This is Thinking in Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mowie, your host and president of the Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Richard E. Burnett is the

executive director and managing editor of Theology Matters. He received the

Master of Sacred Theology from Yale Divinity School and

both the MD and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He's taught at Union Presbyterian

Seminary, Gordon Conwell Seminary, and Erskine Theological Seminary.

He's author edited several academic books and articles.

It is his most recent book, Maetons Hope, The Transformation of a Modernist in the New Princeton Princeton that is the topic of our conversation today.

Professor Burnett, welcome to thinking in public.

Thank you for having me.

You know, I saw that you had written a new biography and a new major

historical work on Gresham Machen so I knew first of all I had I had to read it

eagerly even as I acknowledge Macian's massive influence in my life and thinking.

But I did have to wonder in the onset what could be much different than what had been presented before.

So I want to ask you straight up front.

In terms of the different kind of argument you make

and the different kind of historical terrain you cover,

did you start out pretty much knowing this is the direction

the project would take or was it a surprise to you?

I think if I began by wondering about several threads I began reading

...