Albert Mohler:
This is Thinking In Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them. I’m Albert Mohler, your host and president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Richard E. Burnett is the executive director and managing editor of Theology Matters. He received the Master of Sacred Theology from Yale Divinity School and both the M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He’s taught at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Gordon Conwell Seminary, and Erskine Theological Seminary. He’s authored or edited several academic books and articles.
It is his most recent book, Machen’s Hope: The Transformation of a Modernist in the New Princeton, that is the topic of our conversation today. Professor Burnett, welcome to Thinking in Public.
Richard E. Burnett:
Thank you for having me.
Albert Mohler:
I saw that you had written a new biography and a new major historical work on Gresham Machen. So I knew, first of all, I had to read it eagerly, even as I acknowledge Machen’s massive influence in my life and thinking. But I did have to wonder in the onset what could be much different than what had been presented before. So I want to ask you straight up front in terms of the different kind of argument you make and the different kind of historical terrain you cover. Did you start out pretty much knowing this is the direction the project would take or was it a surprise to you?
Richard E. Burnett:
I think if I began by I wondering about several threads. I began reading Machen. I had learned, used his Greek grammar in college and had heard things about him, but I began to read him more seriously and I just began to see some, and I wanted, there were things that just didn’t make sense. There were things that were missing and I wanted to get into the narrative and find out what was behind some of these stories.
Albert Mohler:
Well, in my estimation, Gresham Machen lived one of the most important lives of his time, and modern evangelicals do not realize how much of Machen lives within the movement as an argument. And in my mind, Machen is a fairly consistent conversation partner. And I’ll tell you autobiographically, that came very early in my life as I’m trying to figure out all kinds of issues and Christianity and Liberalism was one of the most important books that crystallized for me a way of understanding the theological reality I was facing. And so as I started as a very young theologian to think about Gresham Machen, thinking about the late Gresham Machen, thinking about the Christianity and Liberalism Gresham Machen. You really spend a lot of time going back to the origin story. So did you plan to do that or was that something of a surprise to you?
Richard E. Burnett:
I wanted to trace these threads and figure out how he got to where he came by the 1920s. And so there were surprises. I did not, but there were clues that suggested that he had questions. Of course, the question about his period of, I think Stonehouse calls it torturing doubt.
Albert Mohler:
Right.
Richard E. Burnett:
I was curious about that. I was curious about what had happened in, at Johns Hopkins, but also in Germany and the idea that he was a consistent champion of old Princeton. I wondered about that at several points. And so I began to, so there were surprises to find out.
Albert Mohler:
It seems to me that he is perhaps best described as an inconsistent but growingly consistent defender of old Princeton, because he really is, in terms of his lifetime, straddling a massive period of intellectual change. And that’s true in the United States. It’s also true in Germany where you mentioned he studied. So I think with sympathy, we have to look at Gresham Machen and understand the entire intellectual landscape appears to be shifting under his feet.
Richard E. Burnett:
Absolutely. And it’s his awakening to that, I think, that I found interesting.
Albert Mohler:
Now, his background couldn’t be more traditional in terms of Presbyterianism, in terms of his parents, in terms of his larger family. So you would not look at Gresham Machen as a young man and perhaps pick him out as someone who had become famous, or in liberal circles, infamous as a warrior, so to speak, theologically. So give us a little bit of the cultural background. He’s the product of Baltimore. He’s really, in many ways a representative of an entire Protestant society at the time.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. And his background is somewhat common, but his own home church is somewhat different from most southern Presbyterian churches. His parents, his mother particularly, was steeped in Southern Presbyterianism. His father was probably for most of his life, more inclined toward Episcopal Church, but he became a very serious Presbyterian elder. But that church in Baltimore, where he grew up, was very prominent and it had a lot of wealth and a lot of intellectual firepower, and it was somewhat different than a lot of Presbyterian churches in that it had an enormous influence in Baltimore, and also it attracted all kinds of professors and politicians and all kinds of influential people in that congregation. So very, he grew up in an elite culture there.
Albert Mohler:
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, father trained in the law, mother very much from kind of a southern aristocratic tradition, and they’re living in Baltimore, which in terms of the south was kind of the transitional city, but it was intact and there was a lot of wealth there. And so it’s quite different than, say, growing up in Atlanta at the same time.
Richard E. Burnett:
Exactly. They had never experienced the kinds of devastation in Baltimore. I mean, they were high minded, well educated, sophisticated intellectual types, and I think at one point I say they were deeply concerned, they deeply cared about the Christian faith and the finer things of life, but in that order, they cared deeply about the Christian faith. She was a very bright intellect in her own right , she was a socialite. But anyone thinks of Scarlet O’Hara, but she is not merely a socialite.
Albert Mohler:
No, not at all. Her reading was incredible.
Richard E. Burnett:
She is sort of the proverbial Steel Magnolia.
Albert Mohler:
Looking at Machen, it is very clear that he was incredibly intelligent as a boy, that he was a child of promise and a family of enormous wealth and privilege. The question is, what’s he going to do with this? And the first answer was that he would enroll as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University right there in Baltimore. Put that in the intellectual context. Johns Hopkins is itself a major innovator towards the rise of the American Research University.
Richard E. Burnett:
That’s right. And it’s founded in 1766, which is only five years before he is born. And so the energy and the revolutionary spirit of that whole project, he witnessed as a boy, and he embodied that and the enthusiasm for that project. But it was, and Daniel Gilman, the president, was in their homes several times and he becomes enamored with it.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, I mean, clearly so, so much so that he is very positive towards the kind of reforms or new visions for a university like Princeton that Woodrow Wilson would later bring. But going back to Gilman and going back to Johns Hopkins, what was it exactly that Machen studied as an undergraduate? What did he think he was going to do?
Richard E. Burnett:
He studied classics. And I mean, there was, as you may recall, Gilman did not want theology in that program at all.
Albert Mohler:
Right, absolutely.
Richard E. Burnett:
And so, I mean, he studied languages. He studied German, French, but he was a classics major.
Albert Mohler:
And quite frankly, Johns Hopkins was not primarily intended as an undergraduate institution anyway, so it’s kind of like the University of Chicago. It’s an interesting development in American higher education. But after that, what is Gresham Machen going to do? In other words, at that point in his life when he graduates from the undergraduate experience, where is he headed?
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, he isn’t sure. And it’s this new young pastor who comes to his church and within a few months suggest to him that he might fit at Princeton Seminary and to give it a year, see what you think. That’s what it took. The fact that Woodrow Wilson had just gone, gave him confidence that the modern university ideals, which he held so highly, would be at least honored in some way. And so I think that’s what allowed him to go to Princeton Seminary.
Albert Mohler:
The institution I lead and have led for three decades is an extension of Princeton Theological Seminary. The vision of Princeton translated into the Baptist worlds exactly what gave birth to this institution, in 1859, two of our graduates, or are our founding faculty, Manley and James Petigru Boyce, the first president, were Princeton grads. Very much committed to old Princeton, very much committed to Princeton Orthodoxy. The language of our confession of faith is derivative of Princeton’s, and the rules of the institution are just a revised form of the fundamental laws at Princeton. Samuel Miller’s definition of a confessionalism is the official definition of confessionalism here. So when I think of Princeton, I have to think of that. And during that very era when Machen arrived there, but in one sense, it was also kind of strangely enough, a finishing school for the sons of a certain kind of Protestant elite.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. And for southerners, it was called the Northern Southern Gentleman School.
Albert Mohler:
I guess there’s a part of me that is drawn to a certain issue in your book, which is it is not clear that Machen felt a call to Christian ministry at that point. So you have to unpack that a bit for us. Why did his pastor suggest that he go to seminary? Why did he go to seminary and, help us to see, at one point he kind of intended to become a biblical scholar, but not a pastor?
Richard E. Burnett:
Oh, I think he was more deeply torn to become a professor of classics, and that was always, he goes to Chicago for a year and studies with Shorey, but I mean, he comes from a pious home, I mean, they’re not pious in pietistic, but I mean, they’re very devout people and Machen himself is devout, but he has intellectual gifts, and his pastor, this young pastor recognizes that. But it’s a struggle. It’s a struggle for Machen because he simply doesn’t think that Princeton Seminary is up to speed when it comes to modern critical exegesis.
Albert Mohler:
Well, this is where things get really interesting. So let’s dive in here. So I would say that you open a vision into increased understanding in two different trajectories in Gresham Machen’s life. So number one, his absolute commitment to the ideal of the emerging American university. And then number two, we’ll go to Germany. Let’s not go to Germany yet. Let’s just talk about the fact, I mean, this is a man who had dinner at the family home of President Woodrow Wilson when he was president, not of the United States, but of Princeton University. And Gresham Machen was clearly bought into at that point, Wilson’s vision for the university.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes.
Albert Mohler:
Can you spell that out for us?
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, I mean, this goes way back the Gresham family and went back the relationship with the Wilson family a long way. And they knew his family, they knew his famous uncle Woodrow. They know that in the southern church. That was a huge controversy at South Carolina College. And as many biographies have noted, Woodrow Wilson had never forgot how his uncle had been treated. And so Wilson was very much interested in advocating modern approaches to the scriptures, and so he knew he had to be careful about how he talked about that, but he understood intellectual freedom, he’s very wanting to champion that, but he was a strict disciplinarian and Princeton University, it had changed in 1897 with Patton, Francis Patton, and so he wanted to make them more disciplined. And so he came in with this rigor and that I think was attractive to Machen.
Albert Mohler:
And Woodrow Wilson, by the way, I’m going to be preaching this coming Lord’s day at the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. And as you know, Woodrow Wilson’s parents are buried there in the churchyard. And his father was not exactly a titanic conservative figure either. So both his father and more notoriously as uncle got involved in all kinds of theological controversy at the time and not as conservatives. So Gresham Machen is friends with Woodrow Wilson and his wife, and Woodrow Wilson is a progressivist in a true sense, and in terms of academia as the president of Princeton, he actually seeks to transform Princeton University into a very different university. Not only that Princeton had been, but he thought any American university had yet been.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes, that’s exactly right.
Albert Mohler:
Spell that out for us.
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, he saw, I mean, the critique was that Wilson had ruined a perfectly fine gentleman’s finishing
Albert Mohler:
School.
Richard E. Burnett:
Finishing school where there were lots of lazy young people. And he grows up, Woodrow Wilson, he knows what reconstruction’s about. I mean, he sees devastation. And so he does not grow up privileged in the sense of wealth. And he believed in hard work, and he wanted to not only get the student body in the shape, but also the faculty. So he was rigorous in his reforms.
Albert Mohler:
And had this strange institutional vision, even for a new campus for Princeton, which was neo-Gothic. It was British scholastic architecture. And quite honestly, in one sense, Wilson was not very well received and escaped by being elected governor of New Jersey and later president of the United States. So Princeton’s glad to claim Wilson now, but there was a lot of controversy when Wilson was then president.
Richard E. Burnett:
Oh, absolutely. And you may know this, but they asked him after he became president of the United States, why did you want to leave that beautiful bucolic setting of Princeton, New Jersey? And he said, well, I just couldn’t stand the politics.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, no, I get the irony. And with Wilson, he also was pushing for a very progressivist vision at the time. And I guess one question I wanted to ask you is do you think Machen recognized that? Did you think Machen sympathized with it? I’m trying to figure this out myself.
Richard E. Burnett:
I mean, he had more than one dinner with the Wilsons. So he spent time and he took Wilson’s course on constitutional law or American constitution. And so he knew Wilson’s views. And I think Machen thinks that there’s nothing to be afraid of when it comes to higher criticism. And Wilson is open to this and it can’t do us any harm. And so he thinks, why not compete in this, why can’t we compete in this market? And so I think that he’s intensely loyal to Wilson. I think it’s only in the First World War that he begins to really think what some of the legislation he begins to worry about. And yes, but he’s fiercely loyal to him.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, I’m taking the trajectory of your book here, and it’s clear that the Machen of say his early adulthood is pretty enamored with the idea of this academic model. And Wilson’s not hiding his progressivism either. I mean, in the course you mentioned in the American Constitution, he’s already arguing and putting into print that the American constitution is no longer fit for a modern society, and that judges and legislators should see it as an evolving project and not bound by the words. That doesn’t sound very much like Gresham Machen, but it makes me think that Gresham Machen at that stage in his life must have been more open to such ideas than he was at the end of his life.
Richard E. Burnett:
I suspect so, but I think Woodrow Wilson had a deep piety. I mean, he would pray.
Albert Mohler:
Right.
Richard E. Burnett:
He prayed regularly, he taught his daughters the catechism, and he would talk about the spirit of Christ, and he had these two sides of him. I think that was hard to reconcile, I think. But it really, people bought it.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. I’m not denying that Wilson held the Christian beliefs. I am saying however, that at the time the cultural Christianity of a Woodrow Wilson, for example, was a lot more Christian than the cultural Christianity people imagine today. And so it was centered in piety and all kinds of things. But at this point, and I think this is where I would call your work on Machen’s Hope, somewhat revisionist. At this point, I think you’re pretty clear that Machen is more of a progressivist himself than many people might’ve recognized, or at least was open to it, friendly to it, but then comes Germany. And so Professor Burnett, I’ll just tell you, this is very personal for me because of the history of my own institution and also my engagement with these issues. And so Machen goes where the action is in Protestant scholarship at the time where the modern research university had emerged. And so he goes to Germany. I look back at that, and I think that was a lot more dangerous as a project than many people might think now. And I think you make that clear in your book.
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, his father was deeply, even in his earlier years, was very interested in German higher criticism and was sympathetic to it. And so, I mean, Machen grows up with this, and so he’s not afraid of it. And certainly higher criticism was also being taught at Johns Hopkins. So we didn’t discover that in Germany. In fact, D.G. Hart, you may know Darryl Hart.
Albert Mohler:
We co-authored a book together. He’s a dear friend.
Richard E. Burnett:
Okay. Well the encounter with Hermann, Wilhelm Hermann, is going to actually be a help according to Darryl Hart, to Machen in helping him decide to go into the ministry, which is ironic.
Albert Mohler:
It is ironic, but I’m in a position to understand it. I was trained by people far, far more liberal than I am. I have done advanced study with people far, far more liberal than I am. And Machen finds himself in Germany at the high watermark in so many ways of German liberal theology. And you mentioned Wilhelm Hermann. I of course, never studied with him, never met him, but I did meet people like him. And it’s the amazing thing we need to recognize some of these people who were the progenitors of liberal theology were also incredibly pious men. And when it comes to Wilhelm Herman, I mean quite frankly, someone who was incredibly charismatic and energetic about what he saw as his vision of New Testament Christianity and Machen was drawn to it.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes, exactly. And he’s quite undone by Hermann and by his piety, by his Christocentric focus.
Albert Mohler:
In a lot of ways was compared to the more liberal tradition and English speaking theology that became arid pretty quickly in terms of empiricism and all the rest. And with Wilhelm Hermann and with many of the Germans, it was combined to a very strange piety. And yet it’s also about what was defined as the academic study of the New Testament, so increasingly Machen sees that as his vocation. It’s clear he doesn’t just charge into it, but he does kind of back into it.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. I mean, again, he’s reluctant, he’s not sure when he is finished it in Germany that he wants to go back to at all the seminary. But his friend and little sort of an older brother, William Park Armstrong, again convinces him to try it out a year. And they do. And I think that over time, I think he began to get a sense of call.
Albert Mohler:
Now, none of this would’ve been possible without a certain amount of family wealth, which is something else that sometimes is left out of consideration. But someone coming from more modest financial backgrounds doesn’t get to go to Germany to study with the most influential liberal New Testament scholars at the time. They don’t get to have dinner with Woodrow Wilson in his home repeatedly. So this is an unusual situation, but it’s not necessarily at that point a situation that points towards joining the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary. I mean, there’s a sense in which I wanted to ask you reading your book, why isn’t Princeton University going after him?
Richard E. Burnett:
Princeton University has changed by then. I mean, it’s going in a very different direction.
Albert Mohler:
A very different direction than?
Richard E. Burnett:
Princeton Seminary. I mean, Princeton Seminary is seen as old Princeton. The whole idea of an old idea of a new Princeton that McCosh had begun to birth, that was, I mean, the faculty of the university did not look highly upon the faculty of the seminary.
Albert Mohler:
That’s the point I’m conceding. And so I was asking you, it seems to me that given Macon’s connections and his background in the classics and all the rest, he could have ended up at the university rather than the seminary is my point, and it seems that you’re kind of presenting him as, in terms of himself understanding, perhaps closer to at that time Wilson and what he sees as the Princeton experiment at the university rather than at the seminary, which your honest, he’s quite critical of the seminary at the time.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. Well, I don’t have any proof of it, and I can’t, so I can only speculate, but I think that Machen perhaps thought that he might be offered a job at some point at Princeton University.
Albert Mohler:
I see. Yeah. He socializes with the university faculty.
Richard E. Burnett:
He’s much more sympathetic, much more at home with them. He respects them. And I thought maybe perhaps he thinks he can be offers some cross-fertilization, but he begins to wake up to what’s really going on over there.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, and I guess that’s the big storyline that I’m most interested in is how the Machen, who is at one point, I think enthralled with Wilhelm Hermann, and you could see going off in a very different direction because that was the story of so many young Americans when they went to Germany and they came back, Germans theologically, they went over as orthodox Protestants, they came back, theological liberals. There’s a trajectory in which a third of the way into your book, you could see Machen doing the same thing, but that isn’t what happens. But his relationship with Princeton Seminary is kind of rocky throughout, and you’re very honest about that. But he comes back to Princeton, but it’s not at all clear he’s going to invest his life at Princeton, the seminary that is,
Richard E. Burnett:
That’s right. I mean, the major issue is can he do his work without being, there’s controversy there, and are they going to allow this kind of critical study of the scriptures and will they have to look over their shoulder all the time? Is there breathing space? And he and Armstrong, I think are dedicated to trying to raise the bar in their own minds. And I think ironically, they do raise the bar, and of course they’re not given credit for that, Machen is not giving credit for raising the bar in that way.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, I have to say, I think by the way, your point about the letters, the absence of the kind of letter collection that people are going to work with about people in the present, it’s going to be a real liability when you compare what you were able to do. I thought some of the most interesting material you covered in your book are the letters between Machen and his mother and about Hermann and about Princeton, but also about the fact that he wasn’t a very good teacher. And so he was not at all popular with students. And quite frankly, he at times looks to me like a Boy Scout leader who doesn’t think the scouts like him much.
Richard E. Burnett:
I think that’s an apt description. I think so. I mean, I think the rigor mean he wants to introduce rigor, and the students find the classes that are easier, and he’s trying to maintain standards.
Albert Mohler:
And I’m president of a seminary, have been for three decades, so I got a lot of investment in this. But Machen was actually such a classicist when it came to the theological curriculum. He doesn’t appear at that stage to have much respect for the so-called Practical Disciplines.
Richard E. Burnett:
No, he doesn’t.
Albert Mohler:
I think that really shows. I want to ask you another question. What did Machen learn by teaching middle school or junior high school boys Sunday School? Because that’s a sweet part of the book.
Richard E. Burnett:
It really is. And his dedication to those boys. I think that he knew that there was, that he had to be able to do retail at that level.
Albert Mohler:
He had to learn how to do it. Junior high school boys taught him how to teach the Bible.
Richard E. Burnett:
And in terms of friendship, he knows how to have fun. So he can be very social, but he cared a lot about, and I think that is an interesting feature that people don’t realize.
Albert Mohler:
And of course, he wasn’t married, didn’t have children of his own. And so these boys are in many ways a family to him in terms of him teaching them. But it really was like, I mean, as you account, his time with them was really important to him. And my guess is, and I’ll tell people this, I think teaching Sunday School makes you a better New Testament professor, I’ll tell you that as a seminary president, because it’s one thing to be concerned about what people in the journal and New Testament studies are going to think, and that’s not unimportant. But if you can teach the Bible in a church to junior high school boys, you’re a teacher now.
Richard E. Burnett:
I think teaching confirmation and communicants classes can be a workout.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, as a Baptist, I know what you mean, at the same age. Let me come back to the timeline of Machen’s life. So Machen, I would say very close to middle age kind of settles in, or the middle of his age, I should say, since he died so relatively young. But in about the middle of his adult life, he kind of settles in at Princeton. But everything’s changing around him, everything’s changing at Princeton or threatening to change. And one of the most interesting things is I think of the big titanic names in the 19th century, the Charles Hodges, and many other Hodges for matter, Archibald Alexander, you just go down the list. And the one kind of lingering towering figure at Princeton in that sense is B.B. Warfield. And it doesn’t look like Machen likes him much in the beginning.
Richard E. Burnett:
That’s right. And of course, he says that his approach is more churchly than academic.
Albert Mohler:
That’s not a compliment at that point in his life. That’s not a compliment coming from Machen.
Richard E. Burnett:
That’s right. And he was a towering figure. And I think slowly he admires him and some of his criticisms seem rather petty.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, honestly, I want to say this carefully, but Machen lives a very solitary life, and I think that does expose you to a certain amount of personal pettiness that, for instance, having a wife and children and grandchildren doesn’t allow for. He’s thinking deeply about things that a lot of people just wouldn’t have time to think about. And he takes slights very hard. That’s also clear. He takes slights from students and from colleagues very hard. I was very touched, however, in your book, by the affection he had for B.B. Warfield at the end of Warfield’s life. I mean, Warfield’s death is kind of a crushing thing to Machen.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. Well, B.B. Warfield was remarkably so dedicated to his wife and caring for his wife. And I think that was done that he was very dedicated in that way. And so he walked the walk.
Albert Mohler:
But Machen also came closer to Warfield’s understanding of scripture.
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, I don’t know that, I mean, that’s a good question. I mean, I think he wants to keep open the door. I think the real problem with Warfield is, and Mark Noll and others mention this, is he thinks textual criticism is going to be such a great tool, but he begins to figure out by the end of the 19th century that this is much more complicated. And as Mark Noll and others have said, he sort of abandoned New Testament studies and begins to look on the history of doctrine. And Machen still is involved in that, but he does make this comment that he thinks if Warfield had lived to see his origin of Paul’s religion, he would’ve approved of it.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, we all, and this is true of Machen. I mean, to make the point now, we all have a lot of dead people speaking into our minds. And I walk across this campus and I’ve got many decades of hearing people speak into my mind, and I evaluate some of them differently at this point in my life than I did when I knew them when I was in my twenties. I mean, it’s not been an 180 degree turn, but I mean, I do see things I didn’t see before. I think that seems to be true of Machen, he, I don’t want to say he mellows, but he certainly comes to a greater appreciation of Warfield at the end of his life than at say, the midpoint.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes, I think that’s true. There’s a sobriety about Warfield’s ecclesiology. Machen talked to him about whether there should be a split in the Presbyterian church. And Warfield wryly says, “You can’t split dead wood.” And so he has a much more sober approach.
Albert Mohler:
Well, that takes us right to the big issue I think everyone’s thinking about with Machen, and that is the rise of theological liberalism in northern Protestantism, in particular, imported from Germany rather genetically, but it takes on its own American form and it affects the Northern Presbyterians in a big way and is a direct threat to Princeton. So just tell us how Machen comes to understand this.
Richard E. Burnett:
He begins, by 1912, he’s already beginning to wake up to it, what’s going on. And it’s not that he was never not a conservative, he was always conservative, but he begins to see its influence more and more. And the idea of an organic union with other Protestant denominations really begins to be the flash point. He begins to, he’s opposed to it, but then he’s going to become more open in being critical. And by the time of Christianity and Liberalism, he’s prepared to launch a full scale attack in a more popular way. I mean, it’s a more popular book. It’s not an academic book.
Albert Mohler:
Right. But it does come with academic respectability. He footnotes what he’s arguing, and he knows, I mean, the superiority of his contribution in that book, a hundred years old last year, that intellectual contribution was singular. I mean, there’s no other conservative who makes the argument as clearly as Machen. Everybody else basically has to get out of his way.
Richard E. Burnett:
He’s a master in his prose, and he can say things very sharply and clearly, it lends itself. And I think he does have a very good grasp of a lot of what’s going on.
Albert Mohler:
And this institution I lead, very much in the American South, at the time, although in the border region of Louisville, so there’s a lot of conversation, some of our folks had studied in Germany as well. There was the understanding that this represents a direct challenge to the veracity of the Christian faith, to the nature of the gospel and to the entire edifice of orthodox theology. But what Machen does, and he’s in the context of Northern Presbyterianism where he’s dealing with just unadulterated anti-supernaturalism, he just comes right out and says, look, this is not two different ideas of presbyterianism. These are two different religions, one’s Christianity and one’s not.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. And I think that there certainly was among a number of secular people, an anti-naturalistic commitment. But I think what fools Machen is that there are liberals that are not opposed to supernaturalism as such, and he doesn’t see that there are those who claim to be, who have no qualm about supernaturalism, but they are still liberals.
Albert Mohler:
It is a pattern that comes down to, you don’t have to deny the virgin birth, but if you say that it’s allowable to deny the virgin birth, you can still say that you affirm the supernatural, particularly in some kind of mystical sense. But quite frankly, you’ve given away the store.
Richard E. Burnett:
And that’s happening. It had happened for several decades. But then what happens in the teens and the early twenties is that New York presbytery, they begin to be open about it, and that’s where he has to draw a line.
Albert Mohler:
So one thing I was interested to see in your book, so what exactly is happening at the university, not at Princeton Seminary, but at Princeton University, it pretty much sees anything coming from Germany as a pretty promising trajectory.
Richard E. Burnett:
I mean, there were folks who thought that at the university, but I mean Machen himself is much more positive toward German scholarship than most of his colleagues. In fact, he has to be very careful about that.
Albert Mohler:
That’s at the seminary. It’s at the university where I think the issue I want to raise is that by the time you get to Christianity and Liberalism, Princeton Seminary and Princeton University are kind of in two different worlds.
Richard E. Burnett:
Oh, that’s already happening by the end of the 19th century. I mean, I think what you see at the university, and this takes Machen a long time to get his head around this, but I mean, there’s the beginning of religious studies, that whole agenda, and even in his book, The Origin of Paul’s Religion, he thinks he can play in that market.
Albert Mohler:
Though he’s reluctant to use the word, but he has to, religion.
Richard E. Burnett:
He thinks he does. And his older colleague Park Armstrong doesn’t think he should, but he goes ahead and does it. Then he’s going to come more and more to see the problem with that.
Albert Mohler:
Right. The background to this is the German religionsgeschichtliche, which is just reducing everything to a historical critical investigation. And so it’s fair to say Machen is trying to counter that, but in the title he uses that word, but he’s very clear that he thinks he’s defending Protestant biblical orthodoxy with that book, and I think he does.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. Well, his inaugural address is saying that the New Testament scholars should be primarily a historian. I mean, that’s quite a commitment to the project of historicism.
Albert Mohler:
Right. So where’s the break? This is where I want to put you on the spot. So where’s the break? And at this point, let’s say not the break between Princeton Seminary and Machen, that comes later, but where’s the break between Machen and theological liberalism? It’s clear that he’s uncertain when he is studying with Hermann how this is to be understood. It’s in his letters to his mother that he’s not clear. When does this get clarified?
Richard E. Burnett:
I think the watershed event is when Billy Sunday comes to the campus in 1915 or is invited and he sees the machinery at the university work to expose their prejudices. That pushes him over the edge, I think.
Albert Mohler:
Well, I wish you’d talk about that for a minute, because I found your treatment of that to be singular. I don’t know anyone else that gives that kind of attention to that event, but Billy Sunday at Princeton is something that probably should be made into a movie.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes, yes. Well, he’s quite the flamboyant character. And lobby officials at university are embarrassed by him, and they don’t want him to preach in Alexander Hall, which is the prestigious building there. So they do what they can to block him. And that’s when I think Machen finds out there’s not going to be any way for a rapprochement between these two schools.
Albert Mohler:
Right. Because the response to Billy Sunday is not a response to a flamboyant evangelist. It’s a response to his supernaturalism and his belief in the miracles, and frankly, his attack upon Protestant liberalism.
Richard E. Burnett:
Of course, a lot of the officials are going to deny that and they do in public. But underneath, I think that, there was a fellow there that really, Lucius Hopkins Miller, who was teaching the Bible there at the university, and that’s probably more significant over time.
Albert Mohler:
Opens his eyes.
Richard E. Burnett:
He sees what’s going on there. But the Billy Sunday event was sort of a, it made it very clear what was going on.
Albert Mohler:
Okay, let’s go across the street to the seminary. We have to fast forward to the fact that Machen will depart from Princeton Seminary. We’ll start a rival independent seminary in the Presbyterian tradition, Westminster Theological Seminary. And that will eventually lead to his absolute break with the Northern Presbyterian denomination. So then he also was establishing what became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. How did this happen and how did it happen so quickly in one sense?
Richard E. Burnett:
It builds over several years, and he begins to, I think, feel a sense of alienation. He sees the presidency of the seminary go in a direction that is going to not be sympathetic.
Albert Mohler:
Why did that happen? So let me interrupt you. So why did that happen? How did the seminary end up with a president who if he wasn’t a liberal, was liberalizing?
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, he wanted to be in, like a lot of, I mean, all the liberals are calling themselves evangelicals as well, very few that don’t call themselves evangelical. So the word evangelical becomes a word that a lot of people can use, but Stevenson wants to be ecumenical, his very friendly, people like Erdman, they’re very friendly toward, they consider themselves evangelicals, but they’re interested in ecumenical movement. And I think that that just over time, it’s very frustrating for Machen to see that. And then of course, he doesn’t get the chair in apologetics, he’s wanted this, and I think that’s a frustration to him. But I think he’s counting noses on the faculty and thinking this is going in a different direction.
Albert Mohler:
Right. And Machen feels like he’s repudiated by Princeton before he repudiates Princeton himself. I mean, he clearly accuses Princeton’s president, the board and others of abandoning Princeton’s founding convictions, and quite frankly, leading the seminary into the very liberalism that he attacked in his book Christianity and Liberalism.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. And of course, there’s people who you might consider moderates involved in this, and Park Armstrong is one of them. Geerhadus Vos is another, and there’s other faculty members. And so that becomes a real challenge, people attribute that to his southern confederate wanting to start another country. I’m not sure all the motivations really.
Albert Mohler:
Well, at one point it’s kind of taken out of his hands. It wasn’t taken out of his hands that he had to found Westminster Theological Seminary. But he clearly was out of step with Princeton. And by the time he had repudiated Princeton in terms of its direction, it’s clear he’s going to do something else. I admire Machen so much. His Christianity and Liberalism was just definitive for my own theological development and understanding when I was a very young man trying to understand my own theological context. That book landed on me in the early 1980s as if it had been written months before, not decades before. And I think it’s really important to recognize that for an entire subculture of American evangelicals, Machen is in so many ways the great hero.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. I think that he sounded the alarm. I think that Protestant liberalism is one of the things, I think the great contributions he wanted to respect its power and its influence and its attraction, but it was even more powerful and wider and deeper than he realized. And I think that continues to, I mean, there was a sense that many have had a sense of triumph over that, that he exposed it, but are so much deeper. So I don’t think we’re done with it.
Albert Mohler:
No, we’re certainly not done with it. I can tell you from personal experience, but I also want to tell you something else. And so my situation may be a bit different than others in this, and that is that Machen was just enormously helpful to me in seeking to understand first the theological landscape. And by isolating Christianity and Liberalism and making the argument, we’re not talking about two different variants of Christianity. We’re talking about two different religions. I mean, that was a life-changing frame of reference transformation for me. But as a seminary president, I want to tell you, I’m extremely thankful for Westminster Theological Seminary. I’m thankful for old Princeton too, without whom we wouldn’t have an institution here. But I found much of what Machen had to do at Westminster starting from scratch, so to speak. It was a different challenge than I faced being elected to an institution that was venerable and big, but had to have a course correction. But I’ll tell you, the folks at Westminster had been very close friends to me from the very beginning here, and Machen is a commonality. I mean, I think they appreciate the fact that there are Baptists who have portraits of Machen on the wall.
Richard E. Burnett:
Yes. Well, he was never mentioned once that I can remember when I was at Princeton Seminary.
Albert Mohler:
So explain that. I mean, because even when you go to a seminary that’s gone liberal, they would normally at least even talk about one of the problems I find with liberalism is that it claims a continuity that it repudiates. But you’re saying they didn’t want to talk about Machen at all when you were at Princeton?
Richard E. Burnett:
I don’t think I ever heard his name invoked.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. I will just tell you that that’s the scandal of the liberal or progressivist mind there. But we could also talk about the fact that there were probably, I know of five or six editions of Christianity and Liberalism that came out to mark the centennials. I mean, there’s a sense in which you have to wonder if Macon’s not better read now than he was in 1923.
Richard E. Burnett:
I don’t think that there’s any faculty in the Presbyterian Church (USA) that has books that are more read than Christianity and Liberalism.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, I think that’s kind of true throughout much of the evangelical world because it is a singular work from a singular mind. You help us to put that mind into context, and I really do appreciate that. I wanted to ask you, so why did you write this book? I mean, this is a monumental project. It took you years and years to do this. Why did you do it?
Richard E. Burnett:
I was curious. I just became interested to understand. And so it took me a while to get my head around what was going on. And there’s still more to think through.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, because you, in the book, you’re not really dealing with the history of Westminster too much. I mean, you really kind of come to this decisive break and next thing you know Machen is dead. And I understand that it’s a massive book, and I commend it because I found it so fascinating and insightful, disagree with you at points as you would expect, in other words, in seeing some interpretations of Machen. But you really do help me to think through Machen’s intellectual and theological development, and I appreciate you for that.
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, I thank you for reading it and stay tuned. I’m going to continue to work.
Albert Mohler:
Well see, that’s what I want to ask. So what does come next?
Richard E. Burnett:
Well, I want to think about these deeper roots of the product of liberalism. And Gary Dorrien and his three volume work, talks about liberalism in America becoming, is more grassroots than it is in Germany. I mean, I think that reckoning that with that I think is important. Coming to terms with Neo-Protestantism.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, I will look for that eagerly. And by the way, Dorrien’s volumes are fairly close so that I can reach them when I need them, because nothing like that has yet been done. And so that’s another work that’s pretty singular and influential. Someone on the conservative side needs to cover the same developments and make that argument well.
Well, Professor Burnett, thank you for joining me in Thinking in Public. It’s been fascinating.
Richard E. Burnett:
Dr. Mohler, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
Albert Mohler.
Well, I commend the book, Machen’s Hope: The Transformation of a Modernist in the New Princeton. God bless you, sir.
Richard E. Burnett:
Thank you. God bless you.
Albert Mohler:
Many thanks to my guest, Richard Burnett for thinking with me today. If you enjoyed today’s episode of Thinking in Public, you will find more than 200 of these conversations at almbertmohler.com under the tab, thinking In Public. For more information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. Thank you for joining me for Thinking in Public, and until next time, keep thinking.