The Person and Work of Christ
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (ed. Samuel Craig)
Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company (1970)
575 pages

Ask those pastors that are students of Reformed theology about B. B. Warfield, and most will tell you that no personal library is complete without the inclusion of several of his works, if not the complete set of ten volumes in the reprinted Oxford edition available from Baker Book House. Unfortunately, Warfield is often revered and treated as the author of classics: highly praised but seldom read! Yet, for the honest student of tough-minded theology, Warfield provides a unique combination of academic criticism and pastoral exposition. To neglect the latter due to the complexity of the former is to miss an opportunity to follow one of the great Christian minds of our century down the path of truth!

The Person and Work of Christ is a compilation of several articles originally written for publication in the theological journals of Warfield's own time, along with some helpful sermonic material. As a result of this manner of composition a comprehensive study of the person and work of Christ is not to be found in Warfield's treatment. Subjects such as impeccability, the offices of Christ, and the resurrection receive almost no treatment here. The subjects which are dealt with are covered quite thoroughly, with useful expositions of key texts often given.

The book is divided into two parts: Part 1 discusses issues relating specifically to the person of Christ and includes eight chapters. In chapters 1-3 Warfield surveys the material available for the study of Christ, reacting sharply against the "desupernaturalism" of Jesus which was prevalent among those liberal scholars so intent on revealing the "historical Jesus." Warfield's historical Jesus is the Christ of Scripture, and in these chapters he skillfully deals with all who would diminish the historicity of Scripture. He surveys the Pauline material, the Christological sections of Hebrews, the Johanine material and the sayings of Jesus Himself. Especially useful is his full and insightful exposition of Philippians 2:5-11, found in the first section of chapter 2. He concludes, succinctly, that "the constitution of our Lord's person is a matter of revelation, not of human thought; and it is pre-eminently a revelation of the New Testament... " (p. 37).

Chapter 3 deals exclusively with Paul's teaching on Christ. Here we find Christ as the Son of God and therefore the divine Lord on whom we absolutely depend and to whom we owe absolute obedience. Central to Christ's deity is a correct undestanding of His two natures:

If we reduce what he (Paul) tells us to its lowest terms it amounts just to this: Paul preached the historical Christ as the promised Mesiah and as the very Son of God. But he declares Christ to be the promised Messiah and the very Son of God in language so pregnant, so packed with implications, as to carry us into the heart of the great problem of the two-natured person of Christ (p. 78).

The editor of this volume arranged the book so that the remaining five chapters of this part give a progressive unfolding of Warfield's understanding of the two natures of Christ. Perhaps chapter 4, "The Emotional Life of Our Lord," is the single most intriguing article of the book. Here Warfield begins his argument for the full humanity of Jesus by examining the emotions displayed by our Lord. He shows how the compassion, indignation and joy displayed by Christ not only prove His complete humanity, but also give us a necessary glimpse into the nature of Jesus as a man:

One of the effects of this is to give to His emotions, as noted, the appearance of peculiar strength, vividness and completeness. This serves to refute the notion which has been sometimes advanced under the influence of the "apathetic" conception of virtue, that emotional movements never ran their full course in Him as we experience them, but stopped short at some point in their action deemed the point of dignity.... Perhaps it may be well explicitly to note that our Lord's emotions fulfilled themselves, as ours do, in physical reactions" (pp. 137-38).

Chapters 5-7 are more academic in their orientation, focused primarily against the liberal arguments advanced against the two natures of Christ. Chapter 5 is, of all the articles, the most pastoral, being a well documented exposition of our Lord's interaction with the rich young ruler. Chapters 6 and 7 taken together form a skillful apology for the orthodox position of Christ: full humanity and undiminished deity. Especially useful is Warfield's discussion and exposure of the errors associated with the "kenotic" theory:

Kenoticism differs from Socianism fundamentally in that Socianism took away from us only our Divine Christ, while Kenoticism takes away also our very God. For what kind of God is this that is God and not God alternately as He chooses, and lays off and on at will those specific qualities which make God the kind of being we call "God," as a king might put off and on his crown, or as a leopard might wish to change his spots but cannot, or an Ethiopian his skin? Of course, this is all ... "pure mythology" (p. 194).

Part 1 ends with a treatise on Christless Christanity which, in Warfield's mind, is the disastrous end product of liberal theology.

Part 2 is comprised of six articles on the work of Christ. Actually, this section deals only with the death of Christ, which is seen properly as the heart of Christ's earthly activity. The material here is quite detailed and very useful. Warfield deals fully with Christ the redeemer in chapters 9 and 13. Major views of the atonement are carefully studied in chapters 10 and 11, while chapter 12 deals with Christ's death against the backdrop of the Old Testament sacrifical system. This issue, with all of its theological complexities, makes for extremely helpful and readable material. In all of this I believe we see the essence of Warfield's theology focused on one of the grand truths recovered by the Protestant reformers so powerfully-the centrality of the cross. He writes:

... the religion which Jesus founded is a redemptive religion in the narrow sense, that is to say, it has the Cross set in its centre.... Its redemptive character has not, then, been imported into Christianity from without, in the course of its development in the world-whether through the instrumentality of Paul or of some other one. It has constituted its essence as a specific religion from the beginning; without which it would cease to be the religion that Jesus founded, and that, retaining the specific character impressed on it by Him, has borne His name through the centuries known from it as Christian. Precisely what Christianity was in the beginning, has ever been through all its history, and must continue to be so long as it keeps its specific character by virtue of which it is what it is, a redemptive religion; or rather that particular redemptive religion which brings to man salvation from his sin, conceived as guilt as well as pollution, through the expiatory death of Jesus Christ (pp. 525-26).

The appendix contains three sermons which add to the pastoral depth of these studies. They allow the reader to see the connection between the study and the pulpit quite well. It is particularly interesting to read Warfield's exposition of Philippians 2:5-11 in chapter 2 and then read his sermon on "Imitating the Incarnation." These sermons alone are worth the price of the volume!

B. B. Warfield lived and wrote during a time of great theological shift in America. His powerful insights and incisive communicative style provided a theological bulwark behind which many stood in their defense of the faith. As the church of our day is called upon to guard the truth, and as historic truths are being rediscovered in many quarters, the writings of giants like Warfield play an increasingly large role in modern reformation and may well add to the biblical fire needed to spark earnest prayer for revival.