In your letter of recent date you say that some of your friends are not altogether certain that the existence of Westminster Seminary is justified. They are not as pessimistic as you are about conditions in the Presbyterian church as a whole and about conditions at Princeton Seminary. You ask for data that bear on the matter. Let me assure you that I shall be glad to furnish you all manner of data for I am persuaded that the existence of Westminster will be justified in proportion as the facts are known. First, let me say a few words to your friends who are as pessimistic as you are. Some of them will readily admit that Westminster has a right to exist but feel its efforts will be useless. If a great institution such as Princeton could not maintain the purity of the church, what use is there in trying anything new? So runs their argument.
The Pessimists
Rotten wood cannot be split. Into a dead organism life cannot be injected. Such statements are sometimes made with respect to the Presbyterian Church. To what extent are they true? I do not know. Who does? Is there any definite way to find out? No there is not. That a great many ministers are modernists is beyond dispute. In 1923–1924 nearly 1,300 of them signed the so-called Auburn Affirmation. His Affirmation declared that one need not hold to the virgin birth of Christ or his miracles or his offering of himself as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice or his bodily resurrection from the grave or the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, in order to be a minister in good standing. The Affirmation is clearly anti-Christian and anti-theistic. It denies the absoluteness of God, of Christ and of Scripture, it is based upon the principle of relativism which is paganism. Nevertheless, the signers of the Affirmation are tolerated in a church with a definitely Calvinistic creed. Dr. Charles R. Erdman, a professor at Princeton Seminary, when Moderator of the General Assembly, appointed a committee of fifteen to investigate whether there was anything wrong with the church. As reasonably might a man whose leg is half demolished investigate whether anything is wrong since he does not “run” as easily as otherwise. The committee found nothing seriously wrong. All the ministers of the church professed to be faithful to its confessions; there were only minor differences of “interpretation.” Such was the report. A later assembly accepted this report. The representatives of the people said in effect that there is no difference between paganism and Christianity. Add to this that the people did not object to this trend of affairs and your pessimistic friend seems to be quite right.
Yet all these things do not prove that the rank and file of the people are modernists. They are asleep at best. But who knows that they may not be aroused? Perhaps they need a shock. The very fact that there has been so little opposition on their part against liberal preachers seems to indicate that they do. That Westminster is not the result of a “volksbeweging” is no argument against it. A blessing it would be if Westminster might be used to originate a “volksbeweging.”
“Exactly,” says your friend, “a renewal of consistent Christianity among the people, is what we need. But what difference does it make through what agency such a renewal is begun? Whether it began from Princeton or Westminster is immaterial.” But surely if your friend begins to think about his statement he will see that he assumes that the men of Westminster were wrong. He assumes that Westminster is “just another seminary.” It is just so that the new editor of The Presbyterian is willing to mother this new born child. How magnanimous! Yet, Westminster would ratherdie than be mothered thus. It was because they had no hope at all that a consistent Calvinism would continue to be taught in all the departments at Princeton that the men of Westminster thought it imperative to organize a new seminary. Just as Dr. A. Kuyper felt that, humanly speaking, it would be useless to expect the movement of a renewed Calvinism to endure, unless the Free University were organized, so the men of Westminster felt they dare not pray for a renewal of a consistent Christianity unless they did all that was in their power to organize a new seminary of which there is a reasonable guarantee that it will cling to the Reformed Faith.
Furthermore, suppose your friend is so pessimistic that he despairs of any attempt by any institution to revive an interest in consistent Christianity, you can, it would seem, appeal to his very love for Calvinism and his conviction that the Reformed Faith is the only consistent form of Christianity in order to justify the existence of Westminster. Only a consistent form of Christianity offers any real opposition to paganism at all. The very backbone of evangelical Christianity would be broken if the Reformed faith should disappear. Finally, if your friend is a true Calvinist, he will maintain that it is imperative for Calvinists to maintain consistent theological seminaries irrespective of consequences. The man most pessimistic about “results” can, when a Calvinist, still be enthusiastic about consistently Calvinistic seminaries.
The Optimists
Your other friend, the optimist, has recently heard Dr. Speer say that the trouble at Princeton was but a personal matter. He has also read the statement of Dr. Stevenson (president of the seminary at Princeton) and of the new Board, that they intend to be even more faithful to the original plan of the seminary than the old Board of Directors could be. He has also been told over and over again that Drs. Erdman and Stevenson are as orthodox as could be desired. “Accordingly,” he says, “it may be that these men are right. When good men differ, how decide?”
You are quite right in not beginning a battle about personalities. I would place before your friend a few simple facts.
In the first place the orthodoxy of no one is in question. The only thing with which Drs. Erdman and Stevenson have been charged is pacifism. Dr. Erdman for example says that this is no time to fight. Such an attitude is hard to understand when over 1200 ministers are Auburn Affirmationists. It seems to resemble the attitude of the man who is too busy with “constructive work” for the family to protect his children from murder. But the charge of pacifism is not a charge of heterodoxy.
Secondly, the professions of faithfulness to the plan of the Seminary on the part of Dr. Stevenson and the new Board must be brought into harmony with other statements and actions that seem to contradict such professions. Dr. Stevenson and the new Board seem to have a new “interpretation” of what it means to be faithful to the plan of the seminary. Did not the Rev. H. Hoeksema maintain that his position was truly Reformed? Yet Synod judged otherwise.
It should be remembered that the men of Westminster who now appear as innovators have constantly opposed reorganization at Princeton. They were perfectly satisfied with things as they were. A Board of Directors directed the seminary and a Board of Trustees conducted its finances. It did not worry them greatly that the Board of Trustees contained several outspoken modernists, as long as the trustees had no vote in the appointment of professors, etc. For over a hundred years the seminary was considered by friends and foe alike to be a bulwark of the Reformed faith.
It was Dr. Stevenson and the reorganizers that brought in something new. They are the innovators!
Was their innovation justified? Those who oppose Westminster will have to say that it was, for Westminster was organized in opposition to that innovation alone. It is not possible to say that you are opposed to both, for that at least reduces the innovation at Princeton to a mere trifle. And a trifle, all that know, will say, it was not. The reorganizers would reject with scorn the intimation that they engaged in a long and bitter fight for a mere trifle only.
Once more, was the reorganization justified? Why reorganize at all? The majority of the Board of Directors opposed it till they were exhausted. The majority of the faculty, including Drs. Wilson, Vos, Greene, Armstrong, Hodge, Machen, Allis and Jenkins opposed it to the last. They fought it hard. They wrote pamphlets and articles against it. The reorganizers wrote articles and pamphlets in favor of it. Was it a trifle? Was it merely about a few personal matters? A few personal matters could have been adjusted more easily than that. Or if it be said that the reorganizers wanted to lose no one, neither Dr. Machen nor Dr. Stevenson they could foresee that they would in all likelihood lose several men by adopting the reorganization plan. As early as December 1927 Dr. Machen wrote that if the reorganization of the seminary should come about, much as he hoped it would not, the establishment of a new seminary would in his estimation be imperatively necessary. Rightly or wrongly the majority of the faculty deemed the reorganization to be destructive of the seminary. It is not unfair to say, then, that if the reorganizers did set any value on the services of the majority of the faculty they took great chances of losing them all when they persisted in carrying through their measures. If we must take them at their word when they say it was only the adjustment of personal matters that they had in mind, we will have to think of them as of a physician who recommends a large dose of carbolic acid to a patient suffering from the scurvy.
But the reorganizers do not always say that it was merely personal matters they had in mind. They also say that through the reorganization the seminary could better live up to its plan. Does this second argument sound reasonable? It seems to me that an honest Modernist would have to admit that it is not. An honest modernist will admit that modernism is not historic Christianity, but its contradictory opposite. An honest modernist will admit that it is not likely that a Board containing signers of the Auburn Affirmation will better serve to defend historic Christianity than a Board containing no such signers. The new Board, composed in general of members of the old Board of Directors, of members of the old Board of Trustees and of members chosen from the church at large does contain signers of the Auburn Affirmation. The General Assembly has approved the membership of this new Board. The chief court of the church saw no inconsistency there. But will your friend also see no inconsistency there? If he does not he ought to see no objection to having some members of the Calvin Curatorium embrace the views of Dr. Fosdick.
These facts will, I trust, lead your friend to the conviction that the reorganization was unwarranted not only, but destructive of old Princeton. In the old Board of Directors lay the real power. Those members of it that wished to maintain historic Calvinism were in the majority. Now the words of Scott might be applied to them:
“How few, all weak and withered of their force,
Wait on the verge of dark eternity, the tide returning hoarse,
To sweep them from our sight.”
The few that remain have no right to oppose a man as a candidate for membership in the Board or in the Faculty on the ground that he is a modernist. The church has set its stamp of approval upon modernism inasmuch as it has set its stamp of approval upon the signers of the Auburn Affirmation.
Dr. J. Ross Stevenson, president of Princeton Seminary some years ago favored the plan of organic union between the Presbyterian and other churches. Such a union could not be effected unless the Calvinistic confession of the church were to be set aside. True, Dr. Stevenson said that he was opposed to setting the confessions aside. But there lies the difficulty. How is it possible to run east and west at the same time? What must I understand you to mean when you solemnly and piously affirm that you are faithful to your wife but also frankly strive for “organic union” with your neighbor’s wife?
At the Assembly of 1926 Dr. Stevenson proposed that Princeton Seminary should be a seminary of the “whole” church. This statement, if it was to mean anything at all, could mean nothing else than that the seminary should serve every doctrinal wing of the church, Affirmationists as well as others. At the same Assembly Dr. Stevenson opposed the confirmation of Dr. Machen as professor of Apologetics. Of the “Thompson Committee” appointed at Baltimore in 1926 to investigate the situation at Princeton, president Stevenson asked, “Is this seminary to be what its charter prescribes, ‘The Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,’ or to be an institution of a turbulent section in our own and other churches? 1 This question, too, if it was to mean anything, signified nothing less than that the majority of the faculty represent only a “turbulent faction” of the church. Would it be likely that the policy of such a president, approved by the last assembly, would help to keep the seminary true to its Calvinistic position? Or if it be said that Dr. Stevenson will remain only for a few years, is it likely that a Board created in approval of his policies would elect a man who would once more follow the policy of the “turbulent section” of the church?
Finally, to mention no more, the official bulletin of the seminary of November 1929 white-washed the whole Affirmation movement by saying that the signing of the Affirmation might be quite an incidental and insignificant thing. The bulletin apparently thinks it quite reasonable that a man should sign the Affirmation and also sign a solemn pledge that he will help direct the seminary according to its plan. Could any more definite proof be offered that the Princeton Seminary authorities are adapting themselves to the mind of the church which has learned to be tolerant to and inclusive of modernism?
How unfair then is it to say that Westminster Seminary was started for trifling reasons, or that the men of Westminster welcomed the reorganization at Princeton as an excuse for them to leave! The fact is—and this is all important—that Drs. Machen and Allis resigned from Princeton before they saw any immediate prospect for a new seminary at all. They resigned from Princeton for fear lest evangelical people might think that all was well at Princeton.
Many more data I could furnish but these are sufficient, I trust, to present to your friends a reasonable argument for the imperative necessity and therefore the complete justification of Westminster Theological Seminary.
Your friend,
VanTil