J. Gresham Machen, Ned B. Stonehouse, And The Quandary Of Reformed Ecumenicity

by Sean Michael Lucas

Sean Michael Lucas is a Ph.D. student at Westminster Theological Seminary.

I hope most fervently that we shall make progress in learning, without sacrifice of principle, how we may discharge our full responsibilities as a Reformed Church in the context of world “forces opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ” and of professing churches “swept into the paganizing stream of modernism,” but also in relation to other churches which may properly claim the name Christian. 

—Ned B. Stonehouse[1]

Upon J. Gresham Machen’s sudden death on January 1, 1937 in the heartland of North Dakota, the mantle of leadership in the new denomination he helped form, in the editorship of the journal he helped finance, and in the New Testament department of the seminary he founded, fell directly upon the shoulders of Ned B. Stonehouse. In the years following graduation from Princeton Seminary, Stonehouse became Machen’s partner in all Machen’s endeavors. No wonder, then, Stonehouse writes in the Machen memorial issue of the Presbyterian Guardian, “Our hearts are deeply wounded but not unto despair…. As Elijah was the spiritual father of Elisha and of other ‘sons of the prophets,’ Dr. Machen was the spiritual father of countless Christians in our time.” Stonehouse’s spiritual father was dead; and Stonehouse must have wondered whether Machen’s vision and the denomination he helped found would die as well.[2]

Part of the answer to that question has been answered in the negative, for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) remains to this day. A further question could be asked concerning Machen’s vision. Machen stood for confessional Presbyterianism when confronted by those who believed that doctrine and confession did not matter. Most know that Machen withstood the forces on the left, the theological modernists he castigated in Christianity and Liberalism. Yet few evangelicals realize that Machen stood for more than battling modernism; rather, Machen desired “to be identified, very specifically, with the Presbyterian Church.” The desire to maintain a “true Presbyterian Church” led Machen to view the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) as an apostate church, to separate from the large mainline body, and to help found the OPC.[3]

Machen’s vision that led him to maintain his confessional commitments also led him to emphasize ecumenicity based on confessional unity. In the six months between the founding of the OPC and his death, Machen held his fragile coalition together by pointing away from divisive non-confessional issues, such as Christian liberty and premillennial eschatology, and by directing attention to the broad commonality the new denomination had in the Westminster Standards. With Machen’s death, his vision of ecumenicity based on confessional unity did not die with him, but rather passed to Stonehouse. The young New Testament professor guided the young church between the shoals of denominational isolation and doctrinal indifferentism, between fundamentalism and latitudinarianism.

Both Machen and Stonehouse did more than provide leadership for the young denomination. Each provided answers for this pressing difficulty, the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity. Forces on both the left and the right in Christendom argued that confessional commitments led churches to separatism. This sectarianism was current in some quarters of the OPC; some even doubted whether Arminians truly proclaimed the Gospel and others claimed that non-Reformed were “inadequately Protestant.” However, others minimized confessional commitments in order to emphasize the unity of the church, leading to administrative efficiency and ecumenical evangelism. Whether advocating the Plan of Union in the 1920s or the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1940s, these “low church” Christians looked askance at the confessional concerns of Machen and Stonehouse. The quan dary that this situation posed for Machen and Stonehouse was difficult—how to express the basic unity of Christ’s church, while at the same time do justice to their confessional commitment to the Reformed faith.[4]

Machen and Stonehouse both sought to solve this quandary by recognizing different levels and purposes of fellowship and unity. On the one hand, both Machen and Stonehouse united with conservatives in other denominations in order to battle modernism as well as to seek limited cooperation in matters such as securing radio time and placing military chaplains. Hence, in a limited way, both men sought to give aid to “fundamentalism” and used the moniker “fundamentalist.” On the other hand, both Machen and Stonehouse sought to reserve the functions of church—particularly missions and evangelism—for the church and not the para church. This type of united activity had to be based on common confessional identity and commitment (namely commitment to the Westminster Standards as the best expression of the Reformed faith and practice). As a result, both Machen and Stonehouse sought to affirm doctrinal purity while still maintaining the unity of the church.

I

J. Gresham Machen sought to resolve the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity through confessional unity. That Machen did in fact desire a biblical unity of the church could be questioned by some. After all, was this not the same man who wrote in the midst of the modernist controversy in the PCUSA, “A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour”? Was this not the same man who, in arguing against the modern world’s tendency to union movements, wrote, “The real indictment against the modern world is that by the modern world human liberty is being destroyed”? How could such a “fundamentalist” be seen as a ecumenist? Admittedly, Machen’s task was largely negative, as he sought to confront modernism and doctrinal indifference within his own denomination. However, this largely negative project was based on a vision of Reformed ecumenicity.[5]

Machen did not address issues of ecumenicity until he was elected a commissioner to the 1920 General Assembly. Certainly, Machen was aware of the movement within Presbyterian circles toward church union. Princeton President J. Ross Stevenson and Professor Charles Erdman both were involved on the PCUSA Committee on Church Cooperation and Union from its inception in 1918. But with the report of this Committee, which recommended the Plan of Church Union offered by the American Council on Organic Union, Machen first came to the forefront as an opponent of non-doctrinal ecumenism.[6]

Machen published three articles in The Presbyterian against “the proposed plan of union.” In these articles he worked out themes that would appear in Christianity and Liberalism.[7] In the first article, “The Proposed Plan of Union,” Machen deconstructed the preamble of the “Plan.” Particu larly troublesome was that the “shared belief” of the cooperating denominations omitted “all of the great essentials of the Christian faith.” Further, Machen believed that the plan relegated the creeds of the churches to “purely denominational affairs.” In contrast, Machen argued that the Westminster Confession was not a purely denominational affair. Rather, “those who believe it to be true will never be satisfied until it has been accepted by the whole world, and will never consent to be limited in the propagation of it by any church or union of churches whatsoever.” In a second article, “For Christ or Against Him,” Machen claimed the planned union was “committed to a denial of the Christian faith. For the preamble is thoroughly anti-Christian.” In order to support this claim, Machen focused on one of the plan’s chief advocates, George Richards, the chairman of the Committee on Deputations of the American Council of Organic Union. In the final article, “The Second Declaration of the Council on Organic Union,” Machen sharpened his critique of the preamble. He believed that the plan for organic union was “anti-Christian to the core” because it served as “a manifesto of that naturalistic liberalism which is the chief enemy of Christianity in the modern world.” For those who supported the plan, doctrine was the state ment of any given age and changeable. Further, the only doctrines admitted into the preamble were those acceptable to “modern naturalism.” The plan relegated the Reformed faith to the background with the hope that the time would come when “the importance of divisive names and creeds and methods will pass more and more into the dim background of the past.” Those who seek a church, where confessions matter little are perfectly free to unite in their own church on such principles, Machen wrote. However, such principles should not be forced upon confessional Presbyterians in “a unity of organization which covers radical diversity of aim.” The main problem then with the Plan of Union was that its doctrinal standards were “anti-Christian,” thoroughly devoid of meaningful biblical content.[8]

Machen extended his critique of modernism and the modern church union movement in Christianity and Liberalism.[9] According to the Princeton professor, the key issue of the day was whether or not Christianity could be maintained in “a scientific age.” Modernists believed that Christianity could only be maintained in the face of “new science,” if it were adapted to the naturalism of modern science or if it were separated from scientific investigation entirely. The former solution involved a series of concessions by religion to naturalism that would result in an entirely differently religion from Christianity. The latter claim, that “religion is so entirely separate from science, that the two, rightly defined, cannot possibly come into conflict,” expressed a profound skepticism toward knowledge in general.[10]

Machen contended that these modernist solutions were non-Christian and unscientific. In order to demonstrate the charge that modernism was non-Christian, Machen arraigned theological liberalism against the standard of Christian orthodoxy as set forth by the Westminster Standards. As D. G. Hart rightly noted, Christianity and Liberalism reads more like a primer in Christian theology, less like a piece of theological polemic.[11] To Machen, the key difference between theological modernism and historic Christianity was that the latter asserted the logical priority of doctrine over experience. Christianity was a message based on a factual narrative. This historical narrative was not merely a listing of brute facts, but it also contained the meaning of the facts. This meaning was doctrine; thus, doctrine was at the heart of the Christian religion. If the liberals successfully did away with doctrine, they were attacking “the very heart of the New Testament.” For Machen, theological liberals were not merely “against the seventeenth century”; they were “against the Bible and against Jesus himself.” Thus, one basic difference between Christianity and liberalism was that liberalism promoted life, Christianity proclaimed a message; liberalism held forth experience, Christianity taught doctrine.[12]

After defending the priority of doctrine in the Christian life, Machen examined theological liberals’ views on major doctrines—God, humankind, the Bible, Christ, and salvation. According to Machen, modernism presented a God who was one with the world process, a God who was solely immanent; Christianity worshiped “God transcendent.” Modernism offered a “supreme confidence in human goodness”; Christianity proclaimed the reality of sinful human nature. Modernism affirmed Christian experience as its sole authority; Christianity defended the authority of the inerrant Scriptures. Modernism esteemed Jesus as an example of a man’s faith in God; Christianity worshiped Jesus, the God-man, the object of faith. Modernism presented the atonement as an example of self-sacrifice; Christianity held forth the atonement as an one-time substitutionary sacrifice for sin and the only way of salvation.[13]

As a result of the vast difference between naturalistic modernism and supernatural Christianity, Machen believed that it was inconceivable that the two religions should abide in the same institution. “A separation between the two parties in the Church,” he proclaimed, “is the crying need of the hour.” And if modernism and Christianity should not coexist within the same denomination, they certainly should not coexist in an united church like that proposed by the plan on church union. Those who advocated church union on a minimalist creed not only set aside doctrines that conservative evangelicals held to be true, but also they promoted a dishonest program. It was dishonest because denominations like the Presbyterian Church had established confessions as part of their constitutions. To occupy teaching or ministerial positions within a confessional church while warring against that church’s established, constitutional positions was a dishonest use of the funds provided by well-meaning laypeople. As a result, theological liberals in every denomination should abandon their churches and form their own liberal denomination. The only way to maintain denominational unity among Presbyterians was for all ordained elders to reaffirm the Westminster Standards as the confessional standards of the church.[14]

The one response to Machen’s demand for unity based on confessional Presbyterianism came from Robert Hasting Nichols, a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary. Nichols prepared a three part statement that sought to defend the freedom of liberal Presbyterian ministers to teach other inter pretations of doctrines such as “the inspiration of the Bible, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and the continuing life and supernatural power of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The final document, known to posterity as the “Auburn Affirmation,” was released January 9, 1924 and caused quite a stir in the church. Appended to the document were the signatures of 150 Presbyterian ministers; eventually almost 1300 clergymen would sign the document.[15] The next day, Machen sent a statement to the New York Times that was published beside the Affirmation. There he wrote,

The declaration as a whole is a deplorable attempt to obscure the issue. The plain fact is that two mutually exclusive religions are being proclaimed in the pulpits of the Presbyterian Church…. One is the great redemptive religion known as Christianity—a religion founded upon certain supernatural events in the first century of our era; the other is the naturalistic or agnostic modernism, anti-Christian to the core, which is represented by Dr. Fosdick and by some of the signers of the present declaration.[16]

After the publication of the Affirmation, Machen wrote a counter- affirmation, which was not circulated widely. In the document, Machen claimed that the Auburn Affirmation “advocates the destruction of the confes sional witness of the Church” by interpreting doctrines in ways at variance to “the plain sense” of the confession. Whereas the affirmationists claimed that unity would be fostered by doctrinal pluralism, Machen believed that unity could be maintained “only by maintenance of the corporate witness of the church. The church is founded not upon agnosticism but upon a common adherence to the truth of the gospel as set forth in the confession of faith on the basis of the Scriptures.” Machen would have unity, but only based on a common understanding and adherence to the Westminster Standards.[17]

The situation continued to deteriorate within the PCUSA. The turning point came when Charles Erdman defeated Clarence McCartney as modera tor of the assembly in 1925. Bradley J. Longfield evaluated Erdman by writing, “Erdman’s willingness to cooperate with liberals for the sake of evangelism—not his personal orthodoxy—was at the heart of Machen’s opposition. The conflict was rooted in a different understanding of the essence of Christianity and of the mission of the church. For Machen the truth of Christianity was primarily doctrinal; for Erdman, existential.” The clash between Machen, Erdman and Stevenson served as the catalyst for the ultimate administrative reorganization of Princeton Seminary, leading to the dissolution of the conservative Board of Directors and to the appoint ment of two signers of the Auburn Affirmation to the new single Board of Trustees. This reorganization, which compromised the confessional integrity of the board, caused Machen to resign from Princeton. For Machen, there could be no unity at Princeton Seminary when there was no confessional commonality.[18]

Because Princeton Seminary had succumbed to an inclusivist doctrinal policy at the board level, and would soon do so within the faculty, Machen and three other former Princeton faculty founded Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. “Though Princeton Seminary is dead,” Machen asserted at the opening of the new seminary, “the noble tradition of Princeton Seminary is alive. Westminster Seminary will endeavor by God’s grace to continue that tradition unimpaired.” The foundation of Westminster was “the Christian religion, as it is set forth in the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church.” Although Princeton no longer sought unity based on con fessional commitment, Westminster was founded on that very basis. Though the student body did not come solely from Presbyterian backgrounds, the seminary’s purpose was to declare “that great historic Faith that has come through Augustine and Calvin to our own Presbyterian Church.”[19]

With the new seminary as a base, Machen waged his last battle as a minister in the PCUSA. The controversy over Presbyterian missions was precipitated by the Hocking report entitled, Re-thinking Missions: A Layman’s Inquiry after One Hundred Years. The report, which denied the exclusivity of Christianity and recommended inter-religious cooperation as an effective missions strategy, was sponsored originally by the mainline denomi nations, including the PCUSA. Upon the appearance of the report, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions tried to side-step the issue by expressing lukewarm appreciation of the report while vaguely rejecting the theological basis of it. This response might have been satisfactory if Pearl Buck had not taken a public role in promoting the report. Buck, a Presbyterian missionary and novelist, reviewed the report in The Christian Century, and offered high praises for the book: “I think this is the only book I have ever read which seems to me literally true in its every observation and right in its every conclusion…. It expresses too perfectly all that I have known and felt about Christianity in general and missions in particular.” What Buck felt about Christianity was revealed in Harper’s when she claimed, “Some of us believe in Christ as our fathers did. To some of us he is still the divine son of God, born of the virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit. But to many of us he has ceased to be that. Some of us do not know what he is, some of us care less. In the world of our life it does not matter perhaps what he is. If we are asked we shall say, I admire him of course. He was perhaps the best man who ever lived. But that is all he is.” The outrage at Buck’s comments, offered while still supported by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, eventually caused the Board to ask for Buck’s resignation.[20]

However, Buck’s resignation did not satisfy Machen. Once again, it appeared to him that the PCUSA sought to maintain unity through administrative manipulation rather than through confessional commitment. Thus, Machen produced an important document, Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, to support an overture he had introduced in the Presbytery of New Brunswick. In the report Machen took on the entire denominational missions venture, including the Hocking report, Pearl Buck, Auburn Affirmationists on the missions board, literature produced by the Missions Candidate department, and Robert Speer, the popular general secretary of the Board. The overture, which failed in the New Brunswick Presbytery but passed in the Presbytery of Philadelphia, came to floor of the 1933 General Assembly supported by majority and minority reports. While the minority report sustained Machen’s arguments in the overture and argument, the majority report “expressed its confidence in the orthodoxy of Speer and the Board of Missions, and repudiated all theological statements in Re-Thinking Missions that conflicted with the theological positions of the church.” The Assembly passed the majority report by an overwhelming margin and Speer was greeted with a standing ovation when he came to deliver the report of the Board.[21]

Once again Machen tried to force the church to express its unity based on confessional commitment. Once again he failed in this task, and once again, because in Machen’s eyes the Board of Foreign Missions was “dead,” he founded an independent institution which would perpetuate the spirit and tradition of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. This institution, The Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions, eventually divided conservatives who had supported Machen’s stand for unity based on confessional commitment. Clarence McCartney, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, resigned from the board of Westminster Seminary to protest the formation of the Independent Board. The Independent Board also served as the reason for denominational leaders to rid themselves of Machen. They charged Machen with violation of his ordination vows and renunciation of the rules and authority of the church. In March 1935, the Presbytery of New Brunswick convicted Machen of these charges. After these charges were sustained by the 1936 General Assembly, Machen was defrocked by the Presbyterian Church.[22]

That Machen was ousted from the church was no surprise to anyone, least of all to himself. He helped to form the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union that would serve as the basis for a new denomination in June 1935; and on June 11, 1936, the meetings of the Covenant Union became the First General Assembly of the OPC. In a pattern followed with both Westminster Seminary and the Independent Board, the Adopting Act of the new denomination declared that the PCUSA had died but that the new denomination represented “the true spiritual succession” of Presbyterianism in America. Hence, Machen declared that “we became members, at last, of true Presbyterian church” without being schismatic in the least. In his view, the new denomination was simply the continuation of historic Presbyterianism that the PCUSA had rejected. This continuation of historic Presbyterianism had as its basis confessional agreement.[23]

This commitment to confessionalism in the new denomination did not come without a fight; some joined the new denomination motivated to fight modernism, not to perpetuate confessional Presbyterianism. This tension between fundamentalism and Presbyterianism came to the surface in the six months between the founding of the OPC and Machen’s death on New Year’s Day, 1937. Two issues came to the forefront: premillennialism and Christian liberty. The point men for the fundamentalist coalition in the new denomination were J. Oliver Buswell, president of Wheaton College, and Carl McIntire, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, New Jersey and editor of the Christian Beacon. Machen tried to diffuse the growing tensions in the OPC by arguing that the bonds of unity were the shared commitment to the Westminster Standards, not interpretations of non-confessional teaching in the realm of eschatology or personal holiness. Further, Machen tried to promote unity through a political maneuver at the Second General Assembly; he had Cornelius Van Til, one of the confessionalist “party,” nominate Buswell as the moderator of the Assembly.[24]

These maneuvers, in the end, delayed the inevitable. A few weeks after the Second General Assembly, the elections for the Independent Board of Presbyterian Foreign Missions took place. Machen had served as president of the Independent Board since its inception in 1933. The constitution of the Board, including both Presbyterians and nondenominational church men, proved to be the Board’s undoing. During the November 1936 meeting, the nondenominational churchmen joined forces with the discontented fundamentalist Presbyterians on the Board, led by Carl McIntire, to oust Machen from the presidency. Machen lost by a single vote, after a five-hour debate, and was replaced by Harold S. Laird, pastor of the First Independent Church of Wilmington, Delaware. This was a crushing blow to Machen and to the new denomination. In the minds of the confessionalists, McIntire and the fundamentalists did not desire unity based on historic Presbyte rianism; rather, it appeared that the fundamentalists wanted to establish supra-confessional tests. This failure to reach consensus on the basis of the Westminster Standards led to the split of the tiny denomination, with McIntire and his followers forming the Bible Presbyterian Synod.[25]

This survey of Machen’s career should make plain that, though Machen’s work was largely negative, one of the key issues that he wrestled with was unity. Whereas many in the PCUSA seemed content to unite around administrative programs or church order, Machen contested that true spiritual unity could only be based upon shared theological commitments. In his fight against modernism, Machen was more than willing to make common league with “fundamentalists” who held to supernaturalism against modern istic naturalism. And several times Machen identified himself in public with the fundamentalist cause even though the term was “distasteful” to him. However, in private correspondence and increasingly during his last months, Machen insisted that his first loyalties were to the Reformed faith as proclaimed by his beloved Presbyterian church. When it came to unity within the newly born OPC, unity could only be based on forthright commit ment to the Westminster Standards. Extra-confessional tests would not be tolerated in the OPC. Several, especially Presbyterian fundamentalists like McIntire and Buswell, did not understand Machen’s commitment to confessionalism; as a result, they led a division of the tiny denomination just one year after it was formed. Even recent observers of Machen fail to understand that his commitment to confessionalism placed him beyond mere fundamentalism. Because Machen and his followers fail to fit nicely into one of the categories of fundamentalist, moderate, or budding evangelical, it seems that a new category is needed: confessionalist. For surely it is significant that in seeking to provide a solution to the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity Machen sought to maintain unity based on a shared confessional commitment to the Westminster Standards.[26]

II

After Machen died in January 1, 1937, the leadership of the OPC fell to the young scholars at Westminster Seminary. Though the names of Cornelius Van Til and John Murray are well known, Ned Stonehouse remains a shadowy figure. Professor of New Testament for over thirty-years, Stonehouse also was a strong churchman, active in the affairs of the OPC and the broader evangelical world.[27] Stonehouse helped to guide the OPC through the post-World War II ecumenical landscape. What makes Stonehouse an interesting figure in this period is that he emphasized both “the catholicity and unity of the Church” and “the plurality of churches.” It was necessary for Stonehouse to hold both catholicity and plurality in real tension for he was committed to confessional Presbyterianism.

This commitment, inherited from his mentor Machen, led Stonehouse to forsake both denominational status and mainline scholarly career by leaving the PCUSA. Stonehouse’s commitment to confessional Presbyterianism also was evident in his editorials in the Presbyterian Guardian, which he edited for twelve years. For example, in assessing the situation in the OPC after the controversy with Gordon H. Clark, Stonehouse wrote, “From the beginning, in truth, we have sought to foster Presbyterianism, the Presbyterianism, as we believe, of the Bible and of the historic creeds, not merely what might go under the name of Presbyterianism. The differences between Presbyterianism and Arminian fundamentalism we have never been able to regard as trifling.” This difference between Presbyterianism and fundamentalism not only provided the basis for the Clark case, but also the division of 1937. Stonehouse believed that many who separated from the PCUSA with Machen “did not realize that what Machen and the others at Westminster set over against modernism was the Reformed Faith, and not simply Fundamentalism.” As the new denomination sought to develop itself at that early stage, “it became increasingly clear that some who had joined in the fight against modernism could not agree with us in an unequivocal stand for Calvinism.” This insistence upon confessionalism ultimately divided denomi nation in 1937 and 1948. In each division, Stonehouse defended what he saw as the Machen vision of a “true Presbyterian Church.”[28]

Although Stonehouse emphasized the diversity and plurality of the church for the maintenance of the purity of the Reformed faith, he also fostered expressions of the unity of the church. Perhaps the most controversial church activities in which Stonehouse engaged revolved around his attempts to move the OPC into the membership of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) and its international counterpart, the International Coun cil of Christian Churches (ICCC). Two factors made cooperation with these councils controversial. First, the leader of both councils was Carl McIntire. For members of the OPC, it was hard to forget that McIntire fomented the division of 1937 and led in the formation of a rival denomination (Bible Presbyterian Synod) and a rival seminary (Faith Theological Seminary). McIntire formed the ACCC in opposition to the Federal Council of Churches (FCC) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the ICCC in opposition to the World Council of Churches (WCC). How could Orthodox Presbyterians cooperate with organizations headed by the man who proved to be so divisive and decisive in their history thus far?[29] A second barrier to participating in the McIntire councils was the insistence by some within the OPC, particularly Stonehouse’s own colleagues at Westminster Seminary, that the Reformed faith would be compromised through cooperation with ACCC and ICCC. Some even argued that Arminian fundamentalists were not Christians because they had a defective understanding of the Gospel. Others were concerned that the ACCC and ICCC were usurping church functions, such as evangelism and missions, that properly belonged to the church alone. However, Stonehouse saw in these councils one of the few possibilities to express the unity of the church while still maintaining the purity of the Reformed faith.

1. Stonehouse, the OPC and the American Council

McIntire officially formed the ACCC on September 17, 1941 with two member denominations, his own Bible Presbyterian Synod and the Bible Protestant Church. The ACCC originally had a two-fold purpose: first, to battle against the modernism represented by those churches making up the FCC; second, to provide a single voice for various conservative religious groups in securing public radio air time and military chaplaincies. McIntire knew that the non-separatist evangelicals were planning to form their own organization; by establishing his council first, even with two tiny member denominations, McIntire attempted to seize the public momentum. That he did is evident in the fact that the temporary committee, which met in Chicago in October 1941 and which would eventually form the NAE, invited McIntire to attend their meetings. McIntire attended and attempted to persuade these evangelicals to join the ACCC; however, the broader evangelicals were not persuaded and in 1942 formed the NAE.[30]

Though McIntire’s personality and practices provided a great barrier to his council for many in the OPC, other aspects of the ACCC appeared attractive to the denomination. The ACCC battled against modernism in all its forms; thus, it provided themes that originally provided unity for the OPC and Bible Presbyterians before the division of 1937. One safeguard that council had against modernism was the requirement for all constituent members of the council to separate completely from the FCC. Yet the American Council’s strength was also its weakness. McIntire believed that modernism and communism were linked together and to battle one was to battle the other. This confusion of the spiritual and political made the council appear to be “a political lobby … [in which] civil politics seem [to be] very food and drink to the American Council.”[31]

Even in this light, it was not until 1949 that the OPC determined not to seek admission as a general constituent member of the American Council. Some in the OPC hesitated because they saw the Gordon Clark controversy and the American Council issue springing from the same desire for the OPC to be a part of the larger stream of American evangelicalism. In addition, the OPC’s hesitation to join the ACCC was a reflection of the general deliberateness by which the church approached every issue. One benefit of this orderliness was an important majority report by a committee appointed by the Eleventh General Assembly to study the issue of cooperation with the ACCC and other church bodies. This majority report produced by Stonehouse, J. P. Clelland, and R. B. Kuiper provided the first statement by the OPC on ecumenicity. The report answered two important questions: first, the proper functions for a council of churches; second, whether the American Council had superseded those limited functions. The committee’s majority report delineated that “a federation of churches may not presume to perform those tasks which Scripture assigns to the special offices of the organized church.” Those tasks were the administration of the sacraments, the exercise of church discipline, the ordination of church officers, the conduct of worship, the performance of diaconal duties, and engagement in the official preaching of the Word of God. Aside from these tasks, a council of churches could be “instrumental in arranging that there be a fair distribution of radio time among its constituent churches, that no two constituent denominations occupy the same corner of a large neglected mission field, or that the constituent churches save money by purchasing Bibles unitedly in large lots.” Likewise, a council of churches could issue “united testimonies against such prevalent evils as Modernism, Communism, state totalitarianism, suppression of religious minorities, race prejudice, and general lawlessness.” However, the committee’s great concern was that “a federation of churches may never be permitted to function as a sort of super-church.” In order to prevent such a development, the OPC desired that any council actions be delayed until a consultative meeting of the OPC General Assembly could give full approval.[32]

In the light of this delineation of the responsibilities of the church and a federation of churches, the majority report of the committee advised the General Assembly not to join the ACCC. The committee believed that “it is not at all clear that the council adheres to the [same] principles of coopera tion” that the committee advocated. In particular, the ACCC had departments on evangelism, home and foreign missions, and Christian education, areas the OPC believed to be the church’s tasks. Likewise, the ACCC was political, using “sensational methods” “to further the cause of the American Council.” In the opinion of the committee, some ACCC tactics were “undignified” and “unfair.” Many ACCC political pronouncements were on issues that Christians might rightly disagree. The majority of the committee believed that “the slow, but ordinarily sure, method of procedure of our church would almost certainly prove a hindrance to its active participation of the American Council.” Based on these reasons, the committee argued against the OPC participation in the American Council. The OPC heeded the committee’s report; the OPC rejected constituent membership in the ACCC in 1949.[33]

2. Stonehouse, the OPC and the International Council

Though the OPC rejected membership in the ACCC, Stonehouse hoped that the International Council would be more acceptable to the church. Having been sent to Amsterdam for the first ICCC plenary sessions in 1948 as the OPC’s delegate, Stonehouse served as the chairman of the Committee on Resolutions and on the Executive Committee of the ICCC, penning the Testimony adopted by the ICCC. Upon his return from Amsterdam, Stonehouse believed that the first congress of the ICCC achieved “a remarkable unity of viewpoint … as a result of patient and thorough discussion of basic matters.” The council’s basis “was a largely sound view of the nature and task of the Christian church.” Stonehouse believed that “the movement stands on a clear-cut doctrinal position”; the doctrinal statement was not viewed as “a proper substitute or summary of the Christian faith,” but rather a statement of some truths among other equally important biblical truths. Likewise, Stonehouse reported that the council exercised caution in its approach to social and political questions. This area was one of concern; Stonehouse warned that it could be possible for the International Council to operate in a similar manner to the American Council. On the whole, Stonehouse, upon his return from Amsterdam, was enthusiastic about the ICCC.[34]

In fact, Stonehouse was so enthusiastic about the ICCC that he agreed to write an article on its behalf for the liberal Christian Century. Stonehouse’s article, “Fundamentalism and the International Council,” was never published by the Century but did come out in the Dutch monthly, Getrouw. In the essay, Stonehouse defined fundamentalism in terms that he, as a confessional Presbyterian, could be comfortable. In a similar fashion to his mentor Machen, Stonehouse noted, “In using the term ‘fundamentalism’ here, I feel constrained to say that I personally should never think of using it as a designation of my own point of view.” To Stonehouse, the “genius of funda mentalism” has to do with the “wholehearted acceptance” of the key doctrines of Christianity: the infallibility of the Bible, the historic understandings of creation and the fall of mankind into sin, the accomplishment of salvation by the crucified and risen Jesus, the application of this salvation by the Holy Spirit, and the consummation of salvation in the personal return of Jesus. “If fundamentalism means these things, and all that is bound up with them,” Stonehouse writes, “then I am a fundamentalist, and count it an inestimable privilege to work for its proclamation and defense.”[35]

Stonehouse argued that the fundamentalists of the ICCC challenged the WCC goal “to further organic union of churches.” The union of churches must be challenged because “the truth and unity in view are sought at the sacrifice of ‘the truth as it is in Jesus’.” The raison d’être for the International Council was to maintain its “radically different conception of Christian doctrine.” Whereas the WCC doctrinal pronouncement was inclusive, so much so that it did “not provide solid assurances of [its] specifically Christian character,” the ICCC declared that doctrine was vitally important and must be maintained at all costs. These differing views of doctrine produced a “distinctive conception of Christian faith and calling.” Fundamentalists had to form an organization like the International Council in order to have an “organization that could speak for and defend their common interests.” However, the Christian Century did not believe that the International Council was necessary; they rejected Stonehouse’s manuscript without explanation. The essay, though, is important; it not only demonstrates Stonehouse’s thinking, but indicates his level of involvement in the promotion of the ICCC.[36]

All was not smooth sailing for Stonehouse’s promotion of the ICCC as an expression of Christian unity. At the 1949 General Assembly, Stonehouse delivered his delegate’s report that recommended the OPC apply for constituent membership in the council. After lengthy debates the General Assembly decided to apply for membership. This application was conditioned by the expectation that there would be resolution to two major difficulties that the OPC expressed concerning the ICCC constitution. The first major difficulty was the Preamble, which read, “whereas we believe the times demand the formation of a world-wide agency, for fellowship and cooperation on the part of all true believers, for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel.” The Assembly objected to this language because the OPC held “that the Christian Church is the agency, and the only agency, ordained of God for the proclamation and defense of the Gospel.” The church already had declared this position during their debates on American Council. The second major difficulty with the International Council’s consti tution was the doctrinal statement. The statement on regeneration was ambiguous in declaring whether regeneration was a result of faith or whether regeneration was prior to faith. Some OPC members questioned, “How could our Church ‘approve and accept’ this statement?”[37]

Yet the church made application for their membership in the council based on the emendation of the constitution. In addition, the Assembly set up a committee on ecumenicity, chaired by Stonehouse. The committee would study the OPC’s relation to other denominations and to the state. Some wondered how the church could make application when the Assembly “could not unqualifiedly approve and accept either the Preamble or the doctrinal statement.” Opponents to the International Council filed a brief protest concerning the application for constituent membership, signed by three of Stonehouse’s colleagues, John Murray, Arthur Kuschke, and Leslie Sloat.[38]

At the 1950 General Assembly, the issue was the International Council. Stonehouse, in the majority report for the committee on ecumenicity, delivered his most important answer to the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity. In the first section of his report, Stonehouse carefully laid out “principles of cooperation with other denominations.” In explaining these principles, Stone house argued for a distinction between specific functions that the church qua church performs (such as worship, church government and discipline, evangelism, care for the poor) and those activities which are “essential incidentals” to the performance of these specific church functions. These “essential incidentals” included the acquisition of property, protection of denominations from super-churches such as the FCC or WCC, resolution of difficulties in mission work or radio ministry, or specific protests against the encroachment of government into the churches’ spheres. Stonehouse then argued that only those churches that share confessional agreement can cooperate in the specific functions of the church as a church. In areas that are “essential incidentals” to the performance of church functions, cooperation with non-Reformed churches was acceptable.[39]

The basis for cooperation with non-Reformed churches was “the recognition of the existence of a plurality of churches of Jesus Christ, and that the plurality of the churches must be held in harmony with the recognition of the unity and catholicity of the church. The church must act upon the basis of that unity.” This plurality of the church, though a historical fact, was not a necessary or essential feature of the Church of Christ; nor was this recog nition to provide the basis of an indifference to division among the churches. For Stonehouse, “the more ultimate emphasis falls upon the unity of the churches, a unity that persists in spite of their being more or less pure.” Although unity was to be the emphasis of the church in approaching the issue of ecumenicity, Stonehouse was pressed to emphasize that “cooperation between churches may never permit of compromise of the specific doctrine and practice to which a church stands committed.” If a church sets aside its distinctive doctrinal positions, it denies “its right to separate existence as a denomination.”[40]

This tension between the pluriformity and unity brought Stonehouse to the crux of the matter. The OPC could cooperate with other Reformed churches in worship and evangelism, as well as other functions which belong exclusively to the church. In addition, the OPC was permitted to cooperate with non-Reformed churches “in dealing with matters which arise out of the necessity of performing its functions in the world inasmuch as questions concerning the maintenance of purity in doctrine and practice are not involved…. It would be acting upon the basis of the unity of the Church without compromising its own right to existence.” It is necessary for the church to decide what a proper “instrument or agency” would facilitate cooperation in “essential incidentals.” Stonehouse proposed that a council of churches would be an acceptable instrument of cooperation if it “were regarded as being in reality a joint committee established by several churches.” Certainly a council would be more complex than a smaller committee; this would not disqualify a council as a worthy instrument. If a council could be an acceptable instrument of cooperation, then two types of councils might exist: one made up solely of Reformed churches or one that included non-Reformed churches in its membership.[41]

Whatever form the council took, whether solely Reformed or a mixed group of Reformed and non-Reformed churches, this instrument of cooperation had to avoid all political manipulation or lobbying. In a section of the report written by John Murray, the committee stated, “To put the matter bluntly, the Church is not to engage in politics. Its members must, but they do so in their capacity as citizens of the State, not as members of the Church. The Church is not to create or foster political parties or blocs.” The council must not be viewed as a super-church in the prosecution of political ends or as a powerful lobby seeking to influence government. Likewise, any proposed council that included non-Reformed churches must avoid transgressing those functions that are the prerogative of the church qua church. Stonehouse argued that “it would be imperative indeed for a council which includes non-Reformed churches to take care to avoid transgressing upon the specific work of the church including that of evangelization.” The report concluded by suggesting several major emendations to the International Council’s constitution, particularly dealing with the issues of cooperation in evangelism and the doctrinal issue in relating regeneration to faith.[42]

The committee’s report did not specifically address whether or not the OPC should remain in the ICCC; nor did it reach “a final philosophy of the doctrine of the church.” Likewise, not all of the committee completely agreed with the report. John Murray wrote a minority report, which took issue with the process by which a council might admit other churches into membership. Murray also suggested that “if the ICCC were permanently to follow the pattern laid out in the present form of its constitution, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church would not be warranted in being a member of it.” The discussion on the ecumenicity reports dominated rest of the Assembly, lasting Friday evening, most of the day Saturday, and spilling over into Monday morning. Some members of the Assembly questioned whether or not non-Reformed churches were actual churches or whether Arminians were actual Christians. Throughout the debate, Stonehouse sought to steer the Assembly between sectarianism and an uncritical embrace of the ICCC. In the end, not only did the Assembly adopt most of the suggested amendments to the constitution of the International Council, but it also elected Stonehouse and R. B. Kuiper to serve as delegates to the 1950 meeting of the International Council in Geneva.[43]

At the 1950 ICCC congress, Stonehouse sought to advance the OPC recommended emendations of the preamble and doctrinal statement. After much labor in the executive committee, he gained enough support to insure that the statement on regeneration would be changed to satisfy the OPC. However, Stonehouse was unsuccessful in getting the executive committee to accept the completely rewritten preamble from the OPC ecumenicity report. In lieu of that, Stonehouse accepted a “salutary resolution on evangelism,” which stated in part that the ICCC “believes the primary task of our Bible-believing churches is Evangelism.” It was clear that the Council did not understand the OPC’s concerns on this point. All in all, Stonehouse believed that the result was mixed. He believed that “there does not appear to be a substantial reason why we may not remain as members, though it may be desirable to continue to seek clarification of the Preamble.”[44]

Not all agreed with Stonehouse’s continued qualified recommendation of the International Council. The 1951 General Assembly spent the large part of its deliberations considering the relation of the OPC to the International Council. Once again, Stonehouse served as “the leading advocate of continued membership in and affiliation with the Council.” He argued that those who opposed continuance in the ICCC were “setting up too sharp an antithesis between the Reformed and non-Reformed though evangelical views.” Instead, Stonehouse claimed that the OPC must consider the large degree of unity among the evangelical churches. Stonehouse desired genuine Reformed ecumenicity that would engender “a broad mission for our church.” Many of Stonehouse’s Westminster colleagues opposed him, most particularly Professors Kuiper, Van Til, Skilton, and Murray as well as his former students Kuschke and Meredith Kline and his Guardian colleague, Leslie Sloat. These men argued that whereas they had agreed largely with the 1950 ecumenicity report, it now was apparent that the ICCC was not interested in the doctrinal concerns of the OPC. As a result, each man urged the Assembly to withdraw from the International Council.[45] Finally, on Monday afternoon, Stonehouse presented a motion on the subject, that the General Assembly:

affirm membership in the International Council of Christian Churches, and in so affirming state its approval and acceptance of the Preamble and Doctrinal Statement of the Constitution of the International Council of Christian Churches; that in connection with this action, the Assembly inform the Council that … we regard the language of the Preamble as at certain points capable of the understanding that the International Council of Christian Churches is itself directly committed to a program of evangelism. In affirming membership, therefore, we do so in the light of evidence that, as a matter of fact, the Council regards evangelism as the work of the church and does not interpret the language of the Preamble as authorizing the Council to enter upon such a program.[46]

This motion, intended to clarify the OPC’s relationship to the Council and to approve the full constitution of the ICCC, was debated until the dinner hour. After the dinner recess the motion was voted upon before all the members of the Assembly had returned. The motion passed by a margin of eighteen in favor, fifteen opposed. When the late-coming delegates returned from their dinner, they were “stunned by the discovery that the vote had been taken in their absence.” However, many of these latecomers sought to dissuade a reconsideration of the issue and a motion on reconsideration lost by one vote. The OPC officially approved the full constitution of the ICCC and declared itself a member of the Council.[47]

This result, and the manner of obtaining it, led to another protest by commissioners who opposed the motion. This protest, signed by one more person than had voted for the original motion, argued that the Assembly made a mistake in “affirming to approve and accept the Preamble and Doctrinal Statement of the Constitution of the ICCC.” The protestors maintained that the Preamble committed the OPC to a program of evangelism with non-Reformed churches, that the Assembly admitted in its action that there was some ambiguity in the Preamble it just approved on the program of the Council, and that, in taking this action, the Assembly was abandoning the principles of the committee on ecumenicity whose report had been accepted the previous year.[48]

It was evident, in the face of this significant protest, that the OPC would not be a member of the International Council for long. During the 1952 General Assembly, the Presbytery of Philadelphia introduced an overture to terminate the church’s relationship with the council. The debate on the overture rehearsed many of the same arguments on both sides; however, those who emphasized the Reformed character of the church rather than the ecumenism that burdened Stonehouse won this final fight, by a vote of twenty-eight to eighteen. In the end, the Guardian’s reporter summed up whole quandary of Reformed ecumenicity for the OPC. “Two main factors appeared to influence the delegates,” Leslie Sloat wrote: “First was the feeling that participation in the Council compromised our testimony to the Reformed Faith. Secondly it was evident that many of the men … had neither forgotten nor forgiven statements and actions of the president of the International Council at the time he and his associates separated from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Westminster Seminary in 1937.” Certainly, the fact that both the ACCC and ICCC were headed by the man who had proved to be so divisive in the OPC’s history did not help the cause of ecumencity. However, it does appear that the larger concern was this basic quandary: how does one hold on to Reformed confessionalism and still affirm the unity of the church? How does one desire doctrinal purity on the one hand and transdenominational unity on the other? In their encounters with McIntire’s councils, the OPC decided that the unity of the church could only be found in a common commitment to the Reformed faith.[49]

It is not clear what personal umbrage Stonehouse took at being defeated in his quest to ally the OPC with McIntire’s councils. The following year Stonehouse served as the OPC delegate to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod at Edinburgh. There he sought to explain to other Christians who sought Reformed ecumenicity why the OPC had left the ICCC. In analyzing the situation, Stonehouse saw a small group in the OPC “who appeared to be opposed in principle to any such council” that included non-Reformed churches and that had a general, “not specifically Reformed” statement of faith. Though he admired these individuals’ “steadfast commitment to the Reformed faith inherent in this position,” Stonehouse wrote, “I have personally always opposed it, and was assured that most delegates agreed that participation in such a council did not necessarily impinge upon one’s consistent and whole-hearted maintenance of the Reformed faith.” By far the large portion of the OPC seemed “to recognize the propriety of the establishment of such an evangelical council under certain safeguards.” However, the ICCC was rejected by the church because it failed to “properly safeguard the interests of the churches in that it seems to allow the Council itself directly to undertake the work of evangelism.”[50]

Eventually Stonehouse recognized that the ICCC was not a useful vehicle to promote Reformed ecumenicity. The International Council, after 1952, increasingly operated in a fashion similar to the American Council, making political pronouncements on the behalf of the constituent churches. Stonehouse had feared this development could wreck the potential of the ICCC. The demise of the ICCC did not, however, end Stonehouse’s or the OPC’s attempts to resolve the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity. Stonehouse served as the OPC delegate to the Reformed Ecumenical Synod three times and conferred with the Christian Reformed Church’s (CRC) synod on several occasions. Stonehouse repeatedly urged OPC to consider merging with the CRC and the Bible Presbyterians (Columbus Synod) in an effort to promote the unity of Christ’s church based on confessional agreement. Likewise, the OPC sought other vehicles to promote the unity of Christ’s church. They were an early member of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod (formed in 1946), remaining in the organization until 1988 when they were forced to withdraw due to the body’s unwillingness to challenge liberalism in other constituent members. The OPC also helped form the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council in 1975. Both of these organizations were committed to the infallibility of the Scriptures and the Reformed faith; hence, the OPC did not believe they were compromising their Reformed heritage by belonging to them.[51]

Stonehouse’s efforts continued Machen’s own somewhat “ambivalent” approach to other evangelicals. Just as Machen willingly joined non-Reformed “fundamentalists” in order to provide a joint witness against modernism, so Stonehouse willingly joined with non-Reformed fundamentalists in the ICCC. However, both Machen and Stonehouse provided safeguards for the purity of the Reformed faith. Machen did so when he demanded that the PCUSA and later the OPC should be a confessional, not a latitudiarian (in the case of the former) or fundamentalist (in the case of the latter) insti tutions. Stonehouse provided safeguards for “true Presbyterianism” by arguing that true church unity and joint proclamation of the Gospel could only occur with a shared commitment to the Reformed faith. While some of Machen’s former colleagues and disciples went beyond Machen himself in claiming that Arminians were not adequately Protestant, Stonehouse maintained a balance approach to the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity. As a result, at his death, Stonehouse was hailed as an “ecclesiastical statesman” who was “no isolationalist.” Rather, Stonehouse “managed to keep in view both the necessity of separation from any compromise that would dishonor Christ and his church, and that biblical ecumenicity which is incumbent upon the true church.”[52]

III.

With Stonehouse’s death in 1962, leadership in Westminster’s faculty and in OPC councils began to pass from a generation that had studied with Machen to one that had not, from a generation that had wrestled with the challenges of modernism, evangelicalism, and fundamentalism to one that was coming of age during the halcyon days of the “New Evangelicalism.” By 1974, only four original faculty members remained at Westminster, three of them serving on an emeritus status. Several students, who had studied during the 1950s and 1960s, became professors and sought out new directions, not merely in biblical studies but also in Presbyterian churchmanship.[53]

John M. Frame was one of these students. In a 1997 reminiscence, Frame recalled the “theological creativity” at Westminster during his time there as a student in the early 1960s. There was a “relative absence at Westminster … of a confessional or traditional focus” so much so that Frame “felt as a student that we were being stimulated to originality more than we were being indoctrinated into a tradition.” Frame claimed that during his student years at Westminster he was never assigned the classic Reformed confessions or Calvin’s Institutes, except in small portions. The result was that “after graduation I became ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and I confess I was rather surprised at the seriousness with which my fellow ministers took the confessional standards and Presbyterian traditions.” While Frame later learned to appreciate the Reformed confessions, he admitted still being nostalgic “for the openness of theological discussion during my seminary years.”[54]

Frame eventually became a professor at the Philadelphia campus and then moved to Westminster in California. While a professor at Westminster, Frame wrestled with the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity. The result was his book Evangelical Reunion: Denominations and the Body of Christ. Prompted by the failure of his denomination, the OPC, to merge with the larger Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in the 1986, Frame led his local church to leave the OPC and join the PCA in order to overcome “the curse of denominationalism.” Frame argued that the church was not merely a spiritual, but also an organizational entity. Not only was the church united on the spiritual plane, as the “invisible” or “universal” church, but the church must demonstrate organizational unity. This organizational unity should not to be identified strictly with any form of church government, denomination, or confessional standard. In fact, it was impossible to recognize this basic organizational unity in the contemporary church because of its fractured state. Any division of the Body, according to Frame, must be sinful either “on the part of the founders of the new denomination, or on the part of their original denomination, or both.” In order to rectify the “sin” of denominationalism, Frame urged Christians to seek the destruction of their own denominations for the good of the larger church of Christ. Frame believed that “when all the denominations are re-absorbed into the one, true Church, nothing of value [in the denominations] need be destroyed.” In order to promote evangelical reunion, Christians must gain a new perspective. In a neighborhood Bible study, on the mission field, or in a protest on the local abortion clinic, denominational distinctives were not important; rather, all that can be required is that the other individuals “love Jesus.” In fact, if Calvinists and Arminians, sacramentalists and memoralists, paedobaptists and Baptists would simply view each other’s distinctive doctrines as different perspectives of the same truth, Christians would find hat not much separated them. In order to foster organizational unity, Frame argued that large-scale church union should be pursued within denominational labels—at first, Presbyterians merging with other Presbyterians, Baptists with other Baptists, Methodists with other Methodists. After the major denominational labels each had become one denomination, then it would be possible to merge them into one church through a large evangelical “Council on Church Union.”[55]

Frame’s solution to the tension between being confessionally Reformed and truly ecumenical emphasized ecumenicity at the expense of confessionalism. In the end, though, Frame provided no doctrinal basis for union. In his final chapter, “What do we do now?” meant to be a practical guide for fostering “evangelical reunion,” Frame minimized the local church and its distinctive identity in favor of transdenominational neighborhood Bible studies and parachurch organizations. He also encouraged withdrawal from doctrinal distinctives or creeds of any sort (including, presumably, the West minster Confession), promoted reformulating worship in order to meld various worship traditions and pleaded for the relaxation of ordination requirements and subscription vows.[56]

Frame’s approach bore an uncanny resemblance to the 1920 Plan of Union sponsored by the PCUSA. In seeking ecumenism at seemingly any price, Frame produced a solution to the quandary of Reformed ecumenicity that was markedly different from Machen and Stonehouse’s views. Frame’s predecessors had not sought cooperation on the basis of sentiment, nor did their theological connections prevent efforts to find common ground with other believers. Each man sought to foster ecumenical relations with both Reformed and non-Reformed communities of faith while maintaining the OPC’s distinctive confessional identity. That each viewed other evangelical Christians as genuine believers is evidenced by their willingness to work with them to battle a common foe, modernism, and to demonstrate in those areas of “essential incidentals” the unity of Christ’s church. Yet, each was unwilling to foster any kind of church union or denominational unity based on anything less that doctrinal agreement as found in the Reformation confessions. Machen and Stonehouse sought to direct the OPC in the middle way between denominational isolation and doctrinal indifference. In doing so, they both provided an approach to interdenominational cooperation based more on the principles of Reformed ecumenism than hopes for evangelical reunion.

Notes

1. Ned B. Stonehouse, “Some Principles Relative to Interchurch Cooperation,” Presbyterian Guardian (hereafter PG) 20 (Feb 15, 1951) 35.
2. Ned B. Stonehouse, “The Passing of J. Gresham Machen,” PG 3 (Jan 23, 1937) 153.
3. Machen to F. E. Robinson in Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1951), 426–28. The original name for the denomination was the Presbyterian Church of America; after legal difficulties surrounding the name, the group inserted the word “Orthodox” into their moniker (see Edwin H. Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict [(1940) Philadelphia: OPC, 1992], 158, 169). Throughout this essay, in order to avoid confusion, I will refer to this group as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
4. E. J. Young, “Is Arminianism the Gospel?” PG 13 (September 25, 1944) 264-65; Cornelius Van Til, “Wanted—A Reformed Testimony,” PG 20 (July 16, 1951) 125-26, 136. Compare these with J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism ([1923] Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946), 51–52.
5. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 160; J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Liberty,” in What is Christianity? ed. by Ned B. Stonehouse (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954) 263; Mark Sidwell, “Was J. Gresham Machen a Fundamentalist?” Biblical Viewpoint 31 (1997) 71-80.
6. Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict, 14, 42; D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 74–75; idem, “The Tie That Divides: Presbyterian Ecumenism, Fundamentalism, and the History of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism,” WTJ 60 (1998) 85-107. The report which includes the Plan of Church Union is in the Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1920) 117-22. For more on the two major church union movements of the 1920s, see Eldon G. Ernst, Moment of Truth for Protestant America (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1972); Martin Marty, Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 15–58; Robert A. Schneider, “Voice of Many Waters: Church Federation in the Twentieth Century,” in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 95–121; Samuel Cavert, The American Churches in the Ecumenical Movement, 1900–1968 (New York: Association, 1968), esp. 112–13; Samuel Cavert, Church Cooperation and Unity in America: A Historical Overview, 1900–1970 (New York: Association, 1970); Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 303–314.
7. The next five paragraphs are slightly revised from Sean Michael Lucas, “Christianity at the Crossroads: E. Y. Mullins, J. Gresham Machen, and the Challenge of Modernism,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3 (Winter 1999) 59-60.
8. J. Gresham Machen, “Proposed Plan of Union,” Presbyterian 90 (June 10, 1920) 8-9; Machen, “For Christ or Against Him” Presbyterian 91 (Jan 20, 1921) 8-9; Machen, “The Second Declaration of the Council on Organic Union,” Presbyterian 91 (Mar 17, 1921) 8, 26.
9. In between Machen’s trip to the 1920 General Assembly and the publication of Christianity and Liberalism, he delivered an informal address to the Chester Presbytery Elders’ Association on November 3, 1921. That address was published in the Princeton Theological Review as “Liberalism or Christianity?” (PTR 20 [1922] 93-117) and served as the basis for Machen’s well-known book.
10. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 1, 2, 4–5, 6–7.
11. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 7; Hart, “Christianity and Liberalism in a Postliberal Age,” WTJ 56 (1994) 329-44; Lucas, “Christianity at the Crossroads,” 60–61; Hart, Defending the Faith, 65–83.
12. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 23, 27, 29, 44–46, 47. For Machen’s balance of doctrine and experience, see also Paul Kjoss Helseth, “The Apologetic Tradition of the OPC,” WTJ 60 (1998) 109-29.
13. J. Gresham Machen, “God Transcendent,” in Ned. B. Stonehouse, ed., God Transcendent ([1949] Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1982), 15–22. Importantly, the shortest chapter in Christianity and Liberalism was the one on the Scriptures, raising questions concerning the alleged importance of biblical inerrancy for the Princeton Theology; see D. G. Hart, “A Reconsideration of Biblical Inerrancy and the Princeton Theology’s Alliance with Fundamentalism,” Christian Scholar’s Review 20 (1991) 362-75.
14. Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 160–67. D. G. Hart rightly points out that Machen’s logic against church union over a minimalist creed cuts against fundamentalist unions as well; see Hart, “The Tie that Divides.” Machen’s insistence that the Westminster Standards were part of the PCUSA constitution was strangely ignored by William J. Weston, Presbyterian Pluralism: Competition in a Protestant House (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997) 110-20; compare with D. G. Hart, “Somewhere Between Denial and Conspiracy: Explaining What Happened to the Presbyterian Church, USA,” WTJ 61 (1999) 247-68.
15. Charles E. Quirk, “Origins of the Auburn Affirmation,” JPH 53 (1975) 125; “An Affirmation Designed to safeguard the unity and liberty of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,” in Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 205–8.
16. “Moderns Agnostic, Says Dr. Machen,” New York Times, Thursday, 10 Jan 1924, 4.
17. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 367–68; Dallas M. Roark, “J. Gresham Machen: the Doctrinally True Presbyterian Church,” JPH 43 (1965) 124-38, 174–81; Weston, Presbyterian Pluralism, 59–71, 102–20.
18. Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists and Moderates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 149; D. G. Hart, “Presbyterians and Fundamentalism,” WTJ 55 (1993) 331-42; Weston, Presbyterian Pluralism, passim. On the reorganization of Princeton Seminary, see Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 37–56; David B. Calhoun, Princeton Seminary: The Majestic Testimony 1869–1929 (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1996), 365–98; John W. Hart, “Princeton Theological Seminary: The Reorganization of 1929,” JPH 58 (1980) 124-40; and Ronald T. Clutter, “The Reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary Reconsidered,” Grace Theological Journal 7 (1986) 179-201. Interestingly, John Hart and Clutter disagree significantly as to the reason for the reorganization; Hart argues that the issue was theological, not administrative, whereas Clutter argues the opposite and thus, is in line with the PCUSA version of the story.
19. J. Gresham Machen, “Westminster Theological Seminary: Its Purpose and Plan,” in What is Christianity? 229, 232–33. A large portion of the seminary’s early student body, in fact, came from fundamentalist traditions which led to some tensions before Machen’s death; see D. G. Hart, “Legacy of J. Gresham Machen and the Identity of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,” WTJ 53 (1991) 209-25.
20. Longfield, Presbyterian Conflict, 199–208; James A. Patterson, “Robert E. Speer, J. Gresham Machen and the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions,” American Presbyterians 64 (1986) 58-67; Pearl S. Buck, “The Layman’s Mission Report,” Christian Century 49 (23 November 1932), 1434; idem, “Is There a Case for Foreign Missions,” Harper’s 166 (January 1933) 143-55.
21. Longfield, Presbyterian Controversy, 199–208; Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 87–149; Hart, Defending the Faith, 146–59; Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 469–92; Machen, Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1933).
22. Longfield, Presbyterian Controversy, 209–17; Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 87–149; D. G. Hart and John Muether, Fighting the Good Fight: A Brief History of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: OPC, 1995), 30–32; J. Gresham Machen, Statement to the Special Committee of the Presbytery of New Brunswick (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1935).
23. Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 151–71; on the name change, see n.3; J. Gresham Machen, “A True Presbyterian Church at Last,” PG 2 (June 22, 1936) 110.
24. Hart and Muether, Fighting the Good Fight, 41–56; George Marsden, “Perspectives on the Division of 1937,” in Charles G. Dennison and Richard Gamble, eds., Pressing Toward the Mark: Essays Commemorating Fifty Years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 1986), 295–328; “A Step to Avoid,” PG 3 (Oct 10, 1936) 1-2. The catalyst for the open disagreement in the OPC was an article written by Westminster professor R. B. Kui per, published in the Christian Reformed Church journal, The Banner, and republished in the PG (Kuiper, “Why Separation was Necessary,” PG 2 [Sept 12, 1936] 225-27). In the article Kuiper links dispensationalism and Arminianism as two anti-Reformed “heresies” of American fundamentalism. Carl McIntire took exception to Kuiper’s article in an editorial for the Christian Beacon (reprinted in “Has the Presbyterian Guardian Attacked Premillennialism,” PG 3 [Nov 14, 1936] 53-54). This sparked a response by R. B. Kuiper in his own defense and an overture from the Presbytery of California in McIntire’s defense (also reprinted in “Has the Presbyterian Guardian”). Machen and Ned Stonehouse, editors of the Guardian, issued their response to the controversy in two editorials. They distinguished between premillennialism and dispensationalism and pointed to the Westminster Confession’s relative silence on the matter of the Lord’s return (“Premillennialism,” PG 3 [Oct 24, 1936] 20; “The Second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America,” PG 3 [Nov 14, 1936] 41-45). Machen and Stonehouse also published an article by J. Oliver Buswell, McIntire’s ally, on premillennialism which sought to nuance the whole issue of dispensationalism and premillennialism in an effort to promote unity around the Westminster Standards (Buswell, “A Premillennialist’s View,” PG 3 [Nov 14, 1936] 46-47).
25. Marsden, “Perspectives on the Division,” 310–11; Hart and Muether, Fighting the Good Fight, 49; Hart, Defending the Faith, 163–64; Charles G. Dennison, “Tragedy, Hope and Ambivalence: The History of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church 1936–1962: Part One, Tragedy,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 8 (1992) 147-59.
26. Marsden, “Perspectives on the Division of 1937,” 309–11; Dennison, “Tragedy, Hope, Ambivalence: Part One,” 154–59; Hart, Defending the Faith, 169–70; idem, “The Legacy of J. Gresham Machen,” passim; Sean Michael Lucas, “Fundamentalisms Revived and Still Standing: A Review Essay,” WTJ 60 (1998) 327-37. For Machen’s willingness to identify himself to the public with the fundamentalist cause, see his “Does Fundamentalism Obstruct Social Progress?” and “What Fundamentalism Stands for Now” in What is Christianity, 244–52 and 253–60, respectively, and Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 337–38, 426–28. For recent discussion that affirms Machen was in fact a fundamentalist, see Mark Sidwell, “Was J. Gresham Machen a Fundamentalist?” Bob Jones Review 43 (1997) 71-80.
27. For a valuable overview of Stonehouse’s contributions as a NT scholar, see Moisés Silva, “Ned B. Stonehouse and Redaction Criticism (Part I),” WTJ 40 (Fall 1977) 77-88; Silva, “Ned B. Stonehouse and Redaction Criticism (Part II),” WTJ 40 (Spring 1978) 281-303.
28. From Stonehouse’s copy of an ICCC Committee report; Ned B. Stonehouse, “The Church and Reformation,” 1950, Stonehouse Papers, Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Stonehouse was the editor of the Presbyterian Guardian in 1936–1937, 1945–1948, and 1956–1959. However, the concerns of the Guardian were never far from him as he served the Presbyterian Guardian Corporation as an editor, writer, member of the advisory council, treasurer, and president of its board of trustees almost continuously from 1936 to his death in 1962. See Robert E. Nichols, “Statesmanlike Scholar,” PG 31 (Dec 1962) 169. For a sketch of the Clark case, see Hart and Muether, Fighting the Good Fight, 106–15; Stonehouse, “Taking Inventory,” PG 17 (Jan 10, 1948) 4. For a sketch of the division of 1937, see Marsden, “Perspectives on the Division of 1937,” 295–328; Stonehouse to E. J. Tanis, July 29, 1937, Stonehouse Papers.
29. John Fea, “Carl McIntire: From Fundamentalist Presbyterian to Presbyterian Fundamen talist,” American Presbyterians 72 (1994) 253-68; Shelly Baranowski, “Carl McIntire,” in C. H. Lippy, ed., Twentieth-Century Shapers of American Popular Religion (Westport: Greenwood, 1989), 256–63.
30. Fea, “Carl McIntire,” 259. Arthur H. Matthews, Standing Up, Standing Together: The Emergence of the National Association of Evangelicals (Carol Stream: NAE, 1992), 14, 32–36.
31. Fea, “Carl McIntire,” 263; Arthur W. Kuschke, Jr., “Stay Out of the American Council!” PG 18 (Apr 1949) 64, 68–69. For an opposite view to Kuschke in the OPC, see W. Harllee Bordeaux, “Join the American Council—If,” PG 18 (July 1949) 124, 133–35. Bordeaux served as the General Secretary of the American Council.
32. “Report of the Committee on the American Council of Christian Churches,” Minutes from the Twelfth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1945), 56–66. Interestingly, a minority report was delivered by Samuel Allen and co-signed by Gordon Clark which strongly advocated immediate affiliation with the ACCC; if the OPC failed to affiliate there was “the distinct possibility of either perishing or existing as a harmless and freakish sect” (64).
33. Leslie W. Sloat, “Assembly Says ‘No’ to A.C., ‘Yes, but …’ to I.C.,” PG 18 (Aug 2, 1949) 157.
34. Stonehouse, “Testimony of Newly Formed International Council,” PG 17 (Sept 1948) 208, 223–24; Stonehouse, “Two Councils, PG 17 (Oct 1948) 227-28, 241–42.
35. Stonehouse wrote this essay in answer to a request by Carl McIntire. See Stonehouse to McIntire, 29 Nov 1948; McIntire to Stonehouse, 6 Dec 1948; Stonehouse to McIntire, 8 Dec 1948; McIntire to Stonehouse, 10 Dec 1948; and Stonehouse to McIntire, 25 Dec 1948, all in Stonehouse Papers, “Fundamentalism and the International Council,” 2–3, Stonehouse Papers; published in Dutch as “Fundamentalisme en de Internationale Raad,” Getrouw 3 (Nov 1949) 1-2.
36. Stonehouse, “Fundamentalism and the International Council,” 3–8.
37. Sloat, “Assembly Says, ‘No,’” 157; Sloat, “The Nature and Work of the Church,” PG 18 (Aug 1949) 143, 159.
38. Sloat, “Assembly says ‘No,’” 157.
39. Minutes of the Seventeenth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1950), 55–56.
40. Ibid., 56-57.
41. Ibid., 58-59.
42. Ibid., 59, 61.
43. This was Cornelius Van Til’s complaint; see Arthur W. Kuschke, Jr., “The Seventeenth General Assembly,” PG 19 (June 1950) 117. Minutes of the 17th GA, 66–68.
44. Stonehouse, “Report of Delegate to the Congress of the ICCC,” in Minutes of the Eighteenth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1951), 52–56; Stonehouse, “The Ecumenical Question at Edinburgh,” PG 22 (Nov 1953) 215; see also Charles Vincze to Stonehouse, 2 Feb 1951; Stonehouse to Vincze, 24 Feb 1951, Stonehouse Papers.
45. Leslie W. Sloat, “Orthodox Presbyterian Assembly Remains in ICCC,” PG 20 (June 1951) 116.
46. Minutes of the 18th General Assembly, 57.
47. Sloat, “Orthodox Presbyterian Assembly,” 118.
48. Arthur Kuschke, Jr., et al., “A Protest,” PG 20 (June 1951) 118-19. This protest was signed by Westminster faculty members, John Murray, R. B. Kuiper, Cornelius Van Til, John Skilton, as well as future faculty members, Ed Clowney, Meredith Kline, and Arthur Kuschke. This suggests a significant rift among the faculty on this issue.
49. Leslie W. Sloat, “The General Assembly Report,” PG 21 (Aug 1952) 158-59.
50. Stonehouse, “The Ecumenical Question at Edinburgh,” 214–15.
51. Ibid., 215-16; Stonehouse, “Orthodox Presbyterian-Christian Reformed Relationships,” PG 27 (Feb 1958) 25-26; Stonehouse, “Cooperation Among Calvinists,” PG 20 (July 1951) 134-35; Stonehouse, “Presbyterianism and Church Unity,” PG 25 (May 1956) 71-72; Stone house, “Bible Presbyterians at the Crossroads,” PG 25 (Dec. 1956) 167-68; Hart and Muether, Fighting the Good Fight, 135-45.
52. A. W. Kuschke, “The Seventeenth General Assembly,” PG 19 (June 1950) 116-19; R. E. Nicholas, “Statesmanlike Scholar,” PG 31 (1962) 169. On Machen’s ambivalent relationship to “evangelicalism” (non-Reformed conservative Christianity), OPC historian Charles Dennison noted that “Machen himself reflected evangelical attitudes and carried their influence with him into Westminster.” Later Dennison argued that Stonehouse shared a similar ambivalence; see “Tragedy, Hope, and Ambivalence: The History of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church 1936–1962, Part Three: Ambivalence,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 9 (1993) 272-73. It almost appears that Dennison’s reading is more “Old School” than Machen himself.
53. Harvie M. Conn, “A Historical Prologue: Inerrancy, Hermeneutic, and Westminster,” in Harvie M. Conn, ed., Inerrancy and Hermenuetic: A Tradition, a Challenge, and a Debate (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 15–34.
54. John M. Frame, “In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism: Reflections on Sola Scriptura and History in Theological Method,” WTJ 59 (1997) 269-91, esp. 275–79. In fairness, Frame also admitted that he believed that this lack of confessional transmission was a weakness at Westminster in the 1960s.
55. John M. Frame, Evangelical Reunion: Denominations and the Body of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 11, 29–31, 44, 45, 61, 63, 72–81, 94–95, 99–103, 132, 140–44, 155–64.
56. Ibid., 165-69.