Just over a hundred years ago (September 17, 1915), B. B. Warfield gave the opening address in the Miller Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary. To kick off the new academic year, Warfield took up the theme of the importance of the terms “Redeemer” and “Redemption,” — words, which when uttered by a Christian, brought forth the thought of “the cross . . . placarded before our eyes.” But upon making the point about the significance of these terms to the Christian—both in terms of the theology they carry, and the sense of trust in the Savior they convey, Warfield spends the bulk of his address on the sad state of affairs due to the loss of these terms throughout the Christian world—and about which Warfield is cautioning the new students.

The address has been reprinted as “Redeemer” and “Redemption” in Biblical Doctrines, Volume 2, in the Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, 375-398. It is also available in its entirety here.

Warfield laments the loss of proper meaning of a number of “Christian” terms, including the term “Evangelical.” He calls attention to the fact that . . .

Does anybody in the world know what “Evangelical” means, in our current religious speech? The other day, a professedly evangelical pastor, serving a church which is certainly committed by its formularies to an evangelical confession, having occasion to report in one of our newspapers on a religious meeting composed practically entirely of Unitarians and Jews, remarked with enthusiasm upon the deeply evangelical character of its spirit and utterances.

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