Beeson Podcast, Episode 360 John Woodbridge October 3, 2017 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to the Beeson podcast. Well I think you're in for a treat today, because we have another conversation with my dear friend, Dr. John Woodbridge. Welcome back, John, to the Beeson podcast. John Woodbridge: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here, Timothy. Timothy George: Now you and I have had several of these podcast conversations. I think I would have to make up a topic just to talk to you. You're such an interesting conversationalist, and you've lived, as I have now, through a little swath of evangelical history. And so we're going to talk ... We did a podcast, I don't know when it was aired, on the great evangelical leaders we have known. John Woodbridge: Yes. Timothy George: So we talked about people like Carl Henry, and Ken Kantzer, and Billy Graham, and Francis Schaeffer, some of those great figures that have shaped our lives in particular ways ... Chuck Colson. John Woodbridge: Yes. Timothy George: And I think that was just a lot of fun and very interesting to get your perspective on those great people. Well, we're gonna delve back now, a little bit earlier in 20th century evangelical history, and talk about a period that we sometimes characterize as the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. And at some point, you can describe those words and what they mean. But we want to do this through the lens of your own father, Dr. Charles Woodbridge. John Woodbridge: Yes. Timothy George: He's a name, I dare say, that is not as well-known today as the great evangelical leaders we've talked about in the past, and yet played a very pivotal role at certain intersections in the history of the evangelical movement in the 20th century. A person who I think ought to be better known. And so, we're gonna talk a little bit about him. He’s a fascinating figure to me. Why don't you just begin by telling us a little bit about his life story, and how he grew up and the son of a missionary in China I think, all of that background. John Woodbridge: Well, thank you very much, it's a delight to talk about my father, obviously was very appreciative of him and loved him dearly. He was the son of missionary parents in China. My grandfather and grandmother were Southern Presbyterian missionaries in China, a long time ago, and they were somewhat critical towards the American government because my grandparents ran the largest English-speaking Christian newspaper. And consequently, they communicated quite a bit with my grandmother's first cousin, who was Woodrow Wilson. As you know, we've talked about it, my grandmother introduced Woodrow Wilson to her girlfriend, and that's the way Woodrow Wilson met his first wife. So, there was really quite a connected between the Presbyterian Wilson who had been the president of Princeton University. So, my grandparents came from that background and had that experience, but my father was born there in China. And he was raised as a missionary kid, and then went off to Moody school, up in Massachusetts- Timothy George: Northfield. John Woodbridge: In Northfield, exactly. And he recounts a lot of this stuff in his diary, and it's rollicking stuff. He had unfortunately had an almost overbearing sense of humor, which comes across his diary and it's a lot of fun to read. But anyway he went to that school and then went to Princeton University, and played soccer and did fairly well academically, but he didn't know what to do with his life. And so he went back to China to teach for a year, and then that picks up the story of his role in evangelicalism. He came back, then, to America after Princeton and entered Princeton Theological Seminary in 1924, right at the height of the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. So that sort of sets the stage for his involvement. Timothy George: Now maybe we should stop for just a moment and talk about fundamentalism as it arose historically. There were a series of pamphlets called “The Fundamentals,” that were published before your father came to Princeton. John Woodbridge: Yes, 1910 to 1915. Timothy George: What were they about and how did they come to be? John Woodbridge: The Fundamentalist pamphlets were launched by the president of Biola, who saw a need to try and bring evangelicals back to the faith who were straying, from his point of view, due to straying away from the faith, due to the impact of higher criticism and evolution. And so their purposes for these pamphlets, which were written by Canadians, English, and Americans, was to help people come back in reaffirm the faith. They were not political very much in nature at all. Very encouraging, some of them had to do with evangelism, but also dealing with higher criticism and so forth. So, the word fundamentalist sometimes is hooked up with these pamphlets, but that's probably not exactly accurate. Because the fundamentalist controversy itself, of the 1920s, was much more political, these pamphlets were not. Timothy George: Yeah, that word, fundamentalist, I think was coined by an American Baptist named Curtis Lee Laws- John Woodbridge: Correct. Timothy George: ... around 1919, 1920. John Woodbridge: 1920, right. Timothy George: And so it immediately kind of took off and he felt there needed to be a kind of galvanizing movement at that point, things had progressed a little further. But one of the things, before we leave the fundamentals, the pamphlets, it's always interested me in how ecumenical, interdenominational, you mentioned they're drawn from different countries, these leaders, different stripes. For example, among Baptists, E. Y. Mullins, who was the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and usually seen as kind of a moderate conservative theologian, wrote one of the pamphlets for the fundamentals. There were a number of other outstanding leaders who were not recognized as kind of firebrands or radicals, but they were trying to put a stake in the ground and to do it with charity and with clarity. John Woodbridge: Yes, they did, and it was funded by some oil people. And one of the key goals, which I didn't understand until working through them fairly recently, was that they hoped that these pamphlets, which were given to all YMCA directors, YWCA directors, millions of copies throughout the world, one of the major purposes was to encourage evangelism. This is often overlooked. But you're absolutely right, the tone of these pamphlets was moderate and just did not comport with some of the much more pungent vocabulary of the '20s. Timothy George: By the time your father, Charles Woodbridge, arrived at Princeton as a student, things had heated up a bit. And one of the figures in that escalation, let's say, of the conflict into the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, was Harry Emerson Fosdick. Tell us about Fosdick. John Woodbridge: Fosdick was a charismatic person, a very talented individual with a large following. In 1922, he wrote a piece called, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” And he asked the question, will these individuals who have a certain view of Scripture triumph and force good people out of the Presbyterian Church, out of other churches, and his answer was a resounding, No. And consequently, that work set off, in many people's minds, the fundamentalist controversy in a serious fashion. And the very next year, before my father arrived in '24, the person who was going to influence him so much, J. Gresham Machen wrote a book called, “Christianity in Liberalism,” and then that really heated up the controversy because Professor Machen, who was a Greek scholar at Princeton argued that liberalism was not a country cousin religious view from Christianity. It was a different religion. It had different origins and pantheism, so when you say to Protestant liberals that they're not Christians, that spokes their windshield, and it turns out that things are really getting hot. Timothy George: So that book that you mentioned by J. Gresham Machen, John Woodbridge: Yes Timothy George: …“Christianity and Liberalism,” John Woodbridge: Yes Timothy George: …was almost a kind of a landmark publication. John Woodbridge: Yes Timothy George: It in some ways drove a deeper stake into the ground; the lines became more clearly divided- John Woodbridge: Very much so. Timothy George: ... And one of the things about Machen, we want to talk a little bit more about him- John Woodbridge: Sure. Timothy George: ... in our conversation today. You know he was a first-rate scholar. John Woodbridge: You bet. Timothy George: And he wrote with grace, with elegance, so that even a figure like Walter Lippmann, a journalist, not a very religious man at all, commended him for being such a fine, erudite spokesman for that point of view. John Woodbridge: Absolutely. And he also, like so many young Americans that have studied in Germany, he had been very impressed by Protestant liberals with whom he studied, particularly Herrmann, who he said ... he wrote to his mother and said, Herrmann loves Jesus. And this is sort of a confusing thing to find a liberal who loves Jesus. And so Machen battled through the quest for historical Jesus before he would accept the position at Princeton. Consequently, when he started to write about liberalism, he knew what he was talking about, because he had been in Germany. And he was, as you say, an elegant writer, and his work, “Christianity and Liberalism,” really is a classic of 20th century theology, worthwhile for our listeners to dig into. It is a wonderful book. Timothy George: And even before that, I think Machen had written a book called, “The Origin of Paul's Religion.” John Woodbridge: Yes, he had. Timothy George: Which again is a first-rate study of the Apostle Paul and his conversion, over against a view of Pauline life that saw him as purely the product of Hellenistic culture. John Woodbridge: Exactly. Machen did all those things. He wrote other books as well. And your friend and my friend, Chuck Olson, later in life, was put on to Machen and loved reading Machen. Timothy George: You know the first book by Machen that I read was his Greek Grammar. He wrote a grammar of the Greek New Testament. And I used that when I was first learning baby Greek, many, many years ago. So, it’s a pretty good textbook, even today. John Woodbridge: You bet. Timothy George: So anyway, we're getting a little bit side tracked here, but back to these great figures. Your father now is at Princeton. He becomes a friend and a student of the great scholar, J. Gresham Machen. John Woodbridge: He did. And Machen would be, probably in some regards, the person who brings him to full faith in Christ. He was so impressed by Machen. In those days, Machen and he, my father, lived on the same floor of the dorm. Timothy George: We should say that Machen was a bachelor, a lifelong bachelor. John Woodbridge: Lifelong bachelor. Lifelong bachelor, loved to play chess, loved to play checkers, and he did that with his students. He was called Das by the students, plus he had a little extra money and he'd buy tickets so the students could go to Princeton football games. So here you have this remarkable scholar, and you walk down the hallway, and you shave with him in the morning, and then you go to class with him, and then you go to a football game with him ... My father was totally taken by him. Timothy George: You know it sounds like a Mr. Chips kind of character. John Woodbridge: He was a Mr. Chips but maybe knowing a little more Greek than Mr. Chips. Timothy George: Yes, right. Well what a remarkable opportunity though, not only for your father but other students to have this kind of very collegial relationship with a great, great scholar of the day. John Woodbridge: Yes. And my father got into trouble with him almost immediately when he got there. He was in a meeting where some of the students were deciding whether they were going to pull out of the union with the liberal students, and my father was studying Hebrew in the back of the auditorium when they were taking a vote, and he stood up and he said, “This is simply a personality debate.” As he walked out, he ran into Dr. Machen, and Dr. Machen said to him as they were walking out of the building at Princeton, “You were totally wrong on this. 100% wrong.” And then my father was really upset with Machen, went back to his dorm room and some of the students straightened him out. So, he and Machen, you know, they had clashes but then my father thought he was one of the best Christians he had ever met. Timothy George: Yeah. Now the incident you're referring to is in the context of the kind of revolution that was happening within Princeton Theological Seminary itself at the time. There was a kind of, I don't know if you want to call it takeover, or a reversal of direction. How would you talk about that? John Woodbridge: My father in his diary, he was less aware of this at the time, but then by the time he left Princeton in 1927, Machen and others who were on the conservative side of Presbyterian thought, they lost in the reorganization of Princeton. And this ultimately led to Machen leaving Princeton to found Westminster Theological Seminary. So he was right, my father was there right at the time that this tremendous reversal took place. But then my father left by '27 to go to Germany. Timothy George: Yes, I want to talk about that experience of your father in Germany, it's fascinating. But before we get to that, let's say a little bit about when Machen left, and other professors, not all but some other professors also left Princeton to begin a new theological seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, still existing today in Philadelphia. John Woodbridge: In 1929. Right. Timothy George: So that was, in some ways, the cap of a whole decade long, and longer really struggle, you might say for the soul of Princeton. John Woodbridge: It definitely was. And not to say that there were not believers at Princeton after 1929, but the face of Princeton changed remarkably after 1929. Timothy George: Where would a figure like Clarence Macartney fit in to some of that? John Woodbridge: Clarence Macartney was a major Presbyterian evangelical of the day, and he, I think, represents the wing of evangelicalism that wondered about whether or not there really should have been this separation. In other words, not all Presbyterians thought Machen was doing the right thing by pulling out and forming Westminster. So within the Presbyterian Church, there were a good number of folks who thought that loyalty to the Presbyterian Church meant that you didn't separate and if you did separate, then you lose your voice, et cetera. So Macartney took another stand on that, a fine Christian stand. Timothy George: Now we're gonna come back to your father and his going to Germany, but it just strikes me that this event we're talking about, this process of the division within Presbyterianism and the separation of those who left Princeton to start Westminster, this in some ways is very similar to what is happening in many denominations today. And this question, do we stay in, do we try to take a stand and make a change within a denomination that may be going in a direction that we ourselves are not totally satisfied with, or not satisfied with at all? Or, do we come out, do we leave, do we start something new and fresh and ask God to bless that? That's a big, difficult question for a lot of Christians today. John Woodbridge: It is. And it was impressed upon me again what a big question it is about a couple of weeks ago. I was speaking at a mainline Presbyterian celebration of the Reformation in North Carolina, and a lot of the folks who were there were really on the more liberal side of Presbyterianism, if you want to call it that. But a good number of the folks that were there were so delighted that we'd be talking about the Gospel, about the Word of God, and I realized what you just said is very profound. What happens when people pull out because there are a number of individuals who are then without shepherds. So they're still there, and they don't get the tender care. This goes back to the problem of Winthrop in 17th century Puritanism. It's a difficult issue; do you pull out or are you staying? I think it has to be settled biblically, but even then it's a complex call. Timothy George: And you need a lot of discernment I think, a lot of judgment, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to make those decisions. I've often been very hesitant to criticize people too harshly one way or the other, who hasn't themselves struggled with that kind of issue. John Woodbridge: Yeah, it really ... it seems like it's an easy call but, I mean there's an emotional, personal side of it when you see dear believers who don't have folks there. It's tough. Timothy George: Now of course I'm a Baptist, and we have thousands of divisions, we're just a dividing group of people, to some extent. And I remember these debates between the Southern Baptists and the Independent Baptists, when I was growing up. And the same kind of angst you might say, that gripped us. Do we stay in, do we leave, do we make a change? So it's not unique to Presbyterians. John Woodbridge: No, it isn't. No, it isn't. Timothy George: Well let's go back to the 1920s and to the very interesting story of your father, he's now finishing Princeton, and had become a good friend and close associate at that point with J. Gresham Machen, and then he goes to Germany, as Machen himself had done earlier in his own academic career. Tell us about that. John Woodbridge: I think there are several principles that come out of this experience of my father. And that is sometimes when we think about fundamentalism in the '20s, you have to be careful to not necessarily import from later fundamentalism attitudes towards the life of the mind. Machen was very committed to doing and pursuing the best scholarship that he could. Consequently, he had studied in Germany, so he would say, and my father agreed with him, it's far better, if you are going to learn about, to talk about liberalism to be with liberals. So he encourages my father to go off to Germany and my father then goes to the University of Berlin and has an opportunity to, this is unbelievable, and that's to work with the greatest theologian of the early 20th century and that's Adolf von Harnack, who had been a librarian, a church historian, key figure, writes what is liberal, what is Christianity, a major liberal. And for reasons that I still don't totally understand, he got on the radar of Harnack and so Harnack invited him over to his home. Timothy George: Now, in something you've written, you make a supposition, you don't maybe have full proof evidence of this, but maybe it was Machen who wrote to Harnack, because they had maintained a good relationship, despite their differences and maybe recommended your father. John Woodbridge: I doubt, hardly anybody on the planet knows that relationship existed, because what it was is, that Machen appreciated the fact that Harnack would change his view if he got new evidence, and moreover Harnack had reviewed Machen's materials and Machen collected them and sent them back to Harnack. So there was a very good relationship. Who would ever guess that the leading theologian of Protestantism if you will, in America, Machen, would be on such good terms with Harnack, even though totally disagreeing with him and assuming that the root problem of protestant liberalism was naturalism. My father goes off there and they write letters back and forth, and my father writes to him and says, by the way, when I go to class I'm using your stuff in order to survive this. So he goes into Harnack's home one evening and there were nine Germans and himself. And Harnack sits at the end of the table; he doesn't need a Bible. They're studying the Pastorals, 'cause he's memorized the Pastorals in Greek. He knows them in German, so they go around and my father suddenly had to do translation work with Harnack. And what was really remarkable is that in his diary that we have, we have conversations between Harnack and my father. And Harnack says to my father, “Wann sind Sie geboren worden,” “When were you born?” And my father says, [German 00:20:23]. “Oh I was doing theology 30 or 40 years before that.” Putting a good German finger on him and so forth. And then he gave to my father a book he signed. But the key thing that I found amazing too, was my father told me that he asked Harnack, who was Jesus Christ. And Harnack's response was, “He was the greatest man who ever lived.” And my father must have had a tremendous amount of “chutzpah” said to him, Ws he more than that?” “No. He was the greatest man who ever lived.” And my father told me this is very important to know, because sometimes it's not acknowledged that the debate over fundamentalist and modernism, at least in the '20s, the issue was the very deity of Christ was at stake. Timothy George: And you know, there are many remarkable things about that account you just shared. One, that Charles Woodbridge would have the opportunity to study with Harnack. Two, that he would be invited into his home for a scholarly “Gespräch,” for a whole term. John Woodbridge: For a whole term. Timothy George: Once a week, right? John Woodbridge: Yes. Timothy George: And then three, that your father would know German well enough to participate in that conversation. That's all remarkable in the light of what one would normally expect for a young American graduate going to Germany. John Woodbridge: Yeah, and one would expect, too, with these caricatures of fundamentalists in the '20s, as if they were anti-intellectual, they weren’t ready to engage in scholarship as it were. That's a totally bogus analysis of what Machen and some of these people did or thought. Timothy George: Now Harnack is a fascinating figure as you well characterized him, the leading liberal theologian of the day, not only in Germany I would say, but in the world. John Woodbridge: In the world. Timothy George: And a person of first rate scholarship, you know his tremendous magnum opus, the History of Dogma, which traces Christianity from the New Testament right through the early church, and even has a chapter on Luther, who he saw in some ways as overturning the history of doctrine. I think he misread Luther grossly, but it was a popular liberal view of the Reformation. A Protestant, who in some ways was a champion of the kind of individualism that comes to characterize a certain strand of liberal religion. But then Karl Barth was his student as well, and there is a whole exchange between Harnack and Barth. It's just fascinating to me that Charles Woodbridge from Princeton Seminary, a student of Machen is now drawn into the orbit of this greatest liberal theologian in the world. John Woodbridge: Yes. Timothy George: And in a sense, confronts him, I'm sure in a very polite way, but nonetheless a firm way- John Woodbridge: I hope so. Timothy George: ... with the reality of who Jesus Christ is. John Woodbridge: He did. And so again, with all the various interpretations of the '20s, I come back to the point ... my father told me personally, “He said the issue at stake is, you know, when you get down to the nitty gritty question of was Jesus Christ the son of God or not?” Because obviously liberalism put so much emphasis on the fatherhood of God, Jesus was more God conscious than anybody else, but he was not divine. Timothy George: Yeah and that's very much in the same tradition that you get coming out of Schleiermacher and the liberal tradition of the 19th century ... of which Harnack in a way was the apex, you might say. John Woodbridge: He was, yes. Timothy George: Well carry us a little bit further into the story. We don't have too much time to go into all the weeds but the weeds are really interesting here. John Woodbridge: A lot of weeds. Timothy George: Because your father comes back to America after having studied with Harnack, then tell us about, you know, he becomes himself a missionary for a while. John Woodbridge: Yes, he ... initially he became the Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Flushing, New York. And it was a church group, Machen came for his inauguration. Machen was involved in his life in a total way. My father then went into the mission field. He married my mom, who had been a missionary before as a single lady in the French Cameroons, and they met on a blind date in New York City. And they go off to the Cameroons, and everything's going well. He comes down with malaria. He goes off, and he talks about why did he do this, why did he leave a church where there were 700 applicants for the position, after he left. He said because Machen had instilled in him, through the Holy Spirit's help obviously, the love for evangelism. He thought Africans needed to know their Gospel. So he went over there only to find out that the fundamentalist-modernist controversy jumped right across the Atlantic into Africa. And so some of the fracases that were taking place here came to Africa. And then he stood up for what he thought was the right thing in defense of Machen, because Machen was being criticized in Africa. And when that happened, Machen ultimately, so concerned about what was going on in missions, formed the Independent Mission Board, that was independent of the Presbyterian Church. And he called back my father to be the secretary of it. So my father came back here, to the United States, and he worked very closely with Machen for two or three years for the Independent Mission Board. And so he knew him very well indeed. Timothy George: Now another thing that's fascinating to me about this part of the story is that Machen, and I think your father through him, in some ways had a breadth of relationships that one would not necessarily expect of very conservative Presbyterians. For example, I believe one of the first speaking engagements your father took as the General Secretary of this new Mission Board, was to go to Moody Bible Institute. John Woodbridge: Yes, and it is so important for us to understand that Machen's view of ecumenism was so attractive. Machen was a fundamentalist in the sense that he thought there were certain fundamentals that pulled the faith together that we believe. But what he called secondary issues, he could cooperate with all kinds of folks, he was not a separatist like later fundamentalism, if you will. He says about the Anglicans, he said I don't think we were their ecclesiology but I can work them. The Methodists, I don't agree with their anthropology, but I can work with them. Dispensationalists, I can work with them. But then when he was counseling his own students he said, “I do believe that the Westminster Confession is the finest expression of what the faith is. But that doesn't preclude me having relationships with other people.” And that's why there really needs to be a recasting about what people think about the 1920's and fundamentalism. It's not what we sometimes perceive or think. Timothy George: He even said some open things about Roman Catholics. John Woodbridge: Oh yes he did. Timothy George: In the sense that the division between us and them is great but it's not anything like the division between classical liberalism and evangelical faith. John Woodbridge: Actually he would say that and he'd also say too, that he totally agreed with the Roman Catholic views on Scripture, because they believed in biblical inerrancy, he did as well. I mean this is a different world than we sometimes imagine the '20s was. Timothy George: Yeah, thank you for that insight. Now this new mission board has just been created; your father's the general secretary of it. Machen is really the moving force behind it. John Woodbridge: He is. Timothy George: And they're into recruiting missionaries, send them out to the mission fields of the world, so ... arduous work, very difficult work, raising money, recruiting missionaries. Now this in itself becomes a kind of, how can I say this? There was a schism within the new mission board, right? John Woodbridge: Well yes there was. What ultimately happens is the mainline Presbyterian Church was very upset having an independent mission board, thinking this violated the constitution of the Presbyterian Church. So Machen became a figure who was thought to be in revolt, and my father would be in revolt. So real pressure started to be put on Machen and my father and others to resign from the mission board and to come back, in terms of ... go back to the mission board of the Presbyterian Church. Machen refused to do that; my father did as well. Ultimately Machen was put on trial, as you know, by the Presbyterian Church; my father was one of his lawyers. Timothy George: An ecclesiastical trial. John Woodbridge: Ecclesiastical trial, right. Machen was charged with six charges, and it shows you how wonderful a lawyer my father was. Machen was found guilty on all six counts and so forth. This is really tough stuff. And so they suffered than being thrown out, or out of the Presbyterian Church, Machen was, president of Wheaton College was, my father was, and that becomes ultimately the basis for the creation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But you're right, a division ensued later on. It was split within that movement so that Carl McIntire, took it over in late 1936. It was right before Machen died on January 1st, 1937. Timothy George: Now tell the story of Machen's death. I think this is also fascinating and not too well known. I was speaking in Bismark, North Dakota at a Catholic college actually, the University of Mary, and for some reason the name of Machen came up. And they told me that he had actually died not very far from where I was speaking. John Woodbridge: Yes. Well, Machen was warned in the late part of 1936 that he shouldn't take a trip out there because he had a cold. Moreover, he was suffering from the terrible disappointment of being removed from the leadership of the Independent Mission Board. My father talks about this in ... so forth. So despite the warning that he shouldn't go out there, he went out there anyway and he came down with pneumonia. And the reason that he went out there was that there were people associated with the mission board who needed help. And so he went out there, and then he had his remarkable experience that you probably know about. But he was dying, he came back to sensibility and he allegedly said, “Isn’t heaven wonderful?” So people were greatly comforted by that. And then some people tell the story that he came back and said, “Isn't the reformed faith wonderful?” And if he said that, that gives you a sort of little feeling of what the theology of heaven is, so a lot of Reformed people have flipped under that. But he really was a person who felt a call of duty and went out to serve the Lord out there. Timothy George: Yeah. Well, we don't have time to go on with the story of your father's life. His life continued for some decades after that. And it was a very full and productive life. He became a founding member of the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary? John Woodbridge: Close to it. He came in 1950, just right after. Timothy George: So very early after Fuller was founded, I think in '47? John Woodbridge: '47 right. Timothy George: And then his life continued as a Bible teacher, as a writer, and something of a controversialist, would you say? John Woodbridge: I'd say that's a moderate way of talking about it. Timothy George: And that bears a whole nother podcast. We just have to do Charles Woodbridge Part Two. John Woodbridge: Oh yeah, whenever. Timothy George: But I wonder what you think, as he looked back on this period with Machen especially, his work with Harnack, becoming a general secretary for this mission board, his defending Machen in his trial ... Did he have any regrets about this? What did he think of Machen at the very end? John Woodbridge: My father thought that J. Gresham Machen was, besides Harnack, one of the greatest minds he had ever encountered, number one. He thought of him as being one of the most gracious persons despite the reputation he had of being caustic. Very gracious and generous person. But he also thought of him as an individual who spoke so clearly about the gospel. He was a gospel-oriented person; he was a biblically based person, and he represented the best of the, in many regards, the best of old Princeton. Some people thought when Warfield died in the early '20s that Princeton died with him, but I would say it was when Machen left Princeton in 1929 that old Princeton really passed on. Timothy George: Well hearing you talk about all this makes me wish I had met your father and I'd known him, because his footprints are very deep in the history of the evangelical church in the 20th century. My guest today on the Beeson podcast has been Dr. John D. Woodbridge. He is Research Professor of Church History, the History of Christian Thought, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, where he's been on the faculty since 1970, a prolific author, writer, historian, and a great Christian soul. Thank you so much for being with us John. John Woodbridge: It's my privilege and I mean it sincerely, Timothy.