Warfield on "Christianity and Our Times"

In 1914, B. B. Warfield was invited to contribute an essay to the volume The Church, the People, and the Age, edited by Scott and Gilmore. There were 105 contributors, each of whom was asked to answer the following questions. 1). Why are so many people indifferent to the claims of Christianity? and 2). Would it be a step forward for the church (and presumably Christianity in general) if the only requirement for church membership was the desire to love God and our neighbor (which, ironically, was a suggestion from Abraham Lincoln fifty years prior). The contributors included Charles Augustus Briggs (who, at the time, was busy undermining the authority of Scripture), as well as German theologian and sycophant to Kaiser Wilhelm throughout the Great War, Adolf von Harnack. Scottish theologian James Orr also contributed a chapter.

The volume was compiled on the eve of the First World War which plunged all of Europe into chaos as “Christian” nations waged brutal war upon each other in the name of preserving Christian civilization. There was obviously a foreboding sense that Christian civilization was on the edge and the editors were seeking a format to discuss and offer solutions.

I’ve not seen the original volume, but my guess is that Warfield’s chapter suggests much different answers to both questions than the majority of contributors. As for the reason why people are indifferent to Christianity, Warfield points what should be obvious to anyone who has read the New Testament. Christianity is for sinners who know they need a Savior. People who sees themselves as capable of loving God and neighbor on their own will remain indifferent to Christ and his gospel.

Warfield writes,

When we are asked why it is that there are so many persons who are indifferent to the claims of the Church, no doubt the safest answer to give is that it is for reasons best known to themselves. It seems, however, only a voluntary humility to profess to be ignorant of the fundamental basis of this indifference; an indifference, let it be well borne in mind, which is in no sense "modern," but has characterized ever greater numbers as we go back in the history of the Church to the very beginning. It lies in a weak sense of sin and the natural unconcern of men who do not feel themselves sinners with respect to salvation from sin. For Christianity addresses itself only to sinners. Its Founder himself declared that he did not come to call the righteous but sinners; and its chief expounder declared with energetic emphasis that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Warfield reminds his reader that biblical Christianity is offensive to those who answer the second question in the affirmative. The reason? The cross is a supreme offense to a self-identified “good person” who sees no need of a Savior and thinks their ability to love God and neighbor is helped by attending a church without a gospel.

The offense of Christianity has always been the cross; as of old, so still today, Christ crucified is to Jews a stumbling-block and to Greeks foolishness. It would be easy to remove the offense by abolishing the cross. But that would be to abolish Christianity. Christianity is the cross; and he who makes the cross of Christ of none effect eviscerates Christianity. What Christianity brings to the world is not the bare command to love God and our neighbor. The world needs no such command; nature itself teaches the duty. What the world needs is the power to perform this duty, with respect to which it is impotent. And this power Christianity brings it in the redemption of the Son of God and the renewal of the Holy Ghost. Christianity is not merely a program of conduct: it is the power of a new life.

Warfield is right, Christianity is not grounded in ethics and public morality. Rather, it is grounded in the supernatural grace of God realized in a bloody cross. No cross, no Christianity. But those who find new life in Christ will indeed live an ethical life and contribute greatly to the public morality.

As for the church’s fundamental theology, Warfield reminds his reader that we must begin with the gospel—the Triune God revealing himself in his work of redemption through his Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

By "the fundamental theology of the Church" is meant especially the Church's confession of that series of the redemptive acts of God, by which he has supernaturally intervened in human history for the salvation of sinful man, as interpreted and given their full meaning in the revelation which he has made to his people in time past at sundry times and in divers manners through his servants the prophets, and in these last times in his Son speaking through the apostles whom he appointed as his representatives in founding his Church. This is not a mass of cunningly devised fables, but the substance of saving truth. And no message can be effective for the salvation of a lost world which does not stand for and teach in the face of all hesitation and unbelief, denial and opposition, those things which constitute the sum-total of this saving truth, as it has been set down for us in Holy Scripture. The message of Christianity concerns, not "the values of human life," but the grace of the saving God in Christ Jesus. And in proportion as the grace of the saving God in Christ Jesus is obscured or passes into the background, in that proportion does Christianity slip from our grasp. Christianity is summed up in the phrase: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world with himself." Where this great confession is contradicted or neglected, there is no Christianity.

The crisis in Warfield’s day was the reality that much of Christianity had jettisoned the gospel—for a host of reasons, and beyond the scope of Warfield’s answer to the two questions above. May we all be reminded in our increasingly hostile and pagan age, that the gospel our Lord has given us has not lost its power or its relevance.

Warfield’s essay can be found here in its entirety: Warfield, “Christianity and Our Times"