This recording is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison archive, part of the “Lectures” series, delivered January 1, 1996.

This is the third lecture to the title, Here We Have No Continuing City, the Meaning of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The first lecture was entitled Prelude, the Second Meaning, and this third lecture is entitled Confirmation. As we begin, I would like to read from Colossians chapter three. verses one and two. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

On June 27, 1938, The Court of Common Pleas No. 5 of the City of Philadelphia issued its final decree in the case of the Presbyterian Church USA’s suit against the small, struggling church of about 4,000 members, the Presbyterian Church of America. by this decree was therefore forbidden use of its name, the Presbyterian Church of America, because the court agreed with the suit of the larger parent body that the name of this newly organized church was much too close to the name Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and could be used to mislead the public, particularly in matters of contributions. When the small denomination organized just two brief years previously realized the costs involved in its appeal of this decision, and the slim hopes of winning its case, it moved to abandon the appeal process. So on February 9, 1939, a special General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America convened at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia for the purpose of choosing a new name. The Presbytery of Ohio had forwarded an overture, and that overture recommended that the name of the Presbyterian Church of America be changed to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America.

The story goes that the motivation for this proposed name came from two sources. The first source was Machen himself. Before his death, and even before the organization of the Presbyterian Church of America, Machen had written a strong editorial for the Presbyterian Guardian. In that editorial, he considered a number of options that might describe his own position.

He rejected the term fundamentalist. because he saw himself and those who stood with him belonging to, quote, the great current of the Church’s life, the great tradition that comes down through Augustine and Calvin to the Westminster Confession of Faith, unquote.

The term fundamentalist was for Machen much too novel and vague to describe him. Machen was not committed to a few fundamentals of the faith. Rather, he was committed to the full-orbed expression of the Reformed faith. But if the term fundamentalist would work for Machen, what about the term conservative? He was a good term, it would seem. something that might even enable Machen and those who stood with him to attach themselves to a general movement in the culture and within society. But here, Machen reacted to what he considered the coldness and intractability of the term. Conservatives often hold to something Machen said, just because it is old. Machen did not find the term conservative useful in describing his position. But if fundamentalist and conservative were out, what about the word evangelical?

Certainly here is a term that Machen would resonate to. But this term also was judged to be inadequate, because in Machen’s estimation it wasn’t distinctive enough. To merely call someone evangelical didn’t attach that individual specifically to the doctrines of Presbyterianism as they were expounded in the Westminster Standards. The term was just too liquid. It was too inexact.

So Machen came, finally, to the term orthodox. That term means right or straight thinking. And for Machen, it positively suggested the standard of God’s word as a plumb line for the faith. Right or straight thinking, with respect to what?” Machen would ask. Well, of course, with respect to the word of God. Machen wanted to be known, therefore, as orthodox in his Presbyterianism. Now, Everett C. Develde, Sr., pastor of Trinity Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, was greatly taken with Machen’s editorial and essay.

And he pressed the case for the name Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America within his own presbytery. But now we come to the second influence upon the decision for this name. Formation’s editorial was not the only influence upon de Velde. Here we have before us, then, that second motivation for the name, Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America.

It seems that de Velde had among the members of his church in Cincinnati, the Shillito to a department store fortune centered in that city. These wealthy ladies had taken a liking to the name Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America, and had promised substantial funds to the denomination if their preference was honored. The prospect of these monies for missions and other enterprises during the early days of the denomination, and in the midst of the lean depression years, together with an understandable desire on the part of this pastor, Mr. de Velde, to please such generous women, shall we say, to keep them happy. is reason enough to be gracious to Mr. de Velde in overlooking whatever weakness he showed in the situation. In the end, I’m sure that de Velde personally formed his justification for the name by an appeal to Machen’s editorial, not to the Some time during the mid-afternoon on the 9th of February, 1939, the Fifth General Assembly received into nomination names for the renaming of the Church.

Eleven names were proposed, to which another was added before the balloting was concluded, making a total of twelve. a number symbolic in its own right. Among the names suggested were the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the American Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church of Christ, a name supported by the Presbytery of California, I might add, which, because of the time of year and the distance to the assembly, had no one present to vote for it. Another name suggested was the Seceding Presbyterian Church of America. You might note that the acronym for this church is the SPCA, and my personal favorite, the True Presbyterian Church of the World. Of course, among the proposals was the name the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. On the fifth ballot, this name prevailed over the name Protestant Presbyterian Church, and so the Assembly declared that as of March 15, 1939, the Church formerly known as the Presbyterian Church of America would now be known as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The choice of the word Orthodox to describe our Church, the choice of that word to be included in our title carries a powerful message.

Not only was this Church bound in its name to the plumb line of Scripture reflected in the commitment of historic Presbyterianism, but with this name this Church was making it blatantly clear that it stood separate from unorthodox, or even better, heterodox Presbyterians. Such a stand set the OPC apart from two major movements that were very much operative within Presbyterianism at this time. One was evangelical Arminianism. Yes, there were Arminians in the Presbyterian church and within the Presbyterian movement generally.

Within the Presbyterian churches during the last century, many biblically committed and sincere conservative Presbyterians had begun to chafe beneath what they judged the theological determinism of John Kelvin as expressed in the Westminster Standards.

Needed was a more sympathetic interpretation of God’s eternal decree, of God’s eternal counsel, a more positive proclamation of God’s love for the lost. and that expressed indiscriminately. And also an unambiguous declaration that all children dying in infancy are safe. Very much at work in these convictions was commitment to the autonomy of human experience. and the unobstructed freedom of the individual will. One doctrine among the many in historic Calvinism that made these people squirm was the doctrine on the extent of the Atonement, Calvinism historically having affirmed that Christ had died for the elect only.

The evangelical Arminians in the PCUSA, together with others about whom we shall speak momentarily, were able to engineer the 1903 revisions and additions to the Westminster Confession of Faith, as well as the 1906 reunion with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a church that had separated from the PCUSA in 1810, in part because the Cumberland Church rejected the doctrine of the limited atonement. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church was appropriately named in that it stood for full commitment to historic Presbyterianism and against the unorthodox positions of an evangelical Arminianism. The second major movement from which the OPC, as expressed in its name, stood apart was, of course, liberalism. The liberals were not just unorthodox Presbyterians, as were the evangelical Arminians. The liberals were heterodox, or more to the point, anti-Orthodox in their views. Liberalism was that system that absolutized the modern situation from the perspective of naturalism.

It read every age in terms of itself. It reinterpreted the gospel in keeping with the spirit of the scientific worldview. The supernaturalism of the Bible, therefore, was judged symbolic at best, and Christianity was transformed into a religion of morality. But now, with the redemptive and even supernatural message of the Bible removed, The most positive biblical figures were then called upon to aid in the development of the most sublime ethical religion. Not even Jesus is excluded at this point. He himself is revalued along these lines. Jesus, therefore, is a moral example. He is a sublime moral example. And by the force of that moral example, we are encouraged along the lines which he pursued. This, for the betterment of society, the betterment of the world.

For Machen, such a position was no variation on Christianity, but an entirely different religion. But most frustrating for Machen was the way in which liberalism hid behind the pillar of Christianity and used orthodoxy’s vocabulary. Interestingly, on December 30, 1923, the Sunday after the drafting of the Auburn Affirmation in upstate New York, Machen preached a very bold sermon at the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton. That sermon was entitled, The Issue in the Church. As if he had been a spy at the Auburn meeting, Machen mocked the liberals’ use of double-talk. The point was that the liberal was accustomed to use Orthodox language in the interests of an anti-Orthodox religion.

Machen cited as an example the doctrine of Christ’s bodily resurrection, a doctrine to which the liberal could not subscribe in all honesty. In an imaginary exchange, Machen went on, but to then deny an article in the Apostles’ Oh no, replied the liberal, I accept the Apostles’ Creed and recite it religiously, week by week. I accept the article, the third day he rose again from the dead, but I reserve the right to interpret that article in a way consistent with the times in which we live. Therefore, I reserve the right to interpret this article in the Creed to mean the third day he did not rise again from the dead. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, building on the legacy of Machen and his hostility to anti-Orthodox liberalism, this, our Church by its name, has declared its perpetual hostility against such views.

But something else should be noted about the name of our denomination, and the process by which it came to be adopted. Maybe you noticed it. Actually, the name Orthodox Presbyterian Church was not the name proposed in the Vivaldi overture from the Presbytery of Ohio. His proposal was for the name the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America. The geographical reference of America, something that De Veldi’s proposal shared with the original name of our denomination, somewhere along the line from overture to the floor of the assembly was dropped.

Although the excuse could be made that the loss of the geographical reference would be advantageous, and therefore practically useful in developing contacts and even churches beyond regional borders, Still at the same time, the loss of the geographical reference has far more significance, for it is symbolic of the great shift in our culture that has now been formalized in the organization of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

In order to understand this, it is helpful to think once more about nature. You see, when Machen was defrocked by the Presbyterian Church USA, early June 1936, he was not only, in effect, booted out of the Church, but also out of the culture of which that Church was an integral part.

Presbyterianism and this nation, historically, belong together. They move together. was almost as if they were moving to the beat of the same drum. The Presbyterian Church USA, as Presbyterianism generally, was establishmentarian by nature. But now, with Nathan’s disenfranchisement, the church that organized from his efforts bore the stamp of Baptist enfranchisement. It was marked as surely as Machen was himself. As such, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian anomaly. That is, she is an expression of Presbyterianism that just simply does not fit the ordinary mold. Presbyterians have tended to be defined in terms of national identity. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is not identified in terms of its national context.

To be very frank about it, we are not an American Church. Now, please understand me at this point. This does not mean that we are an un-American or anti-American church. It is just to say that in a very real and existential way, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church could not be defined by her tie to American culture or by some aspiration for a position within the American mainstream.

In the providence of God, the severance from an American identity becomes for us the opportunity anew to be the pilgrim people of God, a people whose mind is well directed to our true commonwealth. Our citizenship is in heaven. Philippians 3.20. It will be as citizens by grace of the higher commonwealth that we labor to be good citizens of the lesser. And most definitely, I might add at this point, not vice versa.

Because that would mean a triumph for a religion of works. A religion that has at the center of it labor and effort and work on behalf of the commonwealth of this creation. and in terms of the aspirations and hopes of that commonwealth, and that then displacing our identity in, by grace, that commonwealth above. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a reminder to us, then, of the full sufficiency grace of God, by which we have been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Christ’s own domain. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has been born out of a great travail of culture, therefore. All Western society, and now with the twentieth century, all American society, has been undergoing a tremendous cataclysm. Taking shape has been a culture of unbelief.

Interestingly, in this regard, for writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, whom we’ve mentioned before, Even though they used biblical imagery in their titles—Fitzgerald in his book, this side of Paradise Hemingway, in his book The Sun Also Rises—neither God nor Christianity figure in any positive manner in their writings. By and large, God has been reduced to a swear word. Even when Fitzgerald later repented As indicated in his short story Babylon Revisited and in his novel Tender is the Night, belief in God is never revived. But that is not to say that while Fitzgerald’s godless repentance led him to an early grave, one aided and abetted by alcoholism, the positive use of biblical imagery did not itself revise.

This is evidenced in the language of T.S. Eliot, the American-born but English-trained poet, the man who professed conversion at the end of the twenties and then began to write about his conversion experience and the perspectives that it brought to view. But more particularly for an American audience, the biblical imagery was revived in John Steinbeck, and most specifically in his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

Here, Steinbeck wrote about a new religion that preached belief in humanity and in humanity’s indomitable spirit to face any adverse situation. Humanity had within itself the answer to the problems it faced. It could rise above the devastation of the Depression years. It could survive, it would survive. Here was a new gospel.

The obvious and great tragedy in all this is the Church which, in its efforts to address the great shift in the culture, actually capitulated to the culture. because it feared for its own relevance and continued viability. In the words of Jesus, it sought to save its life in this world.

Sadly then, the established Church embraced cultural and American unbelief, and in its leadership essentially spit on the cardinal doctrines or the cardinal truths of the Christian religion. But later, when the cultural mood changed, and there became an obvious and openness to biblical imagery, the Church applauded the revival of this language and imagery in the interests of a new cultural religion—humanism. a religion that now came to expression in the social paternalism stretching from the New Deal to the Great Society. If there has been further movement in this cultural religion in our present situation, it has been in the direction of recognizing that all societies, not just American, all cultures, all habits, all peoples, all living things, the earth itself, are divine. And the conclusion of the established church is that for the language and images of scripture and of Christianity… to have any validity at all, they must be used in the interests of such commitments.

Is it any wonder that we have witnessed in this century the eclipse, the loss of the heavenly city to the secular city? And in this situation, Christianity, if it is to be positively judged at all, is now viewed as the process of social and political action in keeping with a program of reconciliation such as is perceived according to liberal predilections within Jesus of Nazareth himself. But who is this Jesus of Nazareth? Certainly the citizens of the secular city cannot say, since they have already abandoned the historical reliability of the gospel records.

The best they can do is to propose or project a Jesus consistent with their best efforts and aspirations for humanity. Lately we have been treated to the revolutionary Jesus, You know, the one who crusaded for the rights of Galileans against the powerful priestly temple system in Jerusalem. Or maybe our interest should be more in the ecological Jesus, the one who in his parables actually preached the religion of nature, possibly you didn’t know that. Or what about the PC Jesus, the politically correct Jesus? who is the champion of a first-century equality movement, the principles of which lead us to renounce all oppression of women, homosexuals, and other minority groups.

It is obvious, is it not, that neither nation nor we of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church can proceed down these lines. Neither Machen nor we could begin with a position in which we allow culture, the culture, however subtly, however admirable in some regards that culture may be, to determine our relationship to the gospel. For this reason, by the marvelous and profound providence of God, Machen and we have been delivered from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. And for this reason, by the marvelous and profound providence of God, we must not be the Presbyterian Church or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of America. Indeed, for this reason, by the marvelous and profound wisdom of God, we cannot be even the true Presbyterian Church of the world, because as part of the true biblical Church, we are not of this world, but of another world altogether.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church exists for the recovery of this truth in the consciousness of Christ’s Church. Our meaning and mission are intrinsically tied to the issue of the Church’s essential other-worldliness. This is confirmed even by what many would judge an indifferent thing—our name. It should now be apparent to us all that the meaning of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is no simple matter.

In fact, our meaning is not found in our own clear-headed pursuit of a particular idea, a thought in our brains. It is not found even in a well-worked-out philosophy and theological system in the mind of J. Gresham Machen. But at the same time, neither is our meaning found within our resilient wills. or the superiority of our moral character. It is not as if, by our appeal to some idea or to some strength in our wills or in our moral character, we have formed a church to our own liking and established, even created, the meaning of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And I might add at this point that our meaning isn’t even found in our own perceptive self-analysis and understanding. Rather, it is found in that to which we are being pushed by the providence of God. History is what God does to us. events in keeping with God’s providence force us in directions that we would not choose for ourselves.

Machen would not have chosen either the circumstances or the environment in which he departed from this world. He was brought to these in the providence of God. Machen would not even have chosen his own disenfranchisement, let alone the disenfranchisement of the Church that grew out of his efforts. The providence of God in history moves him in these directions.

They are greater than the man, and more significant than him, but that providence, having moved also moved us, and continues to move us, away from a worldliness, away from an attachment to things here, so that we might live out of our appropriate attachment to and union with Christ and to glory. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth, for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye appear with him in glory. No. I will. Okay, Bob. Correct. Yes, that was the name that came to this. I have no idea how that happened. I thought that is the name that was proposed to the assembly. I had deleted the geographical reference.

The other is different. The question of whether we’re in America or not. What do you do with the with the parallelism or at least seeming to me it is the scripture Pauline epistles are addressed to churches in Galatia, not in heaven. Yes, right. Where they live. Yes. Good point. Good point. In the reality of the life and the community and the culture and the bad things that are brought to them from that culture. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

And this church is also, but I think that I’m sorry, yes, OK, and he’s asking me to reflect on the fact that in Scripture we do have Paul speaking specifically to churches in particular locale, whether or not those would be considered the official names of the churches is a consideration and certainly by any.

By any means, by which the apostle addresses those churches, he certainly is always setting before them their transcendent identity. The tragedy is, though, that the transcendent identity begins to be lost in the consciousness of American Presbyterianism.

You can see it. I challenge anyone to go back and review the Westminster Standards out of the 17th century. These men had expressed in those standards the hope of heaven. That was the goal. But that consciousness is being lost, and as it is being lost, the expectations are very much being attached to the prospects of the nation. I think we all realize what happened in the last century as the Civil War was fought out. I mean, people were fighting this war in the interest of God’s will. And particularly in the north, they saw this as the mechanism by which God would bring the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God on Earth. This was going to be heaven on Earth. That’s why we don’t have the battle hymn of the Republic in the Trinity Hymnal. I think everybody realizes that, don’t they? Okay. Yes. Amen. Yes. See, there’s been a very some of you. Oh, I’m sorry. Yes. Would it.

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