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BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD: SELECTED SHORTER WRITINGS: Two Volume Hardcover Set
Edited by John Meeter

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This anthology of Warfield's most valuable shorter writings is out-of-print at this time, and no reprint is scheduled at this time. In these two volumes, the editor brings together over 100 articles, including, book introductions, book reviews, encyclopedia articles, sermons, and a small book "The Right of Systematic Theology". Many selections are less weighty and more practical than those in the larger sets and none of them appear in the five- or ten-volume set of Warfield's works.

"I have read some of the articles in this set a dozen times or more, and I never tire of going back to read them again. Warfield always drives me back to my Bible and to my knees in prayer and praise, as he always exalts the majesty of God in deep and profound ways." - Michael Gaydosh, Solid Ground

SELECTED SHORTER WRITINGS: VOLUME ONE

Table of Contents

Part I

1. The Bible the Book of Mankind

2. Christianity and Revelation

3. Inspiration

4. Agnosticism

5. Atheism

6. God and Human Religion and Morals

7. Christianity and Our Times

8. How to Get Rid of Christianity

9. Great Babylon the Mother of Us All

Part II

10. God

11. Godhead

12. The God of Israel

13. Antitrinitarianism

14. The Significance of the Confessional Doctrine of the Decree

15. Some Thoughts on Predestination

16. God's Providence Over All

17. Hosea vi. 7: Adam or Man?

18. The Bible's "Summum Bonum"

Part III

19. The Principle of the Incarnation

20. John's First Word

21. The Deity of Christ

22. The Human Development of Jesus

23. Jesus Christ the Propitiation for the Whole World

24. The Resurrection of Christ a Historical Fact

25. The Resurrection of Christ a Fundamental Doctrine

26. On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Part IV

27. Children

28. Christ's 'Little Ones'

29. The Angels of Christ's 'Little Ones'

30. New Testament Terms Descriptive of the Great Change

31. Repentance and Original Sin

32. 'Justification by Faith, Out of Date'

33. Election

34. True Church Unity: What It Is

35. The Foundations of the Sabbath in the Word of God

36. Christian Baptism

37. The Fundamental Significance of the Lord's Supper

38. The Old Testament and Immortality

39. The Gospel and the Second Coming

40. Antichrist

Part V

41. Faith and Life

42. Our Seminary Curriculum

43. The Purpose of the Seminary

44. Singing and Believing

45. Is the Shorter Catechism Worth While?

46. In Behalf of Evangelical Religion

47. What Is Calvinism?

48. What Fatalism Is

49. Calvin and the Bible

50. Calvin and the Reformation

51. A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith

52. The Religious Life of Theological Students

Part VI

53. Arthur Lincoln Frothingham

54. Frederic Godet the Commentator

55. Dr. Charles Hodge as a Teacher of Exegesis

56. Dr. Charles Augustus Aiken

57. Dr. Abraham Kuyper

58. Dr. George Tybout Purves

59. Dr. William Miller Paxton



SELECTED SHORTER WRITINGS: VOLUME. 2

Table of Contents

Part I

1. The Century's Progress in Biblical Knowledge

2. Introductory Note to John H. Kerr's Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament

3. Some Characteristics of the Book of Acts

4. The Canonicity of Second Peter

5. The Book of Revelation

Part II

6. Introduction to Francis R. Beattie's Apologetics

7. A Review of Herman Bavinck's De Zekerheid des Geloofs

8. Christian Evidences: How Affected by Recent Criticisms

9. Darwin's Arguments Against Christianity and Against Religion

10. St. Paul's Use of the Argument from Experience

11. Dream

12. The Question of Miracles

Part III

13. Theology a Science

14. Christianity the Truth

15. The Right of Systematic Theology

16. The Indispensableness of Systematic Theology to the Preacher

17. Recent Reconstructions of Theology

18. A Review of James Denney's Studies in Theology

19. A Review of John Miley's Systematic Theology

20. Regeneration

21. Sanctification

22. How Shall We Baptize?

23. The Posture of the Recipients at the Lord's Supper

24. The Confession of Faith as Revised in 1903

25. Calvinism

26. The Ritschlian School

Part IV

27. Incarnate Truth

28. Spiritual Culture in the Theological Seminary

29. Some Perils of Missionary Life

30. Africa and the Beginnings of Christian Latin Literature

Part V

31. The Authority and Inspiration of the Scriptures

32. The Divine and Human in the Bible

33. The New Testament Use of the Septuagint, and Inspiration

34. The Westminster Doctrine of Holy Scriptures

35. The Westminster Doctrine of Inspiration

36. The Inerrancy of the Original Autographs

37. The Westminster Confession and the Original Autographs

38. The Rights of Criticism and of the Church

39. A Review of Three Books on Inspiration

40. Inspiration

Part VI

41. Why Four Gospels?

42. The Gospel of John

43. John's Gospel of Eternal Life

44. The Apocalypse

45. Doubt

46. The Significance of the Westminster Standards as a Creed

47. The Dogmatic Spirit

48. Authority, Intellect, Heart

49. Heresy and Concession

50. Evading the Supernatural

51. Abraham the Father of the Faithful

52. Jesus the Measure of Men

53. Introduction to Samuel G. Craig's Jesus As He Was and Is

54. The Importunate Widow and the Alleged Failure of Faith

55. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament

56. The Love of the Holy Ghost

57. Inability and the Demand of Faith

58. Under Orders

59. A Calm View of the Freedmen's Case

60. Drawing the Color Line

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Additional Information
• Biographical Sketch

Biographical Sketch

Benjamin B. Warfield - Biographical Sketch by Samuel G. Craig

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born at 'Grasmere' near Lexington, Kentucky, November 5, 1851 and died at Princeton, New Jersey, February 17, 1921.

His progenitors of English and Scotch-Irish origin, on both his paternal and maternal sides, were early settlers in this country who like their descendants took an active and often a leading part in the political, educational and religious problems of the day in which they lived.

His father, William Warfield, was a well-to-do farmer, owner of a considerable landed estate, who was a widely recognized authority on the breeding of cattle. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, D.D., LL.D., distinguished as a preacher, Moderator of the 1841 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (Old School Branch), president of Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, president and professor of theology as well as founder of the theological Seminary at Danville, Kentucky, advocate of the emancipation of the slaves and the maintenance of the Union, temporary chairman of the Republican Convention of 1864 which renominated Abraham Lincoln, and most permanently known perhaps as the author of two volumes of systematic theology entitled The Knowledge of God Objectively and Subjectively Considered.

His early education was received in private schools in nearby Lexington where he was fortunate in having among his teachers Lewis Barbour, afterwards professor of mathematics in Central University, and James K. Patterson, afterwards president of the State College of Kentucky. He entered the College of New Jersey—now Princeton University—as a sophomore and graduated with the highest honors of his class in 1871 at the age of nineteen. He took an active interest in undergraduate activities, won prizes for essay and debate in the American Whig Society and was one of the editors of the Nassau Literary Magazine.

His early tastes were strongly scientific. He collected bird's eggs, butterflies and moths, and geological specimens; studied the fauna and flora of his neighborhood; read Darwin's newly published books with enthusiasm; and counted Audubon's works on American birds and mammals his chief treasure. He came to Princeton the same year that James McCosh arrived from Scotland to become one of the most famous of its presidents. That Dr. McCosh did not succeed in making him a Darwinian, as in the case of so many of his fellow-students, finds its explanation in the fact, as he himself has told us, that knowing his Origin of Species and The Variations of Animals and Plants Under Domestication 'almost from A to Izzard' he was already a 'Darwinian of the purest water' before coming under McCosh's influence—a position which he later repudiated, not without warrant as even biologists have come more and more to admit. During his college days he took a special interest in mathematics and physics and planned to seek the fellowship in experimental science but was dissuaded from this by his father on the ground that he did not need the money in order to pursue graduate studies and that it would be more profitable for him to spend the time studying in Europe without being bound to any particular course of study.

His departure for Europe was delayed by family illness with the result that it was not until February 1872 that he embarked. He first went to Edinburgh. After spending some time there he transferred to Heidelberg. Writing from the latter place in the mid-summer of that year he announced his decision to enter the Christian ministry—an announcement that came as a surprise to his family and friends as he had given no previous intimation of a serious intention of studying theology, and was especially pleasing to his mother who had often expressed the hope that her sons would become ministers. We have no knowledge as to when or why he made this decision as, like his father, he was ever reticent with regard to personal matters. It may be added that he had made a public profession of faith and united with the Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington in his sixteenth year.

He entered Princeton Theological Seminary in 1878 and was graduated with the class of 1876. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Ebenezer of Kentucky in 1875, he was stated supply of the Presbyterian Church of Concord, Kentucky, during that summer. During the summer of 1876 he was stated supply of the First Presbyterian Church of Dayton, Ohio. He received a call to become the pastor of the latter church but declined it in order that he might go abroad for further study. On the third of August of that summer he was married to Miss Annie Pearce Kinkead, daughter of a prominent lawyer, and shortly thereafter they sailed for Europe where he studied at Leipsic. In the course of the year he was offered an appointment in the Old Testament Department of Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh but declined the offer because the New Testament had now become his main interest—a marked change from the time when as a school boy he strenuously, though unsuccessfully, objected to studying Greek—so his brother Ethelbert has related—on the ground that since he expected to follow a scientific career he would have no need for Greek.

Following his return to America, late in the summer of 1877, he became assistant pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore but resigned this position after a short period to accept another call from Western Theological Seminary—this time as instructor in New Testament Language and Literature. Going there in September 1878 as an instructor he was appointed professor the following year. It was not until then (1879) that he was ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

He remained at Western Theological Seminary for nine years during which he won a reputation as a teacher and Biblical exegete rarely attained by so young a man. He was then forced to make a difficult decision by the fact that following the death of Archibald Alexander Hodge he received a call from Princeton Theological Seminary to occupy the chair of Systematic Theology made famous by Charles Hodge. In view of the exceptional gifts as an exegete he had displayed and the promise they offered for the future along that line, many of his wisest friends and well-wishers questioned the wisdom of his accepting this new call. Years afterwards, if our memory serves us right, William Robertson Nicoll, the distinguished editor of The British Weekly, expressed the opinion in that publication that it was a thousand pities that Warfield did not continue to make the New Testament his chief field of study in the belief that such were his qualifications as an exegete that had he done so he might have ranked with Meyer and others as a New Testament commentator. It must have been a difficult decision for him to make. Doubtless he was influenced, as his brother Ethelbert has intimated, by the fact that Charles Hodge, his revered teacher, had begun his career as a theological professor as a student and exegete of the New Testament. Be that as it may, the years spent at Western Theological Seminary were not wasted years from the standpoint of the more than thirty-three years spent at Princeton. Rather they were years of training and preparation apart from which he might not have become the distinctly Biblical theologian he became by way of eminence among recent theologians. It may be added that in 1881 he had declined a call to occupy the Chair of Theology at the Theological Seminary of the Northwest at Chicago—now McCormick Theological Seminary.

Warfield was a volummous writer During his lifetime he published the following volumes Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (1886); The Gospel of the Incarnation (1893); Two Studies in the History of Doctrine (1893); The Right of Systematic Theology (1897); The Significance of the Westminster Standards (1898); Acts and the Pastoral Epistles (1902); The Power of God Unto Salvation (1903); The Lord of Glory (1907); Calvin as a Theologian and Calvinism Today (1909); Hymns and Religious Verse (1910); The Saviour of the World (1915); The Plan of Salvation (1915); Faith and Life (1916); and Counterfeit Miracles (1918). The bulk of his writings, however, made their first appearance in Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias and theological magazines, especially the Presbyterian and Reformed Review and its successor the Princeton Theological Review. Following his death, sufficient of this material to make ten large volumes was selected by his literary executors, Ethelbert D. Warfield, William Park Armstrong and Caspar Wistar Hodge, and published by the Oxford University Press….

Warfield received the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1880 and that of Doctor of Laws in 1892 from the College of New Jersey; that of Doctor of Laws from Davidson College in 1892; that of Doctor of Letters from Lafayette College in 1911; and that of Sacrae Theologiae Doctor from the University of Utrecht in 1913.

Perhaps no better description of Warfield as a man and as a writer has been made, or could be made, than that given by Francis Landey Patton, president of Princeton Theological Seminary and ex-president of Princeton University, in the Memorial Address he delivered by invitation of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary in the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, May 2, 1921. 'Dr. Warfield,' he said, 'was a most imposing figure. Tall, erect, with finely moulded features and singular grace and courtesy of demeanor, he bore the marks of a gentleman to his fingertips. There was something remarkable about his voice. It had the liquid softness of the South rather than the metallic resonance which we look for in those who breathe the crisp air of a northern climate. His public utterance took the form of a conversational tone, and his sentences often closed with the suggestion of a rising inflection, as if he invited a hospitable reception from his hearers. He lacked the clarion tones of impassioned oratory, but oratory of this kind was not natural to him. He kept the calm level of deliberate speech, and his words proceeded out of his mouth as if they walked on velvet. But public speaking was not his chosen form of self-expression. He was pre-eminently a scholar and lived among his books. With the activities of the Church he had comparatively little to do. He seldom preached in our neighboring cities, was not prominent in debates of the General Assembly, was not a member of any of the Boards of our Church, did not serve on committees, and wasted no energy in the pleasant but perhaps unprofitable pastime of after-dinner speaking. As was to be expected, therefore, he was too much of a recluse to be what is known as a popular man. His public was small, but it covered a wide area and he reached it with his pen. Through the pages of the Presbyterian and Reformed Review and later of the Princeton Theological Review, he was speaking regularly to men who waited eagerly to see what he had to say concerning the latest book on New Testament Criticism or the most recent phase of theological opinion. It is difficult, of course, to estimate the influence he exerted in this way, but geographically speaking it was widely extended, and I may be pardoned perhaps for saying somewhat extravagantly that his line has gone out into all the earth and his words to the end of the world. His writings impress me as the fluent, easy, offhand expression of himself. He wrote with a running pen, in simple, unaffected English, but with graceful diction, and only a moderate display of documented erudition. His weapon in controversy was the sword and not the battle-axe. His gleaming blade had a keen edge, but the quarte and tierce of logical encounter went on without loss of temper or lapse of good behaviour. His mental machinery was in constant use. It never rusted and was always ready for the work it had to do. Something is undoubtedly lost in the transfer of thought to the printed page. We see it through a glass darkly—darkly, sometimes because we look through a cloudy medium, and sometimes the prismatic colors of the lens have a confusing effect upon our vision. But Dr. Warfield's style was the servant of his thoughts and expressed them accurately and clearly. He made no phrases, pointed no epigrams, did not have the habit of putting his own image and superscription on some common coin of speech and sending it forth as his seal and sign—manual of originality.'