By James W. Scott
[James W. Scott is Managing Editor of New Horizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Publications Coordinator for the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC. Part I of this article, “Machen’s Lost Work on the Presbyterian Conflict: The Historical Evidence,” appeared in WTJ 74 (2012): 217–55.]
In Part I, historical evidence was presented to demonstrate that J. Gresham Machen, prior to his death on January 1, 1937, was writing a book on the Presbyterian controversy of the 1920s and 1930s over modernism, in which he had played a central role. It was further argued that Machen’s manuscript was misappropriated by his close associate, Edwin H. Rian, who revised and augmented the text and published it under his own name as The Presbyterian Conflict in 1940. Now further light on this matter will be sought from a close examination of that book itself.[1]
I. Internal Evidence Of Machen’s Writing In 1936
Machen’s writing of a rough draft on the Presbyterian conflict, if our historical reconstruction is correct, took place mostly in August, September, and October 1936. Rian evidently took unauthorized possession of Machen’s work in January 1937, and began his editing and expansion of the manuscript in the second half of 1938. Evidence of when Rian began to write is provided by the fact that he informed Thomas R. Birch in February 1939 that he had already completed “the first five” of the book’s (fifteen) chapters. Since Birch had “completely forgotten” that Rian had previously told him about his writing project, we may infer that several months had passed.[2] Rian narrates events through 1939 (but not into 1940). The latest publication cited by Rian, in the concluding chapter, is the January 1940 issue of Fortune magazine.[3] Rian’s preface is dated March 15, 1940, and was written after two men had read the entire manuscript.[4] The book was put on sale about June 1, 1940.5 These facts indicate that Rian probably finished his manuscript in January 1940, but made a few changes thereafter in response to critiques and finally added his preface on March 15, 1940. If Rian wrote his final ten chapters from February 1939 to January 1940 (eleven months for ten chapters), and spoke to Birch about his writing project several months before February 1939, then he began his work (assuming a roughly steady rate of writing) about August or September 1938 (allowing five or six months for five chapters). (The concluding appendix, consisting of twenty-nine key documents cited in the text, or quotations from them, was evidently assembled as the work progressed, since the twenty-nine “notes” are extensions of footnotes in the main text.)
Although Rian completed his first five chapters by February 15, 1939, he returned to them and updated or added material later. In chapter 1, he cites the 1938 edition of The Presbyterian Digest, which was published in December 1938 (see the title page), on pages 15 (6) and 26 (14). In chapter 2, on page 45 (27), he again cites the 1938 edition of The Presbyterian Digest, which he probably did not see until 1939. In chapter 4, an event of May 9, 1939, is described on page 107 (70). In chapter 5, an event of June 1939 is mentioned on pages 119 (80) and 124 (83–84), and the October 12, 1939, issue of the Presbyterian is cited on page 120 (81). Also, references are made to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in chapters 1 (p. 13 [5]), 2 (p. 29 [17]), and 4 (p. 101 [66]), which could not have been made before the PCA was so renamed in February 1939. Thus, during 1939 Rian continued to update what he had already written.
About a quarter of the text of The Presbyterian Conflict was definitely written by Rian, namely, accounts of events that occurred after Machen laid down his pen, quotations from and references to literature published after Machen stopped writing, and material that Machen would not have written (such as flattering references to himself) (see section 2). In the remainder of the book, however, there are a number of passages that reflect the situation in 1936, when Machen was writing—not the situation in 1938–1940, when Rian was writing. In other words, some revealing evidence of Machen’s hand slipped through Rian’s editing process.
In the very first paragraph of chapter 1, in fact, we find a statement that much better reflects the situation in the summer of 1936 than that in 1938–1940. There reference is made to “the theological struggle which has just ended within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.,” and “this conflict” is said to have “resulted” in the formation of the PCA in June 1936 (p. 13 [5]). The particular “struggle which has just ended” is clearly the struggle involving Machen and his followers, which they finally lost at the General Assembly of the PCUSA that concluded on June 3, 1936. Its decisions led to the establishment of the PCA on June 11. Now if the writer of this account could look back on these events as having “just” taken place, then he must have been writing shortly thereafter. This fits perfectly with Machen writing in August 1936 (if not even earlier). But when Rian was working on this chapter, probably in the late summer of 1938—and even more so when he edited this paragraph in 1939 (adding that the PCA formed in 1936 was “now known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church”) and sent it to his publisher in 1940—one would not have said that the struggle within the PCUSA had “just ended.”
Furthermore, there is a striking inconsistency between saying that the struggle in the PCUSA resulting in the formation of the PCA had “just ended” and then noting in the next sentence that the PCA was “now” called the OPC. If “now” is 1939 or 1940, then something cannot be said to have “just ended” way back in 1936. Apparently, Machen wrote “just ended” in 1936, and Rian carelessly let it stand and added “now” in the next sentence in 1939.
The natural way to read the first paragraph of chapter 1 is that the struggle in view ended prior to the establishment of the PCA. It is grammatically possible, however, to suppose that the struggle continued beyond 1936 and had “just ended” before Rian was writing in 1938–1940. However, Rian himself wrote in 1939 that “since the 1936 debacle” (an expression that acknowledges that the struggle was over in 1936), the conservatives remaining in the PCUSA tended “to forget the ecclesiastical situation as a whole,” considering any protest or appeal to be “quite hopeless” (p. 273 [191]). The only controversy since 1936 that Rian could think of was over the appointments of Emil Brunner and E. G. Homrighausen to teach at Princeton Seminary, but it was defused when Brunner decided to return to Switzerland and the conservatives were satisfied by Homrighausen’s latest declarations (pp. 265–70 [186–89]). No struggle “ended” in the PCUSA “just” before Rian was writing. Chapter 1 presents the perspective of summer 1936, when Machen began writing this book (except for Rian’s supplemental reference to the renamed OPC).
In chapter 4, after relating the resignation of the majority of the members of the Board of Trustees (and Professor Allis) of Westminster Seminary on January 7, 1936, the author states: “It is to be hoped that they will eventually see their mistake and once more support the seminary in a wholehearted fashion” (p. 100 [65]). One could imagine Machen expressing this hope only a few months later, but by 1939 or 1940 that possibility had become remote. Here again we see the perspective of 1936.
The conclusion of chapter 5 begins with a summary reference to “the whole union enterprise in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in the past two decades” (p. 124 [84]). This chapter narrates the discussions of possible union with three churches: the United Presbyterian Church of North America, beginning in 1930 (p. 110 [74]), the Protestant Episcopal Church, beginning in 1937 (p. 118 [79]), and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., beginning in 1917 (p. 122 [82]). The second section was obviously written by Rian, but the first and third were largely the work of Machen (see section 2). Machen could have accurately written that these discussions occurred “in the past two decades,” for nearly twenty years had elapsed between 1917 and when he wrote in 1936. However, that statement was inaccurate for Rian in 1940, since by then these discussions went back twenty-three years. Machen evidently wrote this statement, and Rian later did not realize that a reference to a longer passage of time was needed when he was writing.
Another indication of Machen’s authorship in 1936 is found in chapter 11, which deals with the 148th General Assembly of the PCUSA, held from May 28 to June 3, 1936, in Syracuse, New York. In order that we might “appreciate the full significance of what took place,” we are given “a brief resume of the issues involved” (p. 206 [143]), but “what took place”—notably, the Assembly’s acceptance on June 1 of the Permanent Judicial Commission’s judgment upholding the suspension of Machen and his associates (including Rian) from office—is barely mentioned! There is no narrative of events, as there is in chapter 9 for the 1935 Assembly. The writer is caught up in arguing the issues, with all of the personal trauma attached to them, as if the debate were still going on. Only after explaining at length that the Assembly had substituted its own authority for the authority of the Bible does he mention that “the members of the Independent Board were expelled” from the PCUSA (p. 210 [145]). But exactly how did this transpire? He does not say—although he does refer briefly to the Permanent Judicial Commission sitting “to decide the cases involving members of the Independent Board” (p. 208 [144]) and to “suspension from the ministry” (p. 213 [148]), and does give us details about two similar cases (pp. 210–11 [146–47]). Later in the chapter, it is noted that Machen and seven other men were “suspended from the ministry,” but this comes in a passage that was added by Rian (p. 212 [147]), as was another reference to Machen being “suspended from the ministry” (p. 214 [148]) (see section 2). In this chapter, we hear someone defending the principles for which he has just been fighting, with the battle so fresh in his memory that it does not occur to him to relate the historical details of that battle. That was Machen in 1936, not Rian years later.
A similar indication of material being written in 1936 is provided by footnote 12 on page 227 (158 n. 13), which cites “Minutes of the First General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church of America, pages 3, 4.” Minutes of various churches and other organizations are cited over one hundred times in this book, yet this is the only instance in which a date is not provided for the meeting.[6] Writing only a few months after the First General Assembly of the PCA in 1936, Machen could easily have seen no need to add a date, but one would have become increasingly necessary as the years proceeded.
Striking evidence that Machen wrote the original draft of Rian’s book in 1936 is provided by an obscure reference on page 70 (44) to the number of schools that had chapters in the League of Evangelical Students. Since it was formed in 1925, we are told, “the League has grown to large proportions, having chapters in fifty-eight theological seminaries, universities and Bible schools.” The precise number “fifty-eight” should pinpoint when this statement was written. The number of educational institutions with member chapters was reported in each issue of the League’s periodical, the Evangelical Student, which was published each year in January, April, and October (though some issues were skipped). Although chapters could be officially received into League membership (or dropped because of inactivity) only at the Annual Convention held each year in February, that was a mere formality. As a practical matter, when a group sent in an application and it was approved, it was treated as part of the League and included in the “Chapter Directory” printed on the inside or outside back cover of the Evangelical Student. Thus, the League president reported at the February 1932 convention that there were then thirty-eight chapters, yet the April 1932 directory reported forty chapters.[7] Similarly, it was reported in October 1938 that “since our last national convention the Executive Committee has welcomed into our fellowship” two new groups.[8] These approved groups did not have to wait until the following February to receive League literature or participate in League functions. On the other hand, the League was reluctant to drop schools from the roll, except at the February meeting. Thus, the number of member chapters would generally increase during the year, except for a decline in February.
When Rian was working on this paragraph in chapter 3 in late 1938, there were at least sixty chapters in the League. The October 1938 issue of the Evangelical Student reported sixty-one chapters. Indeed, the directory listed sixty or more chapters from January 1937 until January 1939 (when the last issue of the Evangelical Student was published), except for April 1937, when the number temporarily dipped to fifty-nine. Thus, one would have expected Rian to write that there were “about sixty” or “over sixty” chapters. But when did the growing number of chapters reach fifty-eight? The number reported in the published directories reached fifty-five in January 1936, dipped to fifty-four in April 1936, and then rose to sixty in January 1937. There was no October 1936 issue of the Evangelical Student, but the January 1937 issue reported that two schools had been added since “the recent News Bulletin of the League,” which (along with the first volume of the League’s study program) was issued in lieu of the October issue, had appeared.[9] That would place the number of chapters at fifty-eight in about October. Thus we see that the number of chapters reached fifty-eight no later than October 1936, during the months in which Machen was writing his book. So the number “fifty-eight” on page 70 (44) of The Presbyterian Conflict reflects the time when Machen was writing, not when Rian was writing.[10]
Machen had played the leading role in the formation of the League of Evangelical Students, and continued to be heavily involved in it until he died.[11] He was a member of the Board of Trustees (of which R. B. Kuiper was president in 1936). He no doubt had access to the latest information, not only from the Evangelical Student, but also from those maintaining the roll of chapters. He was probably writing the rough draft for this portion of the book in August 1936. The number of League chapters may have reached fifty-eight by that time, but if it did not do so until September or October, Machen could easily have corrected the number at that time. Rian, on the other hand, had little to do with the League. He made no effort to update the number of member chapters when he was initially working on chapter 3 or when he was revising it later. Here is a clear instance of Rian failing to update Machen’s account, thus inadvertently revealing who wrote the original text.
Furthermore, the upbeat account of the League, as given in this book, was accurate in 1936, when things were going well and numbers were growing, but not when Rian was writing in 1938–1940. After Machen died, problems mounted for the League, even though the number of chapters increased slightly for a short time. It faced growing competition from the (initially British-Canadian) Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship during the late 1930s, and the League secretary, Robert E. Nicholas, wrote in the latter part of 1939, “The League faces a crisis.” Already in 1938 the number of pages of its magazine had to be cut in half (to sixteen) to save money, and its publication ended in January 1939 because the League was out of funds.[12] The number of chapters plummeted during the early 1940s.[13] The Board considered disbanding the League as early as its meeting of February 28, 1940,[14] about when Rian was putting the finishing touches on his book with its glowing account of the League. What was left of it merged into the Intercollegiate Gospel Fellowship in 1943.[15]
An odd phenomenon is the inconsistent manner in which The Presbyterian Digest is cited. It is cited twenty times in chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5, but not once thereafter. Omitting the ten instances in which it is cited by ibid., we find three references to the 1930 edition (pp. 16, 61, and 62 [7, 38, and 39]) and seven references to the 1938 edition (pp. 15, 26, 45, 110, 112, 118, and 122 [6, 14, 27, 74, 75, 79, and 82]). The cited material occurs on the same (and usually identical) page in both editions, except for a document that is on the following page in the 1938 edition (p. 110 n. 3) and one that is found only in the 1938 edition (p. 112, where the reference to “page 13” is a typo for “page 136”). Nineteen of these twenty citations occur in material that we will identify in section 2 as having probably been originally written by Machen. Only one citation comes from material definitely written by Rian (p. 118, providing background to an event that occurred in 1937).
What is puzzling is why the 1930 edition is cited sometimes and the 1938 edition is cited at other times. Indeed, it is surprising that the 1930 edition, which provides nothing that is not in the 1938 edition, is cited at all. Machen, of course, writing in 1936, would only have cited the 1930 edition, but Rian evidently endeavored to update those references to the 1938 edition—so why did he fail to do so in three instances? When Rian first worked on chapters 1–3, almost certainly prior to the publication of the 1938 edition in December 1938 (since, as we have seen, he wrote chapters 1–5 over a period of months prior to February 15, 1939), he also would have used the 1930 edition. He might have had the 1938 edition in hand while he worked on chapter 5 in January or February 1939, but even this is uncertain; in either case, he evidently updated the 1930 citations to 1938 citations at some time in 1939. So it is still unclear why he left three references to the 1930 edition unchanged. Perhaps he was simply careless. In any case, all the references to the 1938 edition in material that we will attribute to Machen can easily be explained as due to Rian’s editing, and the remaining 1930 references indicate his carelessness in editing.[16]
II. Discontinuities In The Presbyterian Conflict
We now have good reason to believe that when Rian wrote his book in 1938–1940, he used a manuscript written by Machen in 1936. We propose next to examine the text of the published work more thoroughly, not only to see if we can find further evidence in support of our theory of the book’s origin, but also to discover more about its composition. In particular, we want to see if we can distinguish between material that Machen originally wrote and material that Rian contributed to the work.
The Presbyterian Conflict, as originally published, was 342 pages long and included 409 footnotes (mostly brief citations of sources). It might seem that a rough draft for such a work could not have been written in only two months of nearly full-time work (August and September 1936) and another month of part-time work (October 1936). However, that edition had a small number of words per page (about 300 words on a full page); the 1992 edition, in a more typical format (about 425 words on a full page), has only 242 pages, 200 of which are the main text (the rest being prefaces, an appendix of 29 documents cited in the text, and an index).[17] As we shall see below, about a quarter of the narrative was certainly written by Rian, which leaves about 150 pages of ordinary size that Machen could have written. If we figure conservatively that Machen was writing for the equivalent of 40 full days, he would have had to write less than four pages per day to finish his first draft. More likely he had the equivalent of 50 full days, in which time he could have finished the rough draft by writing three pages per day. That seems quite doable.
Furthermore, Machen could have written those 150 pages without having to do much time-consuming research. In the first place, nearly all of the cited material comes from basic sources of American Presbyterian history, to which Machen would have had easy access (usually in his personal library) and with which he would already have had considerable acquaintance. Secondly, the book shows very little effort to dig beneath the public record or go beyond the author’s own personal knowledge. There is no evidence that the author interviewed participants in the events narrated or that he hunted through unpublished materials. Thirdly, there is virtually no interaction with secondary literature. Fourthly, Machen was personally involved in most of the matters with which the book deals, and thus would have been ready to tell the story from memory, aided by references to the key documents and other sources involved. For these reasons, we conclude that this indefatigable scholar, with minimal family encumbrances, definitely could have written a rough draft of as much as three-fourths of the book in 1936. A few of his chapters, as we will see, remained to be completed in 1937, but the first draft as a whole could well have been close to completion when Machen died. This accords well with DeVelde’s belief, expressed on January 3, 1937 (evidently extrapolated from information provided personally by Machen in mid-September 1936), that Machen had completed his manuscript before he died (see Part I, section 1). We will therefore proceed on the working hypothesis that the portions of the text that cannot be demonstrated to have been written by Rian were probably written at least in rough form by Machen.
In analyzing the text of Rian’s book, various types of material may be distinguished:
|
M |
M achen’s original text or at least material originally written by him |
|
R |
Rian’s added material, including: |
|
RN |
Narrative of events that took place after Machen stopped writing |
|
RQ |
Quotations from publications that were published after Machen stopped writing, or references to such publications |
The full extent of the other R material cannot be determined with any certainty. Rian’s possibly many small edits of Machen’s text are generally impossible to distinguish from Machen’s original draft, just as a publisher’s edits are virtually impossible to distinguish from the words of an author’s original text. Therefore, as a practical matter, we will treat as M material whatever does not give evidence of having been written by Rian. Some small edits, however, such as updated references, are easy to spot. For example, as discussed in section 1 above, the 1938 edition of The Presbyterian Digest is cited in M material on pages 15 (6), 26 (14), 45 ter (27–28), 110 bis (74), 112 (75), 122 (82), and 123 ter (83). A quotation from the Westminster catalogue that was repeated annually is attributed to the 1937–1938 edition, not an earlier one, on pages 92–93 (60). References to the renamed Orthodox Presbyterian Church on pages 13 (5), 29 (17), 210 (145), 218 (151), 245 (170), 246 ter (170–71), 247 (171), 258 (181), and 259 (182) could only have been made by Rian, no earlier than February 1939. On page 95 (61), reference is made to “the past ten years of Westminster Seminary,” which was founded in 1929. Similarly, on page 166 (113), Rian writes that “six years have elapsed” since 1934. In the latter two passages, it may be merely that the number of years was changed, but more likely each reference to years is part of a larger R edit of unclear length.
Larger interpolations may also be possible to detect. For example, effusive language used of Machen on pages 25 (13), 41 (25), 42 (26), 53 (33), 60 (37), 71 (44), 81 (52), 90 (58), 91 (59), 94 (61), 135 (92–93), 142 (97), 159 (109), 162 (111), 164 bis (112), 180 (123), 212 (147), 214 (148), and 285 (200–201) must be attributed to Rian. Occasionally we find views that Machen probably would not have expressed, as on pages 42 (26), 281 (198), 285 (200), and 287–88 (202). There may be other passages that Machen could have written, but for one reason or another look more like Rian’s work.
An interesting question is posed by the many references to Machen in the narrative. There is no way to be sure whether Machen originally referred to himself in the first person or the third person (or both). Rian left or put all three references to himself (pp. 173 bis [118], 220 [152] n. 2) in the third person, so perhaps Machen referred to himself in that manner as well. On the other hand, considerable weight should be given to the fact that in the narrative portions of Statement of J. Gresham Machen to the Special Committee of the Presbytery of New Brunswick (1934), Machen referred to himself in the first person. Needless to say, he would have spoken of himself more modestly (and probably less often) than Rian spoke of him in the final draft.[18]
We cannot here dissect the entire text of The Presbyterian Conflict, which upon close inspection has numerous interesting features from a source-critical perspective. However, the extensive and easily determined material that Rian must have written (especially RN and RQ material) is of particular interest to us. If discontinuities can be discerned between this material and the presumably M material that precedes or follows it, such as an interruption of the narrative or the logical flow, then we would have strong support for our view of the manner in which this book took shape. We will now look for such discontinuities—and find that there are many.
The introductory chapter 1, on “The Beginnings of Unbelief,” which traces the rise of liberal or modernist thought in the PCUSA from its earliest days until the Auburn Affirmation of 1923, contains two pieces of R material, both of which look like interpolations. The first piece is the RQ paragraph beginning with “There are those who contend” on pages 20–21 (10). The first sentence in the paragraph should be attributed to Rian because it refers to a magazine article dated November 25, 1936. Similarly, the fourth sentence includes a quotation from a magazine article dated December 26, 1936. As we have seen, it is doubtful that Machen did any work on this book during the last two months of 1936. This paragraph as a whole is a defense of particularism, in support of the previous paragraph, which critiques chapter 35 of the PCUSA’s Confession of Faith (a chapter added in 1903). But while this paragraph seems to belong after the preceding one, it does not flow into the one that follows. The subsequent paragraph begins, “The very same weakness . . . ,” finding a similar watering down of particularism in another addition of 1903. This can only refer to the paragraph preceding the R paragraph, since the latter does not discuss this weakness. Eliminating the R paragraph, we find that the first paragraph concludes by condemning chapter 35 because it “seeks to declare the teaching of the Confession on the Love of God and omits the fact that God has elected some to salvation,” and that the next paragraph begins by telling us that “the very same weakness is seen” in an addition to chapter 10, which goes beyond Scripture by extending the saving love of God indiscriminately to all who die in infancy. The R paragraph, then, looks very much like an interpolation.
The paragraph criticizing the 1903 addition to chapter 10 concludes with what is probably another piece of R material, a quotation from a magazine article dated September 26, 1936, since it is likely that in October 1936 Machen was working on latter portions of his first draft, not revisiting the first chapter. Furthermore, the quotation simply repeats, with some additional detail, the argument of the earlier part of the paragraph. It looks like it was tacked on after the paragraph was completed. This is a quotation from Professor Murray of Westminster Seminary, just as the previously interpolated quotation is from Professor Stonehouse. Stonehouse is nowhere else quoted in the book, while Murray is quoted only in other R material. One can see Rian here seeking to involve Westminster faculty members with his book (arguably to curry their favor, though perhaps to promote the seminary), in a way that Machen would not have done. Rian similarly works in the views of Professor Van Til in the concluding chapter (and quotes him in other R material). Rian in his preface thanks Murray and Van Til “for their suggestions with respect to certain points in chapters one and fifteen,”[19] and this probably refers at least in part to the quotation of Murray in chapter 1 and the presentation of Van Til’s views in chapter 15.
Moving on to chapter 2, “The Auburn Affirmation” (pp. 29–59 [17–36]), we find that there is no RN or RQ material, although some other R material is evident (as noted above). Notably, however, there is a paragraph praising Machen on page 41 (25) that he obviously would not have written. After a long treatment of the controversy regarding Harry Emerson Fosdick, the two paragraphs before this R paragraph broaden the scope of the narrative to tell how the conservatives were becoming more aroused over the general problem of modernism. The paragraph after the R paragraph continues this broadening of the debate: “The Modernists were also much stirred over the turn of events.” Here the word “also” ties this paragraph to the previous discussion of conservatives being stirred up. But that connection is broken by the R paragraph, which introduces and lavishly praises Machen’s book that was written on the controversy, Christianity and Liberalism, and quotes Walter Lippmann’s high praise of it. This is stirring stuff, but it is clearly an interruption in the narrative of events.
Chapter 3, “The Reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary,” has an extensive RN section toward the end, where, after the narration of events that came to a head in 1929, Rian works in a discussion of the continuing liberalization of Princeton in the late 1930s. After the reorganization is narrated, the assertion is made in the M material that the fears of the conservatives were realized and that “the historic doctrinal position of the institution changed” to modernism. To support that claim, “a few facts” are promised “as evidence” (pp. 80–81 [51]).[20] The next paragraph presents some such evidence: Auburn Affirmationists were named to Princeton’s Board of Trustees, and their approval by President Stevenson and Board chairman McEwan was an endorsement of their “anti-Reformed and Modernist ideas.” The next paragraph adds the fact that only two professors from the pre-1929 era remained on the faculty (F. W. Loetscher and W. P. Armstrong), and that the Barthian John A. Mackay had been chosen in 1936 to succeed the retiring J. Ross Stevenson as president of the seminary. When Machen would have been writing in 1936, a third pre-1929 professor, Caspar Wistar Hodge, was still on the faculty (Erdman had just retired), so if Machen originally wrote this paragraph, as we believe, then it was updated by Rian to reflect Hodge’s death in 1937. But at this point Rian launches into a long discussion of Barthianism and its deficiencies (pp. 82–85 [52–54]). Machen may have originally noted that Mackay had been heavily influenced by Karl Barth, for he had noted Mackay’s Barthian leanings as early as 1933 and was aware of Barth’s teachings especially from Van Til,[21] but Rian’s essay on Barthianism is clearly out of place in this compact historical narrative and thus should be considered secondary. Rian finally returns to the previous argument, pointing out that the first Auburn Affirmationist joined the faculty in 1937. The next paragraph, on page 85 (54), continues appropriately from that point, saying that “in another way . . . the new Princeton has made its position abundantly clear,” namely, by failing to raise any voice against modernism and in defense of the Bible and evangelical doctrine. However, this paragraph follows equally well if the previous RN section is removed, for it would then come after the paragraph stating that so few pre-1929 faculty members remained and that Mackay had been named the new president. In fact, the two paragraphs before the RN section and the one paragraph after it constitute the “few facts” promised at the end of the paragraph preceding these paragraphs much better than the several pages of Rian’s text that include the discussion of Barthianism.
The paragraph setting forth Princeton’s new silence in the face of modernism, which we attribute to Machen, concludes, “Princeton has changed and changed radically.” The next paragraph is RQ material, as it is based on a magazine article published in September 1937. It reports that the modernist Christian Century has now embraced Princeton. This paragraph is verbally linked to the previous paragraph, as it begins, “The Modernists themselves have noticed this radical change.” However, this paragraph interrupts the logical flow from the previous to the following paragraph. The silence of Princeton, noted in the previous paragraph, is to be explained, as the following one says in its first sentence, in “one of two” ways: either by an absence of modernism to be protested or by Princeton’s acceptance of modernism. The latter explanation is the “only possible conclusion,” of course, and “the following chapters” will show that the PCUSA has indeed “succumbed more and more to the inroads of Modernism.” So one paragraph sets forth the deafening silence of Princeton, and the next one explains it (leading into the subsequent chapters).
Furthermore, this RQ paragraph misconstrues the nature of the change set forth in the previous paragraph. That change is not the change from historic Christianity to modernism at Princeton, as Rian assumes. Rather, the radical change in view is the change from the vociferous championing of historic Christianity over against modernism prior to 1929 at Princeton to the utter silence at that school thereafter. Hence the two possible explanations for this change are stated in the subsequent paragraph to be the disappearance of anything to protest or a new agreement of Princeton with what had been previously protested. Rian did not quite grasp the argument into which he inserted his additional material. What he took to be the change being referred to is actually the explanation for that change.
Chapter 4, on “Westminster Theological Seminary,” has two sizeable R sections toward the end. After the narration of the first major crisis in Westminster’s history, which involved the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions and led to the resignation of most Board members and one faculty member on January 7, 1936 (pp. 96–100 [62–65]), Rian narrates a second major crisis, which occurred in 1937. It pertained to certain concerns of fundamentalists, and led to the resignation of four Board members and one faculty member (pp. 100- 103 [65–68]). The M material resumes with an account of efforts in the PCUSA to undermine Westminster Seminary by blocking the ministry of its graduates (pp. 103–5 [68–69]). But while this material is linked to the preceding RN block by the introductory R statement, “The attack on Westminster Seminary from without was more bitter,” which draws a comparison to “the unwarranted attack by Dr. MacRae” from within (p. 103 [67]), this account follows in better chronological order immediately after the narrative of the first crisis. The first narrative pertains to the Independent Board, beginning in 1933. The account following the RN block similarly begins with the Independent Board in 1934 (p. 104 [68]). But the RN block interrupts this sequence by jumping ahead to Westminster’s struggle with fundamentalism in 1937. It is understandable that Rian would insert an account of an internal crisis after the narrative of an earlier internal crisis, but he failed to see that this interrupted Machen’s treatment of the problems (one internal, one external) that were related to the Independent Board.
After the M discussion of PCUSA efforts to block the ministry of Westminster graduates, Rian adds another RN block on pages 105–8 (69–71), narrating the progress of Westminster for three years after Machen’s death. This forms a fitting addendum to chapter 4. It is difficult to determine how Machen’s rough draft of this chapter ended—or how he intended it to end, if he planned later to update his account of opposition to Westminster graduates—but the final M paragraph sounds like the sort of summary statement that one might put at the end of a chapter: “The reaction to this kind of propaganda and tactics [by liberals in the PCUSA] resulted in sympathy for the seminary and an increased resolution on the part of the professors and the Board of Trustees to go straight on in the endeavor to teach the truth, no matter what persecution should arise.”
Chapter 5, on “Union Movements,” describes three major efforts within the PCUSA to unite with other churches; these “show the doctrinal laxity in the Church and its growing indifference to doctrine” (p. 110 [73]). These three efforts involved the United Presbyterian Church (pp. 110–18 [73–79]), the Protestant Episcopal Church (pp. 118–22 [79–82]), and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (pp. 122–24 [82–84]). The first account, focusing on developments in 1934, is M material. The second, narrating events from 1937 onward, is RN material, which was easily inserted after the first account. The third account, which deals with a 1917 proposal that generated discussions for a few years, could all be M material, except for three paragraphs on attempts to revive the talks in 1938–1939 (p. 124 [83–84]).
Chapter 5 concludes with general observations on church union, starting with the paragraph beginning “The whole union enterprise . . .” (pp. 124–26 [84–85]). Here the hands of both Machen and Rian are evident. Two discontinuities are apparent. First, the illustrative quotation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (p. 125), which is RQ material (published in April 1937), is misplaced. The previous sentence speaks of the PCUSA’s desire for church union, and the sentence after the quotation expands this thought by noting that this impulse is found throughout “the whole Protestant world.” Since Rockefeller was a Baptist and spoke of general Christian unity (along liberal lines), he should have been quoted after the latter sentence. Second, this conclusion begins with a summary sentence appropriate for the chapter, referring to “the whole union enterprise in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.” and the Church’s desire for organizational unity. This thought is continued in the final paragraph, which predicts that “the spirit of unionism in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.” will likely lead to unions on a debased doctrinal basis. But these two paragraphs are interrupted by a paragraph on the situation in the general Protestant world, in which it is argued that Bible believers “in each denomination” should separate from unbelievers, which could lead to “real Christian unity” focused on “the miraculous gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a theme that Rian has tacked onto Machen’s historical study, especially in the concluding chapter (see the end of this section). Since some of the language in this paragraph is also found in the final paragraph, it may be that Rian’s paragraph is an expansion of some Machen material. But it may also be that Rian builds on Machen’s language in order to make his interpolation fit the context better.
If the easily identified R material is removed from this chapter, a coherent treatment of union movements within Presbyterian circles, focusing on the situation in the early 1930s, is presented, such as Machen would likely have written. The R material is supplementary and not all that well integrated into the chapter. As originally put together by Machen, the chapter dealt only with possible union between the PCUSA and other Presbyterian bodies: first the proposed union with the United Presbyterians, which was an important concern of Machen in 1934 (as the chapter makes clear), and then the possibility of union with the Southern Presbyterians. But the chapter, as structured by Rian, deals with church union in a more general (Protestant) framework, and thus adds a major section on discussions with the Episcopalians.
Chapter 6, on “The Independent Board,” does not contain much R material. However, the consecutive paragraphs beginning with “The drama and meaning” and “It was more than a conflict” on page 135 (92–93) present Rian’s personal recollections. His remarks are poignant, but the narrative flows perfectly well without this interpolation.
Chapter 7, on “The Deliverance of the 1934 General Assembly,” contains little apparent R material.
Chapter 8, on “The Machen Trial,” contains a section of R material on pages 179–80 (123) that interrupts the account of Machen’s trial before the Special Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of New Brunswick at its climactic third session. In Machen’s original draft, the sentence noting that the third session of the trial had been reached was probably immediately followed by the statement that the moderator asked Machen to stand and plead to the first charge, but the two sentences are interrupted by Rian’s interpolation extolling the defendant and disparaging the members of the Commission. Much of the account of this trial is colored in a way that a Machen partisan would have handled it, and that shows the extent to which Rian edited Machen’s manuscript, at least in places.
Chapter 9, on “The 1935 General Assembly,” contains no readily discernible R material.
Chapter 10, on “Philadelphia and Chester Presbyteries,” is a short chapter relating how liberal minorities in those two presbyteries maneuvered in 1935 and 1936 to gain control of those bodies with the aid of a General Assembly commission. Machen probably left this chapter unfinished, and Rian completed it by relating further developments in 1937 and adding appropriate concluding remarks. We would identify this RN material as the paragraph beginning with “An overture which would accomplish this” on page 203 (140), and everything from “In 1937 the Commission recommended” to the end of the chapter (pp. 204–5 [140–41]). Since the M and RN material here is integrated seamlessly (chronologically), one might wonder whether Rian wrote the whole seven (five) pages of the chapter, but there is a sentence early in the chapter that looks like an interpolation. On pages 200–201 (138), W. B. Pugh is introduced as “an assistant in the office of the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and the heir-apparent to that position.” Then what he did is related: “During the struggle within the Church . . . Dr. Pugh did everything in his power to thwart the actions of the conservatives.” But between those two sentences, which fit together naturally, Rian inserted the statement, “In fact, he was elected to that office by the 1938 General Assembly” (and perhaps added “and the heir-apparent to that position” to the previous sentence). While this statement is true, it has no bearing on the discussion or indeed on anything in the chapter. It looks like an awkward attempt to “update” Machen’s text and give it the appearance of having been written after Machen died. Accordingly, we conclude that the surrounding text is M, not R, material.
Chapter 11, on “‘We Must Obey God,’” is mostly M material, but a fair amount of R material extolling Machen was inserted at the end. Without the R material, we are left with an account of the 1936 General Assembly, at which the suspensions of Machen and seven other conservatives from the ministry were upheld. The account discusses at length the issue of authority in the church and the judicial questions involving Machen and his followers (pp. 206–12 [143–47]). Immediately after the description of how these men were treated, Rian adds a paragraph on page 212 (147) praising these eight courageous men and stating that people outside the PCUSA understood what was really going on. Rian concludes the chapter by again extolling Machen, linking “this blow” with his death six months later, and quoting tributes to him from those who were not his allies, but which confirmed his analysis of what was going on in the PCUSA (pp. 214–17 [148–50]). However, Machen would not have interpreted these events as the martyrdom of the greatest Presbyterian in the land. In fact, just prior to this encomium are two paragraphs on pages 212–13 (147–48) that probably preserve Machen’s conclusion to the chapter. First he explains that the 1936 decisions dethroned Christ as King of his church and placed human authority above the Bible. Then he (or possibly Rian) compares the General Assembly’s treatment of those loyal to the Bible with the Roman Catholic treatment of Martin Luther, who likewise took a stand for the Word of God. Rian took this as an opportunity to extol his fallen leader, but the implication that Machen wanted readers to draw was that the PCUSA had decisively and finally overthrown its constitution, its confession, the Scriptures, and Christ— thus justifying a remnant of believers in forming a new Presbyterian church, which leads into the next chapter.
Chapter 12, on “The Orthodox Presbyterian Church” (originally “The Presbyterian Church of America,” of course), narrates the formation of the Presbyterian Constitutional Covenant Union in 1935 and, out of that, the Presbyterian Church of America in 1936. M material extends down to the filing of a lawsuit by representatives of the PCUSA against the PCA over its name in August 1936 (pp. 218–31 [151–61]). Machen probably left the chapter unfinished at this point, intending later to finish the story of the lawsuit and discuss the constitutionally important Second General Assembly of the PCA, which would be held in November 1936. But at the beginning of November he had turned his attention to preparing The Christian View of Man for publication and probably did not write more about the Presbyterian conflict during the remaining two months of his life. Rian picked up the story, completing the account of the lawsuit (and perhaps also writing the first paragraph about it, which we have attributed to Machen), telling about the Second General Assembly, and continuing the account through 1939 (pp. 232–45 [161–70]). Alternatively, it is possible that Machen found time in November or December to write an account of the Second General Assembly (pp. 234–38 [163–65] and even an account of the disruption of the Independent Board in November 1936 (240–41 [167]). Rian brings the narrative down to the expectations for the 1940 General Assembly. Three concluding paragraphs follow, which fit equally well with or without the preceding R material. But since these paragraphs reflect the situation in 1936, when the key issue was modernism, not the situation in 1939 or 1940, after major battles had been fought in the PCA/OPC over fundamentalist concerns, it is probably best to see Machen as the principal author. On the other hand, Rian shaped it, as can be seen by his comment on the name “Orthodox Presbyterian” (given in February 1939) and his expressed interest in the eventual impact of the OPC “in the religious life of America.”
Chapter 13, on “Church Property Rights,” may have been written entirely by Rian. Most of it discusses events from 1937 onward, making it RN material. It is possible, however, that the introductory comments and perhaps other discussion of the situation in 1936 come from Machen, who perhaps left the account unfinished with the idea of seeing how the issue developed. We are inclined to see Machen’s hand in this chapter, if only because Rian’s approach all along has been to fill out Machen’s chapters. The issue of church property rights was very important to congregations and groups within the PCUSA thinking of coming into the PCA, and it should not be surprising that Machen would have wanted to deal with it, even if the legal battles were just beginning to take shape in 1936.
Chapter 14, on “Reform from Within” (i.e., within the PCUSA), begins with M material (pp. 258–62 [181–84]), the final section of which deals with the Presbyterian League of Faith (which included Machen and his supporters). But when the narrative describes the reorganization of the League in 1936 (without the PCA contingent), an RN block begins, even though the League’s 1937 activities are not mentioned until the fourth paragraph. One can tell that the M discussion comes to an end because its final paragraph presents a summary of the original League’s activities and an evaluation of it. It represents Machen’s view of the League in 1936. After the League’s activities in 1937–1939 are surveyed (pp. 262–70 [184–89]), the chapter closes with a lengthy (and negative) evaluation of the prospects for reforming the PCUSA from within (pp. 270–76 [189–93]). This whole section could be Rian’s work, but if we remove supportive quotations from Craig and Macartney (p. 271 [190]), and then from MacCallum (with discussion of the ambivalence of the Presbyterian) and Macartney again (pp. 272–74 [190–92]), we are left with a coherent analysis that Machen could have written in 1936.
Since the concluding chapter, entitled “Whither Protestantism?” (ch. 15), does not narrate events, we cannot differentiate between M and RN material within it. There is one piece of RQ material in the chapter (on pp. 280–81 [197- 98]), and this quotation from an editorial in the January 1940 issue of Fortune magazine, of all things, was clearly a last-minute insertion in the text. The text reads smoothly without it, but it could just as easily have been Rian’s last-minute insertion in his own text as in Machen’s text. The reference to Cornelius Van Til’s assistance with chapter 15 at the end of the preface makes it evident that the attempt to summarize Van Til’s philosophical position on page 287 (201–2) is Rian’s work. The surrounding text flows smoothly without this material, but it can be understood as Rian’s enhancement of his own writing rather than of Machen’s writing. Thus, this R material does not really help us determine the authorship of the rest of this chapter.
On the whole, we are inclined to attribute chapter 15 primarily, if not entirely, to Rian. It has almost nothing to say about Presbyterianism as such; the chapter is all about Protestantism. It is an appeal to conservative Protestants in general terms, such as Machen would not have been expected to make, at least in this book. Furthermore, the chapter repeatedly asserts that the goal of the church should be to have a powerful impact on society (see pp. 281 [198], 283 [199], 287–88 [202], and 289 [203]). Machen wanted to build a pure Presbyterian church, however small, but Rian was dismayed by the idea of a tiny, culturally irrelevant denomination. He wanted to rally conservative Protestants much more widely in a great movement to combat modernism and revive the spiritual life of America. One can find various themes of Machen in the chapter, but it would be very difficult to reconstruct something that Machen originally wrote out of this chapter. He may have sketched out some ideas for a concluding chapter, but if so, Rian transformed it into his own appeal to Protestant America.[22]
The many discontinuities in The Presbyterian Conflict between material that could have been written by Machen in 1936 and material that must have been written subsequently by Rian, provide strong evidence that a division of material along these lines is basically correct. If Rian had actually written the entire book himself, and did not build upon a rough draft written by Machen, then these discontinuities would rarely, if ever, exist. If our division of the book into M and R material were entirely arbitrary, then there certainly would not be the pattern of discontinuity that we have found to characterize so much of the R material.
There is, however, one other explanation that must be considered. It could be argued that Rian interpolated this R material, not into Machen’s text, but into his own text written earlier. As we have seen, there is evidence that, after writing his chapters, Rian came back to them and did some editing. He could have introduced additional material at that later time in an awkward manner. This possibility cannot be ruled out in all cases (as we have just seen with respect to the quotation from Fortune magazine in ch. 15), but in general it is ruled out by the fact that, with few exceptions, the RN events took place, and the RQ quotations were published, during a period of time that ended before Rian was doing his major work on the chapters in which the material was placed. The events of the RN material and the publication dates of the RQ material in the early chapters (chs. 1–4), which were written in the latter half of 1938, precede that time of writing, rarely even going beyond 1937 into 1938.23 Similarly, the RN and RQ material in the later chapters (chs. 12–14), written in the latter half of 1939, carries the story into 1939 with regularity. (The middle chapters [chs. 6–11] contain no R material extending beyond 1937, but that is to be expected, since they focus on the crucial events of 1934–1936.) The one exception to this overall pattern is chapter 5. As we analyze it above, there is a large interpolation pertaining to the discussions of union between the PCUSA and the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1937–1939, which would have been written in late 1939. This would appear to be the one large addition to an earlier chapter that Rian made after doing his initial work on it. But since he added this material as part of his effort to change the focus of the chapter from Machen’s narrow Presbyterian context to the wider Protestant context that he preferred, this looks like an interpolation in Machen’s material, not in material that Rian had earlier written. The overall pattern of events and quotations in Rian’s material, then, indicates that most of it was written when we have determined, on independent grounds, that he was doing the bulk of his writing. Therefore, the pattern of literary discontinuity associated with that material indicates that it was added to material for which Machen had written the first draft. This correlation of historical and literary analysis provides powerful support for our thesis on the origin of this book.
III. Differences In Literary Style
In theory, one should be able to compare the material identified as having been written at least principally by Machen and the material known to have been written by Rian and discern differences in style. The stylistic differences between the M material and the R material attributable to the two writers should then be found to characterize their other writings. These matters of style would include such things as vocabulary, the frequency of common words and grammatical features, and average sentence length. However, if a thorough stylometric analysis of this sort were to be undertaken, it would probably be inconclusive. Apart from the substantial methodological issues involved with stylometry itself, any attempt to compare Machen’s material in this book to Rian’s material, as well as any attempt to compare this material with other writings by these authors, would face serious obstacles.
First of all, while we can identify sections of material that Rian must have written, we cannot be sure how much of the remaining material was originally written by Machen. Our study of the discontinuities in the text gives us some confidence as to the general contours of the sections that have Machen’s manuscript underlying them, but the remaining uncertainties regarding details (which we have barely mentioned in this article) would make it difficult even to establish a text for the purposes of stylometric analysis.
Furthermore, a comparison between Rian’s material and Machen’s material would be impaired, if not crippled, by the fact that it would be a comparison of Rian’s writing, not with Machen’s writing, but with Rian’s edited version of Machen’s writing. Rian’s editing, which no doubt included adding, changing, and omitting words, made the style of Machen’s material more like his own, and perhaps much more like it. Another consideration is that the editing presumably done by the publisher would have tended to make the style of the entire text more homogenous and probably to some extent unlike that of either author’s other writings.
And even if certain differences could be discerned between what we have identified as Machen’s material and Rian’s material, it would be difficult to compare that material with their other writings. Machen contributed only a rough draft to The Presbyterian Conflict; his editing of that draft for publication would no doubt have modified some of its stylistic characteristics in the direction of greater literary elegance. Moreover, Machen and Rian wrote little other historical literature. To compare this historical narrative with other types of literature would introduce further complications. On top of that, this book contains numerous quotations, often embedded in sentences, not to mention paraphrases of sources using words drawn from those sources, which would further skew an analysis of style.
For all of these reasons, it is doubtful that a stylometric study of The Presbyterian Conflict for the purpose of determining authorship would produce definitive results. However, certain stylistic features might at least suggest that two hands were at work. Let us look at a few samples in the area of vocabulary.
Rian speaks of “drama” (pp. 135 [92], 212 [147]) and events that are “dramatic” (pp. 135 [92], 179 [123]), whereas Machen does not use those colorful terms in his narrative. Machen does say that a trial “dramatized” a doctrinal viewpoint (p.18 [8]), but that is a little different—or should this word be attributed Rian’s editing?
In material that we attribute to Machen, he consistently refers to a period of ten years as a “decade” (pp. 7 [3], 124 [84], 212 [147]). Rian characteristically speaks of “ten years” (pp. 95 [61], 107 [70]), 108 [70]), though he does speak of a “decade” on one occasion (p. 244 [169]). There may have been a real difference in their tendency to use these expressions, or this may simply be a statistical fluke. Here a comparison with their other writings might be instructive.
In section 2 above, we argued that Rian probably wrote his final chapter with little contribution from Machen. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the expressions “some one might ask” (p. 278 [196]) and “some one might object and say” (p. 283 [199]) are paralleled in Rian’s material, where we find the expression “someone might ask” in his explanation of Barthianism (p. 82 [52]), but are not paralleled in Machen’s material. This would seem to be a rhetorical device used by Rian, but not by Machen (though we have not searched their other writings for it). (But does the difference between “some one” and “someone” indicate anything other than imperfect copyediting by the publisher?)
IV. Rian’s Perplexing Preface
According to the conventions of modern book publishing, if an author wants to make some remarks about his book, he puts them in a preface. As The Chicago Manual of Style states, a preface is “the author’s own statement about a work,” containing “material about the book,” including “reasons for undertaking the work, . . . brief acknowledgments, and sometimes permissions granted.”[24] The preface is placed at the front of the book, as logically preliminary to the main text, but it is typically written after the rest of the book has been completed, because that is the natural time to write about one’s book and what went into writing it.
Rian begins his preface somewhat unconventionally by launching into the main argument of the book—something that would normally be left to an introduction.[25] He begins by placing “the startling events which have occurred in the past decade within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.” in the context of modernism’s rise to dominance “in most of the large Protestant churches.” He explains what modernism is and contrasts it with traditional Christianity. In the second paragraph, Rian states his purpose for writing. “This historical sketch” of the struggles of one particular denomination is presented to the reader as an example of what is happening throughout the Protestant world, thus providing a wake-up call to all conservative Protestants to consider what they can do about it. Thus, the first two paragraphs of the preface present the main argument of the entire book; the rest of the book fills in the historical details.
The third paragraph promises objectivity from the author, even though he “believes whole-heartedly in historic, Biblical Christianity” and “was one of those involved in the Presbyterian conflict,” adding that modernism had been “most ably presented” to him in his theological studies in Germany. Finally, in the fourth paragraph, Rian thanks two men for “reading the manuscript” and making “many valuable suggestions,” and two others for offering “suggestions with respect to” the first and last (fifteenth) chapters.
Rian dated his preface March 15, 1940. The suggestions made by the readers of his manuscript were presumably incorporated in the text before the preface was written. The manuscript must have been immediately put into the hands of the publisher (and already accepted for publication), since the book was available for purchase in early June.[26] After March 15, only minor changes (i.e., corrections of proofs) could have been made without delaying the publication date.
Since there is every reason to think that Rian wrote his preface after completing his fifteen chapters, it is startling to find chapter 15 beginning with these words: “The assertion was made in the Preface of this book that . . . ”—implying that the preface was written before chapter 15 was even begun. This chapter begins by recapitulating at greater length what is stated in the first paragraph of the preface, and develops its argument from there. Indeed, the words of the rest of that first sentence, as well as much of the penultimate two sentences of the first paragraph and part of the final paragraph, are to be found in the preface (often with phrases rearranged). And the chapter repeats the two questions asked in the second paragraph of the preface: “Whither Protestantism?” (the title of the chapter) and “What can be done about it?” Thus, chapter 15 treats the preface as having already been written, while the preface treats chapter 15 as having already been written.
Despite what the first sentence of chapter 15 says, it is highly doubtful that Rian wrote his preface before he wrote chapter 15, not only because of what the preface says, but also because of the natural order of writing. Perhaps, after writing chapter 15 and then his preface, he returned to chapter 15 and added “The assertion was made in the Preface of this book that” in front of “The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and many Protestant Churches of America in their corporate testimony have turned away from historic Christianity.” On this scenario, he incorporated various phrases from chapter 15 in his preface, and subsequently decided to refer to the introductory preface as his lead-in to the concluding chapter. Alternatively, he may have written the first paragraph (and possibly more) of the preface prior to writing chapter 15, for some reason, and completed the preface after writing that chapter. On this scenario, he incorporated various phrases from the preface in chapter 15, and perhaps then some from that chapter in the remainder of the preface. In either convoluted scenario, he wanted to place his appeal to conservative Protestants at the beginning of the book, as well as at the end.
But there is a further complication: there are two indications of Machen’s authorship in the first paragraph of Rian’s preface.[27]The preface begins by referring to “the startling events which have occurred in the past decade within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.” As the second paragraph notes, this book is a “historical sketch” of that “conflict within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.” So The Presbyterian Conflict is an account of “startling events” in the PCUSA that have occurred within “the past decade.” Now if Machen wrote this in 1936, “the past decade” was 1926–1936. When Rian wrote (and dated) his preface, it was 1930–1940. The modernist controversy in the PCUSA went back decades (as surveyed in chapter 1), but the Auburn Affirmation, issued on December 26, 1923 (discussed in chapter 2), is regarded as an important watershed in the book. However, the Affirmation controversy fizzled out in 1924, when the conservatives still seemed to be in control of the PCUSA, and so it is treated in the book basically as an ominous harbinger of things to come.[28] The first really “startling” events (narrated in chapter 3) were those that began in 1926 (following disputations in 1924 and 1925) with the appointment of a special committee of the General Assembly to investigate Princeton Seminary and culminated in its reorganization in 1929 to place liberals in control of the school that meant so much to Machen. This “profoundly” affected the PCUSA,[29] yet it all happened prior to the “decade” to which Rian’s preface refers. However, those events occurred in the early years of the decade that Machen would have had in mind. The founding of Westminster Seminary in 1929 (narrated in chapter 4) likewise falls within Machen’s decade, but not Rian’s. Furthermore, the controversy within the PCUSA was essentially over in 1936; there were no “startling events” during the last four years of Rian’s decade, as there were throughout Machen’s decade. Thus, the initial words of Rian’s preface look much more like they were written by Machen in 1936 than by Rian in 1940.[30]
The first paragraph also refers to Harry Emerson Fosdick’s “assertion that modernism has won a sweeping victory in the Protestant churches.” This assertion is not referenced, but it presumably refers to his widely publicized sermon, “The Church Must Go beyond Modernism,” which he delivered on November 3, 1935.[31] According to Fosdick, while the church had to be brought out of its antiquated mind-set by modernism, that task was now accomplished; the next step would be to supply what was lacking in modernism.[32] It is much more likely that this sermon would have been regarded as a matter of common knowledge (that is, recent memory) by a writer in 1936 than by a writer in 1940. As a final twist, some of the language in the first sentence of the preface (though not the reference to “the past decade”) is repeated in the first sentence in chapter 15. And Fosdick’s assertion is likewise repeated with similar language in the first paragraph of chapter 15.
Underlying at least portions of Rian’s preface and his concluding chapter, then, is most likely something written by Machen. But what? Since, as we have seen, Machen had not finished the rough draft of all his chapters, probably had written no more than a sketch of his concluding chapter, if that, and intended to work further on his book in 1937, we may be quite sure that he never wrote a preface to this work. So if Machen had written neither a preface nor a concluding chapter, where did the portions of Rian’s preface and concluding chapter that evidence dependence on Machen’s manuscript come from?
There would seem to be two possibilities. First, Machen may have begun to write chapter 15 after all, using the first sentence now in Rian’s preface and the reference to Fosdick. Rian would then have built upon that to fill out chapter 15. But on this theory it is hard to explain why Machen’s reference to the startling events of the past decade is omitted from chapter 15, but is then inserted in the preface. One would have to say that Rian used Machen’s introductory material for chapter 15 twice: first when writing chapter 15 (omitting the reference to “the past decade”), and second when writing the preface (including that reference). This explanation seems rather artificial.
The second possible solution is that Machen may never have begun to write his final chapter, but did write a short introduction. Machen’s earlier book, The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930; rev., 1932), has just such a one-page introduction, which introduces the subject matter of the book and briefly outlines its contents. Chapter 15, “Conclusion and Consequences,” in turn, begins by outlining the contents of the previous chapters and summarizing their findings. It is quite conceivable that Machen planned similar “bookends” for his book on the Presbyterian conflict. In any case, once an introduction is posited for his new book, all of the complicated and even contradictory data fall into place. On this theory, the first thing Rian came to in Machen’s manuscript was the introduction. He decided, either right then or at some other time before writing chapter 15, that it would be better to have a preface than to have such a short introduction, and so he used what Machen wrote in his introduction (including the first sentence, referring to the past decade, and the reference to Fosdick’s assertion about modernism) to craft the first paragraph of the preface. He made further use of the introduction, or at least of what he incorporated of it in the preface, when writing chapter 15. Since he was building upon the remarks he had prepared for his preface, he referred back to it when starting to write chapter 15. After that chapter was finished, he added the final three paragraphs of the preface on March 15, 1940, and worked his title for chapter 15, “Whither Protestantism?” into its second paragraph. One would assume that Rian completed his preface (and probably revised its first paragraph) soon after finishing his last chapter, and surprising evidence for this is provided by the fact that phrases from the last paragraph of that chapter (“realize the situation within their gates” and “the Church in its corporate testimony”) are repeated in the preface.
If Machen did write a short introduction, or perhaps the beginning of a final chapter, it would be very difficult to reconstruct it from Rian’s preface and chapter 15. This is especially so because Rian superimposed his message upon Machen’s in both places, and probably omitted whatever Machen wrote that did not fit the new message. Machen evidently wrote that the modernist controversy in the PCUSA was not a phenomenon peculiar to Presbyterianism, but rather was just one instance of modernist upheaval in the Protestant church more broadly. How Machen developed that theme is hard to say, but a good guess would be that he then explained the main features of modernism (as we find summarized at the end of the first paragraph of Rian’s preface). For Machen, the general reference to Protestantism was simply a matter of providing historical context. He was writing a book about the liberal-conservative conflict within the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to vindicate his position for posterity, but also to inform and influence the conservatives who were still in that church or had come out of it. But Rian saw this reference to the historical context as an opportunity to generalize the message of the book and appeal to conservative Protestants everywhere. All conservative Protestants should be interested in his book, he says in the second paragraph of his preface, because it is “a portrayal of what has taken place to a great extent within the Protestant church as a whole.” Then he urges “every clear right-thinking Protestant” to ask himself, “Whither Protestantism?” and “What can be done about it?” “It is the author’s hope,” he adds in the next paragraph, “that the following presentation of a particular church’s theological dispute will help to awaken the Protestant world to the real situation within its gates.”
Rian also sounds the alarm in his conclusion, chapter 15. Modernism, he declares, has eviscerated the spiritual life of the church and the nation. Echoing the preface, he asks, “What can be done about this condition in the Protestant Church?” He proposes “some very definite and constructive steps” “to alleviate the deplorable state of the Church and bring it back to its place of power and usefulness in the life of America” (p. 281 [198]). Basically, he says, “the Church today must do what it has done in ages past; it must call the people back to faith in the Son of God as the Saviour of men and the only way to God, and direct their thoughts to the Bible as the only and final rule of faith and life” (p. 287 [202]). This was a lofty goal, but Rian was trying to make much more out of this account of the Presbyterian conflict than Machen had ever envisioned.
V. The Brief Footnotes
Nearly all of the 409 footnotes in The Presbyterian Conflict are citations of sources quoted or referred to in the text, distributed somewhat less frequently in the Rian material than in the Machen material. In addition, there are some references to other places in the book (especially the documents in the appendix). Only rarely is additional information provided in a footnote.
These citations are very brief (except occasionally where there is a long title). In particular, no facts of publication are ever given, except for the dates of serial publications. Such brevity also characterizes the footnotes in Machen’s previous scholarly publication, The Virgin Birth of Christ, which omit facts of publication other than dates. But this is unlike the footnotes in Rian’s two other books published in the 1940s, A Free World and Christianity and American Education, both of which regularly present full citations, including the city and name of publishers. This evidence supports the view that Rian began with a manuscript written by Machen. When Rian saw Machen’s hundreds of brief citations, he decided to leave them as they were and write the footnotes for his additional material in similar fashion. He was not inclined to hunt down all of Machen’s sources in order to provide full bibliographical information for each one.
More telling than footnote form, however, is the fact that some of the footnotes in Machen’s material are not only brief, but incomplete—or merely descriptive. This suggests that they were written hastily, with the intention of filling them out later. Rian, we know, worked on this book at a more leisurely pace from mid-1938 to early 1940, with most of his work already having been done for him by Machen. But Machen was working hard in the summer and early fall of 1936 to get as much done as possible, and, we have argued, nearly finished his first draft in those few months. In such circumstances, abbreviated and occasionally incomplete citations would have been expected, particularly of works that were readily accessible and well known to him. What is perhaps surprising, though, is that Rian did not make more of an effort to complete them. But his insufficient attention to detail provides another clue to the origin of his book.
The source that Machen used by far the most was the Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., which he cited over seventy-five times (including ibids.). In the Machen material, it is cited on two occasions with the full title, understandably the first time cited (p. 16 [7]) and oddly on page 68 (42). Ordinarily—fifty times—it is cited as Minutes of the General Assembly, with the church being assumed. But four times, on pages 77, 152, 165, and 202 (48, 104, 113, and 139), it is cited incompletely as Minutes. This was not merely the result of random carelessness, however. Each of these four footnotes adds a sentence instructing the reader to “See also Appendix note 14” or the like, whereas not one of Machen’s fifty footnotes citing Minutes of the General Assembly adds such a note. This pattern was not intentional on Rian’s part, however.[33] In the footnotes to his own material, the one reference to Minutes does not have such an added note (p. 265 [186]), whereas one of the eight references to Minutes of the General Assembly does add such a note (p. 118 [79]).[34] The one reference to Minutes in the Rian material is easily explained as the result of carelessness, but the four references to Minutes in the Machen material must have some connection to the added sentences. The only plausible explanation is that originally most, if not all, of these footnotes read Minutes, and that at some point Rian decided to make Minutes of the General Assembly the standard short citation. It seems highly unlikely that Rian, if he himself had originally written all these citations as Minutes, would then decide to change them all to Minutes of the General Assembly. But if he was editing Machen’s text, which consistently read Minutes, then he would have recognized the need to fill out the citations. If he was simply doing this as he worked slowly through the manuscript over the months, he would not have overlooked the four, and only four, footnotes where a sentence was added to the reference to Minutes. He must have decided to change them all at once. As he started out, he noticed that these were all short footnotes, and so as he proceeded with increasing impatience and increasing weariness through the hundreds of pages, he began focusing on short footnotes, and as a result his eye skipped over the four citations of the Minutes spread through the middle of the manuscript that were much longer because of the added notes.
If Rian did his work by placing Machen’s manuscript in front of him and laboriously writing out an entirely new manuscript with the desired changes, including corrected citations, then he would not have overlooked the four citations of the Minutes, and only those four, to which a note was added. But Rian probably would not have made his edits directly to Machen’s manuscript, either, as corrections in a hand different from the underlying text would have looked suspicious to a typist or reader (especially if Machen’s “I’s” were constantly revised to “he’s”). So he probably had Machen’s manuscript typed up, with double-spaced lines and ample margins, so that he could then easily enter changes by hand. When he was finished, with large additions on separate sheets, he had the whole thing typed up by a different typist to submit to his publisher.
Another case of incomplete citations involves The Presbyterian Digest. It is cited twenty times (all in the first five chapters), all but once in Machen material. It is consistently cited as The Presbyterian Digest, though The is carelessly omitted twice toward the end. But once in the Machen material, only Digest is cited (p. 62 [39] n. 5; this incomplete reference is filled out in the 1992 edition). It would appear that Machen usually cited this work hastily as “Digest 1930” in his rough draft, and that Rian completed the references when he revised Machen’s manuscript, but missed this one instance—perhaps, if he was filling out the references all at one time, because it comes right after a long footnote and could have been carelessly overlooked as part of it.[35]
In connection with his ecclesiastical proceedings, Machen had two hefty “pamphlets” privately printed: Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1933) and Statement of J. Gresham Machen to the Special Committee of the Presbytery of New Brunswick in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1934). These are cited seventeen times in the Machen material of chapters 6–8 (and twice more in the 1992 edition), fourteen times simply as “Machen Pamphlet” (italicized, though it is not a title). It is not always clear which of the two pamphlets is being referred to—indeed, the 1992 edition of The Presbyterian Conflict, in attempting to provide proper citations, mistakenly identified the “Machen Pamphlet” four times.[36] It is hard to believe that anyone sitting with either pamphlet in his hand, or notes from it, would cite it as “Machen Pamphlet.” The only plausible explanation for these brief descriptive references is that Machen used them for his own pamphlets, knowing that Modernism was being used in chapter 6 and Statement in chapters 7 and 8. He fully intended, when later revising his manuscript, to provide proper citations that would be intelligible to the reader. It is hard to understand why Rian did not correct these citations; the many other pamphlets cited in the book (mostly by Machen, originally) are described as “a pamphlet” only after their title is given.
The only other references that have similar lack of clarity are the eleven citations of “The Report, 1927” (or “Report, 1927”) between footnotes 14 and 35 in chapter 3.[37] No previous footnote indicates what report is in view, nor is this report even mentioned in the text until one reaches the passage preceding footnote 35 (p. 77 [48]). It is the Report of the Special Committee to Visit Princeton Theological Seminary to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. . . . 1927, as stated in the revised footnote 14 of the 1992 edition of Rian’s book. Once again we have a document that Machen knew well and was probably hastily citing in his footnotes with the intention of documenting it properly at a later stage of writing. It is hard to understand why Rian did not do so, but we have observed his carelessness and inadequate attention to detail on numerous occasions.
VI. Conclusion
Converging historical and literary evidence leaves little doubt but that approximately three-fourths of Edwin H. Rian’s The Presbyterian Conflict is an edited or rewritten version of a manuscript written by J. Gresham Machen during the six months prior to his sudden death. That manuscript was a rough draft, left incomplete in places, which Rian—one of the very few people who knew what Machen had been working on—surreptitiously removed from Machen’s estate and recast as his own work without telling anyone. But he was not able to cover all his tracks.
Rian, who was Machen’s closest associate in the latter half of 1936, provides the strongest evidence for this thesis, for he told Everett DeVelde in a letter of August 26, 1936, that Machen “is very busy writing the book on the Presbyterian conflict.” And DeVelde, after no doubt discussing this with Machen when he met with him in mid-September 1936, declared on January 3, 1937, two days after Machen’s death, that Machen had been writing a book to be entitled The Conflict, which would be published “shortly.” Machen spoke about writing such a book to a dining room of students on October 1, 1936, according to the diary of Arthur Kuschke. This testimony from Rian, DeVelde, and Kuschke, together with the disappearance of Machen’s work from his carefully preserved personal papers and the publication of Rian’s book on the same subject, creates a strong presumption that Rian’s book is an expanded version of Machen’s lost manuscript.[38]
In Part I, we showed that the historical evidence supports this view. Correspondence between Machen and his publisher indicates that he was working on a book from August to October 1936, and there is no plausible candidate for it other than what Rian said Machen was writing. Furthermore, other letters that could well have referred to this work are suspiciously missing from Machen’s and Rian’s papers. A close look at Rian shows that his moral scruples were sufficiently compromised to do what we have concluded that he did. He probably had first access to Machen’s papers in January 1937, and he yielded to the temptation to steal Machen’s work on the Presbyterian conflict and rework it as his own. A fair amount of inference is involved in reconstructing all that happened, but the basic outline of events seems to be firmly established.
Mrs. Dennison’s notes begin with the statement that DeVelde commented on “an extant manuscript entitled The Conflict—Supposedly M[achen] finished draft summer before his death.” In the left margin, Dennison later wrote, “What became of this draft?” Good question!
In Part II, we examined The Presbyterian Conflict itself and found numerous traces of Machen’s underlying rough draft. Certain passages clearly reflect the time when Machen was writing, not the later time when Rian was writing. The material that Rian must have written (narratives of events that occurred after Machen stopped writing and references to literature published after that time) contains many discontinuities with the surrounding material that presumably originated from Machen’s pen. Peculiar aspects of Rian’s preface and some sketchy footnotes can only be explained by recourse to his use of Machen’s manuscript. A full-fledged stylometric analysis of the book would probably be a futile exercise; nonetheless, some differences between Machen’s style and Rian’s style may perhaps be discerned in the published text.
It would not be quite accurate to regard Machen as the coauthor of The Presbyterian Conflict, since Rian shaped the work in certain ways that Machen would not have approved. Most significantly, Machen wrote to vindicate his contention that modernism (a form of unbelief) had taken control of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and Princeton Theological Seminary, and that the spiritual heirs of the old church and the old seminary were now the Presbyterian Church of America (later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) and Westminster Theological Seminary. But Rian presented this narrative as an example of what was happening throughout Protestant America, and thus endeavored to awaken evangelicals out of their slumber and to encourage them to unite against the modernist threat, hoping that that would lead to revival and renewal in the country.
Perhaps it would be best for any future reprinting of this book to note something like this on the title page: “Evidently based on a manuscript by J. Gresham Machen.”
Notes
- The Presbyterian Conflict will be cited according to the pagination of the original edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1940), with the pagination of the edited 1992 edition (published by the Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) added in parentheses.
- Birch to Sloat, February 15, 1939 (Leslie W. Sloat Papers, OPC Archives). See Part I, section 4 for more on this letter.
- Rian, The Presbyterian Conflict, 280 (197) n. 1.
- Ibid., 8 (4).
- See footnote 20 in Part I.
- There is one other apparent exception, footnote 32 on page 238 (165 n. 33), in material added by Rian, which cites “Minutes of the Second General Assembly,” but this is an abbreviated form of the previous full reference in footnote 26 on page 235 (163 n. 27) to “Minutes of [the] Second General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America, November, 1936.”
- Evangelical Student 6.3 (April 1932): 41 and inside back cover.
- “League News,” Evangelical Student 13.3 (October 1938): 16.
- “News of the League,” Evangelical Student 12.1 (January 1937): 32; “News Bulletin” (in the “O.P.C. Publicity 1936” folder, Charles G. Dennison Papers, OPC Archives). The “News Bulletin” is undated, but the list of new chapters dates it to October 1936. It lists “five new chapters,” but one of them (Texas) was already on the April 1936 list. The other four schools first appear on the January 1937 list (Bucknell, Memphis State, Hibbing, Oshkosh State), along with two added after October 1936 (Columbia, Iowa State).
- The “official” number of chapters did dip briefly to fifty-eight at the February 1937 convention (see “News of the Twelfth Annual Convention,” Evangelical Student 12.2 [April 1937]: 33), when some schools were dropped from the roll, but this cannot be the source for that number on page 70 (44) of The Presbyterian Conflict, because Rian was writing in late 1938 or later, when the number was at least sixty.
- See “Student Christian Movements,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity (ed. Erwin Fahlbusch et al.; trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999-2008), 5:207. The fact that Machen’s key role in the League is not mentioned in The Presbyterian Conflict provides a subtle indication that he wrote the account of it.
- See A. Donald MacLeod, C. Stacey Woods and the Evangelical Rediscovery of the University (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2007), 76. Nicholas’s letter is undated, but MacLeod dates it as “some time in late 1939.”
- Victor Bucci, “Report of the General Secretary to the 18th Annual Convention of the League of Evangelical Students, March 12-13, 1943” (Paul Woolley Papers, WTS Archives), reported that there were only fourteen chapters on May 16, 1942, when he took office.
- See an undated letter from Robert E. Nicholas, general secretary for the League, which has “2/28/40” written on it in the Woolley Papers. Under “Future policy and program,” the first option listed is “Disband?”
- MacLeod, C. Stacey Woods, 76.
- The one citation of the 1938 edition of The Presbyterian Digest in material that was probably originally written by Machen (p. 112 [75] n. 5) that cannot be an updating of the 1930 edition refers to a report made to the 1933 General Assembly. This report was previously published in the PCUSA’s Minutes of the General Assembly for 1933 (Part I, pp. 226-27), which Machen had in his personal library. Evidently, then, Machen originally cited these Minutes, and Rian changed the citation to the Digest (which cites the Minutes for the documents drawn from them). Rian had just updated Machen’s previous references to the Digest on page 110 (74) n. 2 and n. 3, and he noticed that lower on the page cited in n. 3 was the very document that was referenced in n. 5, so he changed the citation there from the Minutes to the Digest.
- That an appendix of supporting documents was originally part of Machen’s draft is supported by the fact that his Statement of J. Gresham Machen to the Special Committee of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, written in 1934, similarly consisted of a historical-theological statement (pp. 3-66), followed by an appendix of supporting documents (pp. 67-98).
- While Rian did still think highly of Machen in 1940, the effusive praise showered upon him in the book was perhaps intended in part to camouflage (or compensate for) his misuse of Machen’s work.
- Rian, ThePresbyterian Conflict, 8 (4).
- The text mentions Barthianism alongside modernism—probably an R anticipation of the subsequent RN discussion of Barthianism being brought to Princeton by President Mackay.
- See J. Gresham Machen, Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (privately printed, 1933), 52, drawing attention to Mackay’s articles in the Presbyterian Banner for January 12, 19, and 26, 1933, and writings by Van Til in Christianity Today for February 1931 and December 1932.
- In a radio interview on December 12, 1936, Machen expressed grave reservations about the desirability of Protestant church union, even “a union of real Protestantism—Protestantism really faithful to the Bible,” saying it would become tyrannical. See “An Interview with Dr. Machen on the National Preaching Mission,” Presbyterian Guardian 3 (January 23, 1937): 171-72.
- In 1939, Rian did add the brief comment that Brunner was at Princeton in 1938-1939 (p. 82 [52]). He also added a paragraph on Westminster receiving the power to grant degrees as a goal of the Machen Memorial Fund (pp. 106-7 [69-70])—not surprisingly, since he was the chairman of the fund drive. Some of the language of this paragraph appears to have been taken from Edwin H. Rian, “The Machen Memorial Fund: Its Objectives,” Presbyterian Guardian 6 (May 1939): 89.
- The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.40, 42.
- By comparison, the first paragraph of Rian’s preface to A Free World (1947) states the purpose and scope of the book, and the second paragraph comments on the importance of its subject matter. The first two paragraphs of Rian’s preface to Christianity and American Education (1949) state the purpose of the book, and the next three paragraphs survey the current situation in public, Roman Catholic, and Protestant schools. The final paragraph in each book lists acknowledgments. Rian’s edited volume, Christianity and World Revolution (1963), contains no preface; his “Introduction” presents an overview of the various essays.
- See footnote 20 in Part I. Sometimes a preface is written well after the rest of the manuscript is submitted, but this sequence seems to be ruled out by the presence of a reference back to the preface at the beginning of chapter 15. Publication in only two and one-half months was rapid, but not unheard of; Machen’s The Christian View of Man, submitted to the publisher in late December 1936, was published on March 16, 1937. See Paul Woolley, “A First Glimpse at an Important Volume,” Presbyterian Guardian 3 (March 13, 1937): 222. Also, The Presbyterian Conflict looks like it was hastily produced with inadequate editing.
- The final three paragraphs were definitely written by Rian. The second paragraph, being an appeal to Protestants based on the first paragraph, must be attributed to Rian because this is his thematic contribution to the book. The third paragraph was also written by Rian, for Machen would not have announced his already well-known commitment to biblical Christianity or called attention to his studies in Germany. As the central figure in the Presbyterian conflict, he would not have stated that he “was one of those involved” in it, though a minor figure like Rian might have wanted to draw attention to that fact. The last paragraph, consisting of acknowledgments, was obviously written by Rian.
- Rian, ThePresbyterian Conflict, 59 (36).
- Ibid., 87 (56).
- This would also accord with Machen’s characteristic use of the word decade, observed in section 3 above.
- See the New York Times, November 4, 1935, and the Christian Century 52 (November 20, 1935): 1480-82.
- S ee Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 353-62. Fosdick recognized that modernism was shallow and transient, but he did not call for a return to historic Christianity. For him, historic Christianity was history.
- O ne might suppose that Rian could have left a brief citation of Minutes because a fuller citation was provided in the notes in the appendix referenced in the footnotes, but the notes in the appendix do not provide any references to the sources of the documents quoted. These notes are simply extensions of the footnotes that refer to them, placed together at the back of the book for convenience.
- The editor of the 1992 edition filled out the reference to Minutes in all five cases.
- At the end of section 1 above, we noted that three times Rian carelessly failed to update Machen’s reference from the 1930 edition to the 1938 edition.
- The four references to Modernism and the Board of Foreign Missions in chapters 7 and 8 of the 1992 edition should be listed as references to Statement of J. Gresham Machen.
- In Rian material, a reference to “The Defendants’ Brief” on page 251 (175) is clear in the context, which is discussing a trial.
- After Part I of this article was published, additional evidence of Machen’s lost work was discovered in the OPC Archives. In a folder from the files of the late OPC historian Charles Dennison labeled “Historian: Interviews,” Danny Olinger found a sheet of lined paper with “E. DeVelde” and “10/8/81” written on the top two lines by Dennison. It contains notes of his interview with Everett DeVelde on October 8, 1981. Some of the notes are in Dennison’s hand, but most of them were written by his wife, Virginia. She recalls being present at the interview at the DeVeldes’ home in Fallston, Maryland, and she says she wrote her notes, as her husband dictated them, while they drove to Green Mount (not Greenmount [see www.greenmountcemetery.com]) Cemetery in Baltimore to visit Machen’s grave, about twenty miles away (e-mails from Virginia Dennison, December 6 and 7, 2012). DeVelde’s statement in 1981 shows that decades after his mistaken declaration in 1937 that The Conflict was forthcoming, he remained convinced that Machen had been writing that book prior to his death. He believed that Machen’s manuscript was still “extant” (but in whose possession?), but he now only “supposed” that it had been finished. His unwavering confidence that Machen had been writing a manuscript—despite what Rian may have said to him about that after Machen’s death, and despite the uncertain fate of that manuscript that he probably never saw—is explicable only on the assumption that DeVelde had learned about this work, including its intended time of completion, directly from Machen himself. This confirms what we have argued on other grounds. If DeVelde had any suspicion that Rian had made inappropriate use of Machen’s manuscript, he kept it to himself when interviewed by Dennison in 1981. Since neither the notes of this interview nor Dennison’s marginal comments make any reference to DeVelde’s memorial to Machen, we must infer that it was on a later occasion that Dennison first learned of it. And since these notes make no reference to Rian’s book, Dennison’s suspicion of its connection to Machen’s lost work, hinted at in his 1993 footnote, evidently arose during the intervening years, perhaps in conversation with DeVelde (who died in 1991) or someone else. (These matters are discussed in Part I of this article, pp. 223-29.)
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