The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 5: Calvin and Calvinism
Overview
Warfield devoted a significant portion of his scholarly pursuits to the life and thought of John Calvin. Throughout his lifetime, Warfield remained an ardent defender of the Reformed faith, in part because Reformed theology represented an orthodox medium between the extremes of emotional revivalism on the one hand and domesticated liberal theology on the other. He believed that confessional Reformed theology could withstand contemporary criticism from both extremes, because Reformed confessions offered the clearest and most honest summary and application of Scripture. Warfield’s volume on Calvin and Calvinism begins with a lengthy biography of John Calvin, followed by chapters on Calvin’s doctrine of the knowledge of God, Calvin’s doctrine of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity. The volume concludes with two final chapters on Calvinism in general, and on the literary history of Calvin’s Institutes.
Product Details
- Title: The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 5: Calvin and Calvinism
- Author: B. B. Warfield
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: 1931
- Pages: 428
About Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
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.
Sample Pages from the Print Edition
Top Highlights
“It was not the head but the heart which made him a theologian, and it is not the head but the heart which he primarily addresses in his theology.” (Page 23)
“When we name the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we by no means imagine three Gods; but the Scriptures and pious experience itself show us in the absolutely simple (tres-simple) essence of God, the Father, His Son and His Spirit. So that our intelligence is not able to conceive the Father without at the same time comprehending the Son in whom His living image is repeated, and the Spirit, in whom His power and virtue are manifested. Accordingly, we adhere with the whole thought of our heart to one sole God; but we contemplate nevertheless the Father with the Son and His Spirit.’” (Page 202)
“‘For since the essence of God is simple and indivisible (simplex et individua) Him—who contains in Himself the whole of it, not in apportionment or in deflection, but in unbroken perfection (integra perfectione)—it would be improper or rather inept to call its image.” (Page 215)
“the principle of his construction of the Trinitarian distinctions is equalization rather than subordination” (Pages 229–230)
“Perhaps the simplest statement of it is the best: that it lies in a profound apprehension of God in His majesty, with the inevitably accompanying poignant realization of the exact nature of the relation sustained to Him by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature. He who believes in God without reserve, and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling, willing—in the entire compass of his life-activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual, throughout all his individual, social, religious relations—is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist.” (Pages 354–355)
- Title: The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Volume 5: Calvin and Calvinism
- Author: Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
- Series: The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield
- Publisher: Faithlife
- Print Publication Date: 2008
- Logos Release Date: 2008
- Era: era:modern
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564; Calvinism
- ISBNs: 9780801096457, 0801096456
- Resource ID: LLS:WARFIELD05
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2023-01-24T20:44:32Z
B. B. Warfield (1851–1921) was a prolific writer, accomplished scholar, and ranks as one of America’s greatest theologians. After studying mathematics and science at Princeton University, he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1873, where he was taught by Charles Hodge, in order to train for ministry as a Presbyterian minister. He later returned to America and taught at Western Theological Seminary (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary).
In 1881, Benjamin B. 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 a professor of theology at Princeton, where he taught from 1887 until 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.
Warfield is known as one of Reformed theology’s most ardent defenders. The foundation to Warfield’s theology was his adherence to Calvinism as supported by the Westminster Confession of Faith and much of his writings are centered on this.
He has authored many books in his lifetime, including The Atonement and Modern Thought in the Classic Studies on the Atonement collection, Westminster Doctrine anent Holy Scripture: Tractates by A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield, and the titles included in the B. B. Warfield Collection.
