Dr. Benjamin B Warfield graduated from the College of
New Jersey, now
Princeton University, in 1871 and after a period of study abroad at
Edinburgh and Heidelberg entered Princeton Theological Seminary and was
graduated with the class of 1876. Following a year's study at Leipzig,
Germany, and a short pastorate in Baltimore he was appointed instructor
in New Testament Language and Literature in Western Theological
Seminary in Pittsburgh and a year later elected professor. In 1886 he
was called to succeed Archibald Alexander Hodge as professor of
Systematic Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary — a
position
which he occupied with great distinction until his death in 1921.
Dr. Warfield won early recognition as a scholar, teacher and author. He
received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the college of New
Jersey in 1880; that of Doctor of Laws from both the College of New
Jersey and Davidson college in 1892; that of Doctor of Letters from
Lafayette College in 1911; and that of Sacrae Theologiae Doctor from
the University of Utrecht in 1913. He was editor of the Presbyterian
and Reformed Review from 1890-1903 and until the time of his death, the
chief contributor to the Princeton Theological Review.*
A Remembrance of Warfield
by
J. Gresham Machen
"When I returned from Germany in 1906, I entered, as instructor in the
New Testament department, into the teaching staff of Princeton
Theological Seminary....Warfield was Professor of Systematic Theology
(or "Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology," as the chair was then
more sonorously and vigorously called). And what a wonderful man he
was! His learning was prodigious. No adequate notion of its breadth can
be obtained even from his voluminous collected works. Consult him on
the most out-of-the-way subjects, and you would find him with the
"literature" of each subject at his tongue's end and able to give you
just the guidance of which you had need. Now and then, in wonderfully
generous fashion, he would go out of his way to give a word of
encouragement to a younger man. The old Princeton was an environment in
which a man felt encouraged to do his very best".
* copied, author unknown