Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: Hot Chocolate And Confirmation: J. Gresham Machen And World War I
Author: Levi Berntson

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Hot Chocolate And Confirmation:
J. Gresham Machen And World War I

Levi Berntson

Levi Berntson is Assistant Professor of Theology at Reformation Bible College, Sanford, FL, and a PhD candidate in Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He is also an ordained teaching elder in the PCA. This article is a revised version of an address given at the 2023 Winter Conference at Reformation Bible College on January 16, 2023.

J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was one of the most important Christian figures of the early twentieth century, not only because he founded a seminary, a missions organization, and a denomination, but also because of his prolific and abundant writings. But it is easy to forget that Machen was no ivory tower thinker; he himself had spent a significant portion of his life serving the French and American troops in France during the First World War. This article examines this powerful episode of Machen’s life, and it demonstrates that there are at least five distinct but related ways that the war confirmed Machen’s theology and pushed him forward in his own perception of his theological and scholarly work after the war.

Introduction

The year 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Christianity and Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937).1 Machen is easily one of the most important figures of early twentieth-century American Christianity. He founded a seminary, a denomination, and a missions organization, all of which have been very influential in America. Clarence Macartney (1879–1957), one of Machen’s colleagues, wrote of him, “He was the greatest theologian and defender of the Christian faith that the church of our day has produced.”2 With such impressive accomplishments and reports as these, Machen may strike us as superhuman. But, like each of us, Machen was a person with mentors that taught him, passions that drove him, sorrows that formed

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him, and experiences that shaped him. One of those experiences that had a profound impact on Machen was his time at the front in World War I in France when he served the soldiers as part of the YMCA.

It would be too much to say that Machen’s time in France created the great defender of the gospel that he was. Machen’s theology was already formed when he went off to the front. By his own testimony, his three most formative experiences were his upbringing, his education at Princeton, and his time of study in Germany (discussed below). After these formative events, Machen was set in the direction he would remain throughout...