Throughout his later career, B. B. Warfield was a much sought-after encyclopedist. Before the internet and sites like Wikipedia, multi-volume encyclopedias were an important way to amass information on the whole range of subjects within a larger field of endeavor. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition was among the most famous of these.[1]
Christian scholars developed several notable such encyclopedias (i.e., the McClintock and Strong, Biblical Ccyclopedia; and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia—ISBE. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1910) was one of the most well-known and respected of these. At the time of its publication, Warfield held the chair of Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. It was his job to pounce upon any and all departures from Presbyterian orthodoxy as expressed in the Westminster Standards. As a highly-esteemed scholar and a well-known theological conservative, Warfield was asked to write key entries in a number of these encyclopedias.
Warfield contributed the entry on “Jesus Christ,” for New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (NSHERK). His essay can be found here in its entirety. I pulled out several of Warfield’s assertions about Paul’s knowledge of Jesus (given my Blessed Hope Podcastseries on the letters of Paul). Since Warfield was concerned to defend historic and orthodox Christianity, Warfield’s entry on “Jesus Christ” in NSHERK has a definite apologetic flavor. We certainly see this in Warfield’s treatment of Jesus and Paul.
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Paul As Witness from the Earliest Days of Christianity
Paul had known the Christian movement from its beginning; first from the outside, as one of the chief agents in its persecution, and then from the inside, as the most active leader of its propaganda [note: the term did not yet have the negative connotation it does now]. He was familiarly acquainted with the Apostles and other immediate followers of Jesus, and enjoyed repeated intercourse with them. He explicitly declares the harmony of their teaching with his, and joins with his their testimony to the great facts which he proclaimed. The complete consonance of his allusions to Jesus with what is gathered from the hints of the heathen historians is very striking. The person of Jesus fills the whole horizon of his thought, and gathers to itself all his religious emotions. That Jesus was the Messiah is the presupposition of all his speech of Him, and the Messianic title has already become his proper name behind which His real personal name, Jesus, has retired. This Messiah is definitely represented as a divine being who has entered the world on a mission of mercy to sinful man, in the prosecution of which He has given Himself up as a sacrifice for sin, but has risen again from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God, henceforth to rule as Lord of all. Around the two great facts, of the expiatory death of the Son of God and his rising again, Paul’s whole teaching circles. Jesus Christ as crucified, Christ risen from the dead as the first fruits of those that sleep—here is Paul’s whole gospel in summary (150-151).
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