Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, Senior Minister at First Presbyterian Church of Columbia issued the following letter of invitation to the lectures that will be held on November 2nd and 3rd on the church campus.

I would like to invite you to join us for the inaugural B.B. Warfield Lectures.

We are delighted that Dr Mark Ross has consented to give three lectures on the subject of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He could not have chosen a subject more appropriate for a lectureship named for B.B. Warfield.  Nor could he have chosen a subject more important and relevant for us today.

When the church loses hold on the identity of her Lord, or shifts him from his central position in the purposes of God for the world, her gold begins to grow dim, her glory fades, her graces fail, her impact on the world ceases.

But the same is true of the individual Christian.  For if we love Christ we will not only want to get to know and serve him better, we will also want to know how to think and speak—and yes sing—clearly and joyfully about him.

So these Warfield Lectures will focus on a subject of interest and importance to us all—theological students and ordinary Christians alike.   So come, enjoy having your thinking stretched a little, your knowledge of Christ grow deeper, and your love for him grow stronger.

I look forward to seeing you there.

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Schedule and Lecture Topics:

Theme for the Lectures:  “Who Do You Say That I Am?” – Confessing Jesus Christ – Yesterday and Today

Friday, November 2

Lecture One, 7:30PM:  “Who did they Say Christ Is?”

Saturday, November 3

Lecture Two, 9:30AM:     “Who Are They Saying Christ Is?”

Lecture Three, 11:00AM: “Who Do You Say Christ Is?”

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About B.B. Warfield

Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield is widely thought to be the greatest English speaking reformed Theologian in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.   He was born in Kentucky on November 5 1851 into a prosperous family of farmers—his father was an authority of cattle breeding.  An outstanding student he graduated with highest honors from The College of New jersey (now Princeton University) at the age of nineteen and later from Princeton seminary in 1876.  Offered a post teaching Old Testament he later accepted a call to teach New Testament at Western Theological Seminary and thereafter to teach Systematic Theology in his alma mater.   From 1887 until his death in 1921 teaching an entire generation of ministers of the gospel (including Dr Andrew Blackwood, who was minister of First Presbyterian Church from 1914 to 1921).

Warfield was an outstanding scholar and a massively gifted theologian. He authored many books and a vast number of scholarly articles on a wide variety of topics, many of them being collected into the ten volume Oxford edition of The Works of B.B. Warfield which remains in print today.

In addition Warfield preached regularly in the Seminary Chapel and several volumes of his sermons (perhaps most notably Faith and Life were published. After his death one of his colleagues commented that when he preached it “seemed as if the words proceeded out of his mouth as if they walked on velvet.”

But why establish a Lectureship in South Carolina in the name of a Kentucky-born, New Jersey-domiciled theologian?

In fact Warfield had a rather special connection with Columbia.  In October 1917 he made a rare trip away from Princeton to give The Thomas Smyth Lectures for the original Columbia Theological Seminary. The lectures were delivered in the auditorium of First Presbyterian Church, and described as “The scholastic event of the year in Columbia.”  They were later published as Counterfeit Miracles.  It is, therefore particularly fitting that the first B.B. Warfield Lecturer should be Dr Mark E Ross, like Warfield a Professor of Systematic Theology; like Warfield also a preacher of note; and like Warfield—indeed more so than Warfield—with a special connection to Columbia and to First Presbyterian Church where he served in pastoral ministry with distinction winning the affection of an entire congregation.