In an age when “spirituality” has replaced being “religious” (see, for example Michael Horton’s outstanding bookShaman and Sage), B. B. Warfield’s remarkable essay tying Christianity necessarily to historical events comes as a breath of fresh air—even if it has the slight sense of coming from more than a century ago.

Warfield’s essay, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historic Fact, begins with something quite obvious, yet too often assumed, overlooked, or rejected. Christianity is absolutely dependent upon what Jesus said and did (especially in his dying and bodily rising again from the dead), and not with any possible response to the message coming from the “spiritual self,” pushing me to find “my truth within” quite apart from the historical facts of the life of Christ. Warfield makes his view crystal clear in this regard.

It is a somewhat difficult matter to distinguish between Christian doctrines and facts. The doctrines of Christianity are doctrines only because they are facts; and the facts of Christianity become its most indispensable doctrines. The Incarnation of the eternal God is necessarily a dogma: no human eye could witness his stooping to man’s estate, no human tongue could bear witness to it as a fact. And yet, if it be not a fact, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins. On the other hand, the Resurrection of Christ is a fact, an external occurrence within the cognizance of men to be established by their testimony. And yet, it is the cardinal doctrine of our system: on it all other doctrines hang.

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