B. B. Warfield is said to have been the one who “propelled orthodoxy into the twentieth century.” Warfield was by no means alone in his energetic defense of the faith: there was Spurgeon and Orr and Bonar and others. But no one was so fully equipped to answer the onslaught of unbelief of the day and to expound biblical truth than was Warfield, and no one took up that cause with more energy.

1. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) is best known as the theologian of the doctrine of inspiration.

This does not mean that he “invented” the doctrine or even that he was the first to expound it. In fact he enjoyed pointing out that his doctrine of inspiration was the one that is held in common by the entire church throughout its history. But he is the leading exponent of the doctrine.

He more than anyone else gave the doctrine of inspiration its deepest analysis and most extensive exposition and defense. He would summarize the doctrine of inspiration very simply as the teaching that Scripture is “God’s word written,” that “what Scripture says, God says.” Warfield was committed to the doctrine of inerrancy—the “trustworthiness” of Scripture was his preferred term—but not as merely a separate doctrine but as a necessary “implicate” of the very idea of inspiration. He insisted that if Scripture is “God’s word written,” inerrancy is a given.

2. Inspiration was not B. B. Warfield’s central and most basic area of concern and interest.

It very much was an area of interest and concern, as is evident from what we have just said. But of still more central and basic concern was his commitment to the gospel of Christ. He loved to portray Christianity as “the redemptive religion.” Indeed, he insisted that Christianity meansredemption and that redemption is its very reason for being.

Christ, the Lord of Glory and redeemer from heaven, is the central message of the Bible and the message that makes the doctrine of inspiration so very important. Long before Don Carson and Tim Keller made it cool, Warfield was self-consciously “gospel-centered” and gospel-driven in the very best sense of the terms.

3. B. B. Warfield was a distinctly Reformed theologian.

He was deeply committed to the historic faith of the Christian church and specifically so in its Protestant and still more specifically, its Reformed expression. He treasured the Westminster Confession of Faith as “the ripened fruit of Reformed confession making,” and he exulted in the doctrines of God’s sovereignty and saving grace.

He understood Calvinism as the purest expression of religion generally, understood as man’s sense of dependence upon God, and as the only theological system consistent with biblical theism. He gloried in “Christian Supernaturalism” as not just an abstract theological commitment but the living experience of every believer rescued by the powerful, “irresistible” workings of divine grace.

4. B. B. Warfield was one of the greatest theologians America has ever produced.

We don’t need to argue whether he was America’s greatest theologian ever—opinions here vary. God has given America some theological giants both before and after Warfield. But he is certainly in the contending, and all sides acknowledge him as the towering theological figure at the turn of the twentieth century.

It is aptly said that his grasp was as great in breadth as it was in depth. He was thoroughly versed in every department of biblical and theological studies, from the tools of the modern criticism to historical theology to New Testament or Old Testament studies to his own department of systematic theology, and he consequently owned virtually every discussion and debate he entered. His vast learning and penetrating insight were acknowledged even in his own day. There is enough evidence to say that theologians of his day published with a keen awareness that Warfield was keeping watch!

5. B. B. Warfield has been called “the spoiler of liberalism.”

Warfield taught in the department of systematic theology, but in those days the position was called Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology. Warfield took it all very seriously, but the “polemic” part of his title became closely associated with his name because of his relentless assault on theological liberalism.

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