IT was Dr. Clarence Edward Macartney who spoke at the first Commencement of Westminster Seminary on May 6, 1930. Said Dr. Macartney at that time, "A decent respect to the opinions of Presbyterians, and evangelical Christians in the United States and throughout the world, requires that we should declare the causes which impelled us to separate from Princeton Theological Seminary. A statement of these causes must, of necessity, embrace a brief survey of the present condition of the Protestant Church.”1
Then he spoke of how on an August day one summer he was seated in the park in Geneva, Switzerland, looking at the International Monument of the Reformation. "Over all, cut in great letters was the familiar motto of the Reformation, ‘Post Tenebras Lux’… As I gazed earnestly and reminiscently upon the memorial to our spiritual forefathers, the vagrant August wind was blowing the yellow leaves about the gardens, telling me that the end of the summer was at hand. Has the Protestant Church, which we and our fathers took to be a Tree of Life, whose leaf could never wither, come to its sere and yellow leaf? Is its grandeur and glory only in the past…? …Has the inexorable hand which has spelled the passing of so many of the kingdoms and societies of mankind now appeared to write upon the wall of Protestant Christianity, 'Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting’?"2
Then in looking over the field of Protestantism, Dr. Macartney spoke of a "deleted Bible" and a "diluted gospel,” another gospel 'which is not another’ that is widely proclaimed in Protestant churches.
He spoke with amazement of the fact that the substitution of this “other gospel" for the true gospel had largely come about in one generation. He reminded his audience that some thirty years earlier Union Theological Seminary in New York "broke from its connection with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church because it found that that connection hampered the seminary in its liberty to teach Liberalism and Modernism.”3 But today, he added in substance, we have established a new seminary free from all control of the General Assembly “because it was discovered, to our sorrow and amazement, that such connection was a menace to our liberty to be loyal as we understood loyalty, to the doctrines of evangelical Christianity."4 We can no longer hope as Dr. Francis L. Patton hoped, when "he delivered the funeral sermon over his colleague… Dr. Wistar Hodge," that Princeton would " 'lead the van in the great fight for fundamental Christianity’… We bear no grudge against Princeton the seminary which nurtured us and whose grand traditions are precious unto us. If God shall still use Princeton as a witness to the truth, we shall rejoice in it.”5
Then, as he addressed the graduating class, he said in closing, "As ye go, preach! As ye go, preach! As ye go, preach! And may the blessing of the Triune God be upon you. "'God of the Prophets! bless the prophets' sons! "Elijah's mantle o'er Elisha cast’."6
Reality is Hierarchical
And now, after nearly a quarter century, what may we expect? Does it look as though the shadows that had fallen on Princeton will lift? What are men now taught and told to preach in that ancient institution, once the citadel of the Reformed Faith in this land?
Listen to Dr. John A. Mackay, President of Princeton Seminary, as he addresses the opening exercises of the seminary in September, 1949, and tells the students what to preach. They must of course preach the truth as Jesus tells us to preach it. And what does Jesus Christ tell us? "Jesus Christ said, not in so many words, but by implication, that reality is hierarchical. That means that you have in the universe a graded scale of being. You have God, you have man, you have animals, you have matter; you have also spirits, angelic and satanic. There is an hierarchical nature of things in which true order is achieved when the lower gives obedience to the higher.”7 It is this that Jesus Christ tell us as the "Lord of thought.”
But Christ also speaks to us as the "Lord of life." As the Lord of life he tells us that as for him, so for his followers, crucifixion is inevitable. “Deity in all its fulness was in the Crucified Jesus making manifest the self-giving and forgiving love of God. Jesus in his death wrestled with and overcame all the cosmic forces that stood in the way of man's salvation. Rising again from the dead, the Crucified conquered death and made the great Enemy a spiritual mother." Hence, "when man sets out to serve God in truth the end is crucifixion.” But "Jesus Christ saved death for spiritual ends. In her dread womb new life was engendered and a new law of spiritual advance revealed.”8
Here, then, is the gospel that Princeton Seminary proclaims. Her students are not to say that God created and controls the universe. They are not to preach that the eternal Son of God took to himself a human nature and in it bore the wrath of God for sinners. They are not to preach the grand particularities of the gospel. They are rather to preach about the nature of Reality. In Reality, they must tell men, there are gradations. God occupies the highest place. But by love he comes down with the whole of his being to share the state and fate of man in suffering. This is the way downward. There follows a way upward. "For the Lord of life is the crucified conqueror of death."9 "Redemption, the participation of man in the life of God, is thus found by the seeker to be the meaning and the goal of Biblical truth.”10
The Cross
It is this way downward and this way upward that constitute the divine drama. The central point of this drama is the cross. "In the Cross of Jesus Christ the inmost nature of evil and the inmost nature of divine redemptive love were both revealed. It was there that the supreme crisis in both the life of God and man took place." Man's "Everlasting Nay" hurled against God was defeated by God’s "Everlasting Yea." Thus an end was made of "sin and its power over man.” Thus all that stood between man and his true destiny was removed. It is now the destiny of man to participate in the new divine order—the order of the Resurrection.11
The Bible as Perspective
Where then must men learn about this divine drama, this "Eternal Yea” of God? Of course, from the Bible. But not from the Bible as an “objective criterion" of truth. "There is no such criterion where the human realm is dealt with, or any realm which is directly related to our ultimate sense of values."12 It is only if we first reject the idea of an objective criterion and commit ourselves to participation in the drama of God that we can write “a lyrical interlude on Biblical authority.” "When men are willing to adopt a Biblical point of view, to put themselves in the perspective from which the Bible looks at all things and to identify themselves with the spiritual order of life which the Bible unveils, they understand the Bible, they see those spiritual realities about which the Bible speaks.”13
The Great Commission
When men thus "learn Christ," when they thus leave the balcony and walk the dusty road, they will understand "The Great Commission." For on the road they will meet Jesus Christ as “a luminous category for thinking and a compelling personality for living.” This "compelling personality”… ”ordains us to a mission."14 And then we "move from Golgotha and the empty tomb to a mountain and a trail. There we confront an imperious Person with a pointing finger, and not merely a luminous personality."15 We then note that "this same Jesus Christ commands His Church to summon men everywhere to become His disciples.”16 “He of the yoke and of the towel says:… With my yoke upon you, and girded each of you with a towel… get ready for the Road.”17
Preaching to the Horizontally Minded
As you thus walk along with your inseparable Road-Companion, you will meet those who are "the horizontally minded." "Horizontal-mindedness is interested only in a world of two dimensions, a world which is all surface with infinite breadth and infinite length… Their characteristic gaze is parallel with the surface of the ground… Their representative philosophy is a philosophy of history from which certainties and ultimates are excluded… For such a type of mind the dimension of the eternal and the absolute means nothing.”18
What shall we say to these horizontal minded ones? "To a horizontally minded generation which has lost its way, our message is: Look up, sheer along the line of the vertical. Let the eternal in. We shall discover thereby the significance of life in the light of God. So shall our efforts at the organization of life on the terrestrial plane, be inspired by the eternal Wisdom and undertaken through the eternal Strength.”19
These that have learned to participate in the divine drama minister to a generation which has become aware of subterranean forces that "have torn great fissures in the placid surface of life," a generation which has “rediscovered hell, deep down in the human heart and in the social order." Having fearlessly explored with Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky "the nether world of human nature, human society and human institutions," they cry out: "Life is our need, life, life, life! Life that shall show Nietzsche and all neo-Nietzschians that Christianity is overwhelming abundance of life. Life that shall introduce new meaning and thrill into our deadness, and make possible a totally new 'reverence for life' such as Schweitzer pleads for, with a consequent reconstruction of life—life that shall produce Christians who literally throb and pulsate with life as did Temple Gairdner of Cairo, as does Kagawa of Japan.”20
Pioneers at the Frontier
By thus asking the horizontally minded to look upward, and by proclaiming the "Eternal Yea" of God as victor over the "Eternal Nay" of the nether world, these horizontally minded ones will be brought to join the "brotherhood of enthusiasm" and to stand as pioneers at the frontiers of life. They will in turn find the “dimension of depth" in life. They will help men to change from individuals into persons by being "in Christ”… “who proved to be the Man, history's center because history's Lord.”21 Having seen the "vision splendid," having heard the "music of eternity,"22 they will help those who are still in rebellion against the hierarchical structure of the universe, who are out of step with reality, to find their true destiny in Christ. Thus those who live in a vacuum of Anonymity and Banality may find their true spiritual dimension of life.
These in turn will speak with reverence of "God's adventurous concern for the human kind."23 They will tell those that live without the vertical perspective that "The ultimate spiritual pattern is that of a paternal Kingdom. Therefore might is not right. Souls are not for sale. Fatherhood among men, and all that it signifies, is grounded upon the reality of a Divine universal Fatherhood."24 For "God's will to unity is… the most central thing in cosmic human history. This Divine drive none dare ignore, for whatever man attempts that runs counter to it will ultimately be frustrated and shattered by it.”25
Hierarchical Simplicities
These "hierarchical simplicities" derive from "the famous Theologica Germanica, which played such a decisive part in the spiritual history of Martin Luther."26 They derive more specifically from Kierkegaard, from Karl Barth, from Emil Brunner, from Paul Tillich, from Bergson, and from the Spanish mystic Miguel de Unamuno.
Here then is "truth with a lilt." The "great rift" in the universe has been closed. Such truth has the answer to the nihilistic mood of our time. As "the spectre of Nothingness" haunts the world, the universal church may call upon men to have the upward look. The church may tell all men everywhere that this is a "sacramental universe.”27
At the meeting of the Committee of the International Missionary Council at Willingen, Germany, in 1952, Dr. Mackay said, "We are happily agreed as to who Jesus Christ is; we start from an acceptance of His Deity and Saviourhood.”28
No one needs then to be excluded from partaking in the' preaching mission of the church. One need not, to be a preacher in the Christian church, believe the Bible as the objective revelation of God. One need not believe that God revealed himself to mankind at the beginning of history, making known his will to mankind. One need not believe in the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. One need not believe in the hope of eternal life in heaven or in eternal punishment for unbelief and disobedience to the revelation of God.
Did I say that one need not believe these points? True, one need not believe all or any of these doctrines. Many of those with whom Dr. Mackay is seeking to establish the universal church do not believe these doctrines. And the idea of modern dimensional philosophy which Dr. Mackay is, with all possible force, impressing upon the church, does not require belief in such doctrines.
But this is putting it too mildly. For the truth of the matter is that Mackay’s "hierarchical" scheme, his dimensionalism, does not allow for belief in such doctrines. Therefore those, and only those who believe what the older Princeton men, like the Hodges, Warfield, Vos, Armstrong and others believed, would not be welcome in this new universal church.
To be sure, when Vos, when Armstrong, when Caspar Wistar Hodge were called to glory to reap their reward of grace for faithfully preaching these doctrines, eulogies were spoken and written of them at Princeton. But eulogies they were such as those that were written for scientists of an earlier day who believed that the earth was flat.
When the seminary at Princeton was reorganized in 1929, a statement was issued about its position, in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin (Nov. 1929). The constituency of the church was assured that, despite false charges of apostasy made against the seminary. all was well. "Under the provisions of the amended Charter and Plan," they were told, "all the members, elders as well as ministers, of the one governing Board… are required recurrently to sign the following formula:
'Believing the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice; sincerely receiving and adopting the Confession of Faith of this Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures, approving the government and discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America; promising to study the peace, unity, and purity of the Church; and approving the Plan of the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, I solemnly declare and promise, in the presence of God and this Board, that I will faithfully endeavor to carry into effect all the articles and provisions of said Plan, and to promote the great design of the Seminary’."
But instead of an infallible Bible Mackay offers human experience' as the starting point for theology. Instead of the Confession of Faith as containing "the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures" Mackay offers the idea of a dimension in depth, the idea of perspective, the idea of a lower or impersonal and a higher or personal dimension of being, in short, a modern dimensional philosophy alien to Christianity.
The development of apostasy at Princeton did not recapitulate the slow stages traversed in the course of American church history. There was no half-way covenant. There was no insidious transformation of the “grand particularities" of Calvinism for the universal atonement of Arminianism. With the speed of a strato-cruiser all these "minor" stopping-points were passed over in order to realize “the great design of the Seminary," that of submerging the church into a vague mysticism in which God is not God, man is not man, and Christ is not Christ.
Some years ago Union Seminary in New York was organized in independence of the church in order to be able to teach Liberalism freely. Now, what was then the center of orthodox Reformed theology teaches, and that within the church with the approval of the church, a deeper-dyed heresy than the old Liberalism had the capacity to be.
Let us then again, after a quarter century, thank God for the foresight of Dr. Machen, Dr. Frank H. Stevenson and others who organized Westminster Seminary when and as they did. But let us not depend upon aught that is in man, least of all upon aught that is in ourselves, but only upon the grace of God so that this seminary may continue to train men to teach and preach the doctrines of Warfield, of Vos, of the Hodges, the system of doctrine of the Confession of Faith as the system of doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. Sunk in the quicksands of dimensionalism and mysticism Princeton is not likely to "lead the van in the great fight for fundamental Christianity.”
May God grant us grace to honor him in all the dimensions of life. May we pray to him who giveth the former and the latter rain as well as the regeneration of the heart. May we not teach and preach modern Dimensionalism but the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever.