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Reformed Baptist pastor and seminary professor Fred Zaspel has followed The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary with an easy-to-read primer, Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel. As part of the “Theologians on the Christian Life” series overseen by Stephen Nichols and Justin Taylor, Warfield on the Christian Life shows us that the “Lion of Princeton” believed all Christians, as children of their heavenly Father, never “outgrow the gospel” or “‘move on to better things’” (231). The Christian, then, lives dependently “in the light of the gospel” (20).

Short biographical details help us understand the organic union between Warfield and his view of the Christian life. The Old Princeton view of the vitalizing connection between doctrine and life frames the book’s concise yet substantive chapters. The liveliness between thoughts, affections, and actions is affirmed in that, according to Warfield, the “Christian life grows in the soil of Christian truth” that glorifies God. Warfield’s interpretation of the biblical gospel of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus with the subsequent ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is revealed. Here we do not have Warfield’s intricate scholarly arguments in his interaction with theological scholars of his day, but the clear doctrinal precision regarding the gospel and its attendant fruit, which formed the impetus and end of all his scholarship.

We learn of the beginnings of the Christian life but from a decidedly Godward, Trinitarian perspective. Since Zaspel emphasizes Warfield’s view of the Christian life, stress is placed on God as redeemer. It would be a mistake, however, to think that this amounted to minimizing Warfield’s emphasis on God as creator. Warfield’s view of redemption stresses God’s creation and nourishment of spiritual life in the objects of his mercy and grace through his Word and Spirit. Or, in Warfield’s terms, God’s revelation of himself that redeems is “objectively real and subjectively operative, and finds its rooting both in its inspired record and in its spiritual efficacy” (46). Likely this can be understood even more clearly when we learn that for Warfield the incarnation was not an end in itself, but a means to a greater end—the self-sacrifice of the Son of God to accomplish redemption. This goal has been and continues to be accomplished, as God’s Spirit completes this work through Christian doctrine that grows the believer to do good works within the institutional church and out in the world.

Zaspel provides clarity regarding Warfield’s beliefs on some doctrines that seem to confuse many in our time: the relationship of justification to sanctification, the role of doctrine in the Christian’s life, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Warfield’s robustly Reformed understanding of the Christian life is transparent. Yet given Warfield’s Godward view of the Christian life, his confessed lifelong commitment to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Presbyterian Church, along with his writings on baptism and the Lord’s Supper, perhaps more should have been made of the sacraments in Zaspel’s treatment of corporate worship as a means of grace.

Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel

Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel

Crossway (2012). 240 pp.

B.B. Warfield is well-known as one of America’s leading theologians, perhaps second only to Jonathan Edwards. But until now the character of his own Christian experience and his understanding of the Christian life have remained unexplored. Fred Zaspel unpacks these for us here, and what we find is that Warfield’s profound theological mind is matched only by his passionate heart for Christ. From Warfield we learn truly what it is to live in light of the gospel.

Crossway (2012). 240 pp.

Furthermore, since Warfield believed that Christianity is, at its root and in its entirety “the apologetic religion,” and since he himself was considered the great apologist of Princeton, perhaps more focus should have been devoted to the relationship between the Christian life and the apologetic task. For Warfield the “deepest ground” for apologetics is “the fundamental needs of the human spirit” (cf. “Apologetics,” Collected Works, vol. 9) to have justifiable reason for Christian faith. Such valid reasons, Warfield contends, are organically present in the doctrines the Christian is to believe and by which the Christian grows. Perhaps Zaspel ought to have provided an even fuller picture of Warfield’s view of the Christian life through a more explicit explanation of how a growing understanding of doctrine not only matures the Christian and produces sacrificial living, but also clarifies in the Christian’s consciousness the validity, and thereby substance, of the faith that the Scriptures require us to believe. Here is where one of Warfield’s favorite terms—organic—might have been stressed a bit more.

All this is not so much a criticism of things absent in Zaspel’s presentation, but more of a suggestion on how one should read the book. The doctrines Zaspel ably presents as representative of Warfield’s view of the Christian life were, according to Warfield, their own defense. This might come as a surprise to many loyal Van Tillians, but it’s why the Warfield corpus is filled with explanations of particular biblical doctrines presented in organic relationship to other biblical doctrines. The exposition of the biblical doctrines that contradicted Protestant Liberalism and other distortions of the gospel were Warfield’s proclamation and defense of the biblical gospel. Warfield on the Christian Life is therefore an excellent introduction to both Warfield and his scholarly works.

Some may be surprised by Warfield’s proclamation of the need for the Holy Spirit to create and sustain the Christian’s new life. Zaspel helps us see that Warfield believed in sin’s effect upon the mind and that he related this to human affections and actions, as well as the other loci of Christian doctrines—not least of which was the historical process by which humans come to know. This is why one has to miss virtually the entire substance of what Warfield wrote in order to assert that his views of human knowledge, general biblical doctrine, and apologetics are dependent on and sufficiently explained by Scottish Common Sense Realism, or identified as evidentialist. For Warfield, the Christian life is about both the God who is and how humans in history come to know him.

We can, therefore, be thankful that Zaspel has paid careful attention to what Warfield actually wrote and has deftly produced a highly readable and devotionally satisfying book that will help introduce many to the true Warfield, and more importantly to the biblical gospel.

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