The theology of B.B. Warfield

The giant’s full stature

THE THEOLOGY OF B.B. WARFIELD
A systematic survey
By Fred G. Zaspel
IVP/Apollos. 624 pages. £24.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-482-4

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield lived from 1871 until 1921 and was professor of theology at Princeton University in the USA. He had an extremely fine mind and a deep personal faith in Christ. He turned out to be one of the greatest champions of biblical faith of the modern era, defending evangelical Christianity against both liberalism and extremism.

Warfield never wrote a systematic theology of his own. In many ways this book seeks to fill that gap. Dr. Fred Zaspel has done a fine job in reading the whole corpus of Warfield’s works and seeking to systematise his teaching in such areas as apologetics, bibliology, the character of God, Christ, salvation, the Spirit and sanctification, etc. In the preface, Sinclair Ferguson speculates that the reason Warfield never wrote a systematic theology was partially due to the very high esteem in which he held his predecessor at Princeton, Charles Hodge. He did not wish to be seen to be vying with his mentor. While that may be so, one also gets the impression that Warfield was a theological polemicist, ready to defend the faith at whichever point was under attack at a particular time. Hence his work is of a somewhat disparate nature.

Evidence and theology

19th century liberalism tried to ground theology in religious experience rather than in the objective truth of God’s revelation in Scripture. Warfield in some respects saw apologetics as primary. It prepares the way for theology. Over against the modern jibes of someone like Richard Dawkins, Warfield saw faith not as arbitrary but as a ‘forced consent’ to evidence that is perceived as relevant and true. Nevertheless he insists on the need for the Holy Spirit’s work to regenerate and enlighten the individual.

The task of the theologian is to explicate God’s revelation in all its details. Systematic theology collects all the facts and presents them as a comprehensive whole. Warfield uses the analogy of an army, recruited through exegesis of the biblical text, organised into companies and regiments through biblical theology and brought together as an army by Systematics. Theology is not the science of religion or religious experience, but the science of God who has made himself known. The enemies of theology are mysticism and ‘indifferentism’ (doctrine doesn’t matter) which holds sway over much of evangelicalism today.

Biblical inspiration

Warfield is perhaps best known for his work on the inspiration and authority of the Bible. Zaspel walks us through Warfield’s great arguments and also introduces us to John Woodbridge’s defence of Warfield against his modern detractors. The Bible is both fully divine and fully human and without error. What Scripture says, God says. The Bible possesses an irreducible unity, identified in the canon.

It was, therefore, understood that Israel’s teachings required for their verification demonstrable grounding in these writings. It was from within this context that such expressions as ‘for it is said’ and ‘it is written’ arose. The church, and, more importantly, the Lord Jesus Christ, adopted this same outlook. The Tubingen critics sought to rewrite biblical history in purely human, natural terms. But, above all other things, Warfield stood for Christian supernaturalism. The Bible is the book God has given and it is utterly reliable. As he said in conclusion of his lecture ‘Inspiration and Criticism’, saving revelation ‘is but half revelation unless it be infallibly recorded’. To which he solemnly added ‘the heathen in their blindness are our witnesses of what becomes of an unrecorded revelation.’ Inerrancy was so crucial to Warfield because it touches the heart of what Christianity is, namely a redemptive religion. With this doctrine virtually everything is at stake. He argues that it is impossible for us to hold to the Jesus of the Bible without also holding to the Bible of Jesus, a Bible that is inerrant.

The omnipotent God

For Warfield, the Trinity is a mysterious truth about God progressively revealed in co-ordination with his unfolding saving purposes. It is purely a revealed truth, undiscoverable by human reason. God, first of all, is ‘the omnipotent person’. This inevitably leads to the truth of predestination as taught in Scripture. Without omnipotence God is not God but a ‘godling’. For God to create and not control would be immoral.

God’s foreknowledge and purpose reflects no discomfort with the notion of human freedom. Why? First, because God’s foreknowledge of the actions of free human agents indeed implies the certainty of those actions, but it does not in any way impinge on human freedom any more than his foreknowledge of his own actions and choices impinges on his own freedom. Second, throughout Scripture there is never the least doubt expressed of the freedom and moral responsibility of man.

Christ

The person of Christ and his work topped the list of Warfield’s many interests as measured by his literary output and preaching. Zaspel includes a brief survey of Warfield’s finding the deity of Christ in both the Old and New Testaments. Warfield was scathing about those of his day who searched for a non-supernatural ‘historical Jesus’. In rebutting the critics, he concludes: ‘It is impossible to select out of the NT words from which to construct earlier documents in which the deity of Christ shall not be assumed’. It is around this point in the book that we come across an argument from Warfield for the deity of Christ which is very like the famous ‘Lord, liar or lunatic’ argument of C.S. Lewis. I could not help but wonder if Lewis, coming later, had read Warfield.

He argues for Christ’s full, sinless humanity and directs us to behold that as both our measure and future as Christians. Zaspel unfolds very thoroughly Warfield’s investigation of Christ’s two natures as God and man. Warfield valiantly opposed all kenotic theories which saw Christ as less than God. And Zaspel has quite a lengthy rebuttal of the late Professor John Murray’s misunderstanding of Warfield’s position on the two natures.

The Redeemer

Christ as Redeemer, the name specifically of the Christ of the cross, is that which endears the heart of every Christian to him. Christ crucified is the hinge on which the gospel turns. ‘In the centre of its centre, in the heart of its heart, salvation is deliverance from sin.’ Of the resurrection of Christ, Warfield shows that it was, from the beginning, believed by the entire church. Even those within the church who opposed Paul believed it.

The person and work of the Holy Spirit was not so much a neglected doctrine, according to Warfield, it was rather that other doctrines needed to be clarified by the church first. For Warfield the doctrine of the Spirit comes into its own in the works of Calvin, the Reformers and the Puritans. Both sacramentalism and a denial of the bondage of the fallen human will lead to a neglect of the doctrine of the Spirit. Some will disagree with Warfield’s arguments for a cessationist position on the supernatural gifts of the Spirit, but his argument is worthy of attention, and helpfully clarifies a number of issues.

Evolution and humanity

It is as Zaspel brings together the teaching of Warfield on anthropology and the Fall that he helpfully explores Warfield’s much debated position on the theory of evolution. I think a fair summary would be that Warfield held that, while it is possible to hold that evolution could be consistent with some kind of theism, yet a thoroughgoing Darwinianism is impossible to reconcile with Christianity and biblical revelation.

Warfield argued for the unity of the human race and hence was outspokenly anti-racist at a time when it was not popular to champion the cause of black Americans. In the section on sin there is fine insight (pp.402,403) into the logic of natural catastrophes and human sin. Apart from the Fall, there can be no calamity in the accepted sense of the word.

In dealing with the doctrine of sin, Warfield’s Biblical Calvinism comes to the fore. Here Zaspel takes us through Warfield’s powerful little book, The Plan of Salvation, which has been mysteriously neglected by Reformed publishing companies in Britain over the last 50 years. It is one of the most helpful books this reviewer has ever read. Grace is power and love and is totally gratuitous. Election is simply God’s purposing to save us by grace. In dealing with the doubts and fears which surround the doctrines of grace, Warfield tells us: ‘God does not require election but faith, he does not offer us predestination but Christ’.

Perfectionism

I remember reading through Warfield’s volume on Perfectionism as a young man, and though gaining much from it, had to use all my powers of perseverance to get through it. Zaspel is at his best here in organising and clarifying Warfield’s writings. He explains carefully the different forms of perfectionism which Warfield addressed: the Ritschlian, Higher Life, and Oberlin form associated with Charles Finney. We are shown Warfield’s ten devastating criticisms of the idea that the Christian can be perfect in this life. Warfield defends the classic evangelical view of progressive sanctification, but ends by graciously explaining that, in many ways, what the perfectionists have got wrong is simply a matter of timing. For it is certainly true that we shall indeed know the wonderful freedom of being totally sanctified and free from all sin in the world to come when salvation is complete.

The chapters on Warfield’s ecclesiology and eschatology are relatively short compared with others which deal with primary, gospel issues. He did not write much on these matters. The last chapter gives an overview of Warfield including his ongoing influence, his limitations and his enormous contribution to the cause of Christ.

This book is large, but reading it will bring large rewards.

A systematic survey