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 theological 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 objection as the consequence 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.

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