CHRISTOLOGY AND CRITICISM

by

BENJAMIN BRECKINRIDGE WARFIELD

Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology
in the Theological Seminary of Princeton
New Jersey, 1887–1921

BAKER BOOK HOUSE

Grand Rapids, Michigan 49506

Copyright 1932 by

Oxford University Press

New York, Inc.

Reprinted 2000 by Baker Book House Company

Set of Ten Volumes

ISBN: 0-8010-9645-6

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PREFATORY NOTE

Rev. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology in the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, New Jersey, provided in his will for the collection and publication of the numerous articles on theological subjects which he contributed to encyclopaedias, reviews and other periodicals, and appointed a committee to edit and publish these papers. In pursuance of his instructions, this, the third volume, containing his historico-critical articles on the Person and work of Christ, has been prepared under the editorial direction of this committee.

The generous permission to publish articles contained in this volume is gratefully acknowledged as follows: Funk and Wagnalls, for the article taken from “The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge,” The University of Chicago Press for the articles taken from The American Journal of Theology, Harvard Divinity School, for the articles taken from The Harvard Theological Review, and Mr. Leroy Phillips for the article taken from The Hibbert Journal.

The clerical preparation of this volume has been done by Miss Letitia N. Gosman and Mr. Johannes G. Vos, to whom the thanks of the committee are hereby expressed.

Ethelbert D. Warfield

William Park Armstrong

Caspar Wistar Hodge

Committee.

Contents

chapter

I. The Divine Messiah in the Old Testament

II. Misconception of Jesus, and Blasphemy of the Son of Man

III. Jesus’ Alleged Confession of Sin

IV. Jesus Christ

V. Concerning Schmiedel’s “Pillar-Passages”

VI. The “Two Natures” and Recent Christological Speculation

VII. Christless Christianity

VIII. The Twentieth-Century Christ

IX. The Essence of Christianity and the Cross of Christ

X. Appendix: The Supernatural Birth of Jesus

List of Other Articles on Christology

I

THE DIVINE MESSIAH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT1

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 intimations of a multiplicity in the Divine unity which may be thought to be discoverable in the Old Testament,2 has an important indeed, but, in the first instance at least,3 only an indirect bearing on this precise question. It may render, it is true, the primary service of removing any antecedent presumption against the witness of the Old Testament to the Deity of the Messiah, ...