John Gresham Machen (1881-1937), was an American Presbyterian scholar and apologist. Born in Baltimore, he was educated at Johns Hopkins, Princeton University and Theological Seminary, Marburg, and Gottingen. He was ordained in 1914. He taught NT at Princeton Seminary from 1906 to 1929, apart from a brief period of YMCA service in France. As a defender of the classic Reformed position, he was influenced by his teacher B.B. Warfield. When Warfield died in 1921, the mantle of leadership for the “Princeton Theology” fell upon Machen. He resigned in 1929 due to the Liberal realignment of the seminary. Machen was a principal founder of Westminster Theological Seminary (1929) and what is now the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1936). He served as president and professor of NT at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA from 1929 to 1937.
In 1935 he was tried and found guilty of insubordination by a presbytery convened at Trenton, New Jersey, on charges brought by the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. It condemned him for activities in connection with an independent mission board. He was forbidden to defend himself and was suspended from the Presbyterian (PCUSA) ministry. Machen is regarded by friend and foe as a leading conservative apologist in the modernist-fundamentalist era. Among his most significant publications are The Origin of Paul's Religion (1927); Christianity and Liberalism (1923): most definitive of his thought; New Testament for Beginners (1923); and The Virgin Birth of Christ (1930).
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he came from a wealthy and well-educated background. He studied at John Hopkins University and then went to Princeton Theological Seminary, receiving an M.A. in philosophy. He studied in Germany and returned to teach New Testament at Princeton. He received his B.D. in 1905 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church.
In 1929, he left Princeton Seminary when the institution capitulated to the liberal faction, and he, along with others, founded Westminster Theological Seminary. In 1934 he was censured by the Presbyterian Church for his actions in relation to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, the liberal bias of which he opposed. In 1935 he was defrocked by the Presbyterian Church over major doctrinal issues. Machen then established the Orthodox Presbyterian Church as a reaction to the liberalism of the Presbyterian hierarchy. He died at age 55, of pneumonia.
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