While Warfield is on solid ground to affirm the objectivity, intelligibility, and clarity of God’s revelation to all men, he makes a wrong turn, so to speak, when he holds that the evidence for Christianity only yields probable certainty (W2).

In his article, “The Real Problem of Inspiration,” Warfield addresses the matter of biblical evidence for the trustworthiness of the teaching of Jesus and the apostles.

Of course, this evidence is not in the strict logical sense “demonstrative;” it is “probable” evidence. It therefore leaves open the metaphysical possibility of its being mistaken. But it may be contended that it is about as great in amount and weight as “probable” evidence can be made, and that the strength of conviction which it is adapted to produce may be and should be practically equal to that produced by demonstration itself. ¹

Inductive examination of the evidence in the nature of the case, for Warfield, can never yield absolute certainty even when the evidence is absolutely clear.²

With regard to (W3), the natural man’s ability to assess natural revelation and the evidences of the truth of Christianity in special revelation, Warfield drew the illegitimate conclusion that the unbeliever can use “right reason” to properly do this.³ While Warfield recognized the noetic effects of sin, he did not apparently understand that to undermine the role of reason in assessing evidence of various kinds.

Entering into this phase of the discussion is the concern of both Warfield and Kuyper with the scientific nature of real knowledge, especially the scientific nature of Christian theology. Science here is not limited to the natural sciences, but rather includes all disciplines that organize knowledge, including what Kuyper referred to as the “spiritual sciences” such as psychology and theology.

Ideally, there is only one science to which members of the human race who are engaged in the scientific enterprise contribute. This includes both believers and unbelievers. Additionally, Warfield’s approach to natural revelation at times seems to gloss over the difference between natural or general revelation which reveals God to man in nature and fallen man’s formulation of a natural theology which is a response to that revelation.⁴

End Notes
1. Warfield, “The Real Problem,” Works, 1: 218. The reader will note that Warfield is dealing with the evidence of special revelation at this point, but I think it is safe to say that if the evidence for special revelation yields only probable certainty regarding the truth of Christianity, the same could be said for natural revelation as well.

2. See future blog segments for further discussion of abstract induction.

3. Van Til noted that Warfield’s use of the expression “right reason” was somewhat opaque, but he thought it yielded the notion of neutral reason shared by both believer and unbeliever alike, Defense, 284. More recently the work of Paul Helseth has called this assumption into question. See his “The Apologetical Tradition of the OPC: A Reconsideration” in WTJ 60, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 109-129 and “B. B. Warfield’s Appeal to “Right Reason”: Evidence of a “Rather Bald Rationalism,” in Scottish Bulletin for Evangelical Theology 16 August 1998: 156-177. Related articles include “Re-Imagining the Princeton Mind: Postconservative Evangelicalism, Old Princeton, and the Rise of Neo-Fundamentalism,” in JETS 45, no. 3 (Spring 2002): 427-450; “‘Right Reason’ and the Princeton Mind: The Moral Context,” in Journal of Presbyterian History 77, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 13-28 and “B. B. Warfield on the Apologetic Nature of Christian Scholarship: An Analysis of His Solution to the Problem of the Relationship Between Christianity and Culture,” in WTJ 62, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 89-111.

4. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 598.