A Seminary's 150 Years

"We want to be on the frontier of theological thought," says James I. McCord, president of the Princeton Theological Seminary. "We want to discuss the major issues confronting Christendom. We want a campus with sufficient openness that the whole church can converse with it."

Beginning this week, the better part of Protestant Christianity in the U.S. will be conversing with--and congratulating--Princeton Theological. The oldest, biggest and best of Presbyterian divinity schools is starting a 14-month celebration of its 150th anniversary. The most notable parishioner of Gettysburg's Presbyterian Church, Dwight Eisenhower, is honorary chairman of the celebration. Among the many churchmen who have agreed to lecture at Princeton in the coming months are such famed non-Presbyterians as Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, Willem A. Visser 't Hooft, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, and Swiss Theologian Karl Barth.

Princeton Theological has been historically tied to the varying fortunes of its founding body: the Presbyterian Church.

Nearly a third of the graduates from the Presbyterian-run College of New Jersey at Princeton, which was founded in 1746, entered the ministry during the 18th century. But even then churchmen detected the growth of godlessness on the campus. In 1812, responding to such fears, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church set up a seminary "to provide for the Church an adequate supply and succession of able and faithful ministers of the New Testament; workmen that need not be ashamed, being qualified rightly to divide the word of truth." Though its 14 neat yellow-grey stone buildings are located next door to the Princeton campus, the seminary has always been independent of the university.

The new seminary reflected the ortho doxy of its early teachers. The first professor hired, Dr. Archibald Alexander, was a strict, commonsensical Calvinist who believed that God's truth in the Bible was like a seal and "the human heart was like wax that receives the imprint of the seal." Another early teacher, Samuel Miller, endlessly lectured students on such matters of etiquette as why they should not spit tobacco juice on the carpet. "I have known a few tobacco chewers in whom this habit had reached such a degree of concentrated virulence," he wrote, "that they even compelled persons of delicate feelings, especially females, to leave the room, or the pew, and retire in haste to avoid sickness of stomach."

A Missionary Theology. Princeton The ological's dominant figure during his 56 years (1822-78) there was Systematic Theologian Charles Hodge. He had a deep interest in mission work; hundreds of seminary graduates were inspired to carry the Gospel overseas as a result of his Sunday-afternoon seminars on the missionary challenge. "At its best," says President McCord, "Princeton's was a missionary theology--a theology that eventuates in action." The seminary survived the faith-shaking fissures that divided Presbyterians during the 19th century, but was nearly torn asunder by a 20th century battle between moderate and ultraconservative theologians. During the '20s, faculty moderates wished to give a hearing to theologians who were not bound to a literal interpretation of the Bible; conservatives, led by Dr. J. Gresham Machen, argued that such deviationist views should not be allowed on campus. Separate services were held by the rival faculty factions, which fought for the allegiance of the student body. Eventually, the Presbyterian General Assembly had to step in to resolve the quarrel, and in 1929, many of the conservatives quit to form the new Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

The man who put Princeton back on the theological map was Scotland-born John Alexander Mackay (rhymes with high), seminary president from 1936 to 1959. Although conservative, he was open to new trends in the church, brought in as lecturers such famed theologians as Emil Brunner of Zurich. "Mackay brought real excitement to the faculty," says Eugene Carson Blake, the Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Mackay also doubled both the seminary's enrollment and its endowment, started the school's first doctoral program, founded the lively highbrow quarterly, Theology Today.

Calls to Ministry. Mackay's work has been handsomely carried on by President McCord. 42, a jowly Texan who manages to be both a respected theologian and a top-drawer administrator. He himself teaches two courses--and is famed among students for his gestures: "the punt" (cupped hands suggesting firmness) and "peeling the cabbage" (when he appears to chop ideas from his head). He has strengthened an already good faculty by adding such scholars as Old Testament Expert James Barr of the University of Edinburgh and Pastoral Psychologist Seward Hiltner of the University of Chicago, brought in language machines to speed student learning of Hebrew and Greek. Most of the seminary's 445 students are still Presbyterians. McCord is delighted that the majority plan to enter the pastoral ministry rather than seek a career in scholarship. Says he: "I've never seen a stronger motivation to service." Because of its close ties to the Presbyterian Church, Princeton Theological has never had the international impact of such formidable nondenominational institutions as Harvard's Divinity School or Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary.

But the great independent schools, McCord believes, have never been able to affect any single church the way Princeton has.

Graduates of the seminary have founded seven other Presbyterian divinity schools; 60 former students have served as moderators of their church. Says Presbyterian Blake: "Our church has been the reflection of the Princeton Seminary all through its years--both its strengths and its weaknesses. It has had a massive influence."

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