Deep in the cloud-bound labyrinth of Westminster Seminary Press’s Google Drive is bleary scan of an 86-year-old typewritten sheet: “J. G. Machen Last Will and Testament -- 6.28.35.pdf” is, for the most part, what you’d expect; a detailed list of how Machen intended to steward his wealth after he’d gone. If you’re not that interested in American Presbyterianism it might be pretty boring, but it has a special importance for Westminster Seminary Press. The third page lays out in detail how dearly the seminary’s founder cared for the production and perpetuation of sound books. When it came time for Machen to consider his legacy, he thought of the seminary he founded, the Church, his family, and publication efforts he intended to outlive him (along with some careful instructions for his personal library!).
But this heightened awareness of the importance of books wasn’t unique to Machen. It’s characterized the Church in every era—from Banner of Truth to the presses of Wittenberg, from monastic scriptoriums to early church scribes and even further back to the centuries before Christ:
“The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12, emphasis mine)
Maybe that seems dour or even ironic for a piece celebrating the act of bookmaking, but those words were after all recorded in a book. It would take a more capable mind than mine to craft a fully faceted biblical theology of topic, but it seems that, in the book, mankind has a powerful tool capable of igniting the world with truth, and easily co-opted for smoldering distraction and needless controversy. For WSP that means we have a creaturely responsibility to care for the truth in publishing, doing our best to reflect the beauty and steadfastness of God in editorial decisions, selecting durable binding materials, setting type that is easy on the eyes, and designing appealing dust jackets. This harmonization of presentation with content matters so much because nothing could be more worthy of our care than the information we have to share: true, saving knowledge of the triune God.
The official story of this work at Westminster begins in 2011, 74 years after Machen’s Will went into effect, when Dick Dabney, Chief Operating Officer at Westminster, signed the paperwork establishing WSP’s LLC. According to President Lillback, the idea for the press actually began to take shape with the seminary’s 80th anniversary publication of Westminster Lives a couple of years prior. That book, along with Dr. Lillback’s own experience with publishing, converged with the self-starting spirit around the launch of the Science + Faith Conference and made the prospect of Westminster publishing its own books a real possibility.
Like with its parent seminary, this fledging venture’s survival wasn’t a sure thing—especially circa 2011, when few would have predicted a plateau for then skyrocketing eBook sales and a revitalized print market. That WSP has reached its tenth anniversary is a testament first to God’s gift of professionals and scholars like Peter Lillback, Sinclair Ferguson, Andrew Davis, James Baird, Jonny Gibson, Rachel Stout, Chun Lai, Scott Oliphint, and others (many of whom go unheralded) who labored for WSP because they share the historic Christian love for publishing good books.
From the beginning WSP’s publishing efforts were affiliated with and supported by P&R, the storied Philipsburg, NJ publishing house. From 2011 to 2016, with the exception of a conference tie-in publication (Business Ethics), WSP was strictly a co-publishing venture with P&R. Thy Word is Still Truth, a mammoth omnibus of writings on inerrancy, was followed by a collection of a young J. Gresham Machen’s correspondence, Letters from the Front. A special combined edition of Edmund Clowney and Iain Duguid books in Christ in the Old Testament followed not long after. In addition, two accessible series of topical booklets were published in this period: “Christian Answers to Hard Questions” and “Westminster Perspectives.”
In 2016, under James Baird’s direction, WSP struck out on its own with a sharp new logo debuting on a pair of books that celebrated Westminster’s history and engaged relevant theological issues: Seeing Christ in All of Scripture, an accessible introduction to hermeneutics featuring essays by Vern Poythress, G.K. Beale, Iain Duguid, and Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., and The Person of Jesus, a thematic collection of J. Gresham Machen’s radio addresses from the 1930s. Meanwhile work was nearly completion on O Death Where is thy Sting? A few years earlier, Dr. Lillback commissioned students and staff to track down old recordings of John Murray’s sermons and transcribe them for posterity. He had been brought to tears by an archival recording of one of the accompanying prayers and recognized that in those messages was an unappreciated portrait of that great theologian as an exemplary preacher. Those sermons were collected in O Death, a beautiful book that in many ways set the bar for what has come since. In 2018, another opportunity to co-publish came about, this time with New Growth Press, and Reformation Worship, Jonny Gibson and Mark Earngey’s collection of Reformation era liturgies, launched with great success at that year’s T4G conference.
In 2018 WSP also had the privilege of publishing a translation of Rev. Nam Joon Kim’s Busy for Self, Lazy for God, an influential bestseller in S. Korea. For me it was a thrilling introduction to publishing, but once that book was released the next steps for WSP weren’t immediately clear. The only other work in progress at the time was our ongoing project, The Collected Works of J. Gresham Machen, which wouldn’t be ready for several years. That’s when Jim Sweet, who has played a hand in arranging virtually every one of WSP’s publications, mentioned that J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism would enter the public domain in 2019. Dr. Lillback immediately saw an opportunity to mark the 90th anniversary of the seminary in a special way. He tasked Dr. David Garner with the work of collecting new essays about the influence of Machen and his most famous book from the entire faculty. Under John Kim’s leadership as Director, this became Christianity and Liberalism: Legacy Edition, the second installment in a series—with O Death—which we hope will expand to include even more essential works by Westminster’s portraited faculty in the future.
An unexpected benefit of publishing Christianity and Liberalism was that it ultimately opened the door for WSP to resurrect a pair systematic theology projects that had been in the works for years: Herman Bavinck’s The Wonderful Works of God and Machen’s Things Unseen.
Sometime around 2014, plans were made to publish a refreshed edition of Magnalia Dei, Herman Bavinck’s one-volume adaptation of Reformed Dogmatics that was so influential in 20th century Reformed theology as Our Reasonable Faith. Although the project had stagnated, Ben Dahlvang, Associate Director of the Westminster Bookstore at the time, urged us to press on, insisting that readers would rejoice in a finer edition of the book. Carlton Wynne was pressed into service writing a brand-new Introduction, Charles Williams produced a comprehensive index, and Nathaniel Gray Sutanto translated Bavinck’s original Foreword, which had never been included in previous editions. Finally, Jessica Hiatt designed a cover that took the book to the next level, which she’s done with each book since. Ben was right. Before The Wonderful Works of God had arrived in the warehouse we needed to order a new print run.
Only a few months ago, WSP released its most recent book, the complete collection of Machen’s radio addresses from the 1930s, Things Unseen. Although it’s been more than 80 years since he delivered them, the comforting truth of Machen’s radio talks—delivered in the context of economic depression and global uncertainty in the 1930s—have a comforting relevance for the 2020s. Not only does the chapter-a-day length and clarity of style make it a go-to systematic for just about anybody, but the book gives us a fuller picture of Machen’s approach to communication and theological method. It’s also accompanied by fantastic essays by Sinclair Ferguson, Tim Keller, Stephen Nichols, Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., and William Dennison that James Baird originally gathered in 2017. Significantly, the release of this book was the first project to get the attention of our new Director of Publishing, Josiah Pettit, and Operations Manager, Kyle Whitgrove, as part of a closer partnership with the Westminster Bookstore. Both Josiah and Kyle share that unheralded brand of selfless dedication to publishing good books well that characterized WSP at its beginning ten years ago.
However you’re reading this—in print, on a phone, or on a computer—it probably won’t come as a surprise that reading technology has changed since Machen transcribed his radio addresses or had his Will drawn up. But don’t worry if terminology like “reading technology” makes you shudder. The printed and bound book survived the maelstrom of Nook and Kindle. In 2021 our civilization continues to treasure information of every kind in old fashioned printed and bound books.
But that survival and widespread dissemination of reliable information, of truth, was always the plan with physical printed matter. Anyone with a kid at bookshelf height will tell you that a book can be a fragile thing. But given some reasonable protection (Pro-tip: Give up on alphabetizing now and just shelve your books in descending order of value) a well-made book can last for hundreds of years.
That’s good news for Westminster Seminary Press, and so we’re packing this next year (or so) full with more books than we’ve ever published before, including the incredible collection of new translations of plague writings, Faith in the Time of Plague, which Todd Rester and Stephen Coleman are putting the finishing touches on now; Boyer chair lectures by Bill Edgar and R. Kent Hughes; a pair of Presbyterian classics by Thomas Witherow and John Witherspoon, edited by Jonny Gibson and Kevin DeYoung respectively; and more new translations of works by Herman Bavinck and James Ussher. Some of these new books will kick off new series too, which we hope will continue to grow to include more titles in coming years.
As we work on these new projects—most of which aren’t new to the church at all—we’re privileged to spend our days soaking in the wisdom of Christians from time past. What we find is that although publishing, reading, and writing will never outpace weariness of the flesh in this life, there is a hope we’ve learned from the books passed down to us, which we in turn work to pass on again:
“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” (Job 19:23–25)