Schleiermacher, Newman, Warfield

In our Shapers of Contemporary Protestant Theology course here at Moore we have been reading sections from Schleiermacher, Newman and now Warfield. It is quite interesting to see the lines of concern and thought criss-cross in surprising ways. Having read Newman on the development of Christian doctrine, it is fascinating to see Warfield appealing to some of the same criteria in trying to defend the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture. This doctrine, he argues, is early, ubiquitous and persistent.

Warfield claims:

Despite these attempts to introduce lowered conceptions, the doctrine of the plenary inpsiration of the Scriptures, which looks upon them as an oracular book, in all its parts and elements, alike, of God, trustworthy in all its affirmations of every kind, remains to-day, as it has always been, the vital faith of the people of God, and the formal teaching of the organized church.

Newman might have agreed with this as a method, if not an affirmation. The doctrine, he says, is not merely a matter of form alone, but is a necessary preservative of the lively faith of the church.

Of course it is in the role of the church that they will differ. Newman appeals to the need for an authorised interpretive magisterium and the providential care of God. Warfield will put the church - and he DOES have an ecclesiological concern - is the role of a hearing, listening and obeying church, the church that recognises rather than authorises the authority of scripture....

BB Warfield said one day:

'The Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church'.

Quite. This is what happens with thinkers with a legacy so enormous: it fissures, such that widely differing schools can both validly claim them as forebears.