Fred Zaspel on B. B. Warfield

B. B. Warfield (1851-1921) was professor of theology at old Princeton Seminary (1887-1921). He was internationally recognized as the most broadly equipped and most deeply informed theologian of his day. His career took place in an era of enormous theological change in professing Christendom and in his own Presbyterian church. Essential teachings of the Christian faith held by the church since its beginning were being denied, and he above all others stood against the “liberal” tide at virtually every point of its attempted advance. He more than anyone in the history of the church gave exhaustive definition and defense of the inspiration of Scriptures, and in the century since relatively little of substance has been added to his hundreds of published pages on this basic tenet of the faith. He also provided massive exegetical defense of the person and work of Christ against the various “kenotic” theologians of the day whose de-supernaturalized views of Christ relegated him to mere “godling” status (to borrow Warfield’s description!). Broadly equipped in the original languages and all the tools of the modern criticism and widely read in all the disciplines related to biblical and theological study, both the breadth and the depth of his grasp were unsurpassed. With good reason he has been called the spoiler of liberalism and the man who propelled orthodoxy into the twentieth century.

But he grew up in a Christian home, made profession of faith in his church at age 16. He went off to the College of New Jersey when he was just before his 17th birthday, entered as a sophomore. Obviously, not a dumb guy. That, by the way, College of New Jersey later became Princeton University. He went there, graduated in three years at the top of his class, and went off afterwards to study in Germany for a while. He was very interested at the time in the sciences and that’s what he was pursuing. But then I think it was 1872, if I remember correctly, he sent a letter home, and it was a surprise to all of his family that he had decided that he has to enter the Christian ministry. He was so moved by what God had done for him that he said he just felt like he needed to give his entire life to serving him in a full-time capacity. And so when he came back in 1873, he entered into Princeton Theological Seminary.

Ninety-three years ago today — Feb.16, 1921 — Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, “the lion of Princeton,” finished his earthly race and joined the church triumphant in the presence of Christ. His passing marked not only the end of his earthly life but the end of an era. It was Machen who remarked after the funeral that he felt as they carried Warfield out that they carried old Princeton out with him. Warfield “the pugilist” had gained international attention as a Christian theologian utterly committed to the unfailing and unassailable truthfulness of Scripture — “God’s Word written,” as he was wont to describe it. His earliest known sermon, taken from Romans 3:4, set the tone for his entire career: “Let God be true, and every man a liar.”

It’s in that sense that the doctrine of inspiration is tied to Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. He demonstrated at length that this was the historic teaching of the church, that he wasn’t teaching anything new. This is what the church has always believed about the Scriptures. But he also demonstrated it and expounded it at more length than anyone ever had, gone to more depth, and defended it against the critics more than anyone had before. So his exposition of the doctrine of inspiration, his defense of the doctrine of inspiration, all of that was just a watershed moment in the history of the church. And he demonstrated at great length, “This is what the church has always believed,” but here he has said it now better than anyone else ever has since. And ever since Warfield died in 1921, it has been said that all discussion of the doctrine of inspiration is just a footnote to Warfield. That’s not really overstating the matter much at all. There are now at this point in history countless books that have been written on the doctrine of Scripture. And many of them have unique contributions of their own in whatever way. But many of them that I have read, after reading Warfield, contribute very little that’s new. It’s basically a footnote to Warfield.

Now, there’s something here that’s very important to notice. The point here is not that the apostles wrote what they wrote and God breathed into it a divine quality making it inspired. That’s not the point. The expression is very explicit: “All scripture is breathed out by God.” You could hardly find a more explicit way to say Scripture is God’s word, God’s word spoken. All Scripture is breathed out by God. And notice, by the way, he’s not speaking here just of the apostles who wrote the Scriptures. So we may speak, and we speak properly, of the inspired apostles. The point here is with the biblical text. All Scripture is breathed out by God. So it’s not just that the apostles wrote it and God gave it his stamp of approval. His point is that the Scriptures themselves come directly from the mouth of God. Okay, that’s metaphorical language, but they come directly from God. That’s the point that Paul is stressing here in verse 16. And then notice another detail here: “all Scripture.” That’s singular. You can translate it collectively, “all Scripture,” like we’re used to it, or you can say “every Scripture.” It’s singular. You can translate it either way. Point’s the same. All of Scripture, collectively; every detail of Scripture, discriminately—all of it breathed out by God. The statement is very emphatic and very clear that Scripture has a divine origin.

But Warfield takes another step, and he says, yeah, of course we believe the Bible is inspired of God because the Scripture claims to be. It says that it is, and Scripture is the Word of God. But he goes a little bit deeper and he says, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God because Jesus said so. And here he takes on those who want to say that they are Christian and yet reject the inspiration of Scripture. They still have some affinity for Jesus and they want to be Christians and whatever, but they don’t want this doctrine of inspiration. Warfield presses the point that if we deny the authority and the inspiration of Scriptures, we have to discount Jesus. Because on any reading, Jesus taught this. And on any reading of it, the apostles taught this. And so the real problem of inspiration is, Warfield says, that’s what Jesus taught. And you can’t have the Jesus of the Bible while rejecting the Bible of Jesus. It’s all or nothing.

Warfield, by the way, didn’t often use the word “inerrancy.” He was not afraid of it; he was glad for it. He affirmed it and infallibility and things like that. But his preferred terminology was the authority of Scripture or the trustworthiness of Scripture. Whatever Scripture affirms, it’s trustworthy. It’s reliable or inerrant. Now, why do we believe in inerrancy? Well, for Warfield, the question’s already been answered. You see that? We’ve already answered that question, haven’t we? The Bible is breathed out by God. The Bible is God’s word written. If the Bible is God’s word written, of course it’s without error. God doesn’t make mistakes. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t mislead us. Of course, it’s inerrant if it is the Word of God. So that question of inerrancy is settled already when we say the Bible is inspired of God. And that’s his approach to it always.

Moreover, so far from fearing the overthrow of the faith Warfield manifests everywhere, rather, the supreme confidence of one utterly convinced of the divine origin of Scripture. So completely persuaded that “What Scripture says, God says,” even the possibility of any teaching of Scripture being successfully contradicted seems never to have entered his mind. And so far from being afraid of scholarly “criticism,” he championed its right , insisting that a faith that cannot withstand the critics surely cannot save anyone. But precisely because Scripture is God’s own Word, Warfield was confident it would be vindicated at every point.

We have to be careful with wording here lest we misunderstand. Darwinism was (in)famously atheistic and randomly driven, notions that are entirely incompatible with a personal, purposeful God. So Warfield was “open” to the idea of some kind theistic evolution – and here’s the catch – if it could be proven . That is, he was committed to the accuracy of Scripture and held that if evolution could be scientifically proven , Scripture would in that case be found able to accommodate it. But it is just that “if” that Warfield never granted – he in fact often mocked the flimsy scientific and philosophical ground of evolutionary theories.

The idea that Warfield grew more open to evolution with age is a myth for which I can find no supporting evidence whatever. Warfield’s lecture notes have later marginal insertions which only indicate more skepticism of evolution. And in one of his very latest remarks he acknowledges that he had held to evolution as a very young man but asserts plainly that he had left all that behind him by the time he was thirty years old. I should clarify here that Warfield himself bears some of the blame for this confusion because he did often speak of his theoretical openness to the theory. But it was always an openness to it if the theory could be proven . This openness is what so many have noticed, and it has left a mistaken impression of acceptance. But Warfield never granted the “if,” and he to the end criticized evolutionary theory, even mocked it. And reading him entirely, as I have, you find countless details of theological commitment that are incompatible with any theistic evolutionary theory – Adam and Eve as the first humans, the entrance of death by Adam, and the original perfection of the created order, as just some examples.

This much is clear: although at times speaking with allowance of the possibility of evolution (carefully defined), Warfield never expressly affirmed it. Rather, he affirmed that he had rejected it sometime about age thirty and that he remained unconvinced. The Livingstone-Noll thesis does not reflect the evidence, and the prevailing understanding of Warfield as an evolutionist must be rejected.

But for Warfield, this was not just something of a party spirit or anything like this; this struck at the heart of the gospel—the heart of the Christian faith—because if our Savior is not both God and man, then he’s not qualified to save us, and everything unravels at this point. And so he gave just a Herculean effort to the exposition of Jesus’ deity and his humanity and exact definition as to how these two natures relate to each other, how we see them in Jesus in the New Testament Gospels and so on. And this for him was a point of critical importance and also as a point of worship then as well. And here’s the Christ whom we adore. He is God and he is man. He’s both. And what else could we ever hope for?

In fact, what’s interesting, though, in that is, although he, more than anyone else at the time, gave exposition to the deity of Christ and the two natures of Christ, he also, in ways that are more vivid and graphic and insightful than any other, I think, gave exposition to the human nature of Christ as well. And he gave full weight to that, that we needn’t be embarrassed to say that Jesus was a man in everything that entails being a man. And he would press that and then apply that in ways that were just vivid. He would write studies, for instance, on the emotional life of our Lord, studying the emotions of Jesus in his human life and things like that, and how that reflects God as well. Then he would look at Jesus as our model, as our ideal. He would look at Jesus as our forerunner, since he’s one of us. We will follow him, become what he is and has become—of course not in his deity, but in the glory that he has now achieved. Just some wonderfully rich expositions of his humanity as well as his deity.

Moreover, this was for Warfield no mere academic observation. It was for him the value of Christianity personally. He was a massively learned theologian, highly respected even internationally. But in his own heart he saw himself as a guilty sinner rescued only by the sacrifice of Christ. “Redeemer” was the title for Christ that above all others stirred his heart, he confessed. And throughout his writing there pulses this sense of fervent adoration for and utter, whole-souled dependence on the Lord Jesus. Even in his most academic and polemic works defending the person and work of Christ Warfield cannot refer to our Lord but with worshipful and affectionate tones.

But yeah, he critiqued perfectionism along several lines. One is what you mentioned: you have to redefine either sin or holiness or both. And he kind of mocked it at this point on some occasions. He would say things like, it’s ironic that “perfect” means “perfect” everywhere except when Christians speak of being perfect. It’s just not a real perfection. And then he would remark on how odd it is at how imperfect the perfection of Christian perfectionists is, which, of course, is what you have to do if you’re going to claim to be perfect. But he would also critique it along other lines. A big point of his is that perfectionist teachers were impatient. He agreed with them that God had purposed for us to reach full perfection. But he reminded them that God nowhere says that this perfection will be ours in this life. And he said they’re like little children demanding their entire inheritance all at once. And that’s just not what God has promised. What God has promised is that it will come, but it will come in glory.

Well, there were various brands of perfectionism, varieties of the teaching, but they held in common that in some sense a Christian was perfect. Now, some would say that by definition a Christian is perfect; others would say that a Christian can become perfect and ought to become perfect if you do this or that or whatever. Inevitably, they would dumb down the definition of what it is to be perfect, and Warfield pounced on that pretty firmly. Warfield was just death on the whole idea, and the reason was—and that’s the purpose of this chapter—was really to say, I think it’s summarized in that statement by Thomas Adam very well: that the moment we think we are perfect, the moment we think that we’re okay, we’ll abandon Christ. And at every moment of every day, what I need more than anything else is to look to Christ, and to keep looking to Christ, and to keep looking to Christ. And the moment I think I’m perfect, I’ll abandon Christ because I don’t need Him anymore. And so Warfield saw this as a very important gospel issue: to remember that on the one hand, yes, I’m a miserable sinner—that’s historical language of the Christian Church—but not in order to grovel in it, in order to glory in what I have in Christ. My sin is worse than I ever thought. That’s okay because I have a Savior who’s greater than I ever imagined.

Warfield’s understanding of progressive sanctification is generally the same that you will find in the standard Reformed works. He does not speak of “definitive” sanctification as Murray did, but he did emphasize the same point – that every Christian has by definition experienced a break from sin’s previous reign and that he is therefore free to follow Christ and pursue godliness. As over against the perfectionist and higher life views he insisted that progress in godliness was gradual, progressive, and requiring of the struggle that the New Testament characterizes as a race to be run or a battle to be fought. Freed from sin’s grip by Christ and “led” by the Spirit of God we are empowered to press on in our struggle against sin and for perfection.

Warfield was, I think we could best summarize it as a Westminster Presbyterian. He thought so highly of the Westminster Confession of Faith, he said it was something like it was the best document ever penned, short of inspiration. And he was completely consistent with the Westminster Confession of Faith as a loyal Presbyterian. So that says the long and short of it. In terms of eschatology, he is what we would call post-millennial. Now, he didn’t himself—he didn’t like the terms post-millennial, amillennial, premillennial, whatever. And in one sense, it didn’t fit him, because his exposition of Revelation 20, which deals with a thousand years, was a bit odd. He didn’t refer that to any of the three positions. He referred the thousand years of Revelation 20 to the intermediate state, which is kind of a strange interpretation, I think, no matter what standpoint you come from. But he was very definitely post-millennial in some of his writings, bearing that out in just graphic detail. In fact, one of the articles that he wrote was in specific request from a response to a publisher who had asked for him to represent the post-millennial view.

It is certainly true that Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles had massive influence on evangelical thinking for the past century, but I think it would be mistaken to attribute his (or the succeeding) cessationism to his doctrine of inspiration and authority of Scripture. He did not accept that the “sign” gifts were permanently given to the church. He held that they were “signs” of the apostles and therefore bound to that age. But more broadly at the bottom of all his work is his emphatic insistence on the supernatural character of Christianity. For him everything about our faith is supernatural, from its inception onwards. Indeed, for him every Christian is by the very nature of the case a walking miracle. And he expressly argued for the continuance of miracles – that God still heals, for example. But this for him is very different from saying that God still gives the gift of healing. Again, I don’t know the context of the Driscoll quote, but I think Warfield would scoff at the “if God doesn’t do miracles then Jesus is dead” kind of argument. “Gentlemen, I love the supernatural,” he used to say to his students. His entire theological polemic stemmed from his deep commitment to Christian supernaturalism. And even in his Counterfeit Miracles he affirms plainly that God is still the God of the miraculous. The question at issue is merely if the miraculous gifts are still given. And he argues emphatically that they are not.

Born April 7, 1852, Annie was from Lexington, KY, like Warfield. She is descended from the famous Revolutionary War general George Rogers Clark, Hannibal of the West” as he was called. Her father, George Blackburn Kinkead, was an eminent Lexington attorney who had successfully defended Abraham Lincoln in a case in 1855. Her family were members of Lexington’s prominent First Presbyterian Church. (The Warfields, by the way, were members of Lexington’s Second Presbyterian Church, the only local Presbyterian Church to affiliate with the Northern Presbyterians in the division between the north and south around the time of the civil war.) A well-educated girl, especially for the times, she is described as brilliant, witty, and beautiful. Her correspondence reveals a fun and loving wit and keen intellect, and it seems her evenings were customarily spent in the house with her husband, reading, writing letters, sharing thoughts and comments.

So, with this rather scanty information, what do we actually know about Annie’s health? Evidently a thunderstorm early in their marriage (1876 or 77) resulted in some kind of nervous disorder that became gradually worse until finally she became bedridden. And we know that the two were very close and that Warfield was a devoted and caring husband, choosing to be near her always in her relatively frail condition rather than accepting engagements away. It is truly a tragic story, and Warfield deserves the credit he receives for his faithful concern for his afflicted wife.