Book Review: The Theology of B. B. Warfield

The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary, Fred G. Zaspel, Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.  Hardcover, 624 pages, $44.00.

Ninety years after his death, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield continues to be a respected voice in Reformed theology.  Along with Jonathan Edwards, the Hodges, and a few others, Warfield is one of the pre-eminent Reformed theologians in North American church history.  Yet for all his renown, few have given him a careful reading.  Popular ideas persist about what Warfield believed about this or that.  Part of the problem is Warfield himself never systematically laid out his theology in one place.

Fred Zaspel has therefore done us a favour by carefully collating Warfield’s theology into one helpful volume.  After an introduction surveying Warfield’s life and work, Zaspel follows the standard topics of systematic theology and distils Warfield’s thought on each one.  Here and there he also interacts with interpreters, particularly the ones whom Zaspel feels have not done justice to Warfield.

Zaspel himself is a sympathetic interpreter.  A Reformed Baptist pastor in Pennsylvania, he is broadly in agreement with Warfield’s theological bent.  Where he personally might depart from Warfield (regarding infant baptism, for instance), Zaspel remains respectfully silent, just simply laying out the Princeton theologian’s views without comment.  At the end of the volume he does offer some critique, but for the most part he allows Warfield to speak for himself.  That’s not to say the book consists mostly of quotations – most of the time Zaspel summarizes and paraphrases.

The Theology of B. B. Warfield will appeal most to pastors, scholars, seminary students and informed “lay people.”  Like Warfield himself, it is not light and fluffy.  Technical language is used and readers are expected to have an intermediate level of theological knowledge.

There are four areas in the book especially worthy of further comment.  Early on, Zaspel deals with Warfield’s views on apologetics.  He argues that Warfield has been unfairly portrayed by later Reformed apologists such as Cornelius Van Til.  Van Til argued that Warfield did not give adequate expression to the effects of sin upon the unregenerate mind.  Zaspel attempts to defend Warfield against this accusation.  He notes that Warfield did not attribute “right reason” to the unbeliever and spoke repeatedly of the pervasiveness of sin (77-78).  However, Zaspel also states that Warfield maintained that unregenerate man “is able to see the compelling force of ‘right reason.’”  Unfortunately, Zaspel is unable to see that this justifies Van Til’s complaint.  While he adds some useful nuance to Warfield’s views, Zaspel does not succeed in exculpating Warfield on his inconsistencies in apologetics.

Warfield is known as the great defender of biblical inspiration and inerrancy.  Therefore, one would expect a book of this nature to deal with those subjects at length.  Zaspel does not disappoint.  He outlines how contemporaries of Warfield and latter-day interpreters have accused the Princetonian of “rationalistic scholasticism” in his doctrine of the Bible.  He helpfully illustrates how these charges fall well short of the mark.

A third area of interest is Warfield’s thought on evolution.  The claim is often made that Warfield had an appreciation for evolution.  The argument is advanced that if Warfield can be regarded as a great Reformed theologian and he held to evolution, then how can contemporary advocates of evolution be excluded from Reformed churches?  Those making such claims ought to read Zaspel’s careful summary of Warfield’s views and how they developed.  He concludes Warfield could at best be said to have been noncommittal or to be critically agnostic (386-387).  However, Warfield also developed a “strengthening conviction against evolution” (385).

Finally, one of Warfield’s greatest concerns was the influence of perfectionism or Keswick “higher life” spirituality.  In his day there were popular preachers and writers claiming it was possible for Christians to no longer sin in this age.  There were also those who claimed that Christians should not regard themselves as sinners, since they are a “new creation in Christ.”  They denied the biblical teaching that, in this age, we are both justified and sinners (simul iustus et peccator).  These false teachings are still around today.  Today we still need Warfield’s biblical defense against these errors.  Zaspel provides a helpful door.  Warfield approvingly quoted Thomas Adam, “The moment we think we have no sin, we shall desert Christ” (465).

The Theology of B. B. Warfield is a comprehensive guide to the thought of “the Lion of Princeton.”  There’s no question it will be a standard reference for decades to come.  Anyone interested in the development of Reformed theology on our continent needs to have it and read it.

Book Review: Collected Writings on Scripture

Collected Writings on Scripture, D. A. Carson, Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.  Hardcover, 335 pages, $30.99.

Let me say right away that this book is not written for a broad audience.  The readers who will most benefit will be biblical scholars/professors, pastors, seminary students, and perhaps others who have at least an undergraduate university education.  This is a collection of mostly technical or more academic essays on the Bible.  While Don Carson is able to write at a more popular level, these essays find him addressing complex issues that require more advanced responses.  If terms like epistemology, redaction criticism and perspicuity don’t need explanation, then you should find this book accessible.

Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Wheaton, Illinois.  He is the author of many books and articles and a popular speaker on the Christian conference circuit.  While ecclesiastically a Baptist, he does hold Calvinistic convictions when it comes to the doctrine of salvation.  Most importantly, he believes in a high view of Scripture – and that’s clear in this volume.  When it comes to bibliology (the doctrine of Scripture), Reformed Christians have an ally in Carson.

Collected Writings consists of two parts.  Part 1 contains five lengthy essays.  The first, “Approaching the Bible,” is the most accessible and gives a basic introduction to biblical hermeneutics.  “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture” is an older essay that surveys various challenges faced by a high view of Scripture’s inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy.  “Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology” takes on the often-discussed relationship between systematic theology, exegesis, and biblical theology.  “Redaction Criticism: On the Legitimacy and Illegitimacy of a Literary Tool” – the title speaks for itself.  Finally, the last essay answers the question “Is the Doctrine of Claritas Scripturae Still Relevant Today?”  Part 2 features reviews of several books dealing with the authority, character, and interpretation of the Bible.  It should be readily apparent that all of these essays and reviews consist of previously published material.

The church always faces challenges with regards to the doctrine of Scripture and so a book like this is always relevant, even when it features essays written in the early 1980s.  I appreciate Carson’s lively defense of biblical inerrancy – a doctrine that needs to be freshly appropriated and guarded in our generation.  Today there are also efforts underway to discount the contributions of systematic theology in favour of biblical theology – Carson brings a valuable perspective to this important debate.  With the book reviews in part 2, two of them are particularly worth noting:  Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament; N. T. Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture.  The Enns book is important because it resulted in his departure from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2008.  N. T. Wright is a popular figure associated with the false teaching known as the New Perspective on Paul.  Both works require a fair and critical analysis and Carson provides it.  In the end he makes it clear that men like Enns and Wright do not hold to the highest view of Scripture – to a thoroughly biblical view of the Bible.

I don’t have any serious problems with this volume.  The only points that I might raise are incidental to its purpose and program.  For instance, there’s footnote 35 on page 66 which regurgitates the old “Warfield was an evolutionist” line.  More recent research by Fred Zaspel dispels that myth.  As another example, on page 178 Carson states that Cornelius Van Til is right in his development of a biblical theory of knowledge (epistemology), “but then wrongly demands a presuppositionalist apologetic.”  Unfortunately, this statement comes right at the end of an essay and is prefaced by the disclaimer that Carson cannot here defend his view.  I’d like to hear more on that, because I’m not convinced.  Could we not have had at least a footnote to some further discussion on that point somewhere else?

Don Carson is one of the most important theologians of our day.  What makes him worth listening to is the fact that he humbly listens to our Father.  I think these words sum it up:  “…the aim of thoughtful Christians, after all, is not so much to become masters of Scripture, but to be mastered by it, both for God’s glory and his people’s good” (40).

Accommodation

I’m quite enjoying this book of essays and reviews by Don Carson.  In chapter 2, he discusses “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture.”  This essay was first published in 1986, so it’s not quite “recent” anymore, but it’s still relevant.  He has a section on “accommodation.”  It’s defined in this way:

If the transcendent, personal God is to communicate with us, his finite and sinful creatures, he must in some measure accommodate himself to and condescend to our capacity to receive that revelation.  (82)

This is a point that has long been recognized in biblical hermeneutics.  However, in the last 20 or 30 years, this notion of accommodation has been revised and “frequently assumed to entail error.”  In other words, accommodation rules out inerrancy.  You cannot have both.  Scholars who have followed this track include Karl Barth, Bruce Vawter, and Clark Pinnock.

One of the ways in which Carson responds to this  is by appealing to previous generations.  He maintains that this approach is distant from the understanding of accommodation “worked out both in the early church and in the Reformation.”  Then he provides this helpful quote from Richard Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms:

The Reformers and their scholastic followers all recognized that God must in some way condescend or accommodate himself to human ways of knowing in order to reveal himself.  This accommodatio occurs specifically in the use of human words and concepts for the communication of the law and the gospel, but it in no way implies the loss of truth or the lessening of scriptural authority.  The accommodatio or condescensio refers to the manner or mode of revelation, the gift of the wisdom of infinite God in finite form, not to the quality of the revelation or to the matter revealed.  A parallel idea occurs in the orthodox Protestant distinction between theologia archetypa and theologia ectypa.  Note that the sense of accommodatio that implies not only a divine condescension, but also a use of time-bound and even erroneous statements as a medium for revelation, arose in the eighteenth century in the thought of Johann Semler and his contemporaries and has no relation either to the position of the Reformers or to that of the Protestant scholastics, either Lutheran or Reformed.  (Muller, 19)

Carson strengthens his case with theological argumentation.  For example, he interacts with Pinnock’s claim that error in the Bible is restricted to the fields of history and science because of Scripture’s humanity.  Carson asks:  “Why does not human fallibility also entail error in the religious and theological spheres?  Or conversely, if someone wishes to argue that God has preserved the human authors from error in religion and theology, what prevents God from doing so in other areas of thought?” (84)

Later in that section, he also briefly discusses Calvin.  He concludes that, for Calvin, “whatever accommodation entails, it cannot entail sin or error: the costs are too high right across the spectrum of Christian theology.” (85)

In faithful biblical hermeneutics it is not a case of either accommodation or inerrancy.  It must be both…and.

Luther and Inerrancy

I’m continuing to read through the first volume of Francis Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics.  His cavils against Calvinism can be frustrating at times, but there is a lot of worthwhile material here.  In the chapter on Scripture, he discusses Luther’s position on inerrancy.  It is interesting how inerrancy is often pegged as a fundamentalist concept, but here we have a confessional Lutheran holding to inerrancy whilst harbouring no sympathies for fundamentalism.  He notes that Luther and subsequent orthodox Lutherans did not hold to inerrancy as a conclusion to be reached (a posteriori), but as a presupposition (a priori).  Here’s what Pieper says:

…Luther has no thought of ascertaining the inerrancy of Scripture by human investigation (a posteriori), but before all investigation he is convinced that there can be no error in Scripture.

Luther maintains this throughout.  If there seems to be a conflict between Scripture and human science, he is firmly convinced from the outset that human science is in error and Scripture in the right.  Thus Luther says of the hexaemeron [six days of creation]:  “If you cannot understand how it could have been done in six days, then accord the Holy Ghost the honor that He is more erudite than you.  When you read the words of Holy Scripture, you must realize that God is speaking them.”  Luther maintains this also with regard to all chronological data in Scripture, and he thus places himself in direct opposition to all modern theology.  (281)

[...]

In connection with Gen. 11:11 Luther deals with the question how Arphaxad could have been born two years after the Flood.  He points out possible ways of harmonizing, but then adds that our faith is not endangered if the attempts at harmonizing have no assured result.  The reason why faith is not endangered is given in these words:  “For that is certain that the Scriptures do not lie.” (282)

That is the approach of faith and even a Calvinist can appreciate that.

Why Kuiper Left the RCA

R. B. Kuiper traded the Christian Reformed Church for the Reformed Church in America (RCA), at least for a brief time.  The Second Reformed Church of Kalamazoo called Kuiper in 1923 and he accepted.  However, he was only there for about two years.  Why did he go back to the CRC in 1925?  It had to do with the doctrinal soundness of the RCA in general and nothing really to do with the RCA congregation in Kalamazoo.

More particularly, it had to do with the appointment of Dr. Edward S. Worcester to the chair of systematic theology at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary (a seminary of the RCA).  That happened in 1923, the same year that Kuiper became an RCA pastor.  However, Kuiper didn’t hear about Worcester’s theology until he’d been in Kalamazoo for six months.

There were several points of concern.  One was that Worcester took issue with the Canons of Dort on the free will of man.  He was essentially an Arminian on that point.  But even more basically, he had serious problems with the doctrine of Scripture.  Kuiper writes in his As To Being Reformed, “Dr. Worcester boldly rejects certain teachings of the Reformed churches.  He finds no Scriptural warrant for the opinion that all men are descended from Adam” (25).  This stemmed from Worcester’s position on the character and authority of Scripture.  Kuiper wrote, “Dr. Worcester appears to be in doubt about some fundamental teachings of the Christian religion.  When it is said in article 5 of the Belgic Confession that we believe, without any doubt, ‘all things’ contained in the Bible, he wonders whether the reference is to the inerrancy of Scripture, or only to things ‘necessary to salvation,’ and adds that he regards the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture as very academic, seeing that it is confined to the original manuscripts” (25).

Synod 1923 of the RCA voted almost unanimously to appoint Worcester to this influential seminary position.  The belated realization of this was the catalyst for Kuiper to leave the RCA.  He concluded, “…let me say that the case of Dr. Worcester convinced me that I could not possibly feel at home in the Reformed Church in America” (28, italics original).