Warfield on the Christian Life (Foreword by Michael A. G. Haykin): Living in Light of the Gospel

by Fred G. Zaspel, Stephen J. Nichols (Editor), Justin Taylor (Editor), Michael A. G. Haykin (Foreword by)

Overview

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield has been described as one of the most influential and important theologians in American history, second only to Jonathan Edwards. A prolific writer, he published on a wide variety of theological topics.

Warfield scholar Fred Zaspel focuses here on Warfield's writing on the subject of the Christian life. The gospel, the good news of our salvation through Jesus Christ, is central to all of life for Warfield. Zaspel touches on such topics as Bible reading, prayer, holiness, and work, at every point showing how Warfield brings biblical and theological insight to the question of how we are to live in light of the gospel.

Part of the Theologians on the Christian Life series, edited by Stephen Nichols and Justin Taylor, this volume will help Christians think through what it means to live a God-honoring life before the cross of Christ.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433528262
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	03/21/2012
Series:	Theologians on the Christian Life
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Fred G. Zaspel (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) serves as a pastor at Reformed Baptist Church in Franconia, Pennsylvania, an adjunct professor of systematic theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and executive editor at Books At a Glance. He is the author of The Theology of B. B. Warfield and Warfield on the Christian Life, coauthor of New Covenant Theology, and has published numerous booklets, articles, and book reviews.

Fred G. Zaspel (PhD, Free University of Amsterdam) serves as a pastor at Reformed Baptist Church in Franconia, Pennsylvania, an adjunct professor of systematic theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and executive editor at Books At a Glance. He is the author of The Theology of B. B. Warfield and Warfield on the Christian Life, coauthor of New Covenant Theology, and has published numerous booklets, articles, and book reviews.

Stephen J. Nichols (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) serves as the president of Reformation Bible College and chief academic officer of Ligonier Ministries. He has written over twenty books and is an editor of the Theologians on the Christian Life series. He also hosts the weekly podcast 5 Minutes in Church History.

Justin Taylor (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the executive vice president of book publishing and book publisher at Crossway. He has edited and contributed to several books, and he blogs at Between Two Worlds—hosted by the Gospel Coalition.

Michael A. G. Haykin (ThD, University of Toronto) is professor of church history and biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He has authored or edited more than twenty-five books, including Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

The Man and His Work

At important moments in the history of the church, God has raised up men to give voice to his Word. There is Augustine, the theologian of sin and grace. He did not invent these doctrines, of course. But in his battle with Pelagius he gave them such clear and cogent articulation that ever since he has been recognized as the one who bestowed these doctrines to us. So also there is Anselm, the theologian of the doctrine of the atonement. And there is Luther, the theologian of justification. And there is Calvin, the theologian of the Holy Spirit.

Warfield: The Theologian of Inspiration — and More

In this same sense Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851–1921) of "Old Princeton" is known as the theologian of the doctrine of inspiration. Those who hold to the historic doctrine today add very little to what Warfield said about it a hundred years ago. So also, any who reject that doctrine must contend with Warfield before their work is complete. He was the theologian of inspiration. This was his gift, in God's kind providence, to the modern church.

Impressive as all this is, it does not provide anything close to an adequate representation of this man, who was certainly one of the greatest — arguably the greatest of all — theologians America ever produced. Although the doctrine of inspiration was largely the issue of his day, and although he above all others provided exposition and defense of it, this was not what he would have considered his "center." And despite his many hundreds of published pages devoted to this cherished theme, it was not his leading area of theological attention. Staggering as his output on this theme was, Warfield was no mere single-issue specialist. His learning was massive, and he excelled in virtually every department of biblical studies. In terms of both the breadth and depth of his scholarship he was virtually without peer.

Warfield's Life

Warfield's life story, in one respect, is not particularly spectacular. He was not an activist, he rarely traveled, he founded no movement, and although immensely influential in his Presbyterian church (PCUSA) he was never one of its official leaders. He was a theologian in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey, and he did scarcely little else. His story and his legacy are found, rather, in the many thousands of pages of theological writings that streamed from his pen for some four decades (from roughly 1880 to 1921). It is by his voluminous writings that he became one of the most outstanding and influential theologians of his day. And it is by means of these writings that his impact continues today.

Early Life and Education

Warfield's boyhood home was marked by the best of vital, Reformed piety and genuine godly concerns. Both his mother's and his father's families were rich with heritage: behind him were military officers, educators, influential ecclesiastical leaders, and governmental and political figures, even a United States vice president. Warfield's mother, Mary Cabell Breckinridge, was from the famous Scotch-Irish Presbyterian Breckinridge family of Maryland and Kentucky. Warfield's father, William Warfield, was descended from English Puritan forebears who had fled to America to avoid persecution. The Warfields were members of Lexington's Second Presbyterian Church, and it was here at age sixteen that young Benjamin made public profession of faith.

William Warfield was a successful cattle breeder, and Benjamin was reared in some degree of privilege. He received a private education and developed particular interest in mathematics and especially science, devouring with intense interest the newly published works of Charles Darwin. Because he was so intent on a career in science, he strongly objected to studying Greek. But with a touch of humor his brother Ethelbert (1861–1936) reports that

youthful objections had little effect in a household where the shorter catechism was ordinarily completed in the sixth year, followed at once by the proofs from the Scriptures, and then by the larger catechism, with an appropriate amount of Scripture memorized in regular course each Sabbath afternoon.

This early despising of Greek is ironic, given that Warfield was to become one of the great New Testament Greek scholars of his day!

Warfield was still just sixteen years old when he entered the sophomore class at the College of New Jersey in the fall of 1868. Mimicking his southern drawl, his college friends called him "Wo-field." School records indicate his involvement in a Sunday afternoon fistfight, of which it seems Warfield was the instigator! His maternal grandfather, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge (1800–1871), had been suspended from the school for a similar incident many years before. This incident earned Warfield the nickname "pugilist" — which some have found somewhat prophetic in light of the reputation he would earn as the great contender for the faith.

But Warfield evidently applied himself well as a student. He attained foremost rank in every department of instruction and perfect marks in mathematics and science, graduating with highest honors and first in his class in 1871 at age nineteen. He also won awards for essays and debate in the American Whig Society and was an editor for the Nassau Literary Magazine, for which he wrote several poems and other pieces.

Calling to Ministry

Following Warfield's graduation his father persuaded him to study in Europe, and in the spring of 1872 he began study in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then Heidelberg, Germany. His family was surprised to receive word from him midsummer that he would enter Christian ministry. It seems that a genuine revival swept the campus in his undergraduate days at the College of New Jersey and many young men went on to serve in Christian ministry. We have no record of Warfield's attributing his decision to this event, but a friend does recall his remark that he felt compelled out of love for Christ to serve him in this capacity. So in 1873, after a brief stint as editor of the Farmer's Home Journal in Lexington, he returned to Princeton, this time to the famous theological seminary there, where he received instruction from men whom he came to admire deeply — especially the famous and by then elderly Charles Hodge (1797–1878) and his son Caspar Wistar Hodge (1830–1891). The younger Hodge was professor of New Testament, and he became something of a personal mentor of Warfield, their relationship forming an intimate and lasting friendship. It would be C. W. Hodge who, on behalf of the seminary, would write to Warfield in late 1886 inviting him to consider joining their faculty. For his entire life Warfield maintained deep affection for both the college and the seminary at Princeton, appreciating both the illustrious history of each institution and what he had learned from them.

In May of 1875 Warfield was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Ebenezer, meeting at Lexington, Kentucky, and he served that summer as interim pastor at Concord Church in Nicholas County, Kentucky. After graduating in 1876 Warfield was the interim pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Dayton, Ohio, from which he received a unanimous call to the pastorate. Warfield declined the call, determining instead to return to Europe for further studies.

Marriage

He was married on August 3 of that year to the brilliant, witty, and beautiful Annie Kinkead and then very soon took up studies in Leipzig. Warfield endured extended health problems that kept him from some studies while in Germany, but over the winter of 1876–1877 he took in various lectures.

His new wife was the daughter of a prominent Lexington attorney who in 1855 defended Abraham Lincoln. In the brief biographical sketches of Warfield that are commonly available, Annie is often reported to have been an invalid their entire married life, but it does not seem that this degree of debilitation came until perhaps 1893 (seventeen years into their marriage). A notice in the New York Times dated May 1, 1892, notes that Mrs. Warfield, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and other prominent ladies of Princeton served as "Patronesses" at a lecture event sponsored by the American Whig Society in Princeton on April 30. But about a year later, in July of 1893, Warfield sent a paper to be read at an event in Staten Island, New York, which he was unable himself to attend, the published version informs us, "owing to illness in his family." It would seem that Annie's illness became severe during this period. There are reports of Annie's ill health from others at Princeton at the time, and by all accounts Warfield was a devoted husband in a very happy marriage. The Warfields had no children, and for many years he left his home only for the classroom. He was otherwise home nearly always in the company of his wife. And in the providence of God, without doubt, this contributed to his time in writing so extensively on so many subjects. It was reported by those who knew him that "he has had only two interests in life — his work, and Mrs. Warfield."

Career and Stature

Following a stint as stated supply at the historic First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Warfield began his teaching career as professor of New Testament at Western (now Pittsburgh) Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in September 1878. Greek had now become his leading area of interest. And by the early s1880 Warfield had already begun to gain international recognition as a force of conservative Reformed theological scholarship. His landmark "Inspiration" (1881), coauthored with Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–1886), and his "Canonicity of Second Peter" (1882) were especially noted, portending the brilliant career that quite obviously lay ahead for this young scholar. And in 1886 he became the first American to publish a textbook in New Testament textual criticism, a title that received accolades from all quarters and established him as a leading authority in the field.

His masterful work in New Testament studies, however, would prove to be the foundation of his famous life's work in theology. In 1887 Warfield returned to his beloved alma mater, Princeton Seminary, assuming the historic and prestigious chair of Didactic and Polemic Theology. We call it systematic theology today, and they did then also, but at Princeton, at least, the "polemic" dimension — establishing and maintaining the doctrines of Scripture at given points of controversy — was an especially important aspect of the theological task. And it was a work Warfield took up with great vigor.

The Theological Seminary at Princeton was now long and widely recognized as a land of biblical and theological giants. But both friends and foes of Old Princeton to this day acknowledge Warfield as the giant standing out above all the others. The breadth and depth of his voluminous works have impressed Christian students and scholars of all theological persuasions. Warfield was by all accounts one of the most outstanding and influential orthodox theologians of the era. Among Reformed orthodox theologians few have stood taller. This was the reputation he earned in his own lifetime, and the breadth and depth of his scholarship and exhaustive acquaintance with the theological, scientific, and philosophical literature and thought of his day constituted the high-water mark of Old Princeton. He was well equipped with all the tools of modern scholarship, thoroughly abreast of all the latest theories and methods of the critics, widely — indeed, seemingly exhaustively — read in all the various theological disciplines (whether of theological friend or foe), deeply informed by the historical development of Christian doctrines — Patristic (Greek and Latin), Reformed, and modern; German, French, Dutch, and English — and most of all demonstrating throughout his career an exhaustive exegetical grounding. Warfield was not only a well-informed theologian; he was a theologian perhaps without peer, certainly unsurpassed in all the English-speaking world.

The Naturalistic Worldview of Warfield's Day

"Enlightenment" thought in Warfield's day had come to its own, and naturalistic ideas dominated. The thoroughly supernatural character of the Christian faith was under assault at every point, the nature of inspiration most famously. Various "kenosis" theories explained our Lord in purely human terms, and redemption had become much less than expiation through his substitutional sacrifice. Virtually the entire faith was being recast in thoroughly naturalistic terms, and Warfield vigorously gave himself to the exposition and defense of Christian supernaturalism — a supernatural God, a supernatural revelation, a supernatural Savior, and a supernatural salvation produced by nothing less than the supernatural workings of the Spirit of God. All this and nothing less, Warfield was deeply convinced, could enable us to sing not only Deo gloria, but soli Deo gloria. He understood that in this wide-ranging debate that raged, Christianity itself was at stake.

Warfield the Christologian

Warfield's own center of interest and concern was the person and work of Christ, and this constitutes his leading area of literary output. We might say that he was first and foremost a christologian. In his own heart of hearts he saw himself as a fallen sinner rescued by a divine Redeemer, and this — the person and work of Christ — is where we find the heartbeat of this great Princetonian. As he did with the doctrine of inspiration, so also Warfield provided for the church a massive exegetical grounding for the great truths of Christ's two natures, his redemptive work, and so on. Indeed, it was to this end — God's redemptive revelation in Christ — that Warfield understood the doctrine of inspiration as so very vital.

Ultimately his was a fight for the gospel. Consistently at the center of Warfield's attention was the glorious message of divine rescue for sinners. If the attack was on the person of Christ, his concern was not academic only but soteriological — that we would be left without a Savior and without a gospel. If the attack was concerning the integrity of the Scriptures, his concern was not one of party spirit. It was that in the end we would be left without witness to Christ and, indeed, with a Christ who is himself mistaken as to the nature and authority of the book that was written about him. If the attack was an Arminian one, his concern was that the gospel would be so watered down as to devalue Christ and render him much less than the mighty Savior he is. Throughout even his most polemic writings Warfield's passion for Christ and utter dependence on a divine Savior are plainly evident. It is for this reason that Warfield was so passionate for historic Calvinism. For him, "dependence" on God was the very essence of true religion, and, thus, Calvinism is religion expressed in its purest form. That "God saves sinners" is the heart of both the Calvinistic system and the Christian faith itself.

Warfield the Man

Warfield was tall and erect, pleasant but dignified, rather heavy, something of an imposing figure, with ruddy cheeks, hair parted in the middle, sparkling eyes, and a full graying beard. Former student Charles Brokenshire (1885–1954) recalled, "He walked with head erect and well thrown back, and his face beamed with intelligence and amiability." He was "somewhat deaf," which made classroom recitation to him frustratingly difficult, but he was known for this method of teaching nonetheless. Brokenshire continues:

His most interesting method of instruction appeared when he heard and answered some question in the classroom. Sometime he would use the Socratic method on a reciter and lead some student disposed to argue into a series of statements which drove the young liberal into the orthodox corner where "Benny" wanted him.

"Benny" was the name used by his family — and by his students, but only behind his back, of course! He was always of good humor but also serious, somewhat reserved, and, as one former student reports, with a commanding air of authority. Thoroughly informed as he was, on the one hand he could appear aloof and indifferent to the theological opinions of others, but on the other hand he displayed an obvious love for others and especially children. And he was always demonstrative in his support of gospel endeavors both at home and abroad.

Warfield was a scholar's scholar who enjoyed long hours daily with his books. He did not spend a great deal of time in social pleasantries such as after-dinner conversation. He was something of a recluse with his books and his pen, always diligent in his theological studies, and well read in all other fields of literature also, especially science.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Warfield on the Christian Life"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Fred G. Zaspel.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Series Preface,
Foreword,
Acknowledgments,
Abbreviations,
Introduction,
Part 1 Personal Background,
1 Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield: The Man and His Work,
2 Truth and Life: The Role of Christian Doctrine in Warfield's Christian Life,
Part 2 Foundations of Faith,
3 Learning and Living: The Value and Authority of God's Word,
4 Redemption Accomplished: God to the Rescue,
5 Right with God: Our New Standing,
6 Conversion: The Great Change,
7 Help from Above: The Holy Spirit at Work,
8 From Glory to Glory: The Doctrine of Sanctification,
Part 3 Orientation and Perspective,
9 Righteous and Sinful: Miserable-Sinner Christianity,
10 Jesus's Little Ones: Childship to God,
11 God Over All: Resting in Divine Providence,
Part 4 Living Response,
12 Looking to Jesus: Our Model and Forerunner,
13 Christlikeness: Imitating the Incarnation,
14 The Religious Life: Cultivating Practical Piety,
15 Prayer: A Practice of Piety and a Means of Grace,
16 Matters of the Heart: Motives, Goals, and Values,
17 The Good Fight, 1: Faithfulness to Christ,
18 The Good Fight, 2: In Pursuit of Perfection,
19 A Bright Horizon: The Christian Hope,
Part 5 The Big Picture,
20 Summary Reflections,