Podcast Episode 52
BB Warfield
with Dr. Paul Helseth & host Nick Walters
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He finished his lecture. He closed his notes. He walked out of the classroom at Princeton—and within hours, he was gone.
Episode 52 of This Week in Christian History explores the final class, sudden death, and enduring theological legacy of Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, the most formidable defender of orthodoxy in the era of Old Princeton.
Hosted by Nick Walters, founder of the Center for Christian History at Mississippi College, this episode follows the established format:
• An interview with Nick Walters examining Warfield’s life and last day
• A Deep Dive with Dr. Paul K. Helseth of the University of Northwestern–St. Paul
• Historical highlights from the same week, including Frederick Douglass and missionaries Lettie Cowman and Charles E. Cowman
For more than three decades, Warfield served at Princeton Theological Seminary, the intellectual center of what historians call “Old Princeton.” This was not merely a location or a faculty roster. Old Princeton represented a theological method—careful exegesis, confessional fidelity, and rigorous engagement with modern intellectual challenges. Alongside Charles Hodge and A. A. Hodge, Warfield articulated and defended a robust doctrine of Scripture at a moment when higher criticism and theological liberalism were reshaping Protestant seminaries across Europe and America.
Warfield’s scholarship was formidable. His work on inspiration and authority helped define what would later be called the doctrine of inerrancy. Yet he was not a reactionary figure retreating from modernity. He read widely in philosophy, interacted with scientific discussions of his day, and wrote extensively on church history, Christology, and soteriology. He believed Christianity could withstand scrutiny—not because it avoided questions, but because it answered them.
But Episode 52 centers on a particular day: February 16, 1921.
Warfield delivered what would be his final lecture. There was no dramatic farewell, no announced retirement, no sense of impending finality. He simply completed his class as he had done for decades—teaching theology with precision and pastoral seriousness. Soon after returning home, he suffered a fatal heart attack. His sudden death shocked colleagues and students alike.
Symbolically, his passing marked the end of an era. Within the decade, the reorganization of Princeton Seminary would fundamentally alter its theological trajectory. The Old Princeton synthesis—scholarly Calvinism rooted in confessional Presbyterianism—would give way to new institutional realities. Warfield’s death thus stands at a hinge point in American Protestant history.
In our Deep Dive, Dr. Paul Helseth helps frame Warfield not as a caricatured fundamentalist, but as a theologian of intellectual depth and pastoral concern. Why did Warfield devote such energy to defending Scripture? What did he believe was at stake? How should modern Christians understand his legacy amid contemporary debates over biblical authority?
This episode also places Warfield within a broader Christian historical landscape.
We remember Frederick Douglass, whose prophetic critique of American slavery was inseparable from his understanding of Christian morality. Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of slaveholding Christianity while affirming the justice of Christ’s gospel.
We also highlight Lettie Cowman and Charles E. Cowman, founders of the Oriental Missionary Society (now OMS International). Their missionary labors in Japan and the devotional writings that followed shaped global evangelical spirituality in the twentieth century.
From abolitionist reform to global missions to Princeton’s theological debates, Episode 52 situates Warfield within a wider narrative: Christians wrestling with modernity, Scripture, culture, and global evangelism.
If Old Princeton represents a moment when theology was both intellectually serious and confessionally grounded, Warfield remains one of its clearest voices. His final class was not a planned farewell—but in hindsight, it stands as a closing chapter in a defining era of American theological education.
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