Machen and others wanted ministers who denied certain fundamentals to be kept from ordination.  I’m wondering why these ministers disagreed about the fundamentals.  The fundamentals hold together logically to support the person and work of Christ, so it is no easy thing (logically) to jettison one or two of them.

I’m currently reading a book about the history of Princeton Seminary and just covered the 1929 split that lead J. Gresham Machen and others to leave and form Westminster Seminary.  The book portrays Machen as a southern secessionist.  The Auburn Affirmation, which called for greater breadth in interpreting the Westminster Standards for ordination, was behind the split.  This made me think about when it is better to divide and start a new seminary or church, and when it is better to continue working from within.  This question goes back in the English church to the separatists and non-separatists within the Church of England.

The secessionist model is problematic from a ‘states rights’ perspective in that the capital of each state becomes the new de facto federal government ruling over the cities and counties of the state.  Following that model each of these then has the right to secede from the state.  And then within a county or city divided groups can secede, and within each group individuals can secede until each person is ruling himself/herself.

Clearly there must be times of cooperating with those we disagree with.  Applied to this instance, is it one of them?  What are the options?

1. What actually happened, leave and start Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
2. Stay at Princeton and in the Presbyterian Church USA and continue making the case for the points of disagreement.

Are there any other options (I’m really asking, and would like to hear comments back)?  I’d suggest a third:

3. Work to show that the presuppositions on which the 5 fundamentals rest are indeed true and non-negotiable for Christians.

This makes me reflect on how to continue in an organization when there are disagreements.  Machen and others wanted ministers who denied certain fundamentals to be kept from ordination.  I’m wondering why these ministers disagreed about the fundamentals.  The fundamentals hold together logically to support the person and work of Christ, so it is no easy thing (logically) to jettison one or two of them.  Were there arguments given that were not sufficient?  Or were these ministers simply recalcitrant?  I suspect entire worldviews were in conflict here, not one or two points of doctrine.

Machen believed it was due to the influence of naturalism and its form of liberalism.  Were his arguments just not sufficient, did the other side have counter-arguments that kept them from being persuaded?  How were these addressed?

As I read this history book I’m getting some of those counter arguments and they are generally aimed not so much at the falsehood of orthodoxy, but at the irrelevance of fine-tuned theological points to the larger Christian faith.  The claim is that there is a simpler view of Christ that all of those in the dispute can agree about and use as a model for unity.  The Princetonians that remained based their work on Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge, believing these persons would not be so divisive.  However, as I mentioned above, the fundamentals about Christ hold together logically so that if you deny one you end up denying the representative and atoning work of Christ.

So I’m left wondering how to proceed in such cases.  It seems the drift in history then and up to the present has indeed been to minimize the role of ideas and theology.  Has Westminster Seminary avoided this drift?  Perhaps they’ve held to the 5 fundamentals but have they insisted upon the importance of ideas and the ability to give rational justification for basic beliefs?

As a philosopher I don’t think its a good direction (denying the importance of ideas), but I am left questioning if the case for ideas and theology could have been made more clearly and pointedly.  I am not sure, but I suspect that the point that kept it from being made in this way was a reliance on faith as fideism, and a failure to articulate the good as the knowledge of God.  Rather, the good as heaven or a pious lifestyle was put in the place of knowing God, which was then allowed to be characterized as overly intellectual and arid.

Finally, I suspect this all happened in the absence of the teaching that it is clear that God exists.  Early Princetonians on whom Machen relied claimed that belief in God was common sense and that theistic arguments were nice but not necessary.  This common sense model had been replaced in American culture and among American theologians.  Therefore, we can use this division as an instance where, even if one side was correct doctrinally, there were more presuppositions to think through.  This process would not have guaranteed agreement, but it would have pushed the process to the point where one side must be more explicit in its denial of reason and knowing God.

I should add that in my reading, I don’t see anyone at Princeton or Westminster affirming, as a central issue, the role of natural evil as a call back from sin.  If natural evil was imposed on the creation after the fall, what is its purpose?  What was so bad about the original sin that warranted such a dramatic change in the human condition.  Perhaps knowing this helps get the reality of sin into focus, and the role of God’s love, so that we are not caught in an either/or emphasis of love or depravity.  I’d argue that it was not simply the breaking of a positive command of God, but the failure to seek, to understand, and to do what is right which resulted in believing “you can be like God.”  In order to reject this belief (humans can be/become God) we must be able to articulate the difference between God and humanity, and show that God as the Creator does indeed exist and that challenges to this knowledge are based on inexcusable premises.  Natural evil serves to keep us from going along in our unthinking condition and we respond by either hardening our heart or heeding that call back.

Additionally, the Auburn Affirmation raised questions about the ordo salutis.  It was argued that there is some kind of conflict between the love of God and the need for regeneration (or the inability for fallen humans to add to their own salvation in some way like “choosing God”).  I recently posted a blog entry on “intuition and freedom” to address the idea that there is some conflict between freedom and causation (I don’t believe there is a conflict).

I’d like to suggest these conflicts, however, difficult, are healthy because they bring to light our presuppositions.  Let me give an example from this conflict:

1. The 5 fundaments, which presuppose:
2. The inerrancy of scripture and the logical connection between each fundamental, the first of which presupposes:
3. The need for redemptive revelation, which presupposes:
4. The reality of sin as failing to know what is clear about God and the moral law from general revelation, which presupposes:
5. Moral evil is inexcusable precisely because we can know God and the moral law but have not been seeking, and therefore have not understood or done what is right.  This implies:
6. Christians should be able to show that it is indeed clear that God exists, and that there is a clear moral law, and that since these have been ignored and replaced by humans there is a need for redemptive revelation.  This must be done is a non-question begging manner.  For instance, an appeal to Christian intuitions or common sense simply begs the question, as does an appeal to scripture or Christian tradition.  [Here is a little shameless self-promotion, which is really just intended to suggest some follow-up reading: I’ve written two books relevant to point 6, one is titled “The Clarity of God’s Existence” from Wipf and Stock, and the other is titled “The Natural Moral Law: The Good After Modernity” from Cambridge University Press.  Both are available for perusing on Amazon or their respective publisher’s sites].

This is why I said earlier that tracing out presuppositions in such a conflict may not persuade anyone, but it will force them either to be persuaded or to reject the more basic presuppositions.  I don’t believe this was done in the case I’m considering.  Princeton had traditionally held to Common Sense Philosophy which maintained that all persons are simply equipped with common sense beliefs in God and morality.  When this philosophy was challenged by romanticism and naturalism it was not able to respond within its own parameters.   In this sense both sides in the conflict need to do more work in their presuppositions and thinking about how God is known, and perhaps continued debate would have permitted that to happen in a mutually beneficial way.

Owen Anderson is Associate Professor of -Humanities Arts & Cultural at Arizona State University. He blogs at Summum Bonum, from which this article is reprinted with permission.

[Editor’s note: the link to the author’s blog is no longer valid and has been removed.]