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APRIL

6, 1935 --Massachusetts. In 1933, J. Gresham Machen presented the Presbytery of New Brunswick evidence of modernism within the Presbyterian Board. He disclosed at that time that even Unitarian literature had been recommended and was used in Riverside Church in New York where Mr. Harry Emerson Fosdick was pastor. The Presbyterian Board had approved literature that denied the deity of Christ.
            He spoke of the cooperation of the Board with the National Council of India which had published a pamphlet denying the inerrancy of the Gospel, and referred to the Formosa Christian College in India which had twenty-nine non-Christians on its faculty and only thirteen Christians.
           The leaders of the Presbyterian Church thundered against Mr. Machen, Mr. Charles Woodbridge, and Mr. Carl McIntyre as well as others who supported the forming of an Independent Board and took issue with them, not because of their doctrine, but on the issue of obeying the Church. Approximately one hundred ministers follow Mr. Machen.
         Today in Boston, Mr. Albert Dieffenbach, of the Boston Evening Transcript, himself a Unitarian, reports on the church trial of Mr. Machen, and calls it, "the strangest of all church trials" because it involves a "rebel against heresy." "All of the controversy has centered in his theological stand which is fundamental and conservative ...there is no question it is a battle of beliefs ... His accusers are the ones who should be on trial ... In Dr. Machen is centered all the spiritual and intellectual opposition to the heresies within the Presbyterian Church ... In any case, Dr. Machen will not be obedient to the General Assembly and dissolve his new board ... To obey God rather than man is an authentic principle as old as the Apostle Paul. It looks to the unprejudiced observer who agrees that truth comes first like a simple case in which Dr. Machen is right ... What he has done, according to all the evidence is not enough to bring upon him lasting cruel judgment. That would be shameful ... One doubts that these elements of Fundamentalism and Modernism can ever come together. They have almost nothing intellectual in common. No matter what may be said in slovenly contempt about doctrines --that they do not count--the fact is that they are the only things at last that do count."
            Mr. Machen, Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Woodbridge will be charged, and their ordination revoked, but they have begun the Presbyterian Church of America and it will be formally organized on June 11, 1936. But as the Presbyterian Church United States uses the name, an injunction will be brought against them. In 1938, the name will be changed to "Orthodox Presbyterian Church," and will emphasize the Infallibility and Inerrancy of the Bible, believing the books of the Bible to have been written by men "so guided by Him that their original manuscripts were without error in fact or doctrine." It will maintain the doctrines of Original Sin, the Virgin Birth, the Deity of Christ, and His Substitutionary Atonement, His Resurrection and Ascension; His role as Judge at the end of the world, the Consummation of the Kingdom; the Sovereignty of God, and Salvation through the Sacrifice and power of Christ for those "whom the Father purposes to save."
          In 1938, the controversy will still be active and Mr. McIntyre, who will have formed the American Council of Christian Churches as well as the International Council of Christian Churches, will withdraw from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to organize the Bible Presbyterian Church. The word "Bible" is Used to emphasize its opposition to the "Social Gospel" and its refusal to fellowship with "that which compromises and represents unbelief" in such doctrines as the Verbal and Infallible Inspiration of the Scriptures, the Virgin Birth, the Atonement of the Blood of Christ, and the Bodily Resurrection of Christ.
          The American Council of Christian Churches will continue contending with the apostate National Council of Churches, and the International Council of Christian Churches opposes the ecumenical policies and liberalism of the World Council of Churches.


 

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