FOREWORD
FOREWORD This volume contains the principal articles written by the late Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield having to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ . 1 All of its articles, with the exception of the one entitled The Emotional Life of our Lord, were included in the ten volumes of his collected writings— all of which are out of print— published by the Oxford University Press subsequent to his death. To be more specific, two of the articles that compose the body of this volume have been taken from that one of the Oxford University Press volumes entitled Studies in Theology, five from one entitled Biblical
Doctrines and six from the one entitled Christology and Criticism.
For the purpose of this volume these articles have been divided into two groups—one dealing with the Person of Christ and the place He occupies in the Christian religion and the other dealing with the nature of His redeeming work. In other words, the first group deals mainly with the Incarnation and the second mainly with the Atonement. It is not alleged that these articles, written from time to time as the occasion seemed to require, treat these great themes in all their aspects. This is particularly true of those dealing with the work of Christ inasmuch as they confine themselves almost wholly to His work as priest with only incidental allusion to His work as prophet and king. It is alleged, however, that they deal with that which is most central to an understanding of Christ's person and work, with that apart from which there can be no adequate knowledge of who Christ was and is and what He did and does.
The view of the person of Christ set forth in this volume, namely that He was perfect deity and complete humanity united in one person,
has been incorporated in one form or another in all the great creeds of Christendom—Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Lutheran,
Reformed and Wesleyan—and confessed for nearly two thousand years by practically all of those calling themselves Christians, at least until the rise and spread of anti-supernaturalistic thinking in relatively recent times. What is true of this two-nature conception of the person of Christ is almost equally true of the view of Christ's work set forth in this volume. Every great branch of the Christian
Church has assigned to His death, regarded as an expiatory sacrifice, the place of primary importance. Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics and Protestants unite in accepting the Cross as the symbol of Christianity and in singing the praises of the "Lamb that was slain."
But while Warfield found confirmation of his view of Christ and His work in the fact that it has found expression in the great creeds of the Church and even more, perhaps, in the fact that it has found expression in the great mass of the songs and prayers that have accumulated through out the Christian centuries yet it was not in these facts that he found his primary reason for holding it. For him such considerations were always secondary. His primary reason for holding both his view of Christ's person and His view of Christ's work was his belief that they and they alone are taught in Scripture. To the task of showing that a synthesis of the teaching of Scripture support these views and these views alone Warfield devoted much effort. So well has he performed this task—so at least it seems to the writer— that those acquainted with his labors, whether or not they embrace his views, will find it impossible to deny that his view of the person and work of Christ is the Biblical view.
We do not have to look far to discover why Warfield attached primary significance to the Biblical data. It finds its explanation in the fact that the Bible, especially the New Testament, is the source of all the actual knowledge that we possess of Christ and His work.
There is, as he is not slow to point out, but little to choose between those who deny the historicity of any Jesus and those who deny the historicity of the only Jesus of whom we have any knowledge.
Moreover he presents solid historical grounds for believing in the historicity of the Jesus of the New Testament and as over against those who under the influence of hostility to tire supernatural strip the Jesus of the New Testament of all that is miraculous he maintains that it is "the desupematuralized Jesus which is the mythical Jesus, who never had any existence, the postulation of the existence of whom explains nothing and leaves the whole historical development hanging in the air." It is no mere symbolic Christ who meets us in these pages, a Christ to whom men ascribe whatever thoughts and ideals they desire to commend to others, but an actual historical person who in the days of His flesh was seen with the eye, heard with the ear and touched with the hand (I John i. 1-3) and who risen from the dead abides the same through every change and chance of time, able because of what He experienced on earth to save unto the uttermost all those who come unto God through Him.
One of the chief merits of these articles is the light they throw on the nature of Christianity and so the help they afford in distinguishing between genuine Christianity and its counterfeits and nearcounterfeits. Every article contributes its quota but most of all the articles entitled Christless Christianity and The Cross of Christ and the Essence of Christianity —the former of which is aimed at those who deny that Jesus himself occupies an indispensable place in the religion He founded and the second of which is aimed at those that deny that the death of Christ as an expiatory sacrifice belongs to the essence of Christianity. Taken as a whole, it cannot be said that Warfield regarded one group of these articles as more important than the other. He constantly insisted that the object of our faith as Christians is never Christ simpliciter but ever Christ as crucified and
that it is no more possible to have a Christianity without an atoning Christ than it is to have a Christianity without a divine Christ.
Three of Warfield's sermons have been included in the Appendix— sermons which deal in turn with Christ as risen, Christ as our saviour and Christ as our example. The late Francis L. Patton, himself one of the most instructive as well as one of the most brilliant of preachers, in A Memorial Ad dress, spoke of Warfield's sermons as "models of the better sort of university preaching" and added that "they were the ripe result of religious experience and minute exegetical knowledge, and in their meditative simplicity reminded us of some of the best of the Puritan divines." It is suggested that those unfamiliar with the writings of Warfield and the manner of man he was turn to these sermons first of all.
These writings of Warfield have been republished—in response to widespread requests—in the belief that in their particular field they have not been superseded by any sub sequent writings. No brand new theories of the person and work of Christ have appeared since
Warfield wrote. At the most there has appeared modifications or combinations of previously existing ones. No doubt if Warfield were writing today he would not overlook or ignore the writings of John
Knox, D. M. Baillie, Martin Dibelius, Anders Nygren and Gustaf Aulen, not to mention others, but we may be sure there would be no change in his affirmative teaching regarding the person of Christ and His redeeming work grounded as it was on the teaching of the New
Testament. However long or short the period during which these writings retain their eminence they have been reprinted in the belief that the Person with whom they concern themselves will ever remain the central fact in human history. Certainly if Jesus Christ be what
Warfield with those calling themselves Christians throughout the centuries, including the first century, have all but universally