A Tale of Two Tigers

 Dei Sub Numine Viget – “Under God’s Power, She Flourishes;” this the official Latin motto of Princeton University. Indeed, Princeton has flourished, not only in academic reputation or in endowment value[1], but in the influence of her alumni. Two noteworthy Princeton Tigers are forever connected - J. Gresham Machen and Woodrow Wilson. Both were Princetonians, Presbyterians, and providentially, they were pals.

Woodrow Wilson served as the 28th President of the United States of America. Before he was elected President, Wilson was the Governor of New Jersey, prior to that, President of Princeton from 1902-1910. J. Gresham Machen was a Princeton grad and then hired as Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1906-1929.

Both men were reared in Southern Presbyterian families, and their two families shared history and affection. In fact, while Wilson was a student at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the Machen family extended hospitality. In return, as Machen pursued his Bachelor of Divinity at Princeton, he not only sat under President Wilson’s American Constitution lectures but received invitations to Sunday dinner in the President’s home after the morning service at Princeton’s Nassau Presbyterian Church.[2] Doubtlessly, their shared heritage was a strong connection - both men loved the Presbyterian church and both served as Elders in the Presbyterian church.[3]

While Woodrow Wilson and J. Gresham Machen shared a similar familial and Reformed confessional heritage, they ended with two very different intellectual and theological worldviews. Wilson embraced progressivism, or liberalism, as an all-encompassing worldview. Enamored with the German academy, President Wilson carried his Hegelianism with him to Princeton, the Governor’s Mansion in Trenton, and ultimately to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The Princeton University Presidential archive website describes Wilson’s disposition toward Princeton’s Reformed confessional heritage:

In strengthening the science program, Wilson called for basic, unfettered, “pure” research. In the field of religion, he made biblical instruction a scholarly subject. He broke the hold of conservative Presbyterians over the board of trustees and appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty.[4]

Though he remained faithful in Reformed piety, Wilson deserted Reformed orthodoxy for German higher criticism. He rejected covenant theology as unscientific, and shunned Calvinistic orthodoxy for Protestant Liberalism. “Unorthodox in my reading of the standards of the faith,” he wrote in his journal as a 32-year-old, “I am nevertheless orthodox in my faith”[5] The future POTUS soundly rejected the Calvinist anthropology of total depravity for the optimism of the Enlightenment. In his spiritual biography of Woodrow Wilson, Barry Hankins notes how quickly Princeton University secularized under Wilson’s administration: “Presbyterian orthodoxy disappeared altogether, becoming something of an embarrassment” (98) and the school “ceased to be Christian in any meaningful sense” (86).[6]

Though history would remember him as a staunch defender of orthodoxy, J. Gresham Machen was sympathetic to progressivism in his early years. He came from a family, specifically a father, charmed by the historical criticism of the modern German university.[7] This is partly why Machen enrolled at Princeton to begin with - his trust in Woodrow Wilson. During the 1905-1906 academic year, Machen studied in Germany at the University of Marburg under Wilhelm Herrmann.[8] It wasn’t until Billy Sunday was invited to preach at Alexander Hall in Princeton that Machen awoke to the liberalism of the Princeton faculty.[9] It was the faculty’s reaction to the announcement of Sunday, and their effort to thwart the event, that revealed how deep progressivism had penetrated Princeton.

It was in this new Princeton - a Princeton embarrassed of Presbyterian orthodoxy; a Princeton that ceased to be Christian in any meaningful sense - that J. Gresham Machen fought for Christian orthodoxy, writing his famous, and still quoted apology: Christianity and Liberalism. Machen would not only end up losing the battle at Princeton, but for the entire denomination. The PCUSA was lost to theological liberalism and still wanders in the wilderness to this day. But out of these institutional deaths, God wrought resurrection - Machen went on to found Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), both modern stalwarts of Reformed orthodoxy.

Theologically, Princeton continues to wither, even now, but the seeds of old Princeton have blossomed in other gardens. Two other Princeton grads - James P. Boyce and Basil Manley, Jr. - founded the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, self-consciously in the tradition of old Princeton. Dr. Brett Eckel and I are both multi-time graduates of SBTS. Old Princeton also lives on in Christ Community Church’s statement of faith - the Westminster Standards. Under God’s power, this rich, Reformed confessional tradition continues to flourish at Christ Community Church.

[1]Princeton’s current endowment is valued at over $36 billion, reported in a Princeton alumni newsletter from October 2025 - https://paw.princeton.edu/article/princeton-endowment-earns-11-return-reaches-364-billion.

[2]https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/machen-where-died/

[3]Wilson was ordained as a Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian church in 1897, at the age of 40. Wilson maintained the Reformed piety of his youth throughout his life. During his time in the White House, he faithfully sat in the third-row pew at Central Presbyterian Church. His daughters memorized the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and he regularly led his family in devotions. - https://journal.rts.edu/review/woodrow-wilson-ruling-elder-spiritual-president/

[4]https://pr.princeton.edu/pub/presidents/wilson/index.html

[5]https://journal.rts.edu/review/woodrow-wilson-ruling-elder-spiritual-president/

[6]Barry Hankins. Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

[7]Woodrow Wilson’s uncle was at the center of a controversy in the Presbyterian church about evolution. Machen’s father, who was more of an Episcopalian, though he did end up a Presbyterian, defended Wilson’s uncle. It seems the two families also shared an affinity for German critical scholasticism, along with everything else they had in common.

[8]A disciple of Albrecht Ritschl, Herrmann also taught Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth.

[9]https://albertmohler.com/2024/08/28/richard-burnett/