christian. So even when he testifies before the U.S. Congress against the funding of Department of Education, he says, yes, I represent Princeton Theological Seminary.

This is where I work, but he tries to kind of say, look, I’m saying all of it not because I’m a Presbyterian, or a Christian, but because I’m a citizen, and I think this is gonna lead to when you start this department not only that it’s gonna take a lot of money, not only that it’s gonna undermine the independence of states in their educational endeavors, it’s gonna really ruin our country, so he tries to stay away from all these religious language, and tries to form an appeal that would, so, yeah.

He, again, he thinks Christian church in essence is exclusivist, intolerant. And he has a problem when evangelicals or fundamentalists would start using Christian religion to let’s say promote good character. That’s why he opposes religion in school. I mean, as early as 1930s he says get away from prayer and Bible in school because neither Bible nor prayer in school is for a good purpose, and that is proclamation of the gospel.

We justified, oh, that it will be good for the people’s character, that all those people who immigrate from Europe they don’t want to learn English, but if we give them English Bibles they’ll learn. He says you’re treating Christianity in an instrumental way to promote American culture, and that’s not fair. He says Christ will not be mocked this way, so he’s very nervous whenever Christianity is used instrumentally to accomplish other goals than glory of God and salvation and all of that.

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