Christy
I can’t make the link work either, and it looks interesting - any chance of reposting? I can then steal the whole thing for the article Joshua requests!
Yes - I remember something like that, only I’m not sure whoiever it was had changed his mind, at least forthe first piece he wrote, Weren’t the Fundamentals written as individual articles and only later collected, and presumably edited as events moved on?
Joshua, this is my piece on Warfield (based on reading his work on evolution edited by Noll, which is an excellent read).
I find it still describes my own belief three years later.
Since it appears Machen never said anything substantial about evolution at all, one could presumably make up whatever one liked about “The Machen Fundamentalist Theory of Evolution” and be believed by nobody!
A useful little piece on his non-views here.
I vaguely recall that H.L. Mencken thought Gresham Machen was the only fundamentalist worth reading. Machen wrote a classic called Christianity and Liberalism in the early '20s which I have, but confess I’ve never read. In the years after Warfield, Machen was the big gun of Reformed theologians and made the move to leave Princeton and start Westminster Seminary.
Thanks Preston - sounds like you’re the go-to person on the history of Fundamentalism! How about you writing Joshua’s article? 
What your post does show is the massive change in the meaning of the word “Fundamentalist” from a serious theologian laying out the central doctrines of historic Christianity in opposition to theological liberalism, to - some ex junkie persuaded that he’ll get a harem in Paradise if he blows himself up in a Shia mosque.
Yes, I fixed it. Graham Marsden is a guy I went to college with. I couldn’t get the link to work. Anyway, I inserted the title in case you wanted to search for it. It is “CONGENIALITY” OF MIND AT OLD PRINCETON SEMINARY: WARFIELDIANS AND KUYPERIANS RECONSIDERED. Paul Kjoss Helseth. It comes up as the first google hit for me.
I appreciate the kind remarks of Dr. Swamidass & others about my work. I have not been involved in debates about ID recently, and their direction of may have changed somewhat. My frustration in the past with many discussions with ID proponents has been their unwillingness to engage theological issues and to play the “nobody here but us scientists and philosophers” card. The experience of others may differ.
Let me get to the specific point about which Dr. Swamidass asked me. My generally negative attitude toward natural theology does not mean that I rule out anything like a natural knowledge of God, in the sense of people having some basic idea that “there is a God - or Force, or First Cause &c” behind the universe, something that caused the world to be. But believing that there is “a God” does not mean knowing anything about who God is. As Luther says in his lectures on Jonah, when the sailors in the ship all pray to their gods (Jon.1:5), “Thus you also note that the people in the ship all know of God, but they have no definite God.” I.e., from a bare “natural knowledge” that “there is a God”, no proper “natural theology” can be derived.
In Romans 1:19-20 Paul speaks of the availability of a natural knowledge of God, but argues that the result of that natural knowledge alone is idolatry, and the fact that “they are without excuse.” It does not lead to a positive natural theology. And then, after the arguments in chs.2 & 3 showing that all people is sinners, Paul doesn’t say, “OK, now let’s go back and do natural theology correctly.” Instead, he starts in 3:21 with what God has done in Christ.
However, my position vis a vis natural theology is not Barth’s unqualified “Nein” to the whole enterprise but what I’ve called Torrance’s corollary to that. A natural theology independent of God’s historical revelation (“special revelation” if you wish) is illegitimate. But it is a quite different matter to place our knowledge of the natural world in the context of that historical revelation, illumined by the light of Christ. Then we can properly seek a deeper understanding of God’s presence and activity in the universe.
Or to put it in terms of the 2 books metaphor, we should read the book of God’s words before trying to read the book of God’s works to learn about God. (& that final qualification points to an ambiguity in the metaphor. Reading the book of God’s works tells us about those works, not, first of all, God.)
& that will indicate how I see the “tool” metaphor for divine action - I’m glad that Jon Garvey appreciated my reference to that. I start from the belief that God does act in the world because, e.g., we’re told to pray for daily bread: lex orandi, lex credendi. The tool metaphor - or any other idea used to explain divine action - is a way of making sense of that belief.
While I’m at it, I’ll respond briefly to a couple of criticisms that Jon made in a link he gave above. I do not say that “sin and righteousness” are “necessarily” the result of evolutionary processes. I make the precise distinction, due to Reinhold Niebuhr, that sin is not “necessary” but "inevitable. Righteousness, OTOH, comes about by the incarnate Word becoming a participant in the evolutionary process and, through his death and resurrection turning the course of that process back toward God’s goal. My book that was mentioned as “upcoming” in my 2010 essay has since appeared. Information about it is at http://www.lutheranupress.org/Books/Models_of_Atonement .
I do not think that the divine kenosis is “derivable from nature”. What we learn from nature is that it can be understood, as Bonhoeffer said, etsi deus non dartetur - though God were not given. We know about kenosis first of all from the Word’s self-limitation in the incarnation (Phil.2:7), and that suggests a way of understanding why - and not just that - the world can be understood without reference to God.
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Lucretius’ long poem De Rerum Natura is very well written, although reflecting the atheism of Democritus. C.S. Lewis listed it as one the few works that is so well written that it has continued to be read even by those who disagree with it completely. I enjoyed it myself (in English of course.)
My classics professor father, a conservative Lutheran, gave me a translation of De Rerum Natura when I was in high school because he thought it would appeal to my scientific interests. Apparently he didn’t think the atheistic note would disturb my faith. It didn’t, though it took awhile before I appreciated the book.
Jon, I read a number of books by Marsden, Noll and their historian colleagues a number of years ago. At that time I was more thinking about my own fundamentalist heritage in general than any specific connection to Darwinism. Given how long ago I read these things, Ted would still be a much more informed commenter on the development of attitudes to evolution than me. I do remember that I found Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture and his The Soul of the American University to be very illuminating in terms of how things got to where they are.
So continuing this coversation is a long blog post by @Jon_Garvey explaining the relationship between Camel’s Hump and ID…
http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2016/07/14/science-as-she-is-spoke/
A couple portions might benefit from being quoted here, but I don’t have the time to do so.
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