Westminster Theological Seminary

Definition

Westminster Theological Seminary is a Presbyterian and Reformed graduate theological seminary in Philadelphia, founded in 1929 by J. Gresham Machen and a circle of conservative colleagues who withdrew from Princeton Theological Seminary that same year, intending to carry forward the confessional “Princeton theology” associated with Princeton’s earlier faculty.¹ Samuel Waldron describes it as founded “to be the successor seminary of Old Princeton.”²

Historical Development

Founding amid the Princeton reorganization (1929)

Princeton Theological Seminary’s governing board was reorganized in 1929, and Machen, together with conservative colleagues including Robert Dick Wilson, Oswald T. Allis, and Cornelius Van Til, withdrew and founded Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia that same year.¹ John Murray, then a first-year member of Princeton’s faculty, left after that single appointment and followed Machen to Philadelphia in 1930.³ Murray went on to hold Westminster’s chair of systematic theology, a post Norman Shepherd succeeded him in decades later.² Van Til became the new seminary’s professor of apologetics.⁴

The “eclipse of Princeton” debate

A popular account holds that Princeton’s own confessional theology did not survive its 1929 reorganization and lived on only at the seminary Machen founded. Kenneth Stewart, examining the claim, calls it a mythology:

For too long a mythology has circulated that from the departure of J. Gresham Machen and his circle from Princeton for Philadelphia in 1929, the vaunted “Princeton theology,” a kind of “gold standard” of conservative evangelical and Reformed orthodoxy across the English-speaking world, was eclipsed at Princeton. The Princeton theology is widely accepted to have found its new home in the seminary founded by Machen at Philadelphia.⁵

Stewart traces this narrative to Edwin H. Rian’s 1940 book The Presbyterian Conflict, still being repeated as recently as a 1980 article in the Journal of Presbyterian History.⁵ Against it, he documents that most of Princeton’s own faculty (Charles Erdman, Frederick Loetscher Sr., William Park Armstrong, Caspar Wistar Hodge Jr., and Geerhardus Vos among them) remained at their posts and kept training conservative Reformed ministers for at least a decade after 1929.⁵ The two institutions did diverge in one respect: Princeton’s own journal, the Princeton Theological Review, ended with the reorganization, while Westminster did not launch its own periodical, the Westminster Theological Journal, until 1939.⁶

The Norman Shepherd controversy (1976-1982)

Norman Shepherd joined Westminster’s faculty in 1963 and later succeeded Murray in the chair of systematic theology.² A dispute followed over his teaching on faith, obedience, and justification:

This controversy spanned the years 1976-1982 and was in certain respects even longer. It involved many of the most prominent names in evangelical and Reformed circles. It was a contributing cause to the failure of the OPC’s merger with the PCA. It was confusing and divisive. Major deciding votes related to the controversy in the seminary, presbyteries, and denominations involved were again and again split so evenly that a decisive response to Shepherd’s views was never given.⁷

Shepherd was eventually dismissed from Westminster’s faculty, but, as Waldron notes, “not precisely because he had been found guilty of substantial doctrinal error by seminary or presbytery, but because his views were enormously controversial.”⁸

Related Doctrines

• J. Gresham Machen
• Cornelius Van Til
• John Murray
• Presbyterian
• Orthodox Presbyterian Church

External links

• Official website of Westminster Theological Seminary

References

1. Kenneth J. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed: The Resurgence of Calvinism Across the 20th Century,” Themelios 50, no. 2 (2025): 286. ↩ ↩²

2. Samuel Eldon Waldron, “Sola Fide in Norman Shepherd,” in Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 163. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed,” 289. ↩

4. Loraine Boettner, preface to The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), thanking “Dr. Cornelius Van Til, Professor of Apologetics in Westminster Theological Seminary.” ↩

5. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed,” 288. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed,” 292. ↩

7. Waldron, “Sola Fide in Norman Shepherd,” 166. ↩

8. Waldron, “Sola Fide in Norman Shepherd,” 167. ↩