The Last Class

The Last Class

Teaching was his life.

BENJAMIN BRECKINRIDGE WARFIELD was the greatest theologian of his day. He was professor of theology at Western Theological Seminary from 1879 to 1887. From 1887 until his death he was professor of theology at Princeton Seminary. No theologian of his day is as widely read today as he.

On Christmas Eve 1920 Dr. Warfield suffered a heart attack. He slowly recuperated over the following weeks, and when classes resumed after Christmas vacation, he was back teaching. On February 16, 1921, Warfield went to his regular afternoon class, but he did not stand to lead the opening prayer as was his usual custom, for he was still feeling weak. The passage for study that day was the third chapter of 1 John. When he began teaching, it was as if all of his weakness faded away.

When his exposition reached the sixteenth verse, “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,” a student recalled, “All the eloquence of Dr. Warfield’s Christian heart, all the wisdom of his ripened scholarship focused on the interpretation of that text.” Dr. Warfield explained, “The laying down of His life in our stead was a great thing, but the wonder of the text is that He being all that He was, the Lord of glory, laid down His life for us, being what we are, mere creatures of His hand, guilty sinners deserving His wrath.” He urged his students to realize their own sin and God’s gift more fully which would deepen “our wonder at His grace and our wish to glorify His name.”

After his lecture Warfield returned home. Later that evening he suffered another heart attack and died. He had taught his last class.

The day after Warfield’s death, his Princeton colleague and good friend J. Gresham Machen wrote a letter to his mother saying, “I am writing to tell you of the great loss which we have just sustained in the death of Dr. Warfield. Princeton will seem to be a very insipid place without him. He was really a great man. There is no one living in the Church capable of occupying one quarter of his place. To me, he was an incalculable help and support in a hundred different ways. This is a sorrowful day for us all.”

Years earlier, when performing the funeral service of a friend, Dr. Warfield had described “the innumerable throng” that “have laid aside the trials and labors of earth, well-pleasing to their Lord, and entered into their rest with him.” He continued, “while our farewell to them on this side of the separating gulf was sounding in their ears, the glad ‘Hail!’ of their Lord was welcoming them there. . . . May God grant each of us to follow them. May he give us his Holy Spirit to sanctify us wholly and enable us when we close our eyes in our long sleep to open them at once, not in terrified pain in torment, but in the soft, sweet light of Paradise, safe in the arms of Jesus!”

After teaching his last class, Warfield followed the “innumerable throng” into the safe arms of Jesus.

Reflection

The greatest attribute of B. B. Warfield was his great heart for God. To him, theology wasn’t about lofty propositions; it was about a personal God who sent his Son to lay down his life in our stead that we may spend eternity in paradise with him. Do you think of Jesus as a theological concept, or do you know him personally as B. B. Warfield did?

We know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us.

1 John 3:16