For the theologians of Old Princeton these are good days in which to be dead. Recently published is Paul Gutjhar's biography of Charles Hodge (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Paul K. Helseth's "Right Reason" and the Princeton Mind (P&R, 2010) has been well received. A biography of B. B. Warfield by Bradley Grundlach is forthcoming, and alongside these we now possess the subject of this review, Fred Zaspel's systematic summary of Warfield's theology. Zaspel has given us a great gift: he has achieved a fine compendium of Warfield's thought that will serve as an indispensible guide to his writings. This contribution to the Princeton theologians' renaissance is a fluent and skillful work of interpretation to be read with pleasure and profit.
In Zaspel's hands, Warfield shines as the greatest mind in the Princeton constellation, and there are numerous delightful insights that make this judgment compelling. J. Gresham Machen lamented in a letter after Warfield's funeral that, as they carried him out, "Old Princeton went with him" (35). John DeWitt, who knew Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, and Henry B. Smith personally, was not only sure that Warfield knew a great deal more than each of them, but he was "disposed to think that he knew more than all three of them put together" (41). But the weight of this judgment is not anecdotal. What strikes the reader so clearly from Zaspel's volume is the incredible range of Warfield's intellectual abilities. Although his move from a New Testament appointment at Western Seminary to Hodge's chair of Systematic Theology at Princeton was met with dismay in the biblical studies world, he never left behind his deeply exegetical frame of reference for things theological. The recurring opinion of his peers’friends and foes alike’was that Warfield held in one person a staggering breadth of learning.
This viewpoint, nicely outlined in both the "Historical Context" at the beginning of the book and "Warfield in Perspective" at the conclusion, is vindicated throughout. Zaspel organizes Warfield's thought, culled from his vast corpus, into the traditional loci of a conservative Reformed theology. We are treated to Warfield on the following: apologetics; prolegomena; bibliology; theology proper; Christology (person and work of Christ); pneumatology; anthropology and hamartiology; soteriology; ecclesiology; and eschatology. The aim is to construct from Warfield's occasional writings a composite systematic theology of the kind he might have written, or that is at least in keeping with his own patterns of thought.
Are there highlights and lowlights along the way? The more familiar material on Warfield's bibliology nevertheless still manages to communicate in a fresh way the sheer scale of his painstaking exegetical contribution to the doctrine of inspiration. The chapters on Christology are especially good at showing the exegetical depth of what Warfield offers, so it is here, in this area more than any other, that we touch the heart of his theology. It is a real contribution to display Warfield the Christologian so well. But the fascinating material on Warfield's views of evolution is not crystal clear’perhaps because Warfield himself was not always clear?’and Zaspel's suggestion that there are some unresolved conflicting ideas in Warfield on infant baptism (519) reveals, I think, more about Zaspel's understanding of the doctrine than Warfield's presentation.
Perhaps the most useful question the reviewer of such a volume can attempt to answer is this: In providing a systematic summary, what do we gain by doing with Warfield's thought that which Warfield himself did not attempt? Let me suggest two benefits.
First, Zaspel manages to allow the reasons why Warfield did not write a systematic theology to be at the forefront of his own attempt to systematize. Zaspel is gently critical of Francis Patton's judgment that Warfield "was less interested in the system of doctrines than in the doctrines of the system" (551), and yet he has to reckon with the fact that Warfield's attention "was given primarily to contemporary critical thought" (553). Throughout the entire book he presents a convincing picture of Christian supernaturalism as the main driving concern animating all of Warfield's work. His worldview was that of "a supernatural God, a supernatural redemption, accomplished by a supernatural Savior, interpreted by a supernatural revelation, and applied by the supernatural operations of his Spirit" (59). This frame of reference went hand in hand with Warfield's "continued and vigorous assault on the naturalistic criticism of his day." The consequence is that Warfield was really an occasional writer, an apologist who gave himself to applying biblical supernaturalism with all his might to the vast range of objections to the faith presented in his day. So, in Warfield's case, it would be anachronistic reinterpretation were we to see his greatness displayed in systematic overview rather than the simple fact of his being an occasional writer. We are left with the impression that one of Warfield's greatest gifts to us is precisely that he regarded the period of time in which he was living as "critical rather than constructive" (553); he appears as a prophetic figure who wrote first and foremost to serve the churches and fellow preachers of the gospel by addressing the needs of the hour with precision and rigor.
Second, what we gain in Zaspel's volume is a bio-graphical element embedded in the systematic summary, and the reader needs to be aware of this. If one hopes to read it in the same way as, say, Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, then a measure of frustration may lie ahead. For in attempting to read Warfield's theology here one is continually interrupted with Warfield himself, appearing throughout in the third person and always explicitly mediating his own material. Such mediation happens, of course, in any writing; but it is less intrusive when one simply reads what an author says on a topic and enters the world of his creation, oblivious, in a sense, to his presence. This volume, however, is like reading what an author has written while the author himself is in the room, interjecting as you read. The interjection is not damaging to the text, but it can certainly be distracting. Yet at the same time the biographical element allows Zaspel to render Warfield's theology in a chronological light one does not get in an ordinary systematics, and this has its own rewards for the Warfield aficionado. There are nice treatments, to give just two examples, of Warfield's views on apologetics in dialogue with Kuyper and Bavinck, with reference to the fact that Warfield's views seem to have influenced Bavinck's later thought (79), as well as interaction with John Murray's contention that Warfield's Christology underwent a significant change around 1914 (274ff).
Taken together, then, the constant presence of Warfield himself and the biographical refrain mean that this systematic summary will be most useful for gaining an overview of what Warfield said about a topic and how he understood its inner workings, and only secondarily useful for a thorough study of the given topic in its own right. For that we will need to turn to Warfield's original writings themselves. And this, I imagine, is the very indication that Zaspel has achieved his purpose and that he deserves our admiration and grateful thanks.
