B.B. Warfield: An Introduction

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born November 5, 1851, the first son to William and Mary (Cabell Breckinridge), near Lexington, Kentucky. William was descended from Puritans who arrived on the shores of Virginia in the mid-1600’s. Mary’s family was well connected to the early development of the United States. Her grandfather was Thomas Jefferson’s attorney general and her uncle, John Breckinridge, was chaplain to the United State congress from 1822-23. Later, John would serve as professor of pastoral theology at Princeton. Both William and Mary were characterized by a deep love for Christ and his church, as well as the nation. They and their families also possessed significant literary and intellectual gifts and obviously passed these gifts and loves on to Benjamin. 

In the Warfield household, the Shorter Catechism was memorized at an early age, along with the Scripture proofs, and Benjamin did so by age six. He then went on to the Larger Catechism. The earliest intellectual and spiritual influence upon B. B. Warfield were the theological categories and content of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is no insignificant feature to know, because even during his lifetime, and certainly after his death, Warfield was accused of being under the control of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Among other things, this thesis is a window to the theological controversies that swirled around Warfield.

Warfield graduated from Princeton College in 1871, but already by that time Protestant Liberal theology, advocated by many schools in Germany, had taken on significant developments and strength. He entered the seminary in 1873, and became well-versed in the debates with and arguments against the German Higher-Criticism. In 1876 Warfield married Annie Kinkead, who was the daughter of a prominent Lexington, KY lawyer, who had once represented Abraham Lincoln. Upon graduation, Warfield declined a call to pastoral ministry to embark on further studies in Europe, but upon his return he became the assistant pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore. In 1878, Warfield received a call from Western Seminary in Pittsburgh to join their Old Testament department, but declined the offer. The next year they offered him a similar position in New Testament that he accepted. But, in 1887, Princeton came calling and Warfield answered. Until his death on February 16, 1921, Warfield wrote, preached and taught heralding the Reformed theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith as professor of Didactic and Polemic theology.

One could easily argue that B. B. Warfield is the greatest American theologian. Not only is it estimated that Warfield taught 2,750 students, more than any other Old Princeton theologian, but also had a literary output rarely equaled in the entire history of the church. Moreover, he remained at the center of controversies that marked the Presbyterian Church U. S. throughout his lifetime by exposing the unbiblical character of Protestant Liberal theology, Arminianism, and various strands of evangelical thought, such as the “Higher Life” movement.

Warfield was staunchly Calvinistic in his theology as an adherent of the Westminster Confession of Faith. But he used that theology in service of the church by demonstrating that it was nothing less than biblical Christianity. Believing as he did in God’s sovereign supernatural power to reveal himself in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, Warfield stressed that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the power of God unto salvation. Such salvation, according to Warfield, was the eternal life of God having been established on earth, and would continue generation after generation to spread throughout the whole earth, so that one day the knowledge of God would cover the earth like the water covers the sea. Warfield had unbounded confidence in the gospel as the means by which Christ was building his church. Among other things, this meant that the doctrines of the Christian faith and life were both established by the gospel and best understood as a living organism, the eternal life of God expressed not merely in the doctrines of the Christian faith, but in the life of those that believed them, and could not help but put them into practice. Warfield believed Jesus’ words that the gates of hell could not prevail against the church. The systematic theology of the Confession was not, then, to be regarded first and foremost as giving expression to the rational connections between its doctrines, but as giving expression of the life-giving power of God that took residence in the souls of those to whom the Holy Spirit revealed it as true. It could be rationally explained, but this is because it is the truth that God’s Spirit uses to set people free from sin. Through all of his published works, and they are immense, Warfield championed the cause of Christ and never seemed tire of making the case for Christ.