Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: October 20, 2010 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Introduction

Hi, this is John Stark with the Gospel Coalition. On October 20, 2010, I had the opportunity to speak with Fred Zaspel. Dr. Zaspel is the author of the new book, The Theology of B.B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary, published by Crossway in September of 2010.

All right, Dr. Zaspel, my assumption is that those who are listening to our interview have some interest in Warfield, so they’ll have an idea of who he was. But maybe you can briefly give us some details on him as a historical figure.

The Lion Of Old Princeton

Yeah, well, Warfield is the outstanding theologian of old Princeton Seminary. Princeton was known as a land of giants even in its own day. But Warfield is the one who stands out above them all, and he was recognized in that way in his own day and since, that even his own mentor, Charles Hodge, he had exceeded him in learning, and he’s known as the Lion of Old Princeton. He’s the immensely learned theologian from there, and he’s known as really the last of the old Princetonians. That’s not exactly true because Machen deserves that title too, but in a real sense, that’s true. Machen said of Warfield at his funeral that when they carried him out, he said, “I felt like the old Princeton went with him.”

Now, you’ve written what you’ve called The Theology of B.B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary. It’s sort of a systematic theology of the thought of B.B. Warfield. Since he never wrote a systematic theology himself, did he write enough and cover enough topics to do work like this?

An Occasional Writer

Yeah, it’s something that’s not really as noted about Warfield as he deserves. He wrote on virtually every department of theology, and since his own day, even before he died, people were complaining that he hadn’t written a systematic theology of his own. He was content with Hodge’s three-volume systematic theology and was content to use that; he used that in his class and he said it wasn’t needed in his own day. There were other needs, and so his writing was aimed at the issues of the day.

So he was something of an occasional writer, but in the course of that writing—writings that were published almost always in some kind of periodical, whether a theological journal or a more popular Christian magazine or whatever—they were aimed at the issues of the day. The critics that had come up, liberalism was in its heyday, and he addressed that. But in the course of all of that, like I say, he addressed virtually every department of theology. He was not as exhaustive on some of the details, say, of ecclesiology and whatnot, but in broad terms, at least, he did address the whole spectrum of theology.

Now his writings are—it’s hard to find all of that because what we have of him published today is ten volumes of his works collected, another two volumes of his shorter works, and then his three books of sermons that are available, which is a wonderful sampling of his stuff, but he has that much and more that was never republished. And so what I’ve tried to do is go back through all that he wrote and try to acquaint myself with everything that he had to say, and then try to get into his head, as it were, and attempt to write the systematic theology that he would have written. Here are his conclusions, here’s how he came to those conclusions, and why.

You talk about the liberal theology of Princeton, and we’re all familiar with Machen and his day and that whole transition turning into Westminster Seminary. What was Princeton like when Warfield was there?

It was still very much the old Princeton, and actually it was up until, in large respect, in Machen’s day as well. It’s often thought that Princeton Seminary itself went liberal. That’s not quite the way it happened. It was more of a coup from the denomination. The boards that oversaw Princeton Seminary were eliminated and replaced with another board in Machen’s day, and so almost overnight it became governed by a more liberal tendency. So even into Machen’s day, it was still a fortress of orthodox Reformed theology.

You write in your preface that Warfield is both appreciated and neglected. What do you mean by that, and why do you think that is?

Appreciated And Neglected

Yeah, that’s something I was impressed with more and more as I read about him. Warfield is still quoted with authority, and he’s quoted quite often. And if you have a way to search through the old journals electronically, as I have, you can find that he’s still just—he’s quoted a lot and with commanding authority. But when you search out those citations and how he’s dealt with, you very quickly notice that he really is not read whole. He’s selectively read to go find his statement on this or that, but he’s not read—nobody can read him exhaustively really because it’s too hard to find all his stuff.

But even to say on his doctrine of inspiration, it strikes me when people deal with that, even, that they have not read widely in what Warfield had to say on that. He wrote extensively on the doctrine, and it just strikes me that while he has still this enormous respect, he’s not given the time to read very thoroughly. And certainly then, not just in inspiration, but in the broader range of his theological writings. Many are unaware, for example, of the extent of his writings on Christology, the person and work of Christ, and whatnot. So yeah, he’s appreciated, but he’s not really read that widely.

Why are there no biographies of him?

Well, one reason is he didn’t do much. Other than go to class and go home and study and write, he didn’t do anything else. He was not an activist; he was not greatly involved in denominational affairs. He was involved in the confessional controversy around the turn of the century. He was very eager to see the confession preserved as it was, and so he wrote a lot on that subject. But even so, he wasn’t involved in denominational meetings or things like that. He wrote, he studied, he taught. He would go to the Miller Chapel to preach. That’s a little bit of a simplification, but it’s not all he did. He was not involved in other things.

The other thing is we don’t have a lot of information about his personal life. From his letters we can tell that he and his wife in their earlier years especially would go to the Poconos each summer for vacationing and spend the summers there. Things like that we know about them, but they didn’t do a lot. We have some information about his family background from the Breckenridges and the Warfields, and even the Cabells, his mother’s family as well. But there just isn’t a lot that he did besides that. There are, by the way, two biographies that are in the works, one by Brad Gunlock. Brad has done just extensive research on the background of Warfield’s families and whatnot, and he’ll have just tremendous information to offer in that regard. Also, Carl Trueman is working on a biography as well.

Yeah, I have to admit that the first, maybe even biographical sketch I read of B.B. Warfield was the first 30 or so pages of your book, so that’s good that a few are coming out. I’m thankful for that.

Yeah, well that’s funny because I’ve had it already now, a little bit of response in that regard, and on the one hand I hear people, they’re very grateful for that biographical sketch in the beginning of the book because there’s just so little available on him. But then on the other hand, I’ve heard a couple of people complain that, “Why didn’t we get more?” There just isn’t a lot more to be said.

Now, a lot of people accuse the Princeton theologians of inventing inerrancy—the term inerrancy, or even the concept of inerrancy. But did B.B. Warfield see himself as inventing or coming up with that concept?

The Theologian Of Inspiration

Not at all. Not at all. Charles Briggs tried to say that about Warfield back in their own day when they were going through these controversies, and Warfield just kind of buried him with the evidence, tracing it back through their Reformed forebears through the Puritans, the Reformers, and all the way back to the Church Fathers as well, that this is nothing new.

Now, it is true, though, that Warfield did give it a new articulation, and I’d like to characterize it this way: that just as, for example, Augustine is the theologian of sin and grace—that is, he’s the one that articulated this doctrine for the Church virtually for our whole history—he didn’t invent the doctrine, but he articulated it in such a way that it was a watershed event. Same with Anselm, who articulated for us the nature of the atonement as satisfaction. He’s known as the theologian of the atonement. Luther is known as the theologian of justification. He didn’t invent the doctrine, but he gave it such a watershed articulation that he’s known as the theologian of justification.

In that same sense, Warfield is the theologian of the doctrine of inspiration. He gave it such a massive exposition and such a massive exegetical grounding and such a massive defense that in the hundred years since him, those who have written on the subject in support and agreement of the same doctrine have added very little to the discussion. And by the same token, those who have opposed his doctrine of inspiration have not completed their work—and this is recognized on all sides—they’ve not completed their work until and unless they’ve dealt with Warfield. So he is the theologian of inspiration.

Now it’s common to hear that while Warfield was a defender of inerrancy, he was also an evolutionist. Is that true?

Warfield And Evolution

No, I don’t believe it is. One of the reasons that people have thought that is a quote from Warfield has floated, and it’s floated out of context. He made the statement once that when he entered Princeton, he was already an evolutionist or a Darwinian of the purest water. That was his quote. And that is lifted out and used to color his entire career.

The quote, though, was in reference to his entering Princeton College, the College of New Jersey at the time, in 1868. He was 16, 17 years old when he entered the college. And in that same article where he mentions that, he also mentions that he had abandoned the theory by the time he was in his early 30s. And by that time, he had come under the influence of Charles Hodge. And in Warfield’s personal copy of Hodge’s book on Darwinism, he has highlighted some—I assume it’s Warfield’s highlighting—there is some highlighting in his personal copy of some of the most stringent remarks by Hodge about Darwinism as atheism, as naturalism, as a virtual rejection of Christianity because it is naturalistic. Warfield has, it seems to me anyway, that Warfield is the one who noted that, but at any rate, Warfield did pick up on that, he emphasized that at length, and throughout his career he was very, very well read in the teachings of evolutionary theories on all sides.

He refers to himself as a layman in that regard, but he’s a very learned layman. He was very interested in that from his time as a young man that is working with his father on the ranch where they bred cattle. And so he’s very interested in all of these subjects. And throughout his career, he kept up with it all, read all sides, and offered many reviews of evolutionists and of theistic evolutions and of anti-evolutionists as well. He himself said that he had abandoned the theory in his young 30s, and throughout his career he was very critical of it.

However, he also said—and this point he made at length in his lecture on evolution in the seminary—he made the point that if evolution could be proven, and he emphasized that “if,” if evolution could be proven, he said, Christianity could accommodate it. So he had an openness to it, a theoretical openness to it, and he said that he had no question that it could be accommodated. However, he also said that it does have these problems, and he would outline the exegetical problems with it that he saw, and he emphasized very strongly that it had not been proven, and that although people like James McCosh, the president at the college when he was there, had really promoted theistic evolution, he said things like the cautious enthusiasm had gotten ahead of his good sense. He said there just isn’t enough evidence to say that evolution has been proven; until it has, we’d be better off just to stay away from it. He said there’s just—there’s just not enough evidence. So no, he was not an evolutionist. It is right to say that he was open to it in that respect. Some of the rumor about it with Warfield as an evolutionist is his fault because of his openness to it. But, I’m convinced that he just—he did not accept the theory.

Well, keeping it in the same vein, you write a whole section on Warfield’s apologetic. Today’s apologetics are sort of scattered from presuppositionalists like John Frame, but Tim Keller, who are carrying the age from Van Til, to people like evidentialists of R.C. Sproul, William Lane Craig, from John Gresham Machen. Where would Warfield, the apologist, fit into the mix?

Warfield’s Apologetic

That’s a difficult question for me because I’m not an expert in apologetics, I’m not an expert in Van Til and so on, but I can say, one, that Van Til got Warfield wrong. He characterized Warfield as Arminian in his apologetics because Warfield placed so much emphasis on evidence and also because Warfield placed so much evidence on right reasons. And so Van Til and others have said that he had a basically Arminian view of the abilities of the natural human mind.

And that’s just not the case at all. When Warfield spoke of evidence, he also spoke just extensively on the fact that no amount of evidence, no matter how convincing, will ever make a Christian. This is something only the Spirit of God can do in opening their hearts and making them see and restoring their ability to see right reason. Right reason was not in the capacity of the natural man; he would say that right reason is in the capacity of the normal human mind. But then he would come right back and say, what right do we have to say that the unregenerate mind is normal? It is not normal. It’s in an altered state because it’s so blinded by sin and it cannot appreciate right reason. And we who are of the regenerate mind can show them right reason and they can appreciate the force of it. But they are not capable of right reason.

And so, Van Til, I think, got him wrong. And all I can say is that Van Til really… It’s really wrong to say this, it seems like, but it seems to me that Van Til just did not read Warfield very extensively. And if he had, he wouldn’t have said that about him. Now again, on the other side of the coin, Warfield is not Van Til, I’m sure of that. And again, I’m not the expert on Van Til to be able to explain all the ins and outs of that, but Warfield was basically presuppositional in that he recognized that only the Spirit of God could change the man in giving him the ability to recognize the divinity of Scripture and so on.

Well, and that’s helpful. You talk abundantly about how wide he read and how wide he wrote. Now, there are a lot of quote-unquote Renaissance scholars who are just productive. What sets Warfield apart from just another productive scholar?

Breadth And Depth Of Scholarship

Well, the breadth of his scholarship—even in his day, he was recognized as a man of the broadest scholarship in virtually every department of biblical and theological studies. He was the authority. He was ready to argue the authorship of Old Testament books, New Testament books, textual matters on the rating of which text and why. He was the first American to produce a textbook in New Testament textual criticism. That was back in his days at Western Seminary in Pittsburgh.

Whether in theology, historical theology, in every domain of biblical theological studies, whenever he entered the field, he owned it. And everybody knew that. And it’s just unusual to see someone with that broad of a scholarship and yet at the same time with such depth of scholarship, philosophically, theologically, exegetically in every way. He stood superior and this was at a time when there was such the advance of liberalism and so he could stand up at virtually every point of their advance and take on all comers. And it didn’t matter whether it was Old Testament, New Testament, or his own domain of theology, he was equally equipped in it all. And like I say, he was recognized that way.

There’s an interesting story that comes from—I found in a letter written by a former student who was later a professor of theology himself, writing in some reminiscences of his days at Princeton and Warfield. He said after he left Princeton Seminary, he went to another seminary, and a professor there, he said, was giving a lecture and began to interact with Warfield critically. The guy evidently had a pretty good sense of humor because he stopped in the middle of his lecture and he said, “Now, I’m criticizing Warfield in here so I’ve got to tell you a story.” The professor told a story a few years ago. He said, “I wrote an article critical of Warfield and a colleague of mine told me not to publish it or Warfield will tear me apart.” He said, “Well, I published it anyway. My colleague was right. Warfield tore me apart.”

But you get a sense of that appreciation of Warfield from his own day. I spent some time, a good bit of time, thumbing through all of the old theological journals of the day, and it’s interesting the remarks that you’ll hear about Warfield. Even in book reviews, there’ll be by-the-way remarks like, “the professor from Princeton would not like this,” or “the professor of Princeton will approve of this,” “the theologian at Princeton or Doctor Warfield would not appreciate this; he would say this or that.” You find lots of remarks like that. You get the feeling that they felt in their own day that this giant was looking over their shoulder as they wrote.

Well, where was Warfield at his best in your opinion?

A Christologian

Well, I suppose you have to say it is on the doctrine of inspiration because it was such a landmark. As I say, his exposition of it was just massive, and it’s recognized by all sides in that regard. Although, that is not, I don’t think, where Warfield’s heart was. I mean, it was huge, it was the issue of the day, and so he gave himself to it, but that was not where his heart of hearts was.

In his heart of hearts, he was a Christologian. The person and work of Christ is where he lived and thought. And actually, he produced more extensive writings on the person and work of Christ than he did even on inspiration. Just hundreds of pages expounding the nature, the two natures of Christ, expounding the work of Christ and whatnot. This is where he was at home, and that was his own heart. In his heart of hearts, he saw himself as a sinner rescued by divine grace, by a divine redeemer. And he wrote on this extensively.

It was on a day, of course, when kenotic theology was being promoted, where you have a little bit less than a divine Son of God on earth. And he wrote giving just the massive exposition, the massive exegetical grounding of the historic doctrine, the two natures of Christ. And he did it not only with outstanding scholarship, but he did it with a heart that just beat hot in devotion for Christ. He would say things like—he wouldn’t just say, “The gospel writers portray for us a Jesus who is both God and man.” He would say, “The gospel writers portray before our adoring gaze,” and he would speak like that in a doxological way. Very often you could see this is just his heart; this is where he was at home.

Well, listening to you talk about Warfield, I can imagine someone excited to go read him. Where would you say to begin?

Well, I think the best place to start would be to get a wider appreciation for him. There are two different answers I give to the question. For the general layman, I think the best place to start is his little book of sermons called Faith and Life. They are brief expositions that were given to the students there on their Sunday afternoon meetings and they’re just rich and warm and at the same time just show the depth of insight that he had in the biblical text. So Faith and Life is a great place to start. If you’re wanting a wider range of his scholarship and the kinds of subjects he addressed, the two volumes from P&R, The Selected Shorter Writings, are just a great place to start. You get a good sampling of everything there.

Now, many—just to get back to maybe a little bit of a biographical—many may not know much about Warfield’s life with Annie, his wife. Can you tell us a little bit about their marriage and how that affected his life?

Marriage To Annie

Yeah, they seem to have had a wonderful marriage. All we know about is what we can put together from the correspondence that we have of his and hers. Now there’s a little bit of a problem with that as well because the later correspondence is almost all gone. There was—his brother, Ethelbert, had Warfield’s correspondence in his basement for some years. They’re all housed now at Princeton in the archives there, but for a while Ethelbert had it in his basement and there was a flood and virtually everything from 1900 onward was destroyed. A historian’s nightmare here. Another story, by the way, it’s just terrible.

One day, John Meeter—this is some years later, after Ethelbert had died—John Meeter went to visit his widow. This is Ethelbert’s widow, who had been B.B. Warfield’s sister-in-law. He drove up the driveway and she’s standing out at the incinerator, dropping some papers in and burning it, and he stops in and says, “Hi, how are you?” And they’re talking, he says, “Well, what are you doing?” “Oh, I’m getting rid of some of Benny’s old papers.” And he just about died and he said, “No, stop, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing.” And so he salvaged the rest of it, but there’s a lot that’s missing.

But what we do have, we can tell from their correspondence that they had a wonderfully close marriage. It seems like they would spend their evenings together there at the house, which is right next door to Alexander Hall there. It was Charles Hodge’s former home. And they would sit there in their evenings and they would both read. She was a very intelligent gal, college educated and loved to read. They were something of intellectual soulmates as well. And it seems like they would share their reading together and had wonderful times in that respect.

What everyone knows about Annie is her sickness. When they were on their honeymoon—and we have only one report of this, it’s from O.T. Allis, who recollects it from his days at Princeton—hearing that the story was when the Warfields were on their honeymoon in Europe. He had gone over there to study, just recently married, maybe a month or two. They got caught in a thunderstorm over there. And I don’t know what happened. Was she nearly struck by lightning or what? I don’t know what happened, but something traumatic happened and it seemed like it resulted in some kind of nervous disorder for her that became worse and worse over the rest of her life.

Now the legend is that she was an invalid the rest of her life. That’s not true. I found an article in the New York Times from May of 1892 mentioning that Annie Warfield was a hostess at a big event in Princeton the night before. She and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and some others were hostesses at this big event. It was a big gala thing. So anyway, so you find that she’s out and about that late in 1892. Now in 1893, Warfield was to present a paper on inspiration on Long Island. He ended up sending the paper to be read, and when it was published, the note at the beginning said that Dr. Warfield could not be here to read this himself because of illness in the family.

So I assume that Annie became much worse around 1893, somewhere in there. That’s when things became much worse. And even then, she was not a complete invalid because there are reports even to the very late years of him taking her out into the front yard or the backyard or just walking her down the sidewalk quickly and back. She was able to get out, but some kind of a nervous disorder where it seems to me from what I can gather, a few people were in contact with her. And he was home with her. And of course, they had their servants there. They were wealthy enough to be able to afford that. And they had servants helping to care for her and whatnot.

Now, there is another legend I think would be good to mention. I’ve seen this in print in a few different places that Warfield’s writings on counterfeit miracles were prompted by his experience with Annie. Because of her sickness, he came to these convictions, something to that effect, or at least that this was the emotional impetus for it. That makes for great reading, but I don’t see any evidence for any of that at all. I don’t see how his writings on counterfeit miracles would have been any different had their lives been different. It may be true—it’s a conjecture on somebody’s part—all I’m saying is I don’t see any evidence for it at all. But they did have a wonderful marriage, and enjoyed each other’s company very much.

Well, Dr. Zaspel, I’m thankful for the efforts you put into the book and I wish you the best for it.

Well thank you, appreciate your time.