Benjamin B. Warfield — An Answer to Dr. Briggs’ “Shortest Catechism” (reprinted from the Detroit Free Press, 27 May 1891), transcribed from the page images of the Internet Archive scan.
Written on 21 May 1891 and put privately into the hands of a commissioner at the General Assembly, the paper takes the questions put to Dr. Briggs by the directors of Union Seminary, shows how each might have been framed to raise the real issues (Scripture and Reason, inspiration, the miracles, sanctification, the intermediate state) and sets beside each the answers Dr. Briggs had already printed.
Great interest has been awakened in church circles generally by the publication of what is now known as Dr. Briggs’ catechism which his friends hoped would be accepted by the Presbyterian Church as a substitute for the larger and shorter catechisms of the Westminster Standards. Dr. Briggs’ answers to this shortest catechism have been urged by his friends as a reason why the general assembly, now in session, should defer action and not veto his election as a professor in Union Seminary. The following review of Dr. Briggs’ answers to this catechism has been furnished to THE FREE PRESS by Mr. John J. McCook, an elder in the Fifth Avenue Church, New York (Dr. John Hall, pastor), a commissioner from the presbytery of New York to the general assembly:
Dr. Briggs’ Catechism.
The New York Tribune of May 20 (it also appears in The Evangelist of May 21) contained a brief catechism which the directors of Union Seminary laid, it seems, before Dr. Briggs, and with his answers to which they report that they listened with satisfaction. This catechism does not touch upon many matters as to which the Presbyterian Church would like to be informed more exactly of Dr. Briggs’ opinions; it is therefore deficient, considered as a reply to the objections that have been raised as to his teachings. It is more important to observe, however, that in the matters upon which it does teach, the catechism does not raise the real issues under discussion but rather obtains answers to questions not at all or little in dispute. The object of this brief paper is to point out how the questions might have been framed so as to give the church some information on the points at issue. For this purpose let us pass in review the questions that were asked and note how far each question really touches upon matters at issue and what answers Dr. Briggs would have given on the real issues, had the committee of the directors been so kind as to place them before him.
QUESTION FIRST. A.
“Do you consider the Bible, the Church and the Reason as co-ordinate sources of authority. Answer—No.” What Dr. Briggs here denies is that he makes these three sources co-ordinate in the sense of co-equal; he does not deny that he makes each of them an independent source of knowledge of God, by which, apart from or in opposition to the others, we may savingly find God. But this latter is the real matter at issue. Hence the question needs modification, thus:
QUESTION AS IT OUGHT TO BE ASKED.—“Do you teach that men may obtain that knowledge of God which is necessary for their salvation and find God savingly, by the Reason independently of and apart from the revelation of God given in the Scriptures; and therefore that the revelation of God given in His written Word is not necessary to salvation?”
DR. BRIGGS’ ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.—“Martineau could not find Divine authority in the Church or the Bible, but he did find God enthroned in his own soul. There are those who would refuse these rationalists a place in the company of the faithful. But they forget that the essential thing is to find God—Divine certainty. * * *” (Inaugural Address, p. 27.) “Men are influenced by their temperaments and environments which of the ways of access to God they may pursue.” (Ibid., p. 28.) If it be heresy to say that rationalists like Martineau have found God in the reason and Roman Catholics like Newman have found God in the church, I rejoice in such heresy, and I do not hesitate to say that I have less doubt of the salvation of Martineau or Newman than I have of the modern pharisees who would exclude such noble men—so pure, so grand, the ornaments of Great Britain and the prophets of the age—from the kingdom of God.”—(New York Herald, May 15, 1891.)
“Unless God’s authority is discerned in the forms of the Reason, there is no ground upon which any of the heathen could ever have been saved, for they know nothing of the Bible or Church. If they are not savingly enlightened by the light of the world in the forms of the Reason, the whole heathen world is lost forever.”—(Inaugural address, 2nd ed., pp. 88–89.)