| Article | The Divine Messiah In The Old Testament
The question whether the Old Testament has any testimony to give as to the Deity of our Lord, when strictly taken, resolves itself into the question whether the Old Testament holds out the promise of a Divine Messiah. To gather the intimation of a multiplicity in the Divine unity which may be thought to be discoverable in the Old Testament, has an ...read |
| Article | The Dogmatic Spirit
What is called the dogmatic spirit is not popular among men. It is characterized by an authoritative method of presenting truth; by an unwillingness to modify truth to fit it to current conceptions; by an insistence on what seem to many minor points; and above all by (what lies at the root of most of its other peculiarities) a habit of thinking in ...read |
| Article | The End of the Incarnation
John 6:38-39: For I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent me; and this is the will of Him that sent me, that of all that He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.
In the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand our Lord presented Himself symbolically to man as ...read |
| Article | The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament
In order to obtain a correct understanding of what is called the formation of the Canon of the New Testament, it is necessary to begin by fixing very firmly in our minds one fact which is obvious enough when attention is once called to it. That is, that the Christian church did not require to form for itself the idea of a "canon," -- or, as we shou ...read |
| Article | The Fundamental Significance of the Lord's Supper
The most salient fact connected with the institution of the Lord's Supper is, of course, that this took place at, or, to be more specific, in the midst of, the Passover Meal. It was 'while they were eating" the Passover meal, that Jesus, having taken up a loaf and blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples (Matt. xxvi. 26; Mark xiv. 22). Thi ...read |
| Article | The Historical Christ
The rise of Christianity was a phenomenon of too little apparent significance to attract the attention of the great world. It was only when it had refused to be quenched in the blood of its founder, and, breaking out of the narrow bounds of the obscure province in which it had its origin, was making itself felt in the centers of population, that it ...read |
| Article | The Historical Christ
The rise of Christianity was a phenomenon of too little apparent significance to attract the attention of the great world. It was only when it had refused to be quenched in the blood of its founder, and, breaking out of the narrow bounds of the obscure province in which it had its origin, was making itself felt in the centers of population, that it ...read |
| Article | The Human Development of Jesus
It is Luke's distinction among the evangelists that he has given us a narrative, founded, as he tells us, on an investigation which "traced the coarse of all things accurately from the first" (Luke i. 3). We note the careful exactness with which he records the performance by our Lord's parents of "all things that were according to the law of the Lo ...read |
| Pamphlet | The Leading of the Spirit
"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God." Romans 8:14 (R. V.)
THESE words constitute the classical passage in the New Testament on the great subject of the "leading of the Holy Spirit." They stand, indeed, almost without strict parallel in the New Testament. We read, no doubt, in that great discourse of our Lord's w ...read |
| Article | The Person of Christ According to the New Testament
It is the purpose of this article to make as clear as possible the conception of the Person of Christ, in the technical sense of that term, which lies on or, if we prefer to say so, beneath the pages of the New Testament. Were it its purpose to trace out the process by which this great mystery has been revealed to men, a beginning would need to be ...read |
| Sermon | The Plan of Salvation: Part 1: Differing Conceptions
THE SUBJECT to which our attention is to be directed in this series of lectures is ordinarily spoken of as "The Plan of Salvation." Its more technical designation is, "The Order of Decrees." And this technical designation has the advantage over the more popular one, of more accurately defining the scope of the subject matter. This is not commonly c ...read |
| The Plan of Salvation: Part 2: Autosoterism
THERE ARE fundamentally only two doctrines of salvation (1): that salvation is from God, and that salvation is from ourselves. The former is the doctrine of common Christianity; the latter is the doctrine of universal heathenism. "The principle of heathenism," remarks Dr. Herman Bavinek, (2) "is, negatively, the denial of the true God, and of the g ...read |
| The Plan of Salvation: Part 3: Sacerdotalism
IT IS THE consistent testimony of the universal Church that salvation is from God, and from God alone. The tendency constantly showing itself in all branches of the Church alike to conceive of salvation as, in one way or another, to a greater or less degree, from man, is thus branded by the entire Church in its official testimony as a heathen remai ...read |
| The Plan of Salvation: Part 4: Universalism
THE EVANGELICAL note is formally sounded by the entirety of organized Protestantism. That is to say, all the great Protestant bodies, in their formal official confessions, agree in confessing the utter dependence of sinful man upon the grace of God alone for salvation, and in conceiving this dependence as immediate and direct upon the Holy Spirit, ...read |
| The Plan of Salvation: Part 5: Calvinism
AS OVER AGAINST all attempts to conceive the operations of God looking to salvation universalistically, that is as directed to mankind in the mass, Calvinism insists that the saving operations of God are directed in every case immediately to the individuals who are saved. Particularism in the processes of salvation becomes thus the mark of Calvinis ...read |
| Article | The Polemics of Infant Baptism
THE question of the Subjects of Baptism is one of that class of problems the solution of which hangs upon a previous question. According as is our doctrine of the Church, so will be our doctrine of the Subjects of Baptism. If we believe, with the Church of Rome, that the Church is in such a sense the institute of salvation that none are united to C ...read |
| Article | The Prodigal Son
I wish to speak to you today of the parable of the prodigal son, or, as it is becoming very common to call it, perhaps with greater exactness, the parable of the lost son. I shall not read it to you again. It has already been read in the lesson for the day. And in any event it is too familiar to require that you should be reminded even of the minut ...read |
| Article | The Purpose of the Seminary
It is customary to say that the theological seminaries are training-schools for the ministry. Properly understood, that is the right thing to say. But it is not very difficult, and it is very common, seriously to exaggerate the function of the seminary under this definition. It is not the function of the seminary to give young men their entire trai ...read |
| Article | The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Fact
It is a somewhat difficult matter to distinguish between Christian doctrines and facts. The doctrines of Christianity are doctrines only because they are facts; and the facts of Christianity become its most indispensable doctrines. The Incarnation of the eternal God is necessarily a dogma: no human eye could witness his stooping to man's estate, no ...read |
| Article | The Rights of Criticism
We hear a great deal nowadays of the right of Criticism, spoken with a certain air of conscious heroism, as if Criticism (with a big C, doubtless because it is "Higher"), were being dreadfully oppressed by somebody. But we know no one who denies the right of Criticism. Everybody uses it; and everybody honors it. It is the instrument by which we tes ...read |
Benjamin B. Warfield