Richard Burnett’s new biography of J. Gresham Machen tells the compelling story of Machen’s transformation “from a modernist to an anti-modernist” (p. 3) during his tenure as a student, and later as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. According to Burnett, a close examination of Machen’s writings and personal correspondence makes it clear that, despite what previous biographers have insisted, Machen ought not to be regarded as a “die-hard defender of Old Princeton” (p. 289) who was determined—throughout the entirety of his tenure at Princeton—to march in lockstep with the heritage of Old Princeton Seminary. Instead, he ought to be regarded as a first-rate scholar who was discouraged throughout much of his tenure by what he believed was the “hopelessly parochial mindset” of the seminary with which he was associated, and who, as a consequence, “was more interested in overcoming Old Princeton’s legacy than preserving it” (p. 206). Indeed, although Machen eventually came around to embracing the substance of the Old Princeton tradition in its fulness, nevertheless he was not persuaded at the outset of his tenure that the contemporary proponents of that tradition—who were reluctant to embrace the methods of the modern university—“were prepared to meet the greatest intellectual challenges” of the age in which they lived (p. 206). For that reason, Machen found himself standing in sometimes more and sometimes less sympathy with the ideals of those at Princeton University who were agitating for what Burnett insists was the formation of a “New Princeton,” a Princeton that would be liberated “not only from the legacy of Old Princeton and the chains of its distinctive dogmas but from theology altogether as an academic discipline” (p. 73). In short, Burnett’s Machen was a life-long proponent “of modern university ideals” (p. 206) who was devoted throughout most of his tenure to helping like-minded colleagues deliver Princeton Seminary from its intellectual isolation by applying “the methods and results of higher criticism” (p. 536) to the substance of the seminary curriculum. As Burnett’s beautifully written, meticulously researched, and often provocative analysis makes clear, Machen’s hope for success in this regard—which was grounded in his expectation that the methods of the modern university would enable not just Princeton but other universities “to flourish, make ‘great scientific progress,’ and eventually produce ‘the beautiful blossoms of an intellectual culture’” (p. 530)—endured until he recognized that the methods to which he was devoted had been compromised by the “antisupernaturalistic philosophy” (p. 323) that came to the fore in the early twentieth century. It was at that point, Burnett contends, that Machen was transformed “from a modernist to an anti-modernist” (p. 3), and his hope for authentically enlightened learning was reoriented along more overtly orthodox lines.

While theological conservatives who are interested in Machen and his relationship to the history of the Witherspoon or Old Princeton tradition will no doubt find much to commend in Burnett’s careful analysis of Machen’s hope, it is also true that they will likely find at least something with which to quibble. For example, I am among those interested readers who is pleased to learn that Burnett may be counted as a scholar who is willing to concede that Machen and his colleagues at Old Princeton had more in common with their Kuyperian brethren than is typically acknowledged in discussions of the history of the American evangelical experience (for example, see pp. 291–302). At the same time, however, I want to push back against Burnett’s unambiguous insistence that Machen’s understanding of the relationship between piety and learning was compromised by the naïve realism of the Scottish Enlightenment. Machen’s eventual “break with modernism was not as clean as [he] thought,” Burnett contends, because he “remained tied” (p. 408)—just as the Old Princeton theologians before him had remained tied—to an understanding of objective science that had a distinctively Scottish provenance. But what if Machen’s approach to believing scholarship was not in fact compromised by the naïve realism of the Scottish intellectual tradition, as recent work on the history of the Old Princeton tradition has maintained? This, it seems, is anything but an irrelevant question—particularly in the context of Burnett’s analysis—for how it is answered will have a dispositive bearing upon how we account for the transformation of Machen’s hope that Burnett recounts and that more conservative readers will likely be eager to celebrate. Did Machen, as Burnett contends, abandon “modernism” and become an “anti-modernist” by “mak[ing] peace with modernity,” i.e., by making a self-conscious effort to make “concessions” (p. 553) to the thoughts and assumptions of the age in which he lived? Or did he embrace “anti-modernism” because he was becoming increasingly aware of the enduring significance of more subtle—and indeed more orthodox—elements of the Old Princeton tradition, especially those elements that have to do with what revisionist historians are insisting was Old Princeton’s indebtedness to an Augustinian understanding of “right reason”? While Burnett’s analysis would be even more compelling if he had wrestled with these kinds of questions, the fact remains that Machen’s Hope is an impressive volume that makes an important contribution to the literature on Machen and the Old Princeton tradition more generally.