Category: B.B. Warfield

[T]he kingdom of God is a gratuity, not an acquisition.  -B.B. Warfield in Jesus’ Alleged Confession of Sin

Stick through the quote for the last paragraph.

You see, that what we are doing today as we look out upon our current religious modes of speech, is assisting at the death bed of a word. It is sad to witness the death of any worthy thing, even of a worthy word. And worthy words do die, like any other worthy thing–if we do not take good care of them. How many worthy words have already died under our very eyes, because we did not take care of them! Tennyson calls our attention to one of them. The grand old name of gentleman,” he sings, “defamed by every charalatan, and soil’d with all ignoble use.” If you persist in calling people who are not gentleman by the name of gentleman, you do not make them gentleman by so calling them, but you end up making the word gentleman that kind of people.

…If everything that is called Christianity in these days is Christianity, then there is no such thing as Christianity. A name applied indiscriminately to everything, designates nothing.

The words ‘Redeem,’ ‘Redemption,’ ‘Redeemer’ are going the same way. When we use these terms in so comprehensive a sense…that we understand by “Redemption” whatever benefit we suppose ourselves to receive through Christ,–no matter what we happen to think that benefit is–and call Him “Redeemer” merely in order to express the fact that we somehow or other relate this benefit to Him–no matter how loosely or unessentially – we have simply evacuated the terms of all meaning, and would do better to wipe them out of our vocabulary.

I think you will agree with me that it is a sad thing to see words like these die like this. And I hope you will determine that, God helping you, you will not let them die thus, if any care on your part can preserve them in life and vigor. But the dying of the words is not the saddest thing which we see here. The saddest thing is the dying out of the hearts of men of the things for which the words stand.  – B.B. Warfield in “Redeemer” and “Redemption”

I don’t believe the Bible is a book of heroes. The Bible does have heroes in it, but that is not what it is about. It is a book about the Hero. Nonetheless, I do believe in having heroes, and I believe it is Biblical to have them.

Heroes are not perfect, and thus they point us to Christ in three ways. Their faults (weaknesses and sins) point us to the Savior that they, and we, all need. With this foundation we learn two further truths concerning their strengths. First, they are a result of God’s gifting and working in them such that He gets all the glory. Second, their strengths also point us to Jesus by whom they are graded – Jesus is the ultimate curve breaker. All heroes are judged in relation to Him.

Every year I single out one hero to study in particular. This year I will study the life and works of B.B. Warfield. He was born the son of a farmer on November 5, 1851 near Lexington Kentucky.

Warfield was fighter. While attending Princeton College he got into a fight following an afternoon lecture in front of the chapel. The reason – Warfield had drawn a picture of another student that was passed around the class. The picture wasn’t flattering so they fought. The fight evidently didn’t amount to much because no action was taken by the school, but Warfield’s reputation as a fighter stuck.

Warfield was a champion for the authority and inerrancy of the Word of God and many precious doctrines taught therein. He primarily fought with his pen and by teaching students at Princeton Seminary where he taught for 34 years instructing more than 2,700 students. But he was a gentleman fighter. Primarily he attacked ideas, not persons. This isn’t to say that his arguments didn’t sting or were void of sarcasm, but he was fair.

And yet there was a tenderness in this man that allowed him to fight so tenaciously. At 25 he married Annie Peirce Kinkead and while on their honeymoon she was struck by lightning. She was a semi-invalid the rest of her life. Warfield rarely left her side for more than two hours. Because he was tied so closely to home by love, this freed him to fight with his pen for the glory of God and the edification of our souls.

Every week I will post some gleanings from Warfield. All such posts will be marked, “The Pugilist,” a nickname given to him in those early college years and an identity sanctified by God.