There was a statement by Benjamin Morgan Palmer on the 25th anniversary of the Southern General Assembly in 1886, the same assembly that condemned evolution and set in motion the final acts and the whole play of the Woodrow Evolution controversy. You might think that someone as great in the history of the Southern Church, an eloquent preacher and former seminary professor, the first moderator of the Southern Church General Assembly as Benjamin Morgan Palmer would be a man in whose hand would be the whole audience of that great 25th assembly. It was not to be the case, however. Benjamin Morgan Palmer said in his address, fathers and brethren, it has not been easy for me to utter my speech in your hearing today. When I was first informed of my appointment by the last assembly to this service, my spirit was oppressed. I could not be certain how far in presenting my own views I should be able to reflect those of the church at large. In this age of almost licentious liberalism, When every conceivable truth is brought into question, no speaker can tell whether he may not be treading upon torpedoes which will explode beneath his feet. There was, however, only one resource to me to utter with unhesitating frankness the convictions of my own mind and to which I ask you to accept as the confession of one who plainly recognizes that he belongs to the old school, to the generation which has passed. This testimony of one of the two most important founding fathers of the Southern Presbyterian Church shows how, in the context of the time of the Woodrow Evolution controversy, the church had been through some changes. Now, let's look at this controversy first on an ecclesiastical level and then on a theological one. Ecclesiastically, it was a disaster. It's a parliamentarian's nightmare. I doubt even if our esteemed brother Dave Coffin could have sorted this out on the floor of General Assembly. with so many actions in so many church courts, and in a board of directors of a seminary owned by so many synods at once, and finally the assembly asserting the right of sovereignty over even that institution. It was a mess. But there were tremendous implications for the whole way the church was to conduct her business. And again, these differences or these emphases of the Southern church are on some levels profoundly different than that of her Northern neighbor. Doctrinal positions, which were not clearly stated in the Constitution of the Church, were settled by enthese deliverances of particular assemblies on a case-by-case basis. This was the position articulated by John Gerodot. Now, the problem with an enthese deliverance is that it opens the door to the transformation of the Presbyterian governmental system from that which is constitutionally based, which is based upon a written creed which all voluntarily assent to, because that creed is seen to be biblical, and transforms it from that kind of a constitutional body into a parliamentary body, into a body in which issues and controversies are settled not on the basis necessarily of the Constitution, which it takes a supermajority to transform and change, but merely on the basis of the tyranny of a majority plus one vote. This transformation of the Presbyterian system creates a gap, you see, a gap between constitutionally based law on the one hand and the tyranny of an oppressive majority on the other. And it's why we have ended up so often in American Presbyterianism with the church through her highest church courts acting ultra vires against the very constitution which founds the body. And it's a dangerous and inconsistent position to adopt ecclesiastically. Now, the foundation of the Southern Church in 1861 had been a commitment to the spirituality of the Church. The Southern Church, in the face of the Gardner Spring Resolutions, which demanded loyalty to the government of the United States, had asserted the sovereignty, rightly, of Christ over His Church. There was no such law in the Bible binding the peoples of the Southern states to one particular government that happened to be that in Washington, but rather they were free to choose their own government via their own states. And so in the face of this challenge to Christ's kingship and lordship over the church, they asserted the spirituality of the church, the spirituality of the church over her own affairs on the one hand, and that she should not needlessly mingle herself in the affairs of the state on the other. Now, Thornwell was the one who so clearly articulated that doctrine in this country. It's not unique to Thornwell. It's one that flowed to America from Scottish shores, like so much of our other reformed government and theological conviction. But in the life of the church, this theological conviction about the spirituality of the church, designed to protect the church, became fossilized. For some reason, it degraded into the idea that the church could say nothing about government or politics, which opened the minds of some to the idea that it was inappropriate for the church to say anything at all in the realm of science. Losing that Scottish and originally Thornwellian balance of saying as much as the scripture says, no more, no less, intruding into these other areas where she had a biblical basis in brief, But yet, keeping primarily to her own sphere, that pure Thornwellian and Scottish doctrine became corrupted into an escapist retreatism. It has become abused in the later history of the Southern Church, even used to justify racism in some cases, on which the moral law of God would have a great deal to say. So the Woodrow evolution controversy appealed to a central tenet on which the Southern Church was founded, but in so doing slightly twisted and corrupted that important doctrine. The other ecclesiastical facet of the controversy has been mentioned, that of subscription. Woodrow firmly took exception to the Westminster Confession. He said in the chapter on creation, Chapter four, part one, I accept to the statement that it pleased God in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all therein in the space of six days. If this statement means that the world was made of nothing in six days of 24 hours each in the confession proper, I know of nothing else to which I accept. And I believe the Westminster assembly to teach the doctrine to which I object. So there is precedent in the 19th century in this great struggle over the Bible and science and even surrounding the meaning of the confession phrase in the space of six days. There's clear precedent in the Southern Presbyterian Church of understanding, perhaps more clearly than her northern neighbors, the intent of Westminster. So Woodrow taught to that the confession meant six literal days, but he himself disagreed with that. And having stated his exception before the board of Columbia seminary, he then felt free to teach and preach his exception. They did not stop him from teaching an old age position, but rather it was his evolution teaching, which finally caught their attention. You see in the Southern church, there had been under the pressure of the new geology in the earlier part of the 19th century, a coexistence between older and younger earth views. Those two had been mutually tolerant until the great biology controversy had forced the church's hand to recognize that there were some potential problems in this area. During the evolution controversy, Adger's party asserted quite strongly to Gerardot and his party attacking Woodrow, that they were being inconsistent in their use of the confession. Because on the one hand, they charged Woodrow with not following the confession at this point. But on the other, they were tolerant of other brothers who also clearly believed that the world was created in a longer period than six literal days. But even their charge, you see, of inconsistency on Gerardot's part is something of an echo of Gerardot's own teaching. about the meaning of the confession. What about the theology involved? The theology of the doctrine of scripture was very much to the fore. Woodrow's unique definition of the Hebrew term for dust is not really as surprising as it might seem. Remember, Woodrow never received a formal theological education. He had studied himself independently for his examination before Harmony Presbytery. And in addition, he was appointed the chair not only because at this time he was a favorite son of the Senate of Georgia, Again, as Southerners are apt to do, push their own kind. So, too, he was one who was appointed because of his great expertise in the area of science. Gerardo, however, considered Woodrow's phrase organic dust to be, quote, the most extraordinary combination of words of which I have ever heard, end of quote. William Adams expressed equal astonishment. If this dust in Genesis meant flesh and blood and bone, It was certainly a suptuous meal for a serpent. Adger, however, went on at some length to try to justify this new definition. And I think this is a warning to us in our current controversy. We need to recognize that the kinds of interpretive and constitutional arguments that we bring to bear currently within the PCA will be invoked in the future as we face other controversies. If we think the evolution issue has gone away, we are stark, raving, loony, mad. Adger said, we know that there are various lawful interpretations of the Hebrew word afar. Among them is the English word dust, but it will not do to insist that this particular interpretation or any other of the Hebrew word must always be understood literally or that it must always be understood in one unvarying sense all throughout the scriptures. Does that argument sound familiar? E.J. Young reacts to Woodrow's teaching, his Hebrew usage and interpretation. He calls it a stretching of things in the attempt to meet up to the claims of science. R. Laird Harris himself has noted that Genesis 2.7 does not say that God chose higher animals and by giving it a soul made it a human. Rather, it says that God took an earthly form and by giving it breath made it become human. Because of this approach to the text that Woodrow took, there was an ambiguity about his wider treatment of the scriptures. As one commented during the controversy, we should have been glad to have had a more explicit declaration of the sense in which Woodrow accepts the Mosaic account of creation, inasmuch as the language he uses on this point leaves the impression that he regards it as little more than a Hebrew legend. The man had a view and he taught his view, but there was considerable confusion in the church and in the courts of the church over precisely what he meant. And it's understandable that it would take a period of time for him to clarify and them to understand his teaching, especially because of his treatment of the Hebrew text seemed to be so amorphous to them. Any doctrine, it was noted at the time, at variance with immediate creation is a dangerous error in as much as in the method of interpreting scripture, it must demand and in consequence, A fair interpretation will be involved, leading to a denial of doctrines fundamental to the faith. On the floor of the General Assembly, Given Strickler warned of the snare that had been laid before the Assembly in the interpretation and method of Woodrow. Scientists, Strickler charged, had searched the scriptures and manipulated them in order to bring the Bible in harmony with their scientific teachings, but in doing so, they had silenced the witness of God by perverting its meaning. And he warned his listeners not to get caught in the trap of this interpretation. Well, we could say more on Woodrow's doctrine of scripture. It deserves a Greenville Seminary student to do a paper or a thesis, I think, on the topic. Other doctrines were also endangered during the controversy, the doctrines of God and man. Woodrow did not deny the infinitude of God, nor did he deny the finite nature of man. But at the same time, he didn't let the infinitude of God profoundly impact his theological thinking. He displays, for example, very little appreciation of the doctrine of contingency, an essential element of Christian doctrine of creation founded upon God's infinitude. Especially when you're dealing with the creation of origins, which is an area which is much historic as a scientific question. Conclusions must, because of the doctrine of contingency, be drawn with caution, keeping in mind the full implication of man's and therefore science's finitude in contrast with God's infinite power and infinite number of options. The teaching, the idea of the doctrine of contingency is that God had before him a full range of possible options that he could have chosen from at any point in time. For example, the, the old Greeks insisted on the eternal eternality of matter. And all of us in this room would reject such an idea. But do you also not realize that if you subtly insist not only eternality of the matter, but on the eternality and the inevitability of the principles, of the formulas on which that matter is founded or which describe that matter, then you have subtly bought into a more philosophic form of the eternality of matter. God made E equal MC squared and he didn't have to make it that way. God declared Maxwell's equations and there was light, among other things. But it didn't have to just be that way. There are lots of other ways it could have been. And we always must keep that doctrine of contingency in mind. It's the whole reason why we do experiments and probe the universe to seek to understand, because the options are infinite, which God could have chosen. We never know the answer before we begin the experiment, necessarily. The doctrines of Christ and salvation were also brought subtly under a cloud by the teaching of Woodrow. Woodrow was firmly committed to a Chalcedonian doctrine of the incarnation. We want to say that up front. But because he believed that the body of Adam had evolved from a brute, and because theology and dogmatics is systematic with one truth interrelated and connected to another, there's a symmetry in theology. What you teach in anthropology has implications for Christology, for example. Because of that symmetry, His affirmations about the body of Adam would have naturally lended more credence to an adoptionist Christology than to a Chalcedonian Christology. The idea that Adam was made from the body of one who had preexisted fits more naturally with the Christology rejected by the early church of heretical adoptionist teaching, that God sort of looked down on the face of the earth and chose a fairly bright and attractive fellow to place his spirit upon. and to transform into, to make into the very son of God. There are wider theological implications to our narrow treatments, even of one word in the scriptures. And if God's truth is one, then we must not merely do micro exegesis. We must also have wider biblical and theological control over our conclusions. But finally, and perhaps the most eloquent theological dimension of the controversy, was the underlying relationship between science and theology. All parties involved in the conflict were committed to the unity of truth, if asked, between God's works on the one hand, in creation, and God's word in the scripture on the other. And no one explicitly doubted the traditional Southern Presbyterian doctrine of the full verbal inspiration and consequent inerrancy of the scripture. Now, I say explicitly doubted because we also, in the same breath, cautioned by systematic theology, have to remember that just because one affirms inerrancy or even plenary verbal inspiration, that does not mean that damage of his thought will not occur elsewhere in our systematic theology. Woodrow's defenders limited the range of meaning addressed by the biblical text, denying that the Bible spoke at all to matters of science. In other words, a faulty hermeneutic can quickly impact one's doctrine of inspiration in the next generation, which is exactly what happened. The two parties However, while formally agreed on scripture, did not agree on how science and theology should relate. Woodrow's opponents had hoped from the very start, Judge Perkins had hoped that the Woodrow, that the Perkins chair would be used in the ongoing conflict between the old faith and the new science to buttress the old faith. This warfare model for the relationship between science and theology stood in marked contrast to Woodrow's own independence or separationist model where he divided the two realms. Woodrow decried anyone who would claim the Bible was a textbook of science. And as Steve Barry has already noted, Dr. Gerrido rightly said that that little statement is a mischievous statement because underneath it hides a number of different subtle distinctions. To say the Bible is not a textbook of science is really not to say that much. You must say a lot more to articulate the relationship between science and theology. Woodrow rightly saw that the Bible was a contextual book given in a particular created framework, linguistic, historical, scientific, epistemological realities all assumed. And I think if Presti also would have recognized that the Bible was also given in an uncreated framework, in the framework of the triune God himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, if we're to understand God's word, we must understand it within that context, both the uncreated context and the created context. Woodrow overlooked, however, the inverse, that science is also contextual, that the natural universe has been given to us in a particular framework, including spiritual powers, unseen beings, and even history, the history, especially of a moral dilemma, as well as an uncreated framework of the infinite triune God himself. Therefore, science needs the light of revelation to even begin its work properly. Woodrow not only ended up adopting a separationist model of science and theology, he also, as he hardened his position, began to move towards an assertion of the superiority of science in certain areas over the Bible. You see, his divide and conquer strategy, first you assert separation, then you assert superiority, and so you win the game. But in the realm of scripture, Southern Presbyterians were deeply committed to the promised operation of the infinite Holy Spirit in interpreting the inspired word of God. In the realm of nature, no such promise exists for the interpretation of scientific data. Thus, the authority of science for Southern Presbyterians was relativized, even in its own realm. This is an argument given by J.B. Scherer, who was professor of Bible at Davidson College, just on the heels of the controversy. Near the end of his life, Woodrow hardened his conviction that the scriptures are silent on all matters scientific. He wrote to J.B. Adger, Now I regard the doctrine of evolution as defined in my address, as established as completely as the doctrine of gravitation. And I see more and more clearly the complete silence of the Bible on this and many kindred subjects on which it has been supposed to plainly speak, thus Woodrow moved towards this absolute total separationist model in an addition, in an attempt to resolve the tensions between the old faith and the new science, remaking in the process, the old faith into the new faith at the dawn of the 20th century. Now on balance, we need to be kind and admit that Woodrow himself did not consistently hold to a total separationist view. in the relationship between science and theology. He thought that the Bible taught the special creation of Eve as detailed in Genesis chapter two. He also believed in numerous miracles in the scriptures, all of which fly in the face of the claims of his inaugural address concerning the inability of the Bible to communicate any scientific details, never having clearly defined the line between a detail of science and a fact of science, his own separationist model could not stand on its own two feet. On the scientific side of the controversy, I will quote merely one authoritative source. Woodrow, you see, fell between two stools. On the one hand, he tried to teach and embrace a modified form of evolution. On the other hand, he still retained a place for the special creation of Eve. The New York Times, November 28, 1886, at the end of the controversy, had this one liner. Possibly Dr. Woodrow himself might profitably become better acquainted with a theory which he seems to advocate with more zeal than knowledge. So he even lost the secular and public audience of his day. Well, there's much more that could be said, but let me just say in closing that I think there are lots of lessons to learn in the laboratory of this controversy, both about the history of the Southern Church in an official and ecclesiastical sense, and lessons to be learned to avoid problems in the future. Let me leave you with this great caution ringing in your ears. I have been pleasantly surprised in the discussion in the PCA so far over creation. to find so many people coming forward and asserting unambiguously that they do not hold to any macro evolutionary ideas. Frankly, that's taken me off guard. I expected to hear or to have more volunteer the fact that they embrace such a position. But we must remember that as we deal with this controversy, there are many others like evolution that may well come down the pike again. The first time I was asked for a copy of this paper before the study committee of the PCA met was from an OPC brother. Two years ago, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church had a modern day Woodrow who rose up in the ranks of their ruling elders, and they faced a great controversy. And there was a decision made to reject the Woodrowian position, but it was hardly a unanimous vote. We doubtless will face similar questions and controversies in the PCA in future years. May God protect us from ourselves.