“Knox College and Knox Church: Going Separate Ways after Church Union”

“Knox College and Knox Church: Going Separate Ways after Church Union”

Canadian Society of Presbyterian History 29 September 2012

On 7 March 1926 Professor J. Gresham Machen of Princeton Theological Seminary came to Knox Church, Toronto, as the anniversary preacher. The timing of his visit was highly significant: as a flag-ship Canadian Presbyterian congregation Knox Church had hosted, the previous June 10 as the birth of the United Church of Canada was being celebrated, the non-concurrents who gathered at the stroke of midnight to reconstitute the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The continuing church was reestablishing itself, the two colleges assigned to the minority were reconstituting, and congregations across the Dominion were dealing with the consequences of the vote (where there was one) as to whether they would go into the new United Church of Canada or remain with the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Machen came at the invitation of Knox Church’s “minister in charge” Rev “Jock” Inkster, an Orcadian who had been chosen in 1922 by his predecessor since 1901, A. B. Winchester, to work alongside of him while Winchester became “minister extra muros” and engaged in a wide-ranging conference ministry across North America. The relationship was not always straightforward as it soon became apparent that Inkster, though an excellent pastor and an adequate preacher (no match for Winchester, however), had a problem with alcohol and could on occasion be awkward and unpredictable. More seriously, since 1879 and the arrival of the American Henry Martyn Parsons as the fourth minister of the congregation, the character of the church had altered, becoming a major centre for the promulgation of premillennial dispensationalism[1], with an all-consuming interest in the interpretation of prophecy.

When Inkster replied to Machen’s acceptance of the invitation on 1 December 1925 it was clear that he had only a limited awareness of who he was inviting. “Kindly let me know something about your work, your books and your ideals for the future,” he wrote[2]. Machen duly replied modestly stating, among other things that he had in the previous four years written four books which (though Inkster would appear not to have known) established him as a major figure in New Testament, apologetic and linguistic studies. Machen, in turn, also inquired about the history of Knox Church about which he knew very little. In response Inkster stated that in its 105 years “this church has given an unfaltering testimony to the authority of God’s Word, the confession of Faith, and the Shorter and Larger catechism.”[3] He added (with questionable accuracy in the case of the first two) “each of the ministers has been a believer in the Premillenial coming of our Lord.” He included a six-part statement of faith adopted by the church.

His visit soon turned into much more than a Sunday preaching engagement. Andrew Grant of General Secretary of the General Board of Missions, invited him to stay in his home. Grant’s interest in Machen was as a professor who had a profound influence on students at Princeton Seminary[4]. Grant needed help in filling all the vacancies that Church Union had created and summer students could fill the gap. He was specific, in a letter to Machen, about the kind of person he was looking for: “We want only the men that are true to our standards and are prepared to bring the message of the Gospel to our people, as we are standing fast and making rapid progress along Presbyterian lines.”[5]

A reporter from the Toronto Telegram interviewed Machen the day he arrived and the two column spread started with a direct quote from Machen: “The Presbyterian Church in Canada seems to be an example to the whole Christian world of devotion to principle and to Christian truth.”[6] The article spoke of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, which had appeared three years previously, as “a statement of the conservative portion of the church.” The article continued:

“In discussing the question of modernism to-day, Prof. Machen declared that he and men who       held views similar to his disliked the term ‘fundamentalists’ in that it appeared to denote a new       type of religion, whereas it really represented the beliefs which had been handed down from the               fathers.”[7]

Would that everyone describing Machen today had the insight of the reporter. The interview concluded with Machen saying, in answer to the argument that changing times required changing messages:

“It is not true that evangelical Christianity fails to satisfy the needs of modern men. I think if you     will take a large view of the condition of the church you will see that preachers who proclaim the       old Gospel are holding the attention of men. And I think that there is something unsatisfactory in                the vague offerings of modernism.”[8]

Machen spoke three times at Knox Church that March 1926 Sunday. His morning and evening sermon titles were “The Mission of the Church” and “Christian Liberty.” In the afternoon Bible Class he directed his Bible Class instruction (“What is Christianity?”) to a wider and more academic audience. It took Inkster a few days to respond but he handwrote a fortnight later “I must tell you how much I thank you for your visit.” But, he continued, he had another request:

“What I write about now is: several of our men – lay and clerical – have asked me: Is there any         chance of getting that man for Princ[ipal] of Knox Coll[ege]? This is purely personal and perfectly              private. Perhaps you will pardon this impertinence; but I – and many many others – are very             anxious about the situation here. This is really the reason of this letter.”[9]

Machen wrote back immediately[10] thanking Inkster for his encouragement and the “splendid privilege of preaching at Knox which I shall always look back with the utmost gratification. Certainly I was received in a wonderfully cordial way.” But the suggestion about the Principalship he declined: “In the first place, I should be unworthy of that honor, and in the second place my duty for the present, I think, is at Princeton.”  He went on to agree that the position of Principal is of the utmost importance for your Church, and I hope and pray that you may secure some one who will be absolutely loyal to the faith of the Church and able to defend it in the scholarly sphere.”

But Inkster would not take “No” for an answer and five weeks later he wrote on behalf of a committee of four, all who were on the Assembly’s College committee (“all of them sound and pronounced conservatives”). R. W. Dickie, the host minister of the 1926 Assembly, James MacKay of New St. James, London[11], J. A. Milne, manager of Canadian General Electric and himself. “The committee unanimously agreed that I should write you asking you definitely if you would allow us to nominate you at the Assembly for the Principalship of Knox College.”

Inkster was pressing:

“I earnestly hope you will grant us this privilege. On every hand, even among the liberals, one        hears this ‘If we could get Machen – he is the one man whom our whole church would unite.’    There is a call there for you so imperative that I do not see how you can say to us – ’Do not                nominate me.’ All the churches in Canada are looking to the Canadian Presbyterian Church to see     what they meant by their reaffirmation of their faith and the standards of Presbyterianism, at the    last Assembly. The laity of our own church as well as a large number of the clergy are looking and              longing for a strong leader in conservative, scholarly, constructive theology.”

With a jab about the “hundreds of others [who] are praying that you will be lead to allow us to make this important nomination” – and an enclosure from H R Horne of Moose Jaw – how could Machen refuse?

But he did. Writing by return of post Machen said he felt “overwhelmed by the honor.” But he was prescient in saying “that Princeton Theological Seminary is in just about as critical condition as is Knox College.” He referred to his continuing conflict with Ross Stevenson (unnamed) who as President had split the faculty (“evenly divided between the two ways of thinking – that is, not between Modernism and Christianity, but between a theological pacifism and consistent evangelicalism.”) The consequences of conceding to the theological pacifists would mean Princeton Seminary would take

“the same downward path as has been followed with such disastrous results by other                theological seminaries of our church. That would be a very great disaster, and in order to avert it my vote and my labors in the faculty – unimportant comparatively as they would be in other     circumstances – become quite necessary.”[12]

There followed a reference (“I take you into my confidence”) to his nomination two days earlier to the professorship of apologetics and he announced his intention to accept.

“This election needs to be confirmed by the General Assembly that meets the latter part of this    month; but bitter though the opposition to me is, I have not the slightest notion that the                unprecedented step will be taking of contesting such a confirmation of an election by a Board of               Directors of one of our seminaries.”

He stated further that “It would be treason for me to leave the institution for any reason whatever. At Princeton we have, I think, the greatest stronghold of the Reformed Faith, and if we stand firm we may perform a service to the rest of the church that no other institution could perform.”[13] But contest his nomination they did, it did not go through, and the 1926 General Assembly appointed a special committee to look into tensions on the Princeton Seminary faculty[14], and the rest is history: the reorganization of Princeton Seminary, its change of course theologically after 117 years, and the formation of Westminster Theological Seminary. Machen’s position – and his leadership – in all this as key and one wonders what would have happened had he come to Toronto and become Principal of Knox College in 1926. Things would definitely have been different both in Canada and the United States.

Meanwhile Machen advised Inkster, his informal committee, and his hundreds of friends about “what is the decisive fact in the whole situation in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. A right decision here will make all the difference between life and death,” a position that appears (from Winchester’s letter after the final decision was made) to have had considerable impact. Inkster, in reply[15], stated that “Your reasons however, have convinced you that under the circumstances you are doing the right thing … Nevertheless we are left stranded: no doubt the Lord has a man for the position.”

On 16 May Machen again returned to Canada, this time to be the anniversary speaker at St Paul’s Peterborough, a leading non-concurring congregation. The arrangements had been made through an elder there, James Dutton, who would play a leading role in the future in the denomination[16]. On 6 March 1926 the Session of the congregation had passed a resolution, subsequently approved by the Presbytery of Peterborough on 31 March, and on to General Assembly[17], “about the need for the exercise of extreme care in the choice of professors for our colleges in order that the teaching in these college may be maintained in harmony with the declared faith of our church and that the spiritual welfare of our people may be safeguarded.” The overture was placed in a wider context, in both Canada and the United States, “of unscriptural teaching in the leading theological colleges.” Machen spoke in the morning on “Has the Church a Message?” and in the evening on “The Claims of Love.” Again, after addressing the Peterborough Rotary Monday noon, he provided two lectures for the general public in the afternoon and evening, titled “What is Christianity?” and “The Present Issue in the Church.” Again, Machen’s visit elicited “great appreciation: for his “spriitucal, scholarly and instructive addresses.”

On 22 May, as storm clouds were gathering for him, the Peterborough elders passed a motion of support:

“Prof. Machen should be advised of its sympathy and approval of the stand he has taken in support of        the fundamentals of the faith, and of their prayer that he may be used more and more by the Holy              Spirit to strengthen and deepend the devotion of all the members of the Body of Christ in these days           of doubt and apostasy.”[18]

In Toronto the approaches continued. John Stenhouse, a Toronto physician and a commissioner to the forthcoming Assembly, wrote Machen with great passion on 18 May:

“Our College is in the throes of a new birth and we want it to be well-born, in fact noble born.      For that purpose we must have an outstanding man. It is a question on which we must rise above    petty parochialism and I know some of our best men are looking anxiously to you for help in this    impasse. We have no man who can fill the position, if we take into consideration the three                requisites of either Principal or Professor – sound scholarship, with a firm grip of the                fundamentals; magnetism, which will attract and inspire students and give leadership in our         Church councils; and aptness to teach, which would be enhance by popular gifts on the platform. A student          may acquire much information by his own study, but if he gets no inspiration by living touch with a great soul he leaves college poor indeed!”[19]

On 20 May Machen replied patiently in a two page response, citing his recent nomination and adding

“I can only say that I am glad you have the matter of Knox College so much at heart. If the source   of ministerial supply is poisoned, the really unparalleled opportunity which is before your church   will be lost … It is not merely your battle but the battle of the whole Christian Church that you         have been fighting”[20]

As the fifty-second General Assembly prepared to convene in Knox-Crescent Church in Montreal on 2 June 1926, commissioners received the findings of the various committees. The Report of the Board of Management of Knox College nominated, as its first recommendation, Thomas Eakin, Ph. D., D.D. to be Principal of Knox College. Eakin, an Ulsterman, had been minister, at St. Andrew’s King St Toronto during the war and in 1920 was appointed professor of practical theology at Presbyterian College, Montreal. For the past year he had been serving as acting vice-principal of Knox College and the Board expressed its “high appreciation” and “especially desires to call attention to the able manner in which he handled a very difficult and delicate situation with satisfaction to all concerned and with honour to himself.”[21] Eakin had studied under J. Frederic McCurdy[22] at University College, Toronto. Ironically, in the light of the subsequent debate. McCurdy had attended Princeton Seminary where he was a student of the conservative William Henry Green, though his subsequent study at Gottingen and Leipzig made him open to German Higher Criticism. Eakin was, if anything, even more open to Higher Criticism and his time at St Andrew’s Toronto identified him as being in a different axis than Knox Church Toronto, the two representing opposite polarities in the new Presbyterian Church in Canada. He had sparred with W. D. Reid in Montreal Presbytery and was regarded with suspicion by the confessionalists who promptly set upon the recommendation with great vigor. The debate lasted for three sederunts.

At the final discussion 80-year old Ephraim Scott, editor of the Presbyterian Record  and a highly respected leader in the anti-Unionist coalition, rose to speak:

“At a previous session of this Assembly, in supporting the nomination by the Board of Knox                College of Dr Thomas Eakin as Principal of that College, I stated that Dr. Eakin had said to me in the intimacy            of private conversation – ‘I have already taken, at my different inductions, the vows              required by our   Church of her Ministers, and when occasion requires, I am ready to take them again, and without any          evasive equivocations.”[23]

He then itemized his beliefs, particularly “the inspiration of the Scriptures that holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Scott then said that he had checked with Eakin and he confirmed the statement. James MacKay’s alternative nomination of R W. Dickie[24] of Montreal was withdrawn and all seemed harmonious until A. B. Winchester stood on his feet to move, J. G. Inkster seconding,

“that a Committee, to be selected by the Moderator, representative Synodically and Spiritually            shall consider a name to be submitted as Principal of Knox College.”[25]

Winchester – the newspaper report stated the next day[26] – “claimed that he had been trying to get the floor since the opening of the debate” but the timing meant that his amendment came across as mean-spirited and contrary to the harmonious atmosphere that had prevailed. His amendment lost and the recommendation that Thomas Eakin be the Principal of Knox College quickly passed. After the other recommendations (appointing Cunningham and Morrow to Knox College faculty) passed Stuart Parker (minister of St Andrew’s King St Toronto) rose and moved

“that this Assembly reaffirming its own adherence to the Standards of the Presbyterian Church, and hearing with much satisfaction the full Statement regarding his own acceptance of the same             by Dr. Thos. Eakin, express its complete confidence in Dr. Eakin and his teaching, regret that           through                any cause doubts should have been cast upon his fidelity and desire that the entire       Church should   know with what unanimity the Assembly has given him the office of Principal of Knox College.”[27]

A deeply upset A. B. Winchester went out immediately from the Assembly and sat down in the correspondence room at Knox-Crescent Church to write on Assembly stationary[28] his “dear brother Lewis”[29] an impassioned and emotional letter “to relieve myself of some ‘human’ expression“ :

“The most crucial question of the Assembly was the appointment of a Principal for Knox                College … Prof. Eakin has ever been known as an advanced Modernist but last Ass[embly] when he saw       the determination on the part of an overwhelming majority to emphasize loyalty to the    Standards, to our surprise he voted in favour of a re-subscription to the Formula. Now he                represents that he has been slandered and that he stands 4 square on the Confession without                evasion, equivocation or mental reservation. Well one may seem hard-hearted & uncharitable       not to accept at full value such a st[atement], but alas!  The Professors & ministers of yesteryear    who went out from us all made this statement, until the time of voting and then declared they   now believe the Confession but with mental reservation & now wished to be freed from the              paralyzing ‘dead heat’ of the 17^th Century.”

He then addressed the business of the previous hour:

“With energy & persistence they presented their plan of effectively shutting off discussion by           one ruse after another so that only those in the secret counsels of the Com[mittee], c[opul]d get        a chance. To-day before the vote, the Moderator, a life-long friend, in his desire to get the vote        without further discussion was going to forbid my speaking at all, when I was compelled to appeal to    the Court and they granted me the privilege of ten minutes. To one of my temperament & type of   mind, 10 minutes is not even an introduction – but I poured forth what I c[ould]d in the time & came          away.  It is conclusively proven to my mind that the ‘Compact’ in the Assembly have determined to               allow no ‘Pre-mil’ a place or an expression either in Com[mittee] or the Assembly.’ “

And then a final shout of defiance:

“I have in one form or another served the Church for 50 years & more – 43 years preaching the     Gospel, but feel I am force out. I will not lift my certificate but just ignore the Church courts.”

Winchester could find other opportunities for service outside the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He poured his energies into the foundation of a new Evangelical Theological College in Dallas (later named Dallas Theological Seminary), where he had already been involved along with another Canadian reject, W. H. Griffith Thomas[30]. Jock Inkster led Knox Church into increasing isolation and non-participation in the wider denomination and its finances, Knox being through its endowments the wealthiest Presbyterian church in the Dominion.

Many confessionalists, identifying with Knox Church, increasingly felt that the church of their hopes and prayers when the Union vote was taken was not to be. They had voted to remain Presbyterian because they hoped a purged Presbyterian Church in Canada would be “sound” but this, they felt, no longer would happen. It would always be a denomination of theological extremes, held together because they did not want to haemorrhage more members. The ultimate result of the Assembly vote on 8 June 1926 appointing Thomas Eakin as Principal of Know College was a deeply polarized and divided denomination. Many confessionalists felt excluded and disenfranchised. The church was the poorer for their non-involvement and isolation.

The final word about the 1926 General Assembly should be, however, a more positive one. A week later George Colborne Heine[31] wrote a letter of reassurance to Machen. The discussion about Thomas Eakin, he reassured him, in spite of taking up three sederunts[32] “was characterized by courtesy, and charity, and ended in harmony and good-will  … There was no compromise whatever, but the utmost frankness on the part of Dr Eakin, in fully accepting the standards of the Church without reservation. So I suggest the peace of the church is assured.” He commented on the fact that this post-Union Assembly was the largest he had seen. Of all the General Assemblies he had attended none was “more jealous for the Standards: and they were a fine working body of men, serious, all intent on ‘contending for the faith once delivered to the saints.’ I am most hopeful that this shaking up of the Church may serve not to hinder, but rather promote the Cause we all have so much at heart.”[33] Six months later Heine was dead.

Two vastly different assessments, suggesting some of the complexity of the nascent and reconstituted Presbyterian Church in Canada. Two older clergy, both retired, one striving to preserve what was left of the denomination after union by refusing to admit its wide theological diversity, the other seeking a wider audience, caught up in popular Evangelical trans-denominational loyalties, and no longer emotionally committed to the Presbyterian Church in Canada, as an earlier vision of a post-Union denomination unitedly confessional and Biblical no longer seemed possible.

The truth that emerged with the appointment of Thomas Eakin was quite different from the imagination of either man. Eakin’s twenty years at Knox College was, to say the least, controversial[34]. And in the meantime the career of J. Gresham Machen pursued its own unanticipated course: the breakup of “the old Princeton,” and subsequently division and further separation. In the meantime Canadian Presbyterians lost much of their immediate momentum following union. Knox College and Knox Church, three blocks apart, no longer shared a common vision of what their denomination should be. Knox Church became increasingly isolationist. And both congregation and denomination were the poorer.

It is only today in 2012 that the circle is finally squared between Knox Church and Knox College. John Vissers, a former minister of Knox Church Toronto, Principal of Presbyterian College, Montreal, for fourteen years, has been appointed to the faculty of Knox College. At the same time Vissers was chosen Moderator of the denomination. Perhaps years of suspicion have been reversed and, with their new minister Phil Reinders, the engagement of Knox Church Toronto in the life and witness of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (and in Knox College) will be affirmed and strengthened.

 A. Donald MacLeod,

Research Professor of Church History,

Tyndale Theological Seminary, Toronto

Email: adonaldmacleod@gmail.com