Machen and the Monkeys

Machen and the Monkeys May 12, 2015

In The Dome of Eden, Stephen Webb wonders what might have happened if J. Gresham Machen, Princeton theologian and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, had been at the Scopes trial.

In Webb’s account, Machen’s main concern was to challenge the naturalistic presumptions of Darwinism: “Machen never rejected the basic ingredients of Darwin’s theory. His position was nuanced. He was not very worried about the idea that humans descend from lower life forms. Instead, he defended the Genesis account of creation because he thought miracles were central to Christian faith. . . . Darwin had taught liberals that God is present in nature as a guiding force that works according to the laws of science. . . . Liberal theologians decided that God works through history in the same way. Just as nature began with mere nature and ended up with rational and self-conscious creatures, history begins with primitive societies and is moving in the direction of great cultural forms of justice and morality. . . . Machen argued that this position denied God’s majesty and freedom and overestimated human goodness” (87). For Machen, “if God did not create the world supernaturally, as Genesis reports, then God does not stand outside of natural and historical processes. And if God does not stand outside of nature and history, God cannot intervene in this fallen world in a miraculous fashion, in which case there is no hope for our salvation” (88).

Though sharing anti-supernatural bias with Darwinism, liberal theology itself might end up cannibalized: “Machen understood that Darwinian naturalism might begin by attacking traditional views of the Bible but it would not be satisfied until it also attacked the liberal values of tolerance, equality, and mutual understanding. Machen knew, long before Dennett admitted it, that Darwinism bites any hand that feeds it” (87).

So, put Machen in Dayton, and what might happen: “Machen would have chosen a strategy that countered Darrow at his Darwinian core. He would have met Darrow’s hard Darwinism with the equally hard cross of Christ. He understood that the battle over evolution affects every aspects of Christian belief, but he was especially concerned that the liberal Protestant appropriation of evolution portrayed human nature in such a positive light that it denied the doctrine of original sin. He would have defended the traditional Christian depiction of humanity as both depraved but also uniquely chosen among all creatures to embody the image of God, and he would have warned about the consequences of taking our measure of God from nature and its bitter struggles. He would not have let evolution become a wedge issue dividing Christians, because he would have used it as a wedge issue dividing the world into those who believe in the God above and those who are left with nothing to stand on except the struggle below” (89).

The legal outcome may have been identical. But the shape of the subsequent debate may have been quite different.


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