If you've never been to Princeton, New Jersey I highly
recommend it. It's a fascinating place filled with history and character.
There's much to see and yet the real thrill is to just walk around, enjoy the
streets and wander the magnificent old buildings of one of the most renowned of
the Ivy League schools.
I first visited in 1997 and relatively fresh from two years
in Europe I was impressed. Frankly there's no comparison to what you'll find
across the Atlantic but for the United States, the grand old buildings of
Princeton are remarkable. It rekindled a feeling for me that I appreciated even
if it was a little disappointing when compared to what I experienced in places
like Italy and England.
And while I appreciated the town and campus in 1997, what
really interested me was the seminary. Founded in 1812 the seminary is not
connected to the prestigious university. Nevertheless its campus is located only
a few blocks from the university centre and seems to be a continuation of the
Ivy League school and the town in general. It certainly shares the Ivy League
ethos. Visiting the seminary was for me something of a pilgrimage. At the time
I was steeped in Reformed doctrine and it was a thrill to see the houses where
the Hodges lived and to wander the campus where so many Reformed and Presbyterian
figures of renown had once studied and lectured.
The cemetery was nothing short of thrilling. To visit the
graves of the Hodges, BB Warfield, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Miller and even
John Witherspoon was moving to say the least.
Of course throw in Edward's grandson Aaron Burr, the grave of
Grover Cleveland, Gödel and others, the cemetery is a place of wonder and reflection.
The famed diplomat George Kennan was still alive when I visited in 1997 (and
again in 2002) but I made a point of visiting his grave during this last trip.
I'm not a fan of Kennan but he was an interesting person. Right or wrong he was
a giant in terms of Cold War policy.
It is this last trip, earlier this year that occasions this
piece. My perspective was very different. As mentioned I visited once more in
2002. I wanted to show the town to my wife and it was on that trip we also
visited nearby Bethlehem PA. On the 1997 trip I was with friends and we also
visited the sites of the Log College, downtown Philadelphia and Westminster
Seminary... the Confessional successor school founded by J Gresham Machen in
the 1920s. Princeton Seminary had gone liberal and the conservatives made their
exodus, only a few of them remaining into the 1940s as the school slipped into
the apostasy that so dominates it today.
In 1997 I was on a pilgrimage. In 2002 I was on a pleasant
visit with my wife (with young children in tow). In 2017 I returned with my
wife, teenage children and a very different perspective.
This time I wandered the campus and looked at the grand old
buildings and pondered what the Ivy League represents. Again the seminary is
not connected to the University and yet they share the same culture, ethos and
represent the same forces in society. The seminary is today no longer of great
significance to the wider culture and yet a century ago that was not the case.
Today more people are likely to visit Einstein's nearby house than care about
the halls that once hosted visiting lecturers such as Kuyper and Barth.
In terms of ethos, the seminary represents (and certainly
represented) the same sort of respectability, status and power that are at the
heart of what the Ivy League is all about. The seminary employs the same
imagery and certainly its history is intertwined with its nearby academic
cousin.
It's funny, but for Confessional Presbyterians of our day,
the trip to Princeton is painful and a source of profound emotion. Granted it's
not on the level of a Greek visiting the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul but there are
parallels.
In 1997 I shared the feelings of lamentation. As a Reformed
partisan I wanted to storm Alexander Hall and kick out the infidel theological
liberals that had appropriated it. There's a great bitterness. "This was
ours! All this 'glory' and honour, all this tradition and history was ours. And
these insurgents captured it and took it away!"
While the theological liberals are indeed the enemies of
Christ the lamentation I felt in 1997 was quite gone by my 2017 return. Frankly
the Confessionalist loss struck me as fitting, a case of just desserts, even
poetic.
I wasn't angry or emotional but I felt a sort of cold
reflection. If there was disgust, perhaps it was with myself and how I as a young
Christian thought about these questions.
Standing in front of Charles Hodge's house I couldn't help
but think of his approach to Systematic Theology and his struggles to combat
Darwinism. While the latter was indeed admirable and right, his unwitting
embrace of Enlightenment categories had all but fettered his own hands. I see
him as a tragic figure, trying to hold something together and yet incapable,
not even fully understanding what was happening.
When I think of his son AA Hodge I cannot help but recall the
rationalist nature of his theology and the great lack of wisdom and insight
with regard to society and Christianity. An advocate of what I would identify
as imperialist missionary work and the kind of Sacralist doctrine at odds with
the New Testament, AA Hodge is for all his faults a breath of fresh air to the rank Dominionists and Theonomists who still haunt the halls of American Presbyterianism. At one time
his name was hallowed to me. Today, even though a volume or two of his writings
remain on my shelf, he is not one that I would esteem.
Of course BB Warfield was the 'Lion of Princeton', the great
defender of Calvinistic Orthodoxy in the late 19th and early 20th
century. An author of many fine works, Warfield was nevertheless inept when it
came to defending Scripture in the face of Modernism. This statement will
astonish many for they view him as 'the great defender' of Scripture in the
face of Modernism. But they say this failing to understand his capitulation and
compromise. Unwittingly, Warfield laid the groundwork for today's Evangelical
laxity with regard to Scripture and the collapse of Biblical authority.
I cannot lay all the blame on Warfield. That would be unfair.
But his doctrine of inerrancy as opposed to the older concept of infallibility
did much harm. The Bible was taken away from the Church and handed to the
academy and confidence in Scripture as a supernatural providentially preserved
Word of God was replaced by a scholarly reconstruction, subjected to the
justifications and deductions of men, even unbelievers at that! The Evangelical
disaster with regard to the text of Scripture can be traced back (at least in
good part) to Warfield.
Princeton, so hampered by faulty philosophically dependent
Evidentialist Apologetics proved weak and began to collapse in the face of
Higher Criticism and the Scientific Revolution. Warfield was himself weak on
the question of evolution.
Though not buried there I could not help but think of J
Gresham Machen, the founder of Westminster Seminary and the figure most
associated with the genesis of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). I was
once a member of that denomination and would certainly never have anything to
do with it again. That said, I cannot but to a certain extent admire Machen and
(to a degree) those that went with him. His work on Christianity and Liberalism
still holds a place of honour on the shelf. Though authored almost a century
ago, the fundamental issues have not changed in the least. It is still a
relevant and worthwhile book.
As I walked through the campus I thought about Machen and his
new dissenting seminary. What a change! Abandoning the halls of ivy they were
forced to meet in cramped offices located in downtown Philadelphia. I'm sure it
gave those early professors a sense of excitement and adventure. Their futures
were no longer solid and certain. And yet with the thrill of their new
doctrinally sound settings, they must have also felt a sense of
disappointment... especially when they thought of men like Geerhardus Vos who
remained behind. What had they done? The worldly glory, status and respect had
departed. To this very day, Princetonians of the mainline PCUSA make a face
when I mention Machen's name. He is a source of scorn and disdain.
Does this not demonstrate the Machen faction's great
integrity and fidelity? In a sense it does but on the other hand the fact that
they were all but driven to abandoning the ivy-halls points to something else.
The move to Philadelphia humbled them to be sure, but why? Why was the move
viewed as a loss? I've always heard a great deal about this, lecturers and
authors talking about their great fall and humbling, always cast in a sense of
lamentation and regret. I felt it once myself and quite keenly in 1997.
In their hearts they wanted to be part of that Princeton
scene. This is what I found to be problematic in 2017 and why I no longer feel
sorry for any of them. Princeton's problems are not represented in merely the
takeover by the liberals or the defective theology of its 19th
century leaders. Rather one of the most essential problems is found in simply
walking the campus, looking at the buildings and understanding what it all
means in terms of the culture and the Church's relationship to it. Looking at
the campus I cannot but think it was doomed from the moment it was built.
The Princeton project (as it were) lost its way and became a worldly
institution. And thus it's no great shock that the world took it over. It's
almost a parable for modern Evangelical and Dominionist attempts to capture and
appropriate the culture. They should visit the whited sepulchres of Princeton
Seminary and find out what happens. You can build fine buildings with manicured
grounds and many a historical plaque... but in the end it's all simply
obscuring the spiritual degeneracy at work in its poisoned heart.
In 1997 my eyes were blind to the power that Princeton
University (and Seminary) represents. I was still too caught up in grand
buildings, ivy covered halls and cloister-like porticoes. I was deceived by
romantic and erroneous views of history.
Perhaps by 2017 some might say I was scarred, hardened and
cynical. They might have a point. I have no love for Presbyterianism. Instead
of former and tarnished glory I see entitlement, corruption and hubris. Men I
once viewed as heroes I now see as apologists for the system who in their ivory
tower weakness were exposed as wanting. They were not giants at all. They're
not men to be elevated. In some cases they are worthy of pity. Their system was
a veneer that once compromised, quickly crumbled into the dust.
The faithful confessionalists fled that burning Troy and like
Aeneas sought to build a new one. Did they learn the true lesson of Old
Princeton? I think they learned something from it but for the most part I would
answer in the negative.
Eighty years later they've built new institutions, not in old
hallowed halls of stone and ivy but in shiny modern buildings, appropriately in
the suburbs. No longer wed to old money and power they now represent the Middle
and Upper Middle Classes of which their congregations are mostly comprised.
Ironically, though they have been humbled and have lost a great deal of
influence and respect... the values have not changed.
I doubt I'll visit Princeton again. I am content with what
I've seen. I have found great satisfaction in revisiting old travels after
years of reflection. I don't think Princeton has much more to offer me.
I am very thankful I was able to bring my kids. As historically
minded and aware teenagers they greatly appreciated the visit. We hit some of
the other sites as well. There's the nearby Revolutionary War battlefield,
Einstein's house and more. The trip fit in nicely with some other things we
wanted to see in the greater area.
It was nice to walk the streets, eat some good food and drink
real coffee which is unavailable in rural Appalachia. I am very glad I got to visit
Princeton again, not just for my kids, but for me. I was struck by how
different it all looked now versus my first visit some twenty years ago. But it
has lost its charms and I can now cross it off the list. If I'm nearby I'll
stop in but I doubt I'll make a point of it. There are other things to see.