B. B. Warfield held the chair of Polemical and Didactic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from the Fall of 1887 until his death in 1921. His job title sounds a bit stodgy perhaps, but there was nothing stodgy about Warfield or the duties associated with the prestigious chair which he held. Simply put, it was Warfield’s task to defend the Reformed and Presbyterian faith from any and all challenges. For most of his career, Warfield devoted his time and energy to combating the new German critical scholarship then making its way into the American theological bloodstream. The famous Briggs case comes to mind, along with the numerous essays reprinted in Inspiration and Authority (P & R), and Christology and Criticism and Studies in Theology (from the ten volume Oxford edition of his collected works). But German critical scholarship was not the only theological threat to catch Warfield’s attention.

Warfield spent the last few years of his life addressing the errors of one Charles Grandison Finney, along with critiquing various “Higher Life” movements as the volume of Warfield’s collected essays on these matters, “Studies in Perfectionism” (P & R) attests. Warfield also turned his critical gaze upon a number of evangelical luminaries including Andrew Murray and R. A. Torrey (the founder of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now Biola University). But the man singled out for Warfield’s most biting critical review was Lewis Sperry Chafer.

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