5

THE LAST HERESY TRIALS, 1891-1900

The views propounded by Dr. Briggs in his Inaugural are not new. They have all been stated by him in one or another of his published works, in articles in the Presbyterian Review, during his ten years' editorship, and in more recent contributions to other periodicals. Moreover, for the past ten years, Dr. Briggs has been teaching Biblical Theology in the seminary, and has been expounding to successive classes of students the statements for which he is now arraigned. The present excitement is, as we believe, due, largely, to the tone of the Inaugural Address, to certain unguarded expressions, and to an impression that the transfer of the author to the Chair of Biblical Theology would be subject to the veto of the general Assembly.

So concluded the faculty of Union Seminary in 1891, shortly after the General Assembly vetoed Charles Briggs' election to the newly created chair of Biblical Theology.⁽¹⁾ The faculty insisted that the decisive issue in the widespread outrage over Briggs' 1891 Inaugural Address had been his rhetoric--"unguarded expressions"--not higher criticism or biblical theology, the new academic subdiscipline built in terms of higher criticism. This line of reasoning rested on an unstated assumption: if the issue really had been theology, Briggs would have been formally charged with heresy at least a decade earlier, and possibly as early as 1876. The Inaugural Address had to be peripheral theologically, the faculty concluded. Half a century later, Briggs' former colleague, William Adams Brown, was still echoing this defense. "That a man who had been teaching theology for sixteen years, in one of the leading institutions of the Church, and whose orthodoxy had never been questioned, could have been tried and convicted of heresy, by the highest court of his Church, for continuing to teach what he had been teaching before, seems incredible."⁽²⁾ This seems incredible only if you refuse to consider the importance of rhetoric. But, theologically speaking, Union had a good point. Briggs should have been tried for heresy in 1876. That his opponents had waited so long indicates that something more than theology was involved: an inability to impose negative sanctions.

Union Seminary's Judicial Challenge

The unstated implication of Union's announcement should have been obvious to all parties: Briggs' critics within the denomination should not bring formal charges against him or anyone else for heresy regarding the theological issues he had been discussing in print since 1876. If the evangelical New School members in the Presbyterian Church had agreed, this would have led to the judicial triumph of modernism in the Presbyterian Church, at least three decades early.

Institutionally speaking, the faculty's declaration was correct: for over a decade, Briggs had gotten away with Confessional murder--or at least attempted murder--without any threat to his ordination or his academic position. Analytically, the faculty's statement was also correct: it was the tone of the Inaugural Address that had initiated the response. That tone reflected an aggressive challenge to his opponents to do anything about it at this late date--the assumption of judicial immunity. Finally, the analysis was ecclesiastically correct: theology apart from institutional sanctions is institutionally peripheral.

The denomination's previous inaction regarding Briggs' published works on theology did seem to indicate that his theology was of no concern judicially. The judicial question then became: Was Briggs' lecture still theologically peripheral in 1891, i.e., immune to judicial action? If so, then the failure of the denomination's courts to bring Briggs and his theological peers at Union (or anywhere else) to trial a decade or more earlier had granted them and their ideas a kind of permanent "king's x" within the denomination. The modernists announced: "You had your opportunity, and you missed it. You will never be allowed another opportunity. The statute of limitations is in force: your time is up." The Presbyterian modernists' defensive tactic after 1890 rested on the widespread acceptance of this argument within the churches generally. Briggs in his public defense appealed to just this line of reasoning. After 1900, this line of reasoning became universally accepted in Northern Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Episcopalianism. It was literally invoked by the court in 1935 to silence Machen during his trial.⁽³⁾

Lefferts Loetscher, a Briggs apologist in a later generation, admits that "Some of the language of the address was inexcusably careless. . . . His selection of Martineau, a Unitarian, as an illustration did gross injustice to his own extremely high view of the Person of Christ." (This, I think it is safe to say, is a very obscure detail to single out as a representative example of the rhetorical excesses of the Inaugural Address.) He then asks: "Why did he do it? Even Dr. Briggs's most intimate papers do not fully explain his motives--if indeed they were ever fully rationalized."⁽⁴⁾

Briggs' Motivation

There are at least three reasons why he did it. First, he had a particular view of his calling. He regarded his task as near-messianic, as his 1867 letter to his uncle indicated.⁽⁵⁾ He saw himself as the point man for modernism within the Presbyterian Church, and, like Machen's representative role from January 1, 1924⁽⁶⁾ to January 1, 1937 for American fundamentalists, Briggs in 1891 had become the point man for modernism generally. It was his job as point man to test orthodoxy's will to resist, just as it was Machen's job to test modernism's will to resist.

Second, men have a tendency to confess their true beliefs. Briggs' lecture was a highly concentrated polemic. It drew attention to what he had been teaching for many years. In effect, it announced to the world: "I have made it to the top, and I have done so by promoting all these ideas. I have beaten the ecclesiastical system." Personally speaking, this implicit announcement would soon prove premature. As events after 1900 would prove, he had beaten the system theologically, but not rhetorically.

Third was Briggs' career strategy: the upward ratchet. Every time he had escalated the ratchet of heresy, he had gotten away with it, beginning with his Inaugural Address in 1876. He had toyed ("Toyed") with the Old School since 1876 in much the way that Hitler would toy with the European powers, 1933-38. Easy successes made them both reckless. Briggs used his 1891 Inaugural Address as just one more upward move of the ratchet of heresy, but this time his rhetoric brought forth resistance. Massa summarizes the implications of the Address: it "announced to the culture at large that the shared religious world view upon which a continued united identity among evangelicals depended had indeed collapsed, and that the civil war was well in progress."⁽⁷⁾

He refused to stop. Even after he was charged with heresy, Briggs continued to escalate his rhetoric, a tactic that a recent defender says was "probably quite calculated. . . ."⁽⁸⁾ If it was not calculated, Briggs should be regarded as one of the most naive leaders in Church history. Nothing else in his career suggests such naiveté. Briggs immediately wrote an article for the North American Review, a widely read national periodical. He confidently dismissed his opponents as those about to be crushed by the combined forces of modern life. "We stand at the heights of the last [note: he did not say "latest"] of the great movements of Christendom. . . . It must be evident to every thinking man [note: his intellectual opponents must not have been thinking men] that the traditional dogma has been battling against philosophy and science, history and every form of learning. . . . There can be little doubt but that the traditional dogma is doomed. Shall it be allowed to drag down into perdition with it the Bible and the Creeds?"⁽⁹⁾ His opponents had offered in response only "castles in the air, schoolboys' bubbles. . . ."⁽¹⁰⁾ These schoolboys included the two Hodges, Warfield, and Patton.

There may have been a more arrogant, confrontational man than Charles A. Briggs involved in the Presbyterian conflict, but if there was, his public rhetoric did not reveal the fact. Yet Massa, Briggs' most prominent biographer, refers to his "irenic efforts on the lecture platform"⁽¹¹⁾ and his casting of "a distinctly irenic light" on ecumenical issues.⁽¹²⁾ Briggs had many public characteristics, but the ability to sustain irenicism for an entire essay was not among them. Massa later refers to Briggs' "bellicose personality" that "alienated people."⁽¹³⁾ Massa should have written that Briggs repeatedly promised irenicism, but then failed to deliver on his promise. Massa also refers to the "stridency of Hodge and Warfield's arguments"⁽¹⁴⁾ and the "ultraconservative cabal" that "seized control of the northern church. . . ."⁽¹⁵⁾

(Historiographical note: the Presbyterian conflict was part of a much wider ecclesiastical conflict. The spiritual heirs of the victors have written the academically baptized accounts of this conflict. What the liberals--I include Jesuit Massa--have done for over four decades in writing their lock-step accounts of the Presbyterian conflict is to paint the victorious modernists as irenical, peaceful, and just plain jolly good fellows in search of a judicially fair deal. They have also labeled the conservatives as strident. This same mythology was part of the Presbyterian conflict itself. The historians are merely extending the received mythology into our own day.)

Reactions to the Inaugural Address

The religious press reported on the Inaugural Address. The press was hostile.⁽¹⁶⁾ Many of the denomination's leaders were outraged. But the most amazing statement of all came from Auburn Seminary's Allen Macy Dulles, John Foster's father: he reproved Briggs for his "ambiguous attitude" and "vague teaching."⁽¹⁷⁾ (In 1924, Professor Dulles gave his son advice on how to conduct the defense of that other rhetorical confrontationalist, Harry Emerson Fosdick.)⁽¹⁸⁾

Very few seminary professors immediately came to Briggs' defense. Those few who did speak out in favor of Briggs in 1891 found themselves outvoted. One of them, James A. Craig, adjunct professor of Hebrew at Lane Seminary, lost his job for his outspokenness. Edward L. Curtis spoke out at McCormick Seminary; the following May he left McCormick and succeeded William Rainey Harper at Yale,⁽¹⁹⁾ who had departed to become president of the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago.

By 1891, the modernists had representatives on Presbyterian seminary faculties. They had already provided a wedge for the institutional legitimacy of higher criticism. Once on a faculty, a higher critic could not easily be removed if he did not go into print or employ Briggs-level rhetoric. They would soon learn a lesson from Briggs' experience: keep your nose to the grindstone and your opinions out of print. Their continuing presence in Presbyterian seminaries would make it operationally unlikely for presbyteries to be able to dam up a constant stream of indoctrinated graduates.

Union's conservative systematic theologian W. G. T. Shedd⁽²⁰⁾ sent a letter to the Board of Directors stating his total opposition to the Inaugural Address, saying that had he not retired from Union a year earlier, he would retire in protest now. This was a blow to the seminary, since the directors had been unable to secure a replacement for Shedd and had asked him to return.⁽²¹⁾ (After the untimely deaths of his two named replacements in 1891, including Henry van Dyke's father, Shedd was replaced by modernist theologian William Adams Brown. No conservative would ever again hold the position.)

The Union Seminary faculty was split, although members did close ranks prior to the General Assembly of 1891. An iron law of all institutions--families, bureaucracies, and to a much lesser extent, profit-seeking enterprises--is this one: attacks from outsiders must be resisted, for any suggestion that someone inside the organization needs to be disciplined or removed is an implicit assault against the autonomy of the institution. In the case of a bureaucratic agency, such a criticism implies that the bureaucrats had made a mistake in the first place by refusing to screen out the deviant member, and also by refusing to remove him subsequently. Loetscher is correct: the issue was turf-protection: "If the seminary were to retain the power to decide its own future, it must close ranks before the Assembly of 1891."⁽²²⁾ The seminary could not admit what had been obvious to anyone who had bothered to read Whither?: Briggs was a heretic, and the seminary should have fired him in 1889. It really should have fired him in 1876. It hadn't; hence, the seminary had to form a circle with the wagons, with Briggs safely inside the circle. So would the New York Presbytery, for the same reasons.

The Seminary publicly demonstrated its commitment to Briggs by immediately publishing the Inaugural Address. This was in preparation for a fight at the Detroit General Assembly. It issued a second edition the following March. This edition was reprinted five times within three months, with a sixth in October, 1891, and a seventh in February, 1893.⁽²³⁾ The question was: Would the Seminary submit if the General Assembly vetoed Briggs' appointment to the chair in Biblical Theology?

The 1891 General Assembly: Detroit

Briggs must have known he was in trouble when the General Assembly elected Princeton's William Henry Green as Moderator. Massa describes the election as "carefully choreographed" by the confessionalists well ahead of time, although he offers no evidence.⁽²⁴⁾ After it ended, Union's president, Thomas Hastings, complained of a "Princeton conspiracy" to take revenge against Whither?⁽²⁵⁾ This was a self-serving rhetorical tactic: deliberately ignoring the magnitude of the entire conservative wing's outrage against the Inaugural Address. "It's only those narrow-minded, revengeful Princetonians. They're troublemakers!" For the next nine years, there would be a lot of troublemakers.

The Veto

One of the few gains that the Old School had made in the 1869 reunion was the right of the General Assembly to veto seminary professorships. The GA had to do this at the meeting following the appointment; if it failed to do so, the appointment stood (unless Machen was the nominee).⁽²⁶⁾ The Old School had always asserted this authority; the New School had not: its seminaries were legally independent. The New School seminaries consented in 1870 to come under this new control. At the 1891 General Assembly, the Standing Committee on Theological Seminaries unanimously voted to remove Briggs from his new professorship in Biblical Theology. This decision was accepted by the General Assembly, 449 to 60.⁽²⁷⁾ A negative sanction had at last been imposed on Briggs and Union Seminary. Or had it?

The Standing Committee refused to state the reasons for recommending the veto. Francis Patton, its chairman, said that its reason for remaining silent was that there was going to be a trial in the Presbytery of New York, and the Committee did not want to appear prejudicial. Patton thereby shifted the terms of the debate from negative sanctions (heresy) to positive sanctions (approval). He asked the General Assembly to decide whether Briggs is "a man who you are ready to say ought to be sanctioned for a position of official theological teaching?"⁽²⁸⁾ The Committee, like the General Assembly, voted no, i.e., the members did not choose to sanction the appointment. The General Assembly voted to accept the Committee's report. So, the Church did not actually impose negative sanctions in the name of negative sanctions. It had merely refused to impose positive sanctions--a kind of suspended judgment regarding the theological content of Briggs' Inaugural Address. Its veto was defended in terms of a refusal to vote yes. This verbal tap-dancing around the judicial issue of heresy indicated that the Church still wanted to avoid an all-out confrontation with Briggs and Union Seminary.

Who Is Hounding Whom?

At this General Assembly, Dr. Bartlett, a graduate of Union Seminary, defended the veto of Briggs' appointment. He made one of the most rhetorically clever speeches ever recorded in the history of Presbyterianism. He called for negative sanctions: a veto on Briggs' appointment. The Presbyterian Church, he insisted, was not actively hounding a heretic; on the contrary, the heretic had been hounding the Church for a decade. This hound had to be silenced if the integrity of the Church was to be defended. Prentiss reprinted the speech in his book-long defense of Union Seminary.

. . . Now, I say that any society has a right to have some defined rules, and after a Church has been pursued for more than ten years on this question, I say it is to be commended for long-suffering patience and for tender mercy and for quietness and peace. The implication has always been that there is heresy being sought; that this is an age of thumbscrews and all that species of humbug. In this case it does not apply. Every Church is free, but the Church must be free enough to decide the question independently and fairly.

I like Professor Smith's dog story. It was a good one, and it reminded me of one that I will tell you. We had a bench show in Washington this winter and there were several $3,000 and $4,000 and I believe one $5,000 dog exhibited there. One day this $5,000 dog got out.⁽²⁹⁾ He was a rather ferocious fellow, though very expensive, and running down the street he seized one of my fellow-citizens in a convenient place in the back (laughter,) and his owner, who was chasing him, cried out to the citizen who had been seized: "Don't injure that dog, you might spoil him, and he is a very valuable dog"--and all the while the dog was gnawing away, and the poor man had the impression that he was not in any great danger of injuring the dog, but that the dog was in great danger of injuring him.

And so it is. We have been pursued and finally caught, and we wish for them to make the apology. Who has made this disturbance? Is it the Presbyterian Church, through spies and queer and double construction chasing a man down to convict him of heresy? The Church is forced to regard it, and we simply say: Let go. Let us alone. And if the time has come when you must go out from the beautiful land of Egypt under the repression of this awful Pharaoh--the Presbyterian Church--we say, go, and take all your intimate friends with you. (Laughter and applause.)⁽³⁰⁾

Evading the Sanctions in 1891

Sanctions are an inescapable concept. It is never a question of "sanctions vs. no sanctions." It is always a question of whose sanctions. Who will impose them, in terms of which judicial standards? If the Old School could not get the New School to impose negative sanctions, then the modernists would eventually impose them on either or both wings. Charles Briggs in 1891 had at last forced the Presbyterian Church to consider this inescapable reality. It had taken a decade and a half of his escalating rhetoric to force this decision on the denomination. His deviant, anti-Confessional theology had been insufficient for the task; only his rhetoric had accomplished it. Yet even in 1891, the Church refused to impose negative sanctions officially; it merely refused to impose positive sanctions.

Would Union Seminary comply with the decision of the General Assembly? Would it remove Briggs from the chair in Biblical Theology? No. In June, the Board of Directors voted to keep Briggs in the position. The vote was 22 to 2.⁽³¹⁾ G. L. Prentiss wrote an open letter, "To Whom It May Concern," which was published in the New York Evangelist (June 11, 1891). In it he chided Patton for his refusal to "strike a blow for justice, for sacred scholarship, for reasonable liberty, both of thought and teaching, and for the highest interests of Christian truth. . . ."⁽³²⁾ The sacredness of scholarship had been substituted by modernists for the sacredness of the Bible.

In April, 1891, a committee of the New York Presbytery voted to try Briggs for heresy, but the presbytery dismissed the case that November, 94 to 39.⁽³³⁾ The presbytery then produced a document saying that it did not endorse his views, but he should be allowed to remain in the ministry.⁽³⁴⁾ In short, no further negative sanctions. Briggs received congratulatory notices from the following ecumenical modernists: Washington Gladden, A. C. McGiffert, W. Robertson Smith, C. H. Toy, William Rainey Harper,⁽³⁵⁾ and Newman Smyth.⁽³⁶⁾

The 1892 General Assembly: Portland, Oregon

The presbytery committee that had brought charges then appealed to the General Assembly in 1892. The General Assembly voted to require the New York Presbytery to try the case. The General Assembly's "Portland Deliverance" asserted: "Our Church holds that the inspired Word, as it came from God, is without error. The assertion of the contrary cannot but shake the confidence of the people in the sacred Books. All who enter office in our Church solemnly profess to receive them as the only infallible rule of faith and practice. If they change their belief on this point, Christian honor demands that they should withdraw from our ministry."⁽³⁷⁾

As appeal to the Christian honor of the modernists in order to persuade them to withdraw was the height of naiveté. If the conservatives would not impose negative sanctions, why should modernists leave? What was the benefit of leaving? They would then have to fund their operations with money raised from their own supporters. They would no longer be able to get their hands on other people's money. That is always a chilling thought to minorities in any organization. For Progressives, however, it was more than a chilling thought: it was a denial of their religion.

The modernists were power religionists, willing to lie about the Bible, willing to swear a judicially binding oath to a Confession they did not believe. There was only one effective way to deal with them: negative sanctions. This the General Assembly still vaguely understood in 1892; it did not a decade later. Opponents of the infallible Bible, the General Assembly said, "have no right to use the pulpit or the chair of the professor for the dissemination of their errors until they are dealt with by the slow process of discipline. But if they do so act, their Presbyteries should speedily interpose, and deal with them for violation of ordination vows."⁽³⁸⁾ Speeding up Presbyterian justice sounds easy to achieve, but it is not. Imposing Presbyterian Church sanctions is far more complex a matter than Warfield indicated in his summary of the 1892 Assembly: ". . . in judicial proceedings as well as in morals and mathematics, the shortest line between two points is usually the straight one."⁽³⁹⁾ Straight, yes, as in straight up the side of a cliff. The Old School had abandoned its grappling pegs and hooks in 1869, and had very few ropes.

The Deliverance announced: "They should withdraw from our ministry." A contextually judicial word, should. But attached to a legally binding should must be another pair of words: or else. Without them, should moves from the realm of law to the realm of suggestion. What was the General Assembly's threatened negative sanction against all presbyteries--New York's especially--that chose to ignore its warning? It mentioned none. The General Assembly was unwilling to threaten every ordained supporter of Briggs with removal from office.

The General Assembly could act as a court of final appeal, but it could not act as a legislative body. The 1892 General Assembly had no authority to bind the General Assembly of 1893 or any future General Assembly. The judicial character of any future Assembly would be decided by political mobilization: votes. A General Assembly possessed no legislative authority over the presbyteries; the presbyteries had not voted on this Deliverance. A two-thirds majority of the presbyteries was required to establish a new judicially binding theological position. Had the General Assembly submitted its Deliverance to the presbyteries in 1892 and received ratification in 1893, the character of the denomination might have been retained. Such was not to be.

Union Seminary's board voted in October, 1892, to renounce the 1870 agreement. It pulled out of the denomination. And nothing happened, except that the General Assembly announced that it would no longer be responsible for what was taught there.⁽⁴⁰⁾ In short, no further negative sanctions on Union. But what about Briggs?

Briggs' Second Defense in Presbytery

In mid-December, 1892, Briggs defended himself on the floor of the New York Presbytery. He defended the Inaugural: "No one has yet been able to show that any statement made in the Address is erroneous. When it is clear that I was wrong, I will confess it and retract--not before."⁽⁴¹⁾ He never retracted a word, even after his de-frocking in 1893.

He appealed to his writings, from his first Inaugural Address of 1876 to his lectures on "The Bible, the Church, and the Reason" in 1891. "My views of the Bible, of Biblical Theology, and of the Higher Criticism have remained unchanged in essence. They have become more mature. That is all."⁽⁴²⁾ This was not altogether accurate. The extent of his modernism in his published works became ever clearer and ever more radical over time. Whither? was far more radical theologically than Biblical Study; the 1891 Inaugural Address was more radical than Whither? He had been using his theological ratchet, escalating each successive deviation from orthodoxy. But claiming that there had been no significant theological change, 1876 vs. 1891, was a clever rhetorical device. If believed, it would have made his critics look like either slow-reacting dullards or arbitrary tyrants.

He insisted on his rights: "The defendant has not asked for toleration. He claims his rights under the constitution of his Church to teach anything and everything that he has ever taught."⁽⁴³⁾ In short, he argued, because the Church's courts had remained silent, 1876-90, they must remain silent now. The precedent had been set. Higher criticism is now beyond negative ecclesiastical sanctions.

He denied that the Adopting Act of 1729 requires subscription to every aspect of the Confession and catechisms.⁽⁴⁴⁾ He then moved from "not completely binding" to "not binding at all." Eleven pages later, he concluded: "It is doubtful, therefore, whether subscription to the Westminster Confession in any form is allowed by the Confession itself; and it may be argued with plausibility that subscription is against the doctrine of the three standards."⁽⁴⁵⁾ This was another instance of his familiar tactic of setting the Confession against the Confession. The Confession becomes a non-binding non-compact without negative sanctions; in fact, it was never intended to be the legal basis of a Church covenant. He treated the Confession as he treated the Bible: just another judicially impotent document. Modernism's situation ethics extends to the judicial foundations of the Church covenant. Then he added the ultimate insult to American Presbyterianism: "So thought the English Presbyterians. . . ."⁽⁴⁶⁾ Indeed they had, and by 1719, they had become a Unitarian denomination.

Briggs again appealed to his previous writings: his 1876 Inaugural, Biblical Study, and Whither? As a rhetorical coup de grace, he appealed to his 1883 essay on the authorship of the Pentateuch, published in Presbyterian Review. That journal had been co-published by Princeton Seminary, and everyone knew it. Yet, he said, his accusers were unwilling to refer to these earlier writings; they were prosecuting him only for the 1891 Inaugural. "If my Inaugural be heretical, all those other writings are still more heretical."⁽⁴⁷⁾ Here it was: an unstated challenge to the Princetonians to bring him to trial a decade after he had published his views in a journal for which Princeton was responsible. It was an unanswerable challenge. The General Assembly ignored it. He was condemned in 1893 only for his 1891 Inaugural.

"Not Guilty"

The New York Presbytery, in January of 1893, decided to clear Briggs, in spite of the hostility of the Church at large. Loetscher concluded from this that the decision showed a desire for "the subordination of unresolved theological differences to the necessities of cooperation for the successful prosecution of the church's work. It implied a shift in emphasis in the Calvinistic doctrine of the Church."⁽⁴⁸⁾ This evaluation was correct concerning the New York Presbytery, but the 1893 General Assembly, to be held in New York City, had another opportunity to remove Briggs.

By upholding Briggs, the New York Presbytery announced publicly that from this point forward, there would be no escaping theological conflict within the denomination. This presbytery was going to become home base and a point of entry for modernists. One or the other side would win this denominational conflict. One side would have to persuade the other, or, barring persuasion, one or the other would eventually bring negative sanctions against the other.

The modernists could be reasonably sure that Briggs was going to be condemned by the 1893 General Assembly. The conservatives obviously had the votes. The question was: Could others affirm publicly what Briggs had affirmed and still escape the negative sanctions that faced Briggs? Put another way, was it Briggs' rhetoric that had brought him down or his theology? The modernists' strategy of subversion would hinge on the answer. Without a clear answer to this question, they could have no clear strategy. They had to have a clear answer. To get it, they began to test the conservatives' will to resist Briggs' theology even before the 1893 General Assembly met.

Van Dyke's Test

Henry van Dyke was a member of the New York Presbytery. He was pastor of the Brick Church. He openly supported Briggs. Prior to the 1893 General Assembly, in January, he had preached a sermon, The Bible As It Is. He professed contentment with his own ignorance. He professed contentment with the existing Bible. He pleaded for an end to meaningless controversy and a return to practical religion.⁽⁴⁹⁾ There must be an end to heresy trials.⁽⁵⁰⁾ As for the theory of inerrancy of the original autographs, it constituted a new test of orthodoxy, yet it is contrary to the Confession. The Confession speaks of the equality of today's Bible and the originals.⁽⁵¹⁾ The inerrancy theory is incapable of proof; the autographs do not exist. But, tolerant liberal that he was, he condescendingly wrote that "we ought to be patient in toleration of the Inerrancy theory, as a private opinion, even though it is unconfessional."⁽⁵²⁾ But as a test of orthodoxy, the theory is unconstitutional.⁽⁵³⁾

Van Dyke then issued a challenge. This challenge was to serve from then on as the moral justification of the modernists' decision to remain within the Church. The Portland Deliverance had spoken of the need for Christian honor: the liberals should leave. Van Dyke countered: "It is our duty not to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church. Christian honor requires us to remain."⁽⁵⁴⁾

To achieve this goal, he recommended a strategy of peace and quiet: "It is our duty to study to be quiet and to mind our own business." In short, no negative sanctions. He understood that Briggs' rhetoric of confrontation had unleashed the forces of conservatism, which threatened the liberals' takeover of the denomination. This rhetorical excess should not happen again. "Let us speak carefully, kindly, considerately. Let us beware of the fatal adjectives. . . ."⁽⁵⁵⁾ This became the new rhetorical strategy for the Presbyterian liberals, 1893 to 1922. (Thirty years later, on December 31, 1923, he issued to the press an incomparably vitriolic attack on Machen. This act constituted his formal abandonment of his 1893 strategy.) Meanwhile, liberals must appeal to the Church's Constitution and the rights thereof.⁽⁵⁶⁾

Van Dyke called a meeting of others who agreed with him. On February 17, he released a statement to this effect, A Plea for Peace and Work, signed by 235 ministers.⁽⁵⁷⁾ It defended "plain Christianity," and argued that theological controversy would hinder the work of the Church. It claimed that a majority in the Church wanted only peace and work. It closed with an appeal to Christian liberty, peace, unity, and missions. In short, no further negative sanctions.⁽⁵⁸⁾

Van Dyke, who would become the most notable literary stylist in the Presbyterian Church, was already a master of rhetoric. He was also a master of deception. In 1891, he had appropriated the language of conservatism to describe the platform of modernism. He re-defined orthodoxy as freedom from institutional sanctions. "Liberty first. And why? Because without liberty there is no true orthodoxy. A man cannot be taught to believe and think right without liberty. Orthodoxy must flourish in an air of freedom. . . . That is the position of a conservative."⁽⁵⁹⁾ This became a familiar claim of modernists regarding true orthodoxy: a system of belief devoid of negative sanctions . . . until 1934.

The 1893 General Assembly: Washington, D.C.

The General Assembly suspended Briggs from the ministry, overturning the presbytery's action. The vote was 295 (to sustain the whole of the prosecutors' case), 84 (partial support), to 116 (opposed).⁽⁶⁰⁾ The GA also reaffirmed its previous year's declaration on inerrancy.⁽⁶¹⁾ Only the New York Presbytery voted not to retry.⁽⁶²⁾ But the General Assembly brought no sanctions against Union Seminary. It did not revoke Union's authority to train Presbyterian ministers. The Assembly declared: ". . . the Assembly disavows all responsibility for the teaching of Union Seminary. . . ."⁽⁶³⁾ The New York Presbytery would remain free to ordain graduates from Union. In short, no further negative sanctions.

Double Jeopardy

In his defense before the 1893 General Assembly, Briggs had raised the issue of double jeopardy. He said that the General Assembly had no authority to reverse the "not guilty" decision of the New York Presbytery.⁽⁶⁴⁾ Had he persuaded the General Assembly on this point, this would have overturned traditional Presbyterianism. Final ecclesiastical authority would thereby have been transferred back to the presbytery in every case in which the presbytery cleared a man. This would have made the presbytery the legal equivalent of a jury under common law, as well as the ordaining executive. It would have fused executive and judicial authority in one institution: the presbytery. It would have broken Presbyterianism's chain of appellate courts. It would have transformed the denomination into a hybrid of Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. (This subsequently took place, 1927-1933.)⁽⁶⁵⁾ By refusing to honor Briggs' argument, the General Assembly maintained the traditional hierarchical appeals court structure of Presbyterianism. This meant that a presbytery could not automatically serve as an entry point for heresy for as long as the General Assemblies of the Church continued to convict heretics.

The General Assembly ignored this argument. The crucial institutional question then became: Would future General Assemblies maintain the traditional Presbyterian structure by continuing to allow appeals from minorities within presbyteries that had formally cleared heretics, and continue to de-frock those cleared by these presbyteries?⁽⁶⁶⁾ Would the Briggs case become a legally binding judicial precedent in the Church's courts? That is, would future General Assemblies predictably hand down decisions against those who preached what Briggs had preached in 1891? The future of the Church would depend on the answer to this question.

Theories or Judicial Standards?

During the 1893 General Assembly, 87 men presented a signed protest. They took Henry van Dyke's line. The protest rejected the General Assembly's assertion of the infallibility of the Bible in its original form, referring to this doctrinal position as "a certain theory of inspiration." (This word--theory--would be used again in 1923 in the Auburn Affirmation to dismiss the virgin birth of Christ.) The protest denied that the Westminster Confession asserts any such theory. The signers defended their position as being the truly conservative one. The theory of inerrancy is not reverent regarding the Bible "Because it is disparaging the Bible we have, and endangering its authority under pressure of a prevalent hostile criticism."⁽⁶⁷⁾ Notice the familiar modernist assertion: the "real critics" of the Bible are the Princetonians, not the modernists, for the Princetonians criticize the post-autograph texts as being imperfect. This rhetorical tactic was used throughout the modernist controversy: painting the orthodox party as the heretics and the higher critics as defenders of the biblical text.

The 87 protesters publicly took Briggs' position on higher criticism, but not one of them was ever brought to trial for having signed this protest. This inaction of the General Assembly and the presbyteries to which the signers belonged meant that the Briggs trial was an incident rather than a judicial precedent. The Briggs case did not become a judicially representative case. Eighty-seven men who agreed with Briggs, but whose rhetoric was subdued, got away with it. They learned an important lesson: "If you keep your rhetoric subdued, you can occupy your pulpit." Without the threat of negative judicial sanctions, capturing the denomination was just a matter of time and organization, which the modernists knew they had and the Old School did not. The 87 had tested the conservatives' will to resist judicially. There was not much will remaining. After 1900, there would be none.

Smith and McGiffert

In subsequent years, two other ordained Presbyterian ministers, both seminary professors, were brought to trial for heresy. One was convicted by his presbytery, and his conviction was upheld by the General Assembly. The other was cleared by the New York Presbytery. The case was appealed by a critic within the presbytery, but the accused resigned before the General Assembly could try the case.

Smith

Henry Preserved Smith had become a higher critic during the time of the Presbyterian Review series. He had written one of the more controversial articles in the series. Like Briggs, he had studied in Germany: Berlin (1872-74) and Leipzig (1876-77). He had been professor of Old Testament at Lane Seminary since his return from Leipzig.⁽⁶⁸⁾ He and another faculty member, L. J. Evans, immediately backed Briggs' 1891 inaugural in their own 1891 address, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Smith's presbytery brought charges against him. He was tried in late 1892, and he was convicted of heresy. He was ordered not to preach or teach his views. But the Lane Seminary trustees voted in 1893 not to accept his resignation and to keep him on the faculty.⁽⁷⁰⁾ The faculty member who had originally complained about Smith had his chair cancelled at the same meeting.⁽⁷¹⁾ In short, no further negative sanctions against modernists, but sanctions against those who criticize them. This was to be the experience of Machen and the conservatives, beginning with the General Assembly's 1926 deferral of a decision to sanction Machen's appointment as professor of apologetics at Princeton.

The General Assembly of 1893 protested both acts of the seminary. The seminary's trustees backed down and accepted Smith's resignation, but they sent a protest to the General Assembly for having interfered.⁽⁷²⁾ Academic turf was going to be defended, at least verbally.

Smith appealed his conviction to his Synod, lost, and then appealed to the General Assembly. He lost there, too, in 1894. The issue was inerrancy, and Smith lost. For one last time, negative sanctions were publicly applied.

Smith went on to publish several books on Old Testament higher criticism. He became a professor of Old Testament at Amherst College, his alma mater; later taught at Meadville Seminary, and he ended his career as a professor and librarian at Union Seminary. In 1926, the year after he retired and the year before he died, his last book appeared: The Heretic's Defense. It was a fitting year: in 1926, the liberals visibly took over the Presbyterian Church.

McGiffert

Arthur Cushman McGiffert was a Church historian. He studied at Berlin (1885-86) and received his Ph.D. from Marburg University (1888). He taught at Lane and had been a strong supporter of Smith. He was not tried by his presbytery. He accepted a chair in Church history at Union after leaving Lane in 1893. In 1897, his book appeared, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age. The book led to a complaint at the 1898 General Assembly. This resulted in a heresy trial. The New York Presbytery condemned some parts of the book, but it refused to bring sanctions against him. One elder, the clerk of the presbytery, then filed charges against him. The presbytery declined to act. The elder appealed to the General Assembly in 1900. The outcome appeared obvious: McGiffert would lose the case. He quietly asked to resign from the denomination. This request was granted. The man who filed charges then dropped them with the acceptance of the General Assembly.⁽⁷³⁾

McGiffert served as President of Union Seminary from 1917-1926.⁽⁷⁴⁾ He was a dedicated modernist. He was also the most accomplished Presbyterian defender of historicism's worldview. His biographer comments:

One basic hypothesis found in most of his works was that historical change makes religious teachings relative to differing circumstances. Late in life he came to the point of saying there was no continuing essence or variation on common themes in Christian history at all. No creed or doctrinal formulation remains in force very long because changed conditions bring about new questions which men should be free to answer as they are led. He also gave historical backing to the widespread view that religion consists primarily of experiences which deal meaningfully with contemporary problems. Blended with that pragmatic approach to spiritual affirmation were definitions of Jesus as an exemplar of human virtue and thoughts of salvation as a social rather than a personal process.⁽⁷⁵⁾

This was not only historicism, it was the theological creed of modernism in the Progressive era: no definitive revelation by God in history, no authoritative creeds, evolutionary process, experientialism, Jesus as a moral example, and social salvation rather than personal.

What the historians of the Presbyterian conflict rarely mention is the truly astounding fact that Briggs, in the midst of McGiffert's heresy trial maneuvering, decided to complain to the Union Seminary Board about McGiffert's doctrinal irregularities. The president of Union, Francis Brown (co-author of Brown-Driver-Briggs), appealed to him not to do this, and Briggs relented, but he did not change his mind about McGiffert. Briggs had taught McGiffert. Massa says that this reflects "Briggs' growing personal fears about the evangelical integrity of his intellectual children."⁽⁷⁶⁾ It was King Canute all over again: "Thus far, and no farther!" Nevertheless, the tide of modernism rolled in, covering Union Seminary and the Protestant Establishment which Union served. It has yet to roll out.

The Will to Resist

The Presbyterian system is based on both creed and court. To prosecute a Presbyterian heresy trial successfully takes a great deal of research, careful theological argumentation, lots of time, the ability to pay no attention to increasingly vocal opposition against "needless bickering," and the overcoming of normal institutional inertia. This price was regarded as too high by the denomination after 1900. The denomination's leaders refused to admit publicly that views hostile to the judicial integrity of Scripture and hostile also to the reliability of the Confession are not random opinions, that such opinions are part of another religion--a religion at war with Christianity. It matters little whether "warm Christian evangelists" held such opinions or "cold academic rationalists." These views have predictable and disastrous consequences for the Church. The Presbyterian Church's leadership after 1900 rejected perhaps a fundamental reality of civilization, namely, that ideas have consequences. Ideas have consequences because men attach sanctions to them. The leadership rejected the idea that negative sanctions are worth the effort in order to defend positive ideas. Conservatives refused to acknowledge the connection between Presbyterian law and God's cosmic model: hell.

Briggs, Smith, and McGiffert had tested the will of the Church to resist. They had met strong resistance. With Briggs' and Smith's de-frocking and the departure from the denomination by McGiffert, the modernists adopted a new strategy: patience. There would be no further rhetorical confrontations until Harry Emerson Fosdick launched a new phase of the battle in 1922.

The Woodrow Case

This case was representative of the Church at large in the final decades of the nineteenth century: a war between conservatives and liberals which was won officially by the conservatives but in fact was lost by them. The details of this case reveal how long it took to convict an evolutionist, how divided opinion was, and how negative sanctions had no effect.

In the Southern Presbyterian Church, James Woodrow (1828-1907) was dismissed from South Carolina's Columbia Seminary in 1888 for teaching evolution.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Woodrow had received his Ph.D. from Heidelberg University, summa cum laude. When he returned to teach at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta in 1856, he became the first teacher in Georgia's history to hold the Ph.D.⁽⁷⁸⁾ Church historian Winthrop Hudson comments on his de-frocking: "A placid and undisturbed orthodoxy continued to prevail throughout the South as a whole."⁽⁷⁹⁾ The Woodrow case was more complex than this.

Woodrow had remained silent on the subject of evolution until he published in 1873 an attack on Robert Dabney's Assaults on Physical Science. Dabney had attacked Darwin and Huxley. Such critical opinions, Woodrow insisted, would produce infidelity.⁽⁸⁰⁾ Anti-Darwinism leads to infidelity: this line of non-reasoning would soon become a standard rhetorical ploy of the liberals. To oppose the latest modernist discovery was seen by them as a mark of a weak faith or even unbelief.

No charges were brought against Woodrow at this time, but it was obvious where he was headed. He ceased writing on the topic for over a decade, although he was asked repeatedly to write on it.⁽⁸¹⁾ By 1884, the board of Columbia Seminary was having doubts about his orthodoxy on this point. It asked him to state his views. He responded in a paper with a line of reasoning that is still invoked by liberals employed by conservative Christian colleges: the Bible is not a textbook of science, and its inconsistencies with science did not undermine its authority regarding religious truth. Evolution speaks only of the mode of creation; it is not in conflict with creation. God created man's body through evolutionary processes.⁽⁸²⁾ The board voted eight to three to support him.⁽⁸³⁾ The three formally protested. In the fall of 1884, the issue began to be debated in presbyteries.⁽⁸⁴⁾

The Committee on Theological Seminaries of the South Carolina Synod cleared him. Two members objected.⁽⁸⁵⁾ The debate on the floor lasted five days. One professor, C. R. Hemphill, reminded the synod that there was a time when a majority of Christians believed in a six-day creation and Noah's flood. No longer, he said; he was correct with respect to Presbyterians. But the synod voted, 50 to 45, not to allow the teaching of evolution at the seminary.⁽⁸⁶⁾ Then it unanimously expressed its support for Woodrow.⁽⁸⁷⁾ This kind of dialecticism was typical of the era; Presbyterian courts had difficulty making up their collective minds.

The Seminary's Board was soon replaced; the new board was anti-evolution. It invited Woodrow to offer reasons why he should not be dismissed. He refused. The Board then fired him. The debate in the denomination's press went on.⁽⁸⁸⁾ The Church's press was strongly opposed to him, except for the journal he owned (The Southern Presbyterian) and one other.⁽⁸⁹⁾ Thompson summarizes: "None of those who publicly defended Dr. Woodrow announced himself as an evolutionist, but they apparently agreed with Dr. John B. Adger, who denounced as intolerable [Columbia Seminary professor] Dr. Girardeau's view that a theological professor was not free in his classrooms to inculcate views contrary to the Standards of the church."⁽⁹⁰⁾

He still refused to resign.⁽⁹¹⁾ The Synod of South Carolina agreed with him, by a vote of 82 to 50, and denounced the board's action as unconstitutional. The synods of South Georgia and Florida agreed. The Synod of Georgia, under whose jurisdiction his presbytery (Augusta) operated, agreed with the board. The board reaffirmed its decision: please resign, it said. This was in December, 1885.⁽⁹²⁾ He refused. He had already asked his presbytery to try him.⁽⁹³⁾ He was acquitted in a preliminary hearing in 1886. This decision was appealed by a member of the presbytery's court to the General Assembly. A formal presbytery trial was scheduled to take place after the General Assembly met in 1886.⁽⁹⁴⁾

Debate at the General Assembly took five days.⁽⁹⁵⁾ The Assembly voted 137 to 13 to reject his views. Then followed three more days of debate and another rejection.⁽⁹⁶⁾ At his subsequent trial by his presbytery, he was cleared. The presbytery then formally protested the General Assembly's decision against him as having been judicially premature. But the Synod of Georgia backed the Seminary, 56 to eight, and instructed the board to call for his resignation again. The Synod sustained the 1885 complaint against the Augusta Presbytery. So, Woodrow announced that he would appeal the case back to the General Assembly. The Synod of South Carolina then informed Woodrow that it believed he should resign. Would he do so? He replied by telegram: no, I won't.⁽⁹⁷⁾

Meanwhile, the confusion had so disrupted the Seminary that it had suspended operations for the academic year, 1886-87.⁽⁹⁸⁾

His appeal to the General Assembly against the Synod of Georgia was not sustained in 1888. God made man directly from the dust of the ground, the General Assembly announced.⁽⁹⁹⁾ Then Columbia Seminary fired him--no letter of resignation needed. This had taken four years.

The story was not over. Woodrow then requested a transfer to the Charleston, South Carolina, Presbytery, where he was also teaching at the University of South Carolina. Charleston refused to accept him. The General Assembly decided in 1889, contrary to its own rules (Paragraph 277), to allow him to remain a member in good standing of the Augusta Presbytery despite the fact that he had moved to Charleston.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

In summary, his presbytery had sustained him in 1886. The Synod of Georgia then identified his ideas as heretical; his presbytery ignored the Synod. The 1888 General Assembly then pronounced his views as heretical; his presbytery ignored this. The Charleston Presbytery did not want him, so the General Assembly of 1889 allowed him to remain a minister in good standing in the Augusta Presbytery. It did this by self-consciously violating the Church's structure of presbyterial authority. End of case, 16 years after his initial public attack on Dabney. Conclusion: the wheels of Southern Presbyterian justice ground slowly, but they ground exceeding coarse.

His nephew and namesake Woodrow Wilson no doubt was pleased. Nevertheless, Uncle James had been dismissed by Columbia Seminary. Wilson had written to his future wife: "If uncle J. is to be read out of the Seminary, Dr. McCosh ought to be driven out of the church, and all private members like myself ought to withdraw without waiting for the expulsion which should follow belief in evolution."⁽¹⁰¹⁾ But McCosh died in great esteem, and Wilson did not withdraw. By the time Wilson left Princeton in 1910, theistic evolution was regarded by the faculty as reactionary. They imbibed their Darwinism straight.

The story was still not over. In 1894, with Woodrow now serving as president of the University of South Carolina, the Charleston Presbytery accepted him as a member. In 1901, he was elected Moderator of the Synod of South Carolina. At his retirement from teaching at the University, the board of directors of Columbia Seminary adopted resolutions retroactively affirming his piety and his theological orthodoxy. It repealed all of its former actions against him. "When he died a year and a half later--aged 78--the old controversy was all but forgotten.⁽¹⁰²⁾

This complex story remains forgotten today. Specialized textbooks in American Church history still present the case as if he had lost. They make him into a martyr. If he was, he was a unique martyr: not only did he avoid being eaten by the lions, they came to revere him as their beloved tamer.

Other Cases

In the Methodist Church, in 1904, there was a second attempt to de-frock theology professor Borden Parker Bowne of Boston University. He had studied in Paris, Halle, and Göttingen in the mid-1870's. He was on the Boston University faculty from 1870 to 1910. This attempt failed.⁽¹⁰³⁾ The next year, 1905, the last successful attempt by the Methodist Episcopal Church to stamp out heresy took place, when the bishops exercised their authority to have higher critic Hinckley G. Mitchell removed from Boston University's faculty.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ In 1908, the Judiciary Committee of the Methodist General Conference removed the authority of the bishops to oversee the orthodoxy of professors in the denomination's theological schools.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ There would never again be a significant investigation by the Methodist Church into the alleged heresy of one of its ministers.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾

The Congregationalist conservatives succeeded in 1885 in ousting E. C. Smyth--another higher critic named Smith (almost)--from Andover Seminary for his views on higher criticism. He was reinstated in 1892, and no other Andover Seminary liberal was ever ejected for his beliefs.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

In 1905, Edward Curtis was appointed acting dean at Yale Divinity School. He had previously taught at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, but the conservatives there had resisted him. He was a strong defender of higher criticism, the author of the commentary on Chronicles in the International Critical Commentary.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Yale clearly had completed its move into modernism.

The Episcopal Church de-frocked Dr. Algernon Crapsey in 1906. In the midst of the 1924 flap over Fosdick in several Protestant denominations, he called the Fosdick dispute a disgrace.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾

Almost, But Not Quite: 1895-97

The General Assembly of 1895 voted to require candidates for the ministry to be graduates of only those Presbyterian seminaries that were in submission judicially to the General Assembly.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ This was an attack on Union Seminary. The General Assembly spoke for the Church. If it was willing in its capacity as the Church's supreme court invariably to revoke the ordinations of those who graduated from non-approved seminaries, then minority complaints from the presbyteries would be successful. The generation-long purge would begin. Presbyterian seminaries would be brought to heel by threatening the removal their indispensable positive sanction for students: a union card for Presbyterian ordination. Union's Presbyterian union card would end. This might have become the crucial institutional decision by the conservatives in the history of the Northern Presbyterian Church after 1869, but it was not to be. This rule was reversed by the 1897 General Assembly.⁽¹¹¹⁾ The presbyteries were acknowledged as sovereign in matters of ordination. This was a replay of a similar pair of battles in 1738-40 and 1834, when the New Side and the New School, respectively, repelled Old Side and Old School attempts to control ordination from the General Assembly level.⁽¹¹²⁾ In short, no further negative sanctions against liberal seminaries.

Briggs Pushes Up the Ratchet Again: Ecumenism

Briggs became a minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church in March of 1898.⁽¹¹³⁾ He sent out a press release that announced: "I withhold the reasons for this decision in the interests of peace and quietness."⁽¹¹⁴⁾ Ah, yes: Professor Peace and Quiet. Just what Union needed: a world-famous rhetorical confrontationalist who had now cast doubts publicly on the integrity of the Presbyterian Church. "The board was not amused," Massa writes.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ Yet he remained on the faculty of Union.

In 1909, he published Church Unity, in which he called for a new unified Christianity. There was no significant idea in this book that had not been present in Whither? in 1889, but his claims had escalated. He explicitly argued that Modernism (capital "M") was in the process of undermining the Roman Catholic Church, and would bring it out of its medievalism. (He was correct, but this process took half a century to begin and about a decade to complete, once begun.)⁽¹¹⁶⁾ This, in turn, would make possible a unification of Christian denominations.⁽¹¹⁷⁾

It is evident to intelligent observers [the modernist's familiar rhetorical appeal to the court of culturally meaningful public opinion--imbeciles and fundamentalists need not apply] that Christianity is passing through a process of change which is gradually transforming it. Provincial, denominational, national and racial types of Christianity are confronted as never before in Christian history with other great historic religions of the world; with various races and peoples unknown to those who formulated the current doctrines and organized the existing institutions of Christianity, and the Church is obliged to adapt itself to these new conditions and circumstances to a greater degree. The Christianity of former days is passing, modern types of Christianity are springing up and asserting themselves, and we are obliged to ask what the Christianity of the future will be. . . . Modernism, however much discord it may seem to produce, is really gradually dissolving the discord of Christianity and preparing the way for the Reunion of Christendom.⁽¹¹⁸⁾

To achieve this unity, the creeds must be altered, especially passages suggesting negative eternal sanctions. The Nicene Creed pronounced damnation against those who refused to assent. "They ought never to have been used with the Creed. They may be appropriate as the judgment of the Council, but they are not proper in public worship."⁽¹¹⁹⁾ That is to say, the pronouncement of negative sanctions may have been appropriate for that one Church council back in 325, but not in the continuing worship of the Church.

He went on to quote the late Philip Schaff, whose 2,500-page history of the creeds ("symbols") is one long call for the creation of some future universal creed that will provide "future harmony"⁽¹²⁰⁾ and "union and concord among the different branches of Christ's kingdom."⁽¹²¹⁾ Schaff had said of the Canons of Dort that they were like the Lutherans' Formula of Concord: precise language, consistent and necessary developments (implied qualification: for their day). "Both prepared the way for a dry scholasticism which runs into subtle abstractions, and resolves the living soul of divinity into a skeleton of formulas and distinctions. Both consolidated orthodoxy at the expense of freedom, sanctioned a narrow confessionalism, and widened the breach between the two branches of the Reformation."⁽¹²²⁾

Briggs predicted "a crisis in which all of the forces of Christianity will come into play in order to give birth to a new age of the world in which the discord of Christendom will die away, and concord will live and reign and express its new faith and new life in a Creed, a choral praise to the triune God. . . ."⁽¹²³⁾ The new Christendom would be more like a choir than a civilization.

But the hard questions remained: Who will write the music, select the music to be performed, choose the singers, and direct the choir? And who will pay the performers?

The Rhetoric of Deception Revisited

A new Catholicism is coming. "The Coming Catholicism will be orthodox."⁽¹²⁴⁾ But who are the orthodox? He said there were two parties battling for control of Christianity: the Modernists and the Medievalists.⁽¹²⁵⁾ The Medievalists defend the form of doctrine, the "philosophical formula" of faith. Then Briggs once again invoked rhetoric: "The letter of these doctrines is dead, the living substance is wrapped in grave clothes. . . . Lazarus must come forth into the realities of the modern world."⁽¹²⁶⁾ This will make the old formulas live again. "This is not to destroy the doctrines, it is rather to make them live again."⁽¹²⁷⁾ All this is offered in the name of orthodoxy: "It is not to substitute error and heresy for the doctrinal judgments of Christianity. It is to banish all error and heresy, due chiefly to misconceptions and misstatements of the theologians, by letting the pure, unadulterated, undefiled truth shine forth from the new candelabra upon which the ancient lamps of orthodoxy are now being placed."⁽¹²⁸⁾ This is Orwellian newspeak, four decades before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published: heresy is orthodoxy, received doctrines are error.

Men want to confess their true faith. Now that no negative sanctions could affect him, Briggs made his public confession. He was in 1909 what he had been in 1876: a modernist. "Modernism is the embodiment of the Zeit-Geist, the spirit of our age, that our Lord is using to mediate between the past and the future of his kingdom." Modernists, not their adversaries, are the true conservatives: "The Modernists, who have been smitten by the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches alike, are for the most part, not radicals, but conservatives. . . ."⁽¹²⁹⁾ If you support attacks on modernists, you are the true radical. "The attack of the ecclesiastics upon conservative Modernists, in every case, has strengthened the hands of the radicals and stayed the hands of those scholars who were mediating the reconciliation of the Church with the modern world, and the advance of the Church to a higher and better future, by the use of the more comprehensive and efficient methods of modern thought and modern life."⁽¹³⁰⁾ Here was the deceptive rhetorical appeal that he had employed for over three decades to thwart the logic of confessional orthodoxy. He and his peers were the true conservatives, the true enemies of radicalism in the Church. They were also the true agents of true progress. Truly.

A Vision of Victory

He ended the book with this messianic vision: "When once the great fundamental Catholic principle of Holy Love has become the material principle of entire Christianity, it will fuse all differences, and, like a magnet, draw all into organic unity about that centre where Love itself most truly reigns. Nothing in this world can stand against such a Catholic Church. She will speedily draw all mankind into the kingdom of our God and Savior."⁽¹³¹⁾

From 1903 to 1907, he actively sought a reuniting of Protestantism with what he mistakenly regarded as a liberalizing Roman Catholic Church.⁽¹³²⁾ This liberalizing movement was short-lived (1890 to 1907).⁽¹³³⁾ It did not revive until the papacy of John XXIII (1958 to 1963), after which it transformed the Church in about three years--a process dwarfing the capture of the Protestant mainline churches in both its speed and intensity. Not surprisingly, Briggs in 1907 did not win any Protestants to this new cause, which soon became a distinct embarrassment to his liberal allies. He had gone too far this time. Liberal Protestants, then as now, recognized who would be Jonah and who would be the whale in any ecumenical consummation with Rome.

What we see in the confession of Briggs as he grew bolder over the years is the systematic working out of a religious viewpoint. That viewpoint was not Christianity; it was humanism. This perspective was present in Whither?, when he was still a member of the Presbyterian Church. His chapter in Whither?, "Thither," had become a full volume.

The difficulties that the orthodox wing experienced in removing Briggs from the Church pointed to a looming problem--a problem that would henceforth plague the Northern Presbyterian Church: defenders of Christian orthodoxy could not rally a majority of the Church's leaders in a full-time policing of its ranks. They could not apply negative sanctions.

Conclusion

Leland Griffin's theory of the three stages of rhetoric in historical movements--doubt, institutional crisis and confrontation, and consolidation⁽¹³⁴⁾--applies well to the rhetorical battle over higher criticism in the United States. Applying his theory reveals the organizational error of the Confessionalists. The initial stage of rhetoric, marked by self-doubt by higher criticism's pioneers, was in the 1870's and 1880's. Briggs had made the transition psychologically a decade earlier in Germany, but he was not ready to go public with this until his 1876 Inaugural Lecture. When he did, he became the higher criticism movement's point man in the Presbyterian Church. The second stage, which is marked by an institutional crisis, erupted in 1891 with his second Inaugural Lecture. The third stage, consolidation, did not begin until after 1925.

Mark Noll, in his study of the history of higher criticism and its effects on American evangelicals, has summarized the 30-year period, 1870-1900. He notes that "A distinctly evangelical approach to the study of Scripture, involving a self-conscious stance toward biblical criticism, did not emerge in America until the last third of the nineteenth century. . . . In 1870 most Americans, including most academics, agreed on what it meant for the Bible to be the Word of God. By 1900, Christians contended with each other as to how the Bible was the Word of God. And the academic world at large asked if it was."⁽¹³⁵⁾ We can see this change encapsulated in the transformation of Princeton University: from the accession of James McCosh to the presidency in 1868, through the presidency of Francis Patton, 1888-1902, ending with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, 1902-10.

The turn of the century saw the peak in membership of the Unitarians, the Universalists, and the Society of Friends. The decline which they experienced after 1900 reflected the new opportunities for liberal clerics in the mainline Protestant denominations. The New Theology of modernism had secured major gains in most denominations by 1900.⁽¹³⁶⁾ The primary exception in the North was the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. On the surface, it appeared as though the modernists had been routed. But had they? Only if negative sanctions continued to be applied. But would they?

It was clear in 1900 that if a major case of heresy arose, the New School would probably prosecute the case. But for such a case to be tried, it would almost certainly have to be the result of an offensive attack by the defendant. The New School would not initiate proceedings without extreme provocation, meaning rhetorical excess. To gain judicial immunity for modernism, the modernists needed only to avoid rhetoric that might initiate a confrontation. As long as the men who held views that were openly contrary to the Westminster Confession also held their peace, the New School would protect them. After all, the 1837 split had come following the New School's successful defense of Albert Barnes against an Old School attack. This is why Union Seminary historian George Prentiss linked together Albert Barnes, Briggs, and Smith in his 1899 apologetic of the Seminary: "For, at the best, an American heresy trial, like that of Albert Barnes, or like those of Charles A. Briggs and Henry Preserved Smith, is a pitiable thing in the sight of heaven and earth."⁽¹³⁷⁾ This argument was rhetorical, not theological: covering the apostasy of modernism with Barnes' beloved Arminian umbrella. This same rhetorical tactic had been used in 1891 by Rev. Israel Hathaway on the floor of the General Assembly, when he spoke in defense of Briggs: "Let us not make history so that our children will have to apologize for our position as some have in their position toward Albert Barnes."⁽¹³⁸⁾

After the creedal reformulation of 1903 and the entry of 1,100 Cumberland Presbyterian congregations in 1906, modernists would gain additional protective cover. If the modernists avoided a deliberate confrontation, initiated by one of their own, they would be allowed to remain in the Presbyterian Church. The modernists got the message.

One modernist who might have caused trouble was Thomas Day, a graduate of Union and a disciple of Briggs. He was a seminary professor at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, 1899-1911. The California Synod asked him to resign in 1911. He complied.⁽¹³⁹⁾

Because the conservatives had not driven out the modernists by 1900, both sides de-escalated. The conservatives decided that the war was basically over; the modernists switched their strategy to accommodate this illusion. This rhetorical de-escalation on both sides marked two facts: the victory of the conservatives in the courts, 1893-1900, and the victory of the modernists in avoiding further trials. The modernists avoided harsh rhetoric and thereby gained immunity for their ideas as well as a continuing flow of funds. Their willingness to reduce their rhetoric was shared by other higher critics in America; this was not just a Presbyterian phenomenon. It marked the end of the conservatives' willingness or ability to pursue higher critics in Church courts, at least in the North.

Protestant modernists then began the long process of burrowing into the bureaucracies of the mainline denominations. They had no further need of rhetoric on higher criticism, which would still be taught in the seminaries. The theological lines had been drawn. The takeover of the Church's agencies of positive sanctions would commence: missions (domestic and foreign), ministerial relief (pensions), and social concern--the central agencies of evangelism and healing. The modernists would establish their credentials as men of good will--healers--but they would finance this healing process with other people's money, i.e., with money donated by faithful laymen, most of whom did not share liberal views. Negative sanctions against representative conservatives would come later. What was crucial to the liberals' strategy after 1900 was that negative sanctions would not be applied to anyone until the process of infiltration was complete. Their key word would continue to be toleration. The crucial issue was sanctions.

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Footnotes:

1. "Statement of the Faculty of Union Theological Seminary," reprinted in G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York: Its Design and another Decade of its History (Asbury Park, New Jersey: Pennypacker, 1899), pp. 545-46.

2. William Adams Brown, A Teacher and His Times: A Story of Two Worlds (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), p. 96.

3. See Chapter 12, below: section on "Machen's Trial."

4. Lefferts A. Loetscher, The Broadening Church: a study of theological issues in the presbyterian church since 1869 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), p. 51.

5. See the extract at the beginning of Chapter 5.

6. See Chapter 8, below: section on "Machen Becomes a National Spokesman," subsection on "Van Dyke Strikes Again."

7. Mark Stephen Massa, S.J., Charles Augustus Briggs and the Crisis of Historical Criticism (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 86.

8. William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 94.

9. Briggs, "The Theological Crisis," North American Review (1891), pp. 101, 103. Cited in Massa, Briggs, p. 91.

10. "Theological Crisis," p. 114; ibid., p. 92.

11. Ibid., p. 117.

12. Ibid., p. 117.

13. Ibid., p. 123.

14. Ibid., p. 61.

15. Ibid., p. 119.

16. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 52.

17. Ibid.

18. Chapter 10, below: section on "The 1924 General Assembly: Fosdick, Part II," subsection on "John Foster Dulles."

19. Channing Renwick Jeschke, The Briggs Case: The Focus of a Study in Nineteenth Century Presbyterian History (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1966), pp. 304-305.

20. Henry Warner Bowden, "W. G. T. Shedd and A. C. McGiffert on the Development of Church Doctrine," Journal of Presbyterian History, 49 (Fall 1971).

21. Jeschke, Briggs Case, p. 298.

22. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 53.

23. Jeschke, Briggs Case, p. 306.

24. Massa, Briggs, p. 95.

25. Ibid., p. 96.

26. See Chapter 10, below.

27. Ibid., p. 54.

28. Minutes of the General Assembly, 1891, p. 97; cited in Jeschke, p. 308.

29. With gold at $20 per ounce in 1891, this was a 250-ounces dog. Valuable!

30. Prentiss, Union Theological Seminary, pp. 108-109. Paragraphs added.

31. Jeschke, Briggs Case, p. 309.

32. Cited in ibid., p. 311.

33. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 55. Jeschke devotes Chapter 8 of his dissertation to this trial, the 1892 General Assembly's decision to remit to the New York Presbytery, the second trial and acquittal, and the decision of the 1893 General Assembly to de-frock Briggs.

34. Ibid., pp. 55-56.

35. On Harper's liberalism and great importance for higher education in America, see George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Non-Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), ch. 14.

36. Massa, Briggs, p. 99.

37. "Portland Deliverance," The Presbyterian Enterprise: Sources of American Presbyterian History, edited by Maurice W. Armstrong, Lefferts A. Loetscher, and Charles A. Anderson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), p. 249.

38. Ibid.

39. Benjamin B. Warfield, "The One Hundred and Fourth General Assembly," Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 3 (1892), p. 531.

40. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 55.

41. The Defence of Professor Briggs Before the Presbytery of New York (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893); reprinted in Briggs, Inaugural Address and Defense, 1891/1893 (New York: Arno Press, 1972), p. xvii.

42. Ibid., pp. xvii-xviii.

43. Ibid., p. xviii.

44. Ibid., p. 7.

45. Ibid., p. 18.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., p. 20.

48. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 59.

49. Henry van Dyke, The Bible As It Is (New York: Session, 1893), pp. 9-13.

50. Ibid., p. 17.

51. Ibid., p. 24.

52. Ibid., p. 25.

53. Ibid., p. 26.

54. Ibid., p. 29.

55. Ibid., pp. 29-30.

56. Ibid., p. 30.

57. Presbyterian Enterprise, p. 254.

58. Van Dyke's long ministry, more than any other, was the incarnation of Presbyterian modernism in the years of the Presbyterian conflict. It illustrates the formal commitment of liberals to a Church without negative sanctions until such time as they might gain full administrative control. He died in 1933, just as the liberals were restructuring the Church's machinery in order to bring formal sanctions against the Calvinists who opposed the takeover. Their primary target was Machen. It is one of those ironies of history that van Dyke was related to Machen; he was known to the family as Uncle Henry.

59. Cited in Tertius van Dyke, Henry van Dyke (New York: Harper & Bros., 1935), p. 129.

60. Massa, Briggs, p. 108.

61. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 61.

62. Ibid., p. 60.

63. Jeschke, Briggs Case, p. 353.

64. Ibid., p. 349.

65. See Chapter 10, below: section on "The 1927 General Assembly," subsection on "No More Heresy Trials."

66. The practical question regarding appeals from outside the offending presbytery never arose from a case within Northern Presbyterianism. The soft judicial underbelly of traditional Presbyterianism would remain soft: a unanimous presbytery would remain autonomous.

67. "Eighty-Seven Protest Inerrancy," Presbyterian Enterprise, p. 250. Minutes of the General Assembly, 1893, pp. 167-68.

68. "Smith, Henry Preserved," Dictionary of American Religious Biography, edited by Henry Warden Bowden (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 410.

69. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 63.

70. Ibid., p. 65.

71. Ibid., p. 66.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid., pp. 71-74.

74. "McGiffert, Arthur Cushman," Dictionary of American Religious Biography, pp. 271-72.

75. Ibid., p. 272.

76. Massa, Briggs, p. 151.

77. James Woodrow, "Evolution" (1884), in Darwinism and the American Intellectual: A Book of Readings, edited by R. J. Wilson (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey, 1967), pp. 58-70.

78. Allen P. Tankersley, College Life at Old Oglethorpe (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1951), p. 39.

79. Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), p. 281.

80. Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 3 vols. (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1973), I:458.

81. Ibid., II:460.

82. Ibid., I:462-63.

83. Ibid., II:468.

84. Ibid., II:470.

85. Ibid., II:471.

86. Ibid., II:473.

87. Ibid., II:473-74.

88. Ibid., II:475.

89. Ibid., II:477.

90. Ibid., II:478-79.

91. Ibid., II:476.

92. Ibid., II:479.

93. Ibid., II:476.

94. Ibid., II:480.

95. Ibid., II:481.

96. Ibid., II:482.

97. Ibid., II:483.

98. Ibid., II:484.

99. Ibid., II:485.

100. T. Watson Street, "The Evolution Controversy in the Southern Presbyterian Church With Attention to the Theological and Ecclesiastical Issues Involved," Journal of Presbyterian History, 37 (Dec. 1959), pp. 243-44.

101. Arthus S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, III:217; cited in J. David Hoeveler, Jr., James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition: from Glasgow to Princeton (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 278.

102. Thompson, Presbyterians, II:488.

103. Harmon L. Smith, "Borden Parker Bowne: Heresy at Boston," American Religious Heretics: Formal and Informal Trials, edited by George H. Shriver (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1966), ch. 4.

104. Ibid., p. 151.

105. Ibid., p. 153.

106. Ibid., p. 150.

107. Mark A. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 27.

108. Roland H. Bainton, Yale and the Ministry: A History of Education for the Christian Ministry at Yale from the Founding in 1701 (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957), p. 179.

109. "Dr. Crapsey Calls Dispute a Disgrace," New York Times (Jan. 10, 1924), p. 4.

110. Loetscher, Broadening Church, p. 70.

111. Ibid.

112. Delwyn G. Nykamp, A Presbyterian Power Struggle: A Critical History of Communication Strategies in the Struggle for Control of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., 1922-1926 (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1974), pp. 42-43.

113. His bishop introduced the printed version of George William Douglas' sermon at Briggs' ordination with these words: "The Coptic Church keeps her Scriptures imprisoned in a silver casket, which her votaries kiss; in the same way, a modern fetichism, which has dishonored the Bible while claiming to be its elect guardian, has shut it up, these many years, within the iron walls of a dreary literalism; robbing it, thus, alike of interest and of power. The Book is a literature; priceless, incomparable, and most precious; but still a literature, and it must accept, and those who love and reverence it must accept for it, the conditions of its existence." Henry C. Potter, "Introduction," Sermon Delivered At the Ordination of Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D., and Charles Henry Snedeker (New York: Macmillan, 1899), pp. 6-7.

114. Massa, Briggs, p. 125.

115. Ibid.

116. Joaquin Sáenz y Arriaga, The New Post-Conciliar Montinian Church, trans. Edgar A. Lucidi (La Habra, California: Edgar A. Lucidi, 1985); cf. Malachi Martin, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Church (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). For a representative primary source, see A New Catechism: Catholic Faith for Adults (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967). It was released by the bishops of the Netherlands in 1966.

117. Briggs, Church Unity: Studies of Its Most Important Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), ch. 15.

118. Ibid., p. 426.

119. Ibid., p. 305.

120. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, [1931] 1990), I:4.

121. Ibid., I:11.

122. Cited in Briggs, Church Unity, p. 308. The quotation appears in Creeds of Christendom, I:515.

123. Ibid., p. 314.

124. Ibid., p. 447.

125. Ibid., p. 448.

126. Ibid.

127. Ibid.

128. Ibid., pp. 448-49.

129. Ibid.

130. Ibid., p. 441.

131. Ibid., p. 451.

132. Massa, Briggs, pp. 132-35; ch. 6.

133. Ibid., p. 127.

134. Leland M. Griffin, "The Rhetoric of Historical Movements," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 38 (April 1952).

135. Noll, Between Faith and Criticism, p. 11.

136. Hutchison, Modernist Impulse, p. 113.

137. Prentiss, Union Theological Seminary, p. 323.

138. Ibid., p. 113.

139. Clarence B. Day, "The Thomas Day Heresy Case in the Synod of California," Journal of Presbyterian History, 46 (June 1968).

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