Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 18:3 (Mar 2022)
Article: Melvin Grove Kyle And The United Presbyterian Contribution To Evangelical Scholarship
Author: Jeffrey S. McDonald

Melvin Grove Kyle And The United Presbyterian Contribution To Evangelical Scholarship

Jeffrey S. McDonald

Pastor of Avery Presbyterian Church (EPC), Bellevue, Nebraska

Abstract: This article deals with Melvin Grove Kyle (1858–1933), an eminent scholar, apologist, and archaeologist who did much to defend and advance the cause of conservative Presbyterianism and Evangelical Christianity.

In 1925, when J. Gresham Machen and his Princeton Seminary colleagues were launching the League of Evangelical Students (LES), no PCUSA seminary presidents came to their aid. However, the president of the nation’s oldest and most enthusiastically evangelical Presbyterian seminary, Xenia, decided to support Machen and the LES from the start. Xenia was founded in 1794 and was one of two United Presbyterian seminaries in America. While other Presbyterian seminary administrators spurned Machen’s efforts, the spirited United Presbyterian, Melvin Grove Kyle, embraced them wholeheartedly. Tall and skinny the sixty-seven-year-old Kyle was an advocate of evangelical Presbyterian scholarship and the bold stands of Machen. Kyle, who was perhaps the most scholarly Presbyterian seminary president in America was a volcano of energy and there was no doubt where he stood in the great theological debates of his era. Kyle wrote several books, edited a leading Christian academic journal, participated in many excavations, taught and lectured on biblical

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archaeology widely, established a Bible lands museum that still exists today, and belonged to various academic societies. He was learned and diplomatic, but unwavering in his theological stance and his commitment to evangelical Presbyterian scholarship.

Melvin Grove Kyle was born on May 7, 1858 on a farm in Harrison County, Ohio, a rural and sparsely populated area in the Eastern part of the state. Kyle was from Scotch-Irish and German descent and raised in the United Presbyterian Church of North America.1 In 1881 he graduated from the UP’s Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. Retrospectively, Kyle claimed that Muskingum was at the time “one of the most conservative [Christian] institutions in the land.”2 Nevertheless, Kyle claimed that he and his Muskingum students spent lots of time at the college discussing skepticism and liberal ideas. Kyle argued that they did this so much that he and his fellow classmates “must have seemed to our betters an unbelieving lot.” According to Kyle he talked to his father and minister about the new ideas. Kyle noted:

When we returned occasionally to our homes, we began to air some of our sophomoric wisdom and our fathers peered over their glasses ...