B. B. Warfield

Life

Warfield was born in 1851 into a Presbyterian family in Lexington, Kentucky. He entered Princeton University in 1868 and graduated in 1871. In 1873 he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary to prepare for the ministry, graduating in 1876. He served briefly as a stated supply preacher in Presbyterian churches in Kentucky and Ohio. Late that same year he went to Germany, where he studied under the Lutheran theologian Christoph Ernst Luthardt and the Old Testament scholar Franz Delitzsch. Beginning in 1878, he taught New Testament at Western Theological Seminary for nine years. In 1887 he succeeded A. A. Hodge, the son of Charles Hodge, as professor of didactic and polemic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Didactic theology is the systematic teaching of doctrine, and polemic theology is the defense of doctrine against opposing views. He held this position until his death in 1921.

Ministry and Contributions

• Doctrine of biblical inspiration: In 1881 Warfield and A. A. Hodge published an article titled "Inspiration" in the Presbyterian Review. Inspiration refers to the Holy Spirit's guidance of the writing of Scripture. The article became widely known as a scholarly defense of biblical inerrancy, the view that Scripture is without error because it was written by the inspiration of God. Warfield held that the whole of Scripture is inspired down to every individual word.
• Controversy with liberal criticism: From 1887 to 1889 he co-edited the Presbyterian Review with Charles A. Briggs in an attempt to narrow the differences of opinion within the denomination, but the effort failed. In his 1891 inaugural address, Briggs argued that Scripture is not free from error in matters of history and science, directly challenging the inerrancy position of Hodge and Warfield.
• Cessationism: In 1918 Warfield published Counterfeit Miracles, in which he argued that the revelatory gifts and the miracle-working gifts ceased with the apostolic age. On the same grounds he criticized Roman Catholic miracle claims, the charismatic movement associated with Edward Irving, and the faith healing movement.
• Warfield never wrote a systematic theology textbook of his own. Instead, he produced a large body of articles and book reviews, and in the classroom he used Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology. For his defense of Reformed theology grounded in the Westminster Confession of Faith, he came to be called "the Lion of Princeton." He is regarded as the last major representative of what is known as Old Princeton theology before the reorganization of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1929. His theological approach was carried on by J. Gresham Machen.

Influence on the Korean Church

Warfield's influence reached Korea mainly through his writings and the Princeton tradition. Park Hyung-nong studied at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1923 to 1926, after Warfield's death. Scholars who have studied Park hold that he learned from Warfield a system of Reformed faith grounded in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Within conservative Korean Presbyterianism, the view of Scripture held by the missionaries who founded Pyongyang Theological Seminary is regarded as standing in the same tradition as the Old Princeton theologians' teaching on inspiration and inerrancy. For this reason, Warfield's doctrine of inspiration is still frequently cited in conservative Presbyterian seminaries as a standard authority for the doctrine of Scripture. His cessationism is also often invoked as a classic basis for the cessationist position in the Korean church's debate over spiritual gifts.

Assessment

Conservative Reformed and evangelical circles regard Warfield as a leading theologian who defended the authority of Scripture and supernatural Christianity. His views also have their critics. Proponents of liberal theology, which studies Scripture through historical criticism, and of neo-orthodoxy, which rejects biblical inerrancy itself, criticize his doctrine of inerrancy for failing to take sufficient account of the human dimension of the biblical writings. Others point out that Old Princeton theology was influenced by the Enlightenment philosophy of its day and by Scottish Common Sense Realism. Pentecostals and charismatics reject his cessationism, arguing that Scripture itself does not teach that the gifts have ceased.