The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 8: Perfectionism, Part 2
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Warfield’s second volume on Christian perfectionism is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Oberlin perfectionism and the theology of Charles Finney. The second part describes the works of John Humphrey Noyes and what Warfield labels the “Bible Communists.” Warfield concludes with an account of the mystical perfectionism of Thomas Cogswell Upham. This volume also includes a lengthy chapter on the Higher Life Movement.
Product Details
- Title: The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol. 8: Perfectionism, Part 2
- Author: B. B. Warfield
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: 1932
- Pages: 611
About Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born in 1851 in Lexington, Kentucky. He studied mathematics and science at Princeton University and graduated in 1871. In 1873, he decided to enroll at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was taught by Charles Hodge. He graduated from seminary in 1876, and was married shortly thereafter. He traveled to Germany later that year to study under Franz Delitazsch.
After returning to America, Warfield taught at Western Theological Seminary (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). In 1881, Warfield co-wrote an article with A. A. Hodge on the inspiration of Scripture—a subject which dominated his scholarly pursuits throughout the remainder of his lifetime. When A. A. Hodge died in 1887, Warfield became professor of Theology at Princeton, where he taught from 1887–1921. History remembers Warfield as one of the last great Princeton Theologians prior to the seminary’s re-organization and the split in the Presbyterian Church. B. B. Warfield died in 1921.
Top Highlights
“Pelagianism, unfortunately, does not wait to be imported from New Haven, and does not require inculcating—it is the instinctive thought of the natural man.” (Page 18)
“In all of them alike justification and sanctification are divided from one another as two separate gifts of God. In all of them alike sanctification is represented as obtained, just like justification, by an act of simple faith, but not by the same act of faith by which justification is obtained, but by a new and separate act of faith, exercised for this specific purpose.” (Page 563)
“Mr. Trumbull is accustomed to begin the expositions of his teaching by carefully explaining that justification and sanctification are two separate gifts of God, to be separately obtained, and by separate acts of faith.16 He thus bases his entire system on Wesley’s primary error, the fundamental error by which the whole of Wesley’s doctrine of sanctification is vitiated.” (Page 567)
“If he himself still knew nothing of the grace of God, that could only be because he did not wish to know anything of it.” (Page 12)
“yield; he was a harsh critic of his pastor’s sermons and of the prayers of Christians. But Gale’s” (Page 14)