Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: October 26, 2013 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Introduction to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

All right. Jerry has asked me to give a biographical sketch of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. Let’s begin with Romans chapter 3. In a sense, it’s pretty difficult to give a biographical sketch of Warfield in a popular presentation like this because—I probably shouldn’t say this, it’ll turn you off at the beginning—but the fact is, Warfield never did a lot in terms of activism or involvement in causes and things other than writing. And his whole legacy really is his writing. And so we’ll try to highlight some of the things he did, some of the controversies he entered, and the things he had to say about them.

We might begin with the question, why study historical theology like this? And why look at an individual from church history? Why not rather just go to the scriptures and open them up as we had in the last hour? By the way, I sat here thinking during the last hour, Dr. Nettles is a first-class church historian. He’s a world-class church historian, and I always knew that, and I’ve admired him for that. But I sat here and thought, church historians are not supposed to do systematic theology as well as he did. That was just an excellent, excellent overview. I was going to say it was the best message on reprobation I’ve ever heard, but that really wouldn’t say much because I don’t think I’ve ever heard another lesson on reprobation, but it was just excellent. I encourage you to get the audio for that and go back through it and listen through it, take some more notes. I plan to do it myself.

But why look at people like this from the history of the church? And one of the answers is—it’s not the only answer, but one of the answers is—in God’s providence through the history of the church, at critical moments, God has raised up what we might just call a man of the moment, a man of the hour. And they were raised up by God to address a particular issue of the day with such clarity that it becomes, in the history of the church, a watershed moment. And we’ve got a number of those. We saw that last evening with Martin Luther, who is the theologian of the doctrine of justification. It’s not that he invented the doctrine; he didn’t. But his exposition of the doctrine was so precise and so massive and so influential that any discussion of the doctrine of justification ever since has been a footnote to Martin Luther. The same we might say with the doctrine of sin and grace with Augustine, the doctrine of satisfaction of the atonement with Anselm.

And in that kind of a way, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield is known as, and rightly known as, the theologian of the doctrine of inspiration. He did not invent the doctrine—in fact, he argued long and hard to show that this doctrine that he expounded was the long heritage of the church—but his exposition of it was so massive, and his defense of it was so massive, his exegetical grounding of the doctrine was so massive that it became a watershed moment in the history of the church. And now for the last century since Warfield, any discussion of the doctrine of inspiration has, in a real sense, just been a footnote to Warfield, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with him or not. At this point, you have not finished your study of the doctrine of inspiration until you’ve considered Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield and the hundreds and hundreds of pages that he wrote on the subject. And so that’s what’s noted about Warfield: that when you think of Warfield today, what you think first usually is he’s the theologian of the doctrine of inspiration, and he deserves that, and that’s entirely right. But in my estimation, that does not do justice to him; he was that kind of a scholar in virtually all of the departments of biblical studies, and that’s what made him such an influential figure in the day that he was. Actually, he is noted for his work on inspiration, but he wrote more extensively on the doctrine of the person and work of Christ, another issue of the day. We may have some time to look at some of that as we go along as well.

But in a way, I think Romans chapter 3 and verse 4 is a good place to start with Warfield because in a way it capsulizes so much about him. Here he will begin with verse one: “What advantage has the Jew? What is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. But what if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?” In other words, they’ve had these promises and now they don’t believe. Have God’s promises fallen? By no means. And then this next statement: “Let God be true and every man a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.”

Paul’s answer here is whenever you find a seeming difficulty like this, where it seems that God’s purpose has fallen: no, no, no, no, no, let God be true and every man a liar. And I start with this because what we have in a work that has never been republished—it’s published in the Dayton newspaper in 1876, a sermon of Benjamin Warfield, and it’s the only record we have of it—and it happened to be taken down by a stenographer, evidently, and the local newspaper editor was there in attendance. He was not a believer. His remarks about it are a little bit skeptical. Warfield is one of those hellfire and damnation kind of preachers. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. But that’s just the kind of way the editor portrays it, almost. And it says almost with tongue-in-cheek, a little subtle dig, I think, a little bit. The editor says something like: “Well, if someone’s going to believe in this predestination stuff, we like one who really believes it and doesn’t apologize for it.”

Well, you look through the sermon that Warfield preached, and here he’s just a young man of age 25. It’s the first work of Warfield’s that we have. And what we have in that sermon is simply a nutshell of what characterized his entire career and what he’s noted for today. And the theme of it was, “Let God be true and every man a liar.” And it wasn’t an exposition of the passage, but what he did was he went through the various difficulties that Christians face. And he comes back in every case: let God be true, and every man a liar. So whether you’re speaking of supposed contradictions to the Bible that have been uncovered by scholarship, don’t worry about that. Let God be true and every man a liar. If it’s some mystery of the faith like the Trinity or predestination and human responsibility, don’t worry. Let God be true and every man a liar. And he goes through case by case by case and simply answers in every one: let God be true, and we will never fail in that. And of course, underlining all of that is his deep conviction of the unfailing trustworthiness of the Word of God. And it was a theme that was sounded at the beginning of his ministry and a theme that characterized his whole career.

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, for those of you who are new to him, lived from 1851 to 1921. He was a giant among the old Princetonians. Princeton Seminary in those days was known already as a land of giants. And among that land of giants, Warfield was a giant. That’s not just some opinion of people later looking back; that was even the opinion of people in his own day. People from Europe even talked about how he had become a household name, that they would refer to him as the leading ornament of the seminary. After his death, Caspar Wister Hodge, Jr., that is the grandson of Charles Hodge, remarked that of all of the great theologians that have graced the halls of Princeton Seminary, Warfield stood taller than them all. In fact, one guy remarked—I think that was very interesting—that he was an older man at the time, and he said he had known in his lifetime, very intimately, the three major theologians of the century, and that would be Charles Hodge, William G. T. Shedd, and Henry Boynton Smith. And he said he was not only convinced that Warfield knew more than all of them, but he said, “I’m disposed to say that he knew more than all of them put together.” And that’s just to give you a sense of the stature that Warfield had in his own day. He was clearly the high watermark of old Princeton. Princeton was a seminary in the time that was renowned as a fortress of the faith, and not just strong in their belief, but strong in their intellectual efforts in defending the faith as well and expounding the scriptures in every dimension. And among them, Warfield stands out as the high watermark.

A Few Things About His Life

All right, that’s just generally. Let’s begin with a few things about his life. And maybe we can work into, if we have time, some things about his work. There’s really little biographical information about Warfield that’s available. Most of his legacy is really, as I say, just his writing. But again, he lived 1851 to 1921. He was born outside of Lexington, Kentucky, lived on a ranch there. It was a rather privileged home. They weren’t filthy rich, but it was a rather privileged home. He was educated at home, private education. It was a home that was marked by deep piety, deep reformed piety. He had family heritage already that was very impressive both in terms of civic and religious heritage. Men in the military, men in politics and government. He had a vice president behind him in his family and a secretary of state, and he had some military officers and things like that and some educators, and so on. Robert Breckinridge—his middle name is Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield—Robert Breckinridge was his grandfather and was a noted theologian before him as well. And he even had a great uncle or something, I think it was, that taught at Princeton long before him, in the early days at Princeton.

He was taught at home, as I say, and one of the interesting stories in that regard—I just can’t miss telling it because it’s just such a delicious irony. When he was a young adolescent in his education at home, it came time to learn Greek. Now at this point already, Warfield was convinced that he was going to pursue studies in science. He was planning to go to college, study science, that would be his career. And with a science career, why in the world would I need Greek? And so he protested, “I don’t need to learn Greek,” and he protested to his father. His brother tells us about this. He protested to his father, “I don’t need to learn Greek,” and evidently it was a resolved kind of a protest. But his brother just remarks that in a home where the children are to learn the Westminster Catechism by age six and know the proofs for the Catechism by age nine, and quote all of the verses, youthful protests matter little. He learned his Greek. And what’s so ironic about that is that this is the man who would become one of the leading Greek scholars of the day. And it’s just funny to see how in the early days he despised it like that and saw no need for it.

Well, in the summer of 1868, his dad takes him to Princeton, New Jersey. His dad was a little bit apprehensive about that. Warfield at this point is only 16, not quite 17 years old. He enters into the sophomore class of the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton University. He tells an interesting story about that, that they got into town and they’re walking through and they saw a lot of good hunting dogs. His dad was very interested to see that, and he finally decided that a town with so many good hunting dogs can’t be a bad place to leave my kid. It must be all right. And then Warfield remarks that my dad never really did stop to think if there was any connection of those hunting dogs to the faculty or anything at the university. It was just the town, but he said that he was happy, so that was that.

He begins in school, as I say, age 16 in the sophomore class at Princeton. He excelled in all of his work. He graduated first in his class with perfect marks, we’re told, in science and mathematics. Graduated in 1871. We have one great story from his undergraduate days at this college. He was in chapel one Sunday afternoon, and sitting in the chapel—I don’t know who was preaching—but Warfield evidently takes a piece of paper and a pencil and begins drawing a caricature of some kind of one of his classmates. And he gets through and he’s kind of showing it around to people during the sermon. He’s showing it around and making trouble and people are giggling and laughing. And evidently the caricature of his classmate was not very flattering. And so after chapel, as soon as it was over, the two of them are out on the grass settling the matter like men, with a fist fight. And he gained by that the nickname “The Pugilist,” which again seems rather prophetic with all of the great work that he did in the defense of the faith. What’s ironic about that as well is that his grandfather had been kicked out of Princeton for a similar kind of incident some years before.

But he graduates in 1871, first in his class. He’s age 19. He’s still very interested in science. And so in the spring of 1872, he goes to Europe at the encouragement of his father to pursue scientific studies in the universities there. Eventually, the family back in Lexington receive a letter from Warfield from Europe—entirely unexpected, entirely unanticipated—in which Warfield says, “I intend to come back and go to the seminary at Princeton and pursue studies for the ministry.” This was a complete turnabout in the direction of his life. No one had any clue that this was going to happen. And we don’t have much information about it as to why it happened, except one remark from a friend of Warfield’s looking back on it said that he recalled that Warfield said at the time something to the effect that his love for Christ was so great for the work that he had done for him in saving him, and he felt like he could do no less than to give himself to vocational Christian ministry to serve him. Now, when Warfield was in the College of New Jersey, he had experienced a revival there, a revival that had swept through the school that might have had impact on him in that as well, although we don’t have a specific statement of that.

So in 1873 now, he enters as a student into Princeton Theological Seminary. Charles Hodge was the theology professor. Charles Hodge at this point now is an elderly man and a very respected and revered statesman, if you will, within the Presbyterian Church and beyond as well, and recognized as a leading theologian of the day, and Warfield becomes a student of his and develops a great affection for Hodge. Charles Hodge’s son, Caspar Wister Hodge, was a professor of New Testament there at the seminary, and he becomes something of a mentor for Warfield, and he helps Warfield in some later studies and directions in ministry as well. We’ll see him in a little bit.

But in 1876, he graduates from the seminary. He is the summer supply pastor in Dayton, Ohio for that summer, 1876. That’s the sermon that I mentioned to you; I think it was his first sermon there. He’s age 25. The church unanimously called Warfield to come to the pulpit of the church, but he declined and instead determined to go to Europe to pursue studies again, this time in theology. He marries that summer and he and his new bride go to Europe where he can pursue studies. Now there’s a lot—I should just mention this quickly—there’s a lot that’s been talked about in regard to Warfield’s wife, Annie, Annie Kincaid Warfield. She was evidently beautiful, we’re told, beautiful, witty, and brilliant young lady. She had quite the heritage in her family as well. Her father was an attorney. He had defended Abraham Lincoln in a case years before. She encountered some difficulties there in a thunderstorm when they were hiking in the mountains in Europe, in Germany, and it was debilitating to her and her health declined over the years very much. And we hear lots about that, but what we don’t hear during the time in Warfield’s correspondence is anything about that. Nothing. Nothing. The only thing we have about that is something long later that was mentioned by a former student, a colleague, O. T. Allis, who mentions it, and then Machen mentions something about Annie’s ill health as well. During the time while they were there in the correspondence, what we do find is some debilitating health issues with Warfield himself, where he’s unable to attend the classes like he would have preferred and so on. And it even becomes quite concerning at some points.

But he studies there in Europe and then comes back after a couple of years there. Back here, he is interim pastor of public supply again at a church, this time in Baltimore, First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore. There’s some talk about whether or not he should take the pastorate there and so on. During this time, at some point, he receives a letter from Western Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offering for him to come and teach Old Testament. Evidently, he had some interest in Old Testament and Hebrew back in the day, but now he had moved beyond that. Ironically, his interests were in New Testament and in Greek, and so he declined the offer. And a little while later, a year or so later, he receives another offer from them, this time offering to come and teach New Testament. So he begins his career as professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh.

Now, that’s 1878. By the early 1880s already, Warfield is gaining an international reputation for the work that he’s doing. Keep in mind now, he’s in his late 20s, he’s about 30 years old, and he’s starting already to produce some theological works that are enormously influential. Most notably, first off, is his 1881 article that he co-authored with A. A. Hodge on the doctrine of inspiration. Archibald Alexander Hodge was the son of Charles Hodge, named after Archibald Alexander, who was the founding professor of Princeton Seminary. But they co-authored this article on inspiration, which is massively influential and, in a sense, earth-shaking, because this was the day, as we’ll see in a minute, this was a day in which this was the issue and the defining issue of the moment.

So in 1881, he writes that. In 1882, he writes another article called “The Canonicity of 2 Peter.” The big issue of the day was, did the apostles really write some of these letters in the New Testament? A lot of the higher critics were coming and claiming that many of these epistles were not written by the apostles. In particular, 2 Peter came under the gun of so many of the critics. And Warfield said, well, if we can establish that 2 Peter was written by the apostle Peter, then all the rest of them are easy, because this is the one that they all know that Peter didn’t write. And so he investigates all of the ancient literature, both in Greek and in Latin, and he amasses this massive argument to show that the early church receives the second letter of Peter as a letter from the Apostle Peter. He demonstrates such a wide grasp and such a deep grasp of all of the ancient literature, Christian literature, both Greek and Latin. People are noticing, even in Britain now: who is this guy, 30 years old, 31 years old, when he writes this? And who is this man and where did he come from and look at what he’s doing. So already now he’s beginning to demonstrate the kind of work that he could do and would do. I like to put it this way: he was one of those rare individuals who had a grasp that was as wide as it was deep. He’s an amazing kind of guy. Just right here, he had so much information. Everybody who knew him knew that and made remarks about him to that effect. And he begins to demonstrate that now very early in his career as a New Testament professor at Western.

In 1886, he becomes the first American to write a textbook on textual criticism of the New Testament. He writes many other articles as well, most of them minor, but he’s becoming now recognized as one of the great New Testament exegetes and one of the great New Testament commentators of the day. And then that brings us to November 30th, 1886. Warfield is at Western Seminary in Pittsburgh and he receives a letter from Caspar Wister Hodge at Princeton. Suddenly and unexpectedly, A. A. Hodge, who is now teaching theology at Princeton, A. A. Hodge has died. And they need a new professor of systematic theology at Princeton. And Caspar Wister Hodge writes to Warfield to say that there is no one they are considering for the position except you. And we are hoping—and it’s a very imploring letter—we are hoping, we’re not asking for an answer yet, just please tell us that you will prayerfully consider it. A very gentle but very imploring kind of a letter. And Warfield writes back to him to say, in deep terms of affection, I’ll be glad to consider it. And of course, as God would have it, he ended up making the move and now transitioning from the field of New Testament to the field of systematic theology to teach that at Princeton.

And everyone at the time—and letters flooded in, lots of letters have come in now at this point are starting to come in from family and from abroad as well—congratulating Princeton and congratulating Warfield on this new move, and they’re even expressing great hopes of what is going to come from Princeton now and their new professor of theology. Not everyone was happy about it. Most people were, but there was a fella in Britain who was editing a series of New Testament commentaries, and he’d contracted with Warfield to write a commentary on one of the New Testament books, and he writes and says, “You owe it, you owe it to the field that you’re leaving in order to finish this commentary and to get it done.” Well, he never did. Broadus—no, it’s fine. That’s right. I know. In fact, yeah, Broadus, John Broadus, what he’s talking about. He taught at Southern where Tom is now. In the letter that he writes to Warfield, he actually injects a little humor. And he says, “I’ve been telling my students for years now to watch that you, Warfield, will become one of the great New Testament exegetes and commentators of the day. And now you’re going to prove that I’m not a prophet.”

Overall, the expectations were high. This move is going to be a significant one, and it’s going to prove to be, and everybody knew it at the time. Even in the family, there’s a lot of excitement about it. There’s some mixed feelings as well, because there was some friction between Robert Breckinridge and Charles Hodge some years before on some issues, and there’s some bad blood between Princeton and the Breckinridges and the Warfields. And so now to have Warfield going back to Princeton, where remember Robert Breckinridge had gone—didn’t graduate there, but had gone—and now there’d been bad blood between them, to have him going there now was quite a significant thing.

Chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology

Well, in 1887, then, he begins teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. The name of the chair is that he’s the Chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology. We call it Systematic Theology today. Chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology. They called it Systematic Theology in that day, too. But this title was created for this position deliberately, that not only is he here to teach theology to the students, but there’s a polemic aspect to it. That is, he is to keep his eye on the broader spectrum of things and bring the biblical theology to bear on the issues of the day, and so to combat the increasing unbelief that is coming in Christendom. And it’s a position that Warfield took up with great zeal.

This was a day of liberalism. It was a day of great change. It was a great day of upheaval in so many ways. It was a day of advance, both technologically and scientifically. Advances and changes were made in virtually every department of the academy, and this had come now to bear on religious studies as well, and Warfield was the man of the hour to answer these critics now who had come. Criticism, with a capital C. Criticism was the name of the day. Well, this is a day in which we have learned now that the earth came into being without much involvement from God. After all, because now we’ve learned from Darwin all of that. And if that’s the case, can we really think that God had much involvement in the arrival of this book? And what about things like predestination? Isn’t that kind of an outmoded kind of thinking? And this idea of a man from heaven, two natures, one person. Can 20th-century man, human beings really—can the modern mind really accommodate that kind of thinking? And so criticism was brought against the scriptures on so many levels regarding the veracity of scriptures, regarding the teachings, the doctrines of the faith that have been historically held by the church. And Warfield was the man of the hour to meet those accusations.

To give you a feel for that, by the way—Jerry, how long do I have? What time do we…? OK. To give you a feel for the kind of liberalism of the day, this is a dean from Harvard, William Sperry, who said, “Liberalism is the ‘yes, but’ religion.” Yes, but. So it goes like this: “Yes, I believe in the deity of Christ, but the language of Chalcedon has become meaningless.” I believe in the deity of Christ, but it doesn’t quite mean that he’s God. That’s the idea. We must redefine the doctrine to make it more intelligible to those of us who live now in the 20th century. Or, “Yes, I believe in the virgin birth of Christ, but the important thing is not a biological fact, but the value of Jesus for us.” You can see what’s happening. We want to retain the old terminology but let’s evacuate it of all its meaning and make it mean whatever we want to mean.

William Robertson Smith in Britain was an interesting illustration of this. He was a flashpoint of this new kind of theology in Britain and he was in Scotland and he was accused of denying the deity of Christ. And when he was told that by a friend, that “you’re being accused of denying the deity of Christ,” his response was, “How can they accuse me of that? I’ve never denied the divinity of any man, let alone Jesus.” It’s a clever kind of remark, but it shows what’s happening now. They’re retaining the name Christian. And Warfield made much of this. You’re retaining the name Christian. It does us great honor to see that you want to keep the name. But you’re evacuating all meaning from it and changing it into something else. And he makes the point that if “Christian,” if the word Christian can mean anything, anything at all, like it apparently can, then it means nothing. H. Richard Niebuhr described the liberalism in a famous way when he said: “God, liberalism is the religion that teaches that a God without wrath has brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.” So we have traditional terminology being retained, different meanings being attached, and at stake was the very meaning of Christianity itself. In fact, Warfield loves to argue that way, and he has some significant articles regarding the essence of Christianity, and so on.

Well, in the midst of all of that, Warfield, as I say, is the man of the moment. There are other men, of course, valiantly fighting for the same cause that Warfield was doing. At this time, you have people like Spurgeon, Andrew Bonar, you have J. C. Ryle, you have James Orr, people like that, but there was no one else with the breadth of learning, the breadth of scholarship, and the depth of grasp that Warfield had. He was thoroughly adept in all of the various departments of theology and biblical studies, and no matter where the criticism came from, he was able to meet it at every point, and he virtually said, in so many words—it’s as though he were standing up on a platform saying—”Bring on the criticism, you will find the answers to it.” And he was deeply persuaded that the scriptures would never be disproven.

And in fact, what’s an interesting thing for a lot of people to learn is that Warfield championed the cause of criticism. We don’t deny the right of criticism. And we shouldn’t deny it. We shouldn’t be afraid of criticism. He says any gospel that can’t withstand criticism is not a gospel that’s going to save anybody anyway. And so deeply persuaded was he in the utter reliability of scripture that he invited criticism. But he also criticized criticism, saying that so often this criticism is driven by unfounded presuppositions, anti-supernaturalistic presuppositions that guarantee the conclusion at the end of it. Often he would deal with the critics and point out the flaws in their arguments, point out how they’ve tried to move unwelcome facts out of the way. And sometimes in a—he was not above sarcasm. He would sarcastically deal with them and even mock the way that they had to deal with problems.

One of my favorite examples of that is when he deals with these—the Jesus Quest, if you’re familiar with that. The idea is there’s the Christ of faith and there’s the historical Jesus, and these are two different persons entirely. The Christ of faith is this God-man thing that Christians have developed, but the real historical Jesus was not that. And so what we need to do is peel back the layers of tradition, the layers of legend, and get beyond this miraculous, miracle-working Jesus and all of that. Get back to the real historical Jesus, the real Jesus of history. And Warfield loves to point out that there just is no Jesus of history who is not a miracle worker. Now, of course, he was much more than that, and Warfield wants to emphasize that. But there is, if “historical Jesus” means the Jesus of the historical sources, there just isn’t one except one who worked miracles. And so he loves to point that out, and then he loves to just mock the second generation who have accepted the presuppositions of their teachers—there can be no supernatural, Jesus could not have performed miracles—and they’ve just taken it to the conclusion now, and well, if there’s no such thing as a supernatural and no miracles, and if there’s no record of a Jesus except a miracle-working Jesus, therefore there’s no Jesus. The whole thing’s a myth. And Jesus never lived. It’s all part of imagination.

And so now we’ve got the first generation, as he calls them, as yet Christians, arguing against their students, who he calls no longer Christians, who are saying that there’s no Jesus at all in history, and Warfield just laughs at them. He says, this is their fight, this is not ours. Anybody with an adamant historical sense knows that there was a Jesus of history. But once you’ve granted the presupposition that there’s no such thing as supernatural, and then you notice that all of the historical sources have a supernatural Jesus, how can you argue against these guys, except on the ground that you’ve already surrendered when you taught them earlier? And Warfield just says, we can just watch and sit back quietly as this wretched comedy plays itself out.

But he would handle the criticism that came, both in terms of the truthfulness of Scripture, the truthfulness of the doctrines that were taught in Scripture. He would handle them in those kinds of ways, just utterly persuaded that when the facts are in, scriptures will be shown to be true at every point. And the whole essence of his argument for the doctrine of inspiration, the whole of it can be reduced really to this—the title of one of his articles: “What Scripture Says, God Says.” And he’s deeply convinced Christianity is a revealed religion. That is its distinctive. This is a revealed religion. This is not making our way to God. This is, in every sense, God making his way to us. And so we are a religion marked by a message. God has spoken, and we have the audacity now to say, we’re going to tell you something, and we are speaking for God. And that’s what we’re all about. And this book is God speaking to us. This is his word. What scripture says, God says. What scripture says, God says.

And now, what’s interesting is that Warfield very rarely used the term “inerrancy.” Rarely. He would speak of the authority of Scripture, and he dealt with the concept of inerrancy, of course, but what he wanted to stress was more foundational. Rather than stressing the matter of inerrancy, simply establish this truth: that Scripture is God’s Word. What Scripture says, God says. And once you see that, inerrancy is a given. And so the great bulk of his work is to establish that teaching regarding scripture, that this is God speaking.

What’s interesting, I think, in this regard is here’s a man who is massively learned in every dimension, and the people of his own day knew it. And he’s utterly, utterly persuaded of the complete truthfulness of Scripture. And it never entered his mind, I think—just never entered his mind—that there could possibly ever be brought any kind of a criticism against the Scripture that would stick. When the facts are in, God will be proven true, and every man a liar.

With that, he was a man marked by deep, deep piety. What attracted me in my studies to Warfield was that here’s a man who has got it all. He is massively learned. He’s a model exegete. He knows to go to the scriptures and let it speak, and knows where the argument turns. He’s a master exegete. And yet with that, he’s got a heart that is as big as his mind, that just beats hot for Christ. And you cannot miss it, even in some of his most polemic works, to see here’s a man who has a deep sense of utter dependence upon Christ. In his heart of hearts, he was a sinner redeemed by divine grace through the blood of a divine redeemer. And that pulses through all of his works. And so here’s a man who deals with the highest levels of scholarship and yet in his heart, he is just a humble Christian who recognizes the grace of God.

Well, with all of that, he has been called, in retrospect, the spoiler of liberalism. The spoiler of liberalism—that is, the liberals who bring their criticism, and here’s the one who brought answers against them to vindicate the truthfulness of scriptures. And because of that, then he’s also been referred to as the man who propelled orthodoxy into the 20th century. Well, it might be a little bit of an overstatement, but in a sense, there’s real truth to it, because here’s a man at the turn of the century who could demonstrate in every department the truthfulness of scriptures and the veracity of the teachings of scriptures as well.

However, in his own Presbyterian church, PCUSA, it must have seemed to him that he was losing the battle. In retrospect, it looks like it can appear that here was Warfield just holding it back, holding back unbelief, holding it back. And with the passing of Warfield, things seemed to deteriorate very quickly. J. Gresham Machen was a student of Warfield’s at the seminary, later a colleague of Warfield’s. He’s the man who started Westminster Theological Seminary, as most of you know. He recalls his last conversation with Warfield, and he says that they were talking about the General Assembly, the annual meeting of the church that was coming up, and Machen said something to the effect that, “I’m afraid there’s going to be a great split.” And Warfield’s response was, “You can’t split rotten wood.” And already he saw the deterioration had come so severely.

December 24th, 1920, Warfield is walking over to the home of Geerhardus Vos. He and Vos would walk together regularly on the streets of Princeton, something they did quite regularly. On December 24th, 1920, he’s walking down the sidewalk to Vos’ home and he has a heart attack and falls to the ground and spent the next two, three months recuperating. And in February then of 1921, he finally decides he’s able to go back to teaching. And so he goes back to teach a class, teaches very well. We have some reminiscence of it from one of his students who was there. Expounds on the love of Christ, the love of God in Christ in the gospel, from 1 John. And he goes back to his home and dies that evening. Machen reminisces on it all in some letters to his mother. And he says that Warfield has done the work of 10 men. He said that no man in the church now could fill even one quarter of his place. And he says to her after the funeral, “I felt that when they carried him out, old Princeton was carried out with him.”

Guard the Deposit Entrusted to You

Now I think I’d like to close with one verse that Tom dealt with just briefly last night, and that’s 1 Timothy chapter six. 1 Timothy chapter six, verses 20 and 21. Here the apostle appeals to his younger son in the faith, and you can just hear the passion in it: “Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you, and avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.”

Now what’s interesting about this to me is that Warfield has a marvelous exposition of this passage published in one of his books of sermons, and in fact it’s his last published book of sermons, about 1916. And what’s interesting to me is that the first sermon that we have of Warfield is Romans 3 verse 4, “Let God be true, every man a liar.” And now in his last book of published sermons, we have this one in which he establishes the same theme. And he expounds on it in a marvelous way and he exhorts—now remember he’s preaching to ministerial students in the seminary—and he exhorts them, “Here is your responsibility: keep the deposit.” And he mentions briefly how the deposit, the deposit… this is that body of revealed truth from the apostles, and it’s associated with words like witness and testimony, tradition, been brought to us from God, through Christ, through the Spirit of God. Now it’s deposited to the church and it is your responsibility to keep it and guard it.

And he exhorts these ministers: it is not, it is not your responsibility to come up with anything new. You’re a witness. Bear witness to what has been given to you. Guard the deposit. It’s not your responsibility to come up with anything inventive. It’s your responsibility to guard the deposit that has been given to you. Underlying all of that, of course, is his deep sense, Paul’s deep sense, and then Warfield’s deep sense in expounding it, a deep sense of the utter reliability of Scripture. This is always true. This is always relevant, and always through the history of the Church, this is our responsibility. Keep the deposit. Guard it. Bear witness to the truth that’s been revealed. And here I think of the two sort of bookends to Warfield’s career. “Let God be true and every man a liar.” At the end, he’s still saying it: “Keep the deposit.” And we may be sure, he says, that in any so-called knowledge that arrogates itself against the scriptures, we know that it’s only knowledge falsely so-called, that in every case we will find the utter reliability of the Scriptures. For what Scripture says, God says. Amen.