The Calvinistically Warped Mind -- Warfield's "Review" of Methodist Theologian John Miley's Systematic Theology.

As the two volumes of John Miley’s Systematic Theology were published in 1892-1894, B. B. Warfield reviewed each volume upon release. Miley was a noted Methodist theologian who taught at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey, not far from Princeton, where the Lion of Princeton (B. B. Warfield) held the chair of “polemical and didactic theology.” It was Warfield’s task to pounce upon any and all challenges to Reformed orthodoxy.

Miley, who some have called the “Methodist Charles Hodge” (because he wrote a similar theology text two decades after Hodge completed his), was a capable theologian in the Methodist/Arminian tradition. Miley stated in his Systematic Theology that his efforts were, in part, to be seen as a Methodist corrective to the recently published Calvinist theologies of both Charles Hodge and his son, Archibald Alexander Hodge.

Warfield appears eager to see these volumes come into print as Miley was a capable sparring partner, whose work, Warfield was sure, would illustrate the profound difference between the two systems. Warfield, playfully (if not sarcastically), speaks of his objections to Miley’s Methodism as the fruit of our “Calvinistically warped mind.”

The excerpts below (quotes from Warfield’s “Review” of Miley’s work and my interaction with both Warfield and Miley) are taken from my Lion of Princeton (2015) and edited for publication here.

Warfield appreciates Miley’s clarity and consistency regarding the Methodist/Arminian system.

The material is handled in a masterly manner, and the volume as a whole sets forth the Arminian scheme of salvation in as powerful and logical a form as that scheme admits of. For Dr. Miley presents himself here as above all things an Arminian, and as above most Arminians ready to follow his Arminianism to its logical conclusions. Here, indeed, we find the highest significance of the book. It is the Arminian `Yea’ to the Calvinistic declaration of what Arminianism is in its essential nature, where its center of gravity lies, and what it means with reference to that complex of doctrines which constitute the sum of evangelical truth.

Warfield challenges Miley’s use of divine foreknowledge to escape a Calvinistic doctrine of predestination

We cannot think, however, that he has followed out his own arguments to their legitimate conclusions. They not only involve the admission of the certainty (as distinguished from the necessity) of free actions (p. 183), which is all any Calvinist believes; but they distinctly imply the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. For example, he acutely reduces the difficulties which are asserted to stand in the way of God’s foreknowledge of the free acts of men to absurdity, by pointing out that the same difficulties would press equally against God’s foreknowledge of his own free acts. This is unanswerable. But it will require an immeasurably more acute logic still to distinguish God’s foreknowledge of his future choices, from a fore-intention to make these choices; and this is just the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination.

Warfield addresses Miley’s faulty conception of natural revelation

He there seems to posit a reception by heathen men of a divine revelation, which comes to them through their human faculties, and is not verified to the recipient as from God. Here he seems to step beyond the wall of his own definition, with the effect of throwing himself into the hands of the mystic rationalists. We must hasten to add, however, that when he comes to treat formally of mysticism (p. 16), he rejects the mythical path for attaining religious truth altogether, and deals very stringently with the modern doctrine of the Christian consciousness. We must confess that we do not know how the views expressed at p. 11, as to a not uncommon revelation to heathen seekers, can be accorded with the criticism here; unless we are to suppose that God is nearer to the heathen than to Christians, and deals more intimately with them than with Christians.

Warfield points out the fatal flaw in Miley’s treatment of governmental theory of the atonement

Miley’s clarity is commended, because in this case, “the Governmental theory of the Atonement is expounded and advocated with freshness and force.” Since, as Miley himself freely admits, “freedom is fundamental in Arminianism,” therefore, “the [Arminian] system holds accordingly the universality of the atonement and provisory nature of the atonement, and the conditionality of salvation.” The problem which Miley faces, according to Warfield, is “to find a doctrine of atonement comfortable to the Arminian fundamentum, which Dr. Miley does not hesitate to locate in its psychology of the will.” Dr. Miley, being the capable theologian that he is, again follows this Arminian fundamentum through to its logical conclusion. To demonstrate this, Warfield cites Miley’s contention that “`the cardinal doctrines of the Wesleyan Soteriology' are—`that the atonement is only provisory in its character, rendering men savable, but not necessarily saving them'; and that salvation is conditional in the sense of a real Synergism (p. 169).”

Warfield contends that there is no necessity in Miley’s scheme for the death of Jesus

When the logic of Miley’s conception of the atonement is set forth, there can only be one conclusion in Warfield’s mind. “If it be `safe' to forgive sin on the ground of a `substitute for penalty,' it would seem just as `safe' to make a sincere personal repentance that substitute as to make the suffering of an alien such substitute.” Warfield concludes: “Dr. Miley’s argument seems to us to issue in setting aside all real necessity for atonement.” Warfield notes that in Miley’s Methodist system, “forgiveness itself remains an act of pure grace,” therefore, there is no need for atonement in the first place, and the question is raised as to why Christ suffered at all. Why did the Son of God have to die if some other possible means of dealing with sin, such as personal repentance, could serve as a legitimate method of remitting the penalty due us as sinners?

To read the essay on its entirety, click here: Warfield's Review of John Miley's Systematic Theology