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WRITINGS & SERMONS

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD

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AMERICAN CLERGYMAN & EDUCATOR

BENJAMIN BRECKENRIDGE WARFIELD November 5, 1851 - February 17, 1921 Graduated with highest honors, 1871 at nineteen years of age, from the College of New Jersey, later to be named Princeton University. In 1872, while in Heidelberg, Germany, he decided to enter the ministry. He entered Princeton Theological Seminary and graduated with the class of 1876. In 1878 he took a position at Western Theological Seminary as instructor in New Testament language and literature, becoming a professor in 1879. He left the seminary after nine years to take the chair of Systematic Theology at Princeton University that had once been occupied by Charles Hodge, who had been Warfield's teacher. The chair had been vacated by Charles Hodge's son A.A. Hodge upon his death.

CLICK ON THE CITATION TO VIEW THE ARTICLE "The Authority & Inspiration Of The Scriptures" "The authority of the Scriptures thus rests on the simple fact that God's authoritative agents in founding the Church gave them as authoritative to the Church which they founded. All the authority of the apostles stands behind the Scriptures, and all the authority of Christ behind the apostles. The Scriptures are simply the law-code which the law-givers of the Church gave it." "The Cessation Of The Charismata" "How long did this state of things continue? It was the characterizing peculiarity of specifically the Apostolic Church, and it belonged therefore exclusively to the Apostolic age--although no doubt this designation may be taken with some latitude." "Election" "Certainly it is equally true that where no election is, neither is there salvation. Since all the salvation there is, is of grace, and grace is of election, there is of course no salvation where there is no election. But this does not mean that election excludes from salvation. What election does and all that election does, is to bring into salvation. It is not where it is, but only where it is not, that salvation fails." "The End Of The Incarnation" "Now this subordinate relation in which Jesus thus pervasively represents Himself to have stood to the Father, so as to have been sent by Him, must be a matter either of nature or of arrangement. It must be either essential or economic. It must find its account and origin either in the necessity of nature or else in the provisions of a plan. But side by side with this perfectly pervasive proclamation of His subordination to the Father, in the whole matter of the incarnation itself, and the purpose or "will" that lies behind that incarnation and gives it its justification and its philosophical account, there runs an equally pervasive assertion by Jesus Himself and by His historian as well, of His essential equality and oneness with God. He was not only in the beginning with God: He was God. He is the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father. To have seen Him is to have seen the Father also. He draws and receives from Thomas, the worshipping cry, "My Lord and my God." He declares to the Jews, "I and the Father are One." It seems to be clear, therefore, that the subordination in which the Father is recognized as greater than He, prescribing a "will " for Him to come into the world to perform, is economic, not essential ; a matter of arrangement, not of necessity of nature " "Entire Sanctification" "There is no feature of Christianity more strongly emphasized by those to whom its establishment in the world was committed, than the breadth and depth of its ethical demands. The "salvation" which was promised in the "Gospel" or "Glad Tidings" which constituted its proclamation, was just salvation from sin and unto holiness. In other words, it was a moral revolution of the most thoroughgoing and radical kind. "Sanctification" is the Biblical word for this moral revolution, and in "sanctification" the very essence of salvation is made to consist." "Faith & Life" - Theological Distinctions "The truth is that the world, even in this generation, is made up of a good many people; and a good many varying points of view may be found represented among them. Some are very impatient of theological distinctions, and some are very patient of them: the most are patient to a fault with those they themselves wish to make, and quite impatient of those made by others. The fact is, of course, that everybody makes and must make theological distinctions. Men differ only as they make sound or unsound distinctions, and through these distinctions embrace and live by truth or error. "The Fundamental Significance Of The Lord's Supper" The reason why Christ made a change in the symbols representative of his sacrificed self is obvious enough. He to whom all the Pasehal lambs from the beginning had been pointing, was about to be offered up. The old things were passing away: behold, all things were to become new. As he was in no doubt as to his approaching death or rather as he was in the act of preparing for the death he was himself to accomplish for sinners: so he was in no doubt as to the approaching dissolution of the Jewish state, and the cessation of the ritual law, and with it of the sacrifices which that law prescribed. "Heresy & Concession" "When Christianity is brought into contact with modes of thought and tenets originating elsewhere, either of two effects may follow. It may assimilate them, discarding whatever is at variance with the gospel, or the tables may be turned and the foreign elements may prevail. In the latter case there ensues a perversion of Christianity, an amalgamation with it of ideas discordant with its nature. The product then is a heresy." "Incarnate Truth" "It is clear that it is primarily in its aspect as a revelation of God that John is here contemplating the incarnation. Accordingly, he bears his personal witness to it as such: "The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten of the Father." Accordingly, too, he summons the prophetic witness of the forerunner. And accordingly, still further, he closes the whole with a declaration of the nature of the revelation made, and its guarantee in the relation of the incarnated Word to the Father: 'No man hath seen God at any time; God only-begotten which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.'" "The Prodigal Son" "For the exaggerated estimate which has been put upon this parable has borne bitter fruit in the world. Beginning with an effort to read into it all the Gospel, or at least the essence of the Gospel, it has ended by reading out of the Gospel all that is not in the parable. And thus this parable, the vehicle of a priceless message, has been transformed into the instrument of a great wrong. " "The Resurrection Of Christ: A Historical Fact" "The Incarnation of the eternal God is necessarily a dogma: no human eye could witness his stooping to man's estate, no human tongue could bear witness to it as a fact. And yet, if it be not a fact, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins. On the other hand, the Resurrection of Christ is a fact, an external occurrence within the cognizance of men to be established by their testimony. And yet, it is the cardinal doctrine of our system: on it all other doctrines hang." "The Risen Jesus" "But neither can it be overlooked that it is specifically to the resurrection, which is an act, that he adverts; and that he adverts to it in such a manner as to make it manifest that the fact of the resurrection of Christ held a place in his Gospel which deserves to be called no-thing less than central. The exalted Christ is conceived by him distinctly as the resurrected Jesus; and it is clear that, had there been no resurrection of Jesus, Paul would not have known how to point Timothy to the exalted Christ as the source of his strength to face with courage the hardships and defeats of life." "Some Thoughts On Predestination" "Our difficulties with Predestination arise from a, no doubt not unnatural, unwillingness to acknowledge ourselves to be wholly at the disposal of another. We wish to be at our own disposal. We wish "to belong to ourselves," and we resent belonging, especially belonging absolutely, to anybody else, even if that anybody else be God."

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