The Lion of Princeton

B.B. Warfield as Apologist and Theologian

Kim Riddlebarger

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781577995890
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Take a fresh look at the work of B.B. Warfield. 'The Lion of Princeton, ' as he was known, was in many ways the most significant American apologist, polemicist, and theologian of his age. However, despite the resurging interest in Warfield's life and work, his views are often misunderstood.In The Lion of Princeton, Kim Riddlebarger investigates Warfield's theological, apologetical, and polemical writings, bringing clarity to the confusion surrounding this key figure of the Princeton tradition. He provides a biographical overview of Warfield's life, traces the growing appreciation for Warfield's thought, evaluates the fundamental structures in Warfield's overall theology, and examines Warfield's work in the field of systematic theology.

1

The Heir to the Princeton Tradition

“THE PUGILIST”

Princeton College alumni who remembered B. B. Warfield’s student days at Princeton recall that on November 6, 1870, the young Warfield and a certain James Steen “distinguished themselves by indulging in a little Sunday fight in front of the chapel after Dr. McCosh’s afternoon lecture.” Warfield, it seems, “in lieu of taking notes” during Dr. McCosh’s lecture, took great delight in sketching an “exceedingly uncomplimentary picture of Steen,” which was subsequently circulated among the students.1 The resulting fist-fight between the two young men ultimately didn’t amount to much, but it earned Warfield the nickname—“the pugilist.”2

B. B. Warfield’s earliest days at Princeton, as well as his last, were characterized by a passionate defense of his personal honor. Princeton Seminary colleague, Oswald T. Allis, tells the story about Dr. Warfield’s encounter with Mrs. Stevenson, the wife of the Seminary president, shortly before Warfield’s death and during the height of the controversy at Princeton over an “inclusive” Presbyterian church. When Mrs. Stevenson and Dr. Warfield passed each other on the walk outside the Seminary, some pleasantries were exchanged, and then Mrs. Stevenson reportedly said to the good doctor, “Oh, Dr. Warfield, I am praying that everything will go harmoniously at the [General] Assembly!” To which Warfield responded, “Why, Mrs. Stevenson, I am praying that there may be a fight.”3 As the late Hugh Kerr, formerly Warfield Professor of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, reflects, “From the very beginning to end, Warfield was a fighter.”4

B. B. Warfield was not only a fighter, he was also a theological giant, exerting significant influence upon American Presbyterianism for nearly 40 years. John DeWitt, professor of church history at Princeton during the Warfield years, told Warfield biographer Samuel Craig that:

… he had known intimately the three great Reformed theologians of America of the preceding generation—Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd and Henry B. Smith—and that he was not only certain that Warfield knew a great deal more than any one of them but that he was disposed to think that he knew more than all three of them put together.5

Unlike many of today’s “specialists,” B. B. Warfield was fully qualified to teach any of the major seminary subjects—New Testament, church history, systematic or biblical theology, and apologetics.6 One of Warfield’s students and an influential thinker in his own right, J. Gresham Machen, remembers Warfield as follows: “With all his glaring faults, he was the greatest man I have known.”7 And as previously mentioned, Hugh Kerr, though critical of Warfield’s “theory of the inerrancy of the original autographs,” still told his own students a generation later that “Dr. Warfield had the finest mind ever to teach at Princeton Seminary.”8

A VERY PRODUCTIVE LIFE (1851–1921)

The biographical details of Warfield’s life are well-documented and quite straightforward.9 Born in 1851 near Lexington, Kentucky, Warfield came from good Puritan stock on his father’s side10 His mother was the daughter of Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, who in the words of one writer was “an able Presbyterian Theologian and professor of theology at Danbury (Kentucky) Theological Seminary (1853–69).”11 One of Robert’s sons (and Warfield’s uncle), John Cabell Breckinridge (1821–1875), was a two-term congressman and served as the Vice President of the United States during the Buchanan administration. (He later became a distinguished general and cabinet member of the Confederate States of America.)12

Warfield was educated by some of the finest tutors available13 and also received education at home; Reformed piety was ingrained in the Warfield home at an early age. The Larger and Shorter Catechisms, along with the Scripture proofs were memorized by all of the Warfield children; the Shorter Catechism was memorized by the sixth year.14 At 16, the young Kentuckian made profession of faith and joined the Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington, though he appeared to have inherited from his father “a reluctance to speak of spiritual matters.” His mother, on the other hand, often expressed her wishes that “her sons would preach the gospel.”15 This dream did not come true until her oldest son Benjamin, quite surprisingly, changed his vocational plans and announced his intention to enter into the Presbyterian ministry upon his return from Europe in 1872.16

When B. B. Warfield entered Princeton College as a sophomore in 1868, his lengthy connection to that institution was only beginning. Warfield was not, however, the only new member of the Princeton community that year. The school’s new president, the fatherly Scotsman James McCosh, also undertook his new calling in 1868, and when a number of years later Warfield playfully remarked to McCosh that they both “entered Princeton the same year and that they both had achieved advanced standing,” we are told that “McCosh was not amused.”17

At Princeton College, when he was not drawing caricatures of fellow students, Warfield excelled at mathematics and science, and upon graduation in 1871, he decided to pursue further studies at the universities of Edinburgh and Heidelberg. His younger brother, Ethelbert,18 remembers that Benjamin’s “tastes were strongly scientific. He collected birds’ eggs, butterflies and moths, and geological specimens; studied the fauna and flora of his neighborhood; read Darwin’s newly published works with great enthusiasm.”19 Objecting to studying Greek—since he saw no use for it—he had planned to follow a scientific career. He made perfect marks in science and mathematics, and “counted Audubon’s works on American birds and mammals as his chief treasure.”20 Between the time of his graduation and his departure for Europe, however, Warfield’s career took an odd turn, when “he returned to Kentucky, and following in his father’s footsteps, began an editorial stint with the Lexington Farmer’s Home Journal,” a kind of foreshadowing of his future career as editor of the Princeton Theological Review.21 After his father talked him out of taking a fellowship to study experimental science, B. B. Warfield instead went abroad. In the summer of 1872, his family received the surprising news from Heidelberg that he had given up his previous career objectives and now intended to enter into the Presbyterian ministry.22

Since Warfield was apparently quite reticent to discuss his own spiritual development, we know little of his decision made, while in Heidelberg, to enter Princeton Seminary to study for the ministry. While in Europe he makes his only autobiographical comment in this regard, stating that he “realized the paramount claims of God and religion upon him.”23 His brother informs us that this decision came as a complete “surprise to his family and most intimate friends.”24 When he returned to the states in 1873, he enrolled in Princeton Theological Seminary; he graduated in May of 1876. The young Warfield was soon licensed to preach, but he declined to take a call in Dayton, Ohio to pursue further studies in Europe. Soon after marrying Annie Pearce Kinkead, who was also from noble stock, the newlyweds journeyed to Leipzig. Kinkead was a descendent of George Rogers Clark, the famous general of the Revolutionary War who was known as the “Hannibal of the West.”25

During their stay in Europe, an event occurred that would forever change the Warfields’ lives. While walking together in the Harz Mountains, they were caught in a violent thunderstorm. Annie Warfield suffered a severe trauma to her nervous system from which she never fully recovered. She was so severely traumatized that she would spend the rest of her life as an invalid of sorts, becoming increasingly more incapacitated as the years went by. Her husband spent the rest of his life giving her “his constant attention and care”26 until her death in 1915. B. B. Warfield could not have foreseen just how difficult a demand this would be, nor how, in the providence of God, it would positively impact his entire career.

While still abroad, Warfield was offered a position on the faculty in Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Although previously expressing a distaste for the study of Greek, he made New Testament the primary focus of his European studies.27 Upon the completion of his studies, he returned home and took a call to be an assistant pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore. He served a brief period, then accepted a call to Western Theological Seminary as instructor in New Testament. Beginning his new labor in September of 1878, he was subsequently ordained and appointed full professor. By 1880, he had received so much notice through his publications that he was awarded the Doctor of Divinity Degree by the College of New Jersey.28

The unexpected death of Warfield’s friend Archibald Alexander Hodge in 1886 prompted his return to Princeton. A. A. Hodge, the son of Charles Hodge, had been Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton, after assuming the very chair made famous by his father upon his father’s death. Francis Patton remembered the events this way.

I remember the shock which passed through this community when word went out that Dr. A. A. Hodge was dead.… When the question of his successor arose, our minds turned naturally to Dr. Warfield, then Professor of New Testament Criticism and Exegesis in the Western Theological Seminary, Allegheny, Pennsylvania. I recall today the delight with which Dr. C. W. Hodge welcomed his former pupil to the chair which his father and brother had successively filled.29

Warfield’s very productive nine-year career in New Testament at Western ended and he began a tenure at Princeton that was to last another thirty-three years until his own death in February 1921.

Warfield’s herculean literary accomplishments over the course of his career are remarkable. Hugh T. Kerr describes the huge volume of material that Warfield managed to produce.

Of his printed and published work, there are ten large, and I mean large, volumes of posthumously selected and edited articles known as the Oxford edition as well as two volumes of additional essays put together by John E. Meeter, plus two volumes of handwritten scrapbooks and fifteen volumes of Opuscula (1880–1918), collected and bound by Warfield himself. He also wrote a major work on the textual criticism of the New Testament which went through nine editions, published three volumes of sermons, several commentaries, and a significant investigation of popular religious movements, Counterfeit Miracles. Yet, we are nowhere near the end of the list, for there are literally h...