Conclusion

It is not too much of a stretch to say that the Princetonians, that constellation of biblical scholars and theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary including Charles Hodge, his son A. A. Hodge, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen, gave more thought to the expression of the doctrine of inspiration than at any other moment in the life of the church. They bequeathed to the twentieth century the fully formulated doctrine of the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture. They forged this doctrine in the cauldrons of controversy, against those who preferred a more natural explanation of the origin and genesis of the Bible. Liberalism attempted a middle way, desiring to be at home with modernity and to have Christianity too. By the middle of the twentieth century, yet another view was fast approaching, that of Karl Barth. While Barth certainly doesn’t sound like Harry Emerson Fosdick, neither does he sound like B. B. Warfield. Barth’s view of inspiration would dominate the closing decades of the twentieth century and on to the present time. His view also engendered and continues to engender discussions of inerrancy, which according to Warfield and the Princetonians is the necessary correlate of the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration and is the subject of chapters 3 and 4.

Addressing the positive advances of biblical studies in the nineteenth century, Warfield also observed that “It has not been a century of quiet and undisturbed study of the Bible. Fierce controversies have raged throughout its whole length.” He was speaking from personal experience, at least in reference to the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Then Warfield adds, “But fierce controversies can rage only where strong convictions burn. And amid, or rather by means of, all these controversies knowledge has increased.” Warfield had learned to place his confidence in Scripture. After all, as he quips, “The Bible has emerged from these fires, as out of all others, without so much the smell of smoke upon its very garments.” Warfield held a strong conviction in the word of God because he knew it to be the word of God, the inspired text of Scripture. Warfield concludes his article, written for the Homiletical Review in March 1900, with this look ahead to the next century: “It is the whole Bible that is committed to the twentieth century—to receive from it, as we believe, an even deeper reverence and an even completer obedience.”¹⁴

As the twentieth century moved in, controversies over this ancient book in the modern world by no means abated. Challenges would roll in like the shore’s relentless waves. Of course, the names would change, as would the exact nature and contours of the controversy, but underlying that change, the constant of the challenge of the modern world remained. The term inerrancy would come to the fore. Those who held to it with strong convictions would encounter those who preferred alternatives. Those who revered the Bible deeply and sought to obey it, as Warfield predicted, would also find that there are those who would just as soon move away from the Bible or those who, while professing to revere it on the one hand, subtly dismantle it on the other. If the nineteenth-century history of Scripture in America was a tale of both strong convictions and fierce controversies, so too would be the story of the twentieth century.