From: mark@hubcap.clemson.edu (Mark Smotherman)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Fighting for orthodoxy at Princeton: book review
Date: 2 Oct 92 04:48:33 GMT
Organization: Clemson University

Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists,
  Modernists, and Moderates.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  333 pp. total, 96 pp. of notes, bibliography, and index.

Longfield has written of the period of controversy in the (U.S.A) northern
Presbyterian church, 1922-1936.  The research and writing are excellent,
as one would expect from a student of George Marsden.

The course of the controversy is told from the viewpoint of a succession
of individuals: Harry Emerson Fosdick, J. Gresham Machen, William Jennings
Bryan, Henry Sloane Coffin, Clarence Macartney, Charles Erdman, and Robert
Speer.  However, this is no mere sequence of superficial biographies.
These men and their motives are examined carefully, each from a positive
viewpoint showing that their actions in the controversy were mainly
consistent with their view of the Christian life.  The description of
Machen is especially powerful and thought-provoking.

It has been interesting to me to read this book while observing the recent
series of postings concerning the SBC and its seminaries.  Let me quote
a few relevant passages:

    Erdman's contention that no influences were at work to alter the
    doctrinal position of Princeton points to yet one more important
    difference between Erdman and Machen.  As was argued, Machen's
    Southern upbringing and experience in Germany allowed him to see
    more clearly than most the changes the secular ideas were producing
    in American culture and the church.  This perspective, combined
    with Machen's insistence on pressing all ideas to their logical
    conclusions, drove him to the conviction that any concession to
    modernism at all would lead ineluctably to the apostasy of the
    church.  But Erdman, raised in a tradition of Northern revivalism
    that allowed doctrinal variance for the sake of positive evangelism,
    could never see the dangers that Machen insisted lay down the path
    of toleration.  In one aspect, Erdman was right.  No one, it appears,
    was self-consciously attempting to "change the doctrinal teachings
    of Princeton Seminary."  But Erdman was mistaken in asserting that
    no influences were "working to that end."  For better or worse,
    toleration of doctrinal variation would, as Machen saw, eventually
    move Princeton away from its Old School Calvinistic roots.
    [pp. 170-171]
    
    Ironically, the path the church finally took in an effort to
    maintain its witness to the world probably only served to undermine
    that witness.  Having loosened its doctrinal standards, the church,
    always affected by the cultural trends surrounding it, opened its
    doors even wider to the influences of a secularizing society.
    Without clear theological boundaries, the church, in the years
    ahead, would find it more and more difficult to maintain an identity
    separate from the culture and offer a unique message and vision to
    the world it sought to serve.  [p. 230]
    
    If the Presbyterian Church is any indication, the mainstream churches
    decided to eschew theological discussion and accept doctrinal
    pluralism, at least in part, to further their mission.  ...  In the
    long run, however, this course has contributed to the current identity
    crisis of the church....  [p. 234]

Indeed, this book, reflecting upon events and people from 60 years ago,
makes for very relevant reading for today.
-- 
Mark Smotherman, CS Dept., Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906
  (803) 656-5878,  mark@cs.clemson.edu  or  mark@hubcap.clemson.edu