Digital Logos Edition
In Studies in Theology, Warfield weighs in on a broad range of theological, philosophical, and social topics. This volume contains more than twenty articles and essays on a number of theological topics, including the task and method of systematic theology, the relationship between apologetics and theology, and the relationship between mysticism and Christianity. Warfield also includes chapters on specific theological topics, such as predestination, baptism, the theology of Jonathan Edwards, and the theological significance of Luther’s ninety-five theses. He also addresses pressing theological and social controversies, such as the age of human beings in response to Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and the history and future of rationalism.
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born in 1851 in Lexington, Kentucky. He studied mathematics and science at Princeton University and graduated in 1871. In 1873, he decided to enroll at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was taught by Charles Hodge. He graduated from seminary in 1876, and was married shortly thereafter. He traveled to Germany later that year to study under Franz Delitazsch.
After returning to America, Warfield taught at Western Theological Seminary (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). In 1881, Warfield co-wrote an article with A. A. Hodge on the inspiration of Scripture—a subject which dominated his scholarly pursuits throughout the remainder of his lifetime. When A. A. Hodge died in 1887, Warfield became professor of Theology at Princeton, where he taught from 1887–1921. History remembers Warfield as one of the last great Princeton Theologians prior to the seminary’s re-organization and the split in the Presbyterian Church. B. B. Warfield died in 1921.
“For the very existence of any science, three things are presupposed: (1) the reality of its subject-matter; (2) the capacity of the human mind to apprehend, receive into itself, and rationalize this subject-matter; and (3) some medium of communication by which the subject-matter is brought before the mind and presented to it for apprehension.” (Page 53)
“Discussion of this question became acute on the publication of Charles Darwin’s treatise on the ‘Origin of Species’ in 1859, and can never sink again into rest until it is thoroughly understood in all quarters that ‘evolution’ cannot act as a substitute for creation, but at best can supply only a theory of the method of the divine providence.” (Page 235)
“All Protestants should easily agree that only Christ’s children have a right to the ordinance of baptism.” (Page 389)
“It is the business of systematic theology to take the knowledge of God supplied to it by apologetical, exegetical, and historical theology, scrutinize it with a view to discovering the inner relations of its several elements, and set it forth in a systematic presentation, that is to say, as an organic whole, so that it may be grasped and held in its entirety, in the due relation of its parts to one another and to the whole, and with a just distribution of emphasis among the several items of knowledge which combine to make up the totality of our knowledge of God.” (Pages 91–92)
“By ‘Systematic Theology’ is meant that department or section of theological science which is concerned with setting forth systematically, that is to say, as a concatenated whole, what is known concerning God.” (Page 91)
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