Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 18:3 (Mar 2022)
Article: J. Gresham Machen And The Culture Of Classical Studies
Author: Jeffrey S. McDonald

J. Gresham Machen And The Culture Of Classical Studies

Jeffrey S. McDonald

Pastor of Avery Presbyterian Church (EPC), Bellevue, Nebraska author of John Gestner and the renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelism in Modern America

Abstract: This article deals with one of the most noted evangelical scholars of the first half of the twentieth century, J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937). His classical background helped Machen maintain a healthy balance between scholarship and fundamentalism.

Most of J. Gresham Machen’s career was spent as a professional scholar of the New Testament. Yet, this essay will explore Machen’s ties to classical studies: a discipline that he was trained in and influenced by. His relationships with other classicists will be examined as well as his reputation amongst several of America’s leading classicists. Machen’s classicist orientation will be established, and this will lead to a greater understanding of not only his life, but also of his scholarship and thought. An analysis of Machen’s connections to classical studies sheds important light on his biblical scholarship, defense of the Bible, and disagreements with modernist scholars.

I. Classicism In The Late 19^th Century

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the study of classical literature and languages—Greek and Latin—shaped American education. Indeed, Americans were deeply fascinated with, and interested in, the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. After Christianity,

2

classical studies were “the central intellectual project’ of America prior to the late nineteenth century.1

Knowledge of Greek was a standard requirement for college entrance, and classical literature was taught to help structure “ethical, political, oratorical, artistic, and educational ideals, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly.”2 In the late nineteenth century, the field of classical studies started to split into two separate directions. One direction was that of specialized “scientific” scholarship. The other direction was that of cultivated generalism. To combat this problem, many classicists attempted to embrace both approaches to scholarship; historian Caroline Winterer has labeled this model of learning as “cultivated erudition.”3 This way of doing scholarly work sought to navigate between the excesses of gereralism and the problems associated with hyper specialization. Cultivated erudition was instrumental in the development of early graduate programs in the United States, yet by 1910 this model of advanced study was considered unsusta...