2008 Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield Memorial Lecture

On

The Church and Culture

With

Dr. Gene Edward Veith

Friday, May 9^th, 2008

at the Meinders School of Business, Oklahoma City University

Biography

Dr. Gene Edward Veith is a native Oklahoman and received his B.A. in Letters from the University of Kansas.  Dr. Veith is currently serving as Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College.  Prior to coming to Patrick Henry College, he was the Culture Editor of World Magazine.  His other academic postings include Professor of English at Concodia University, Northeastern Oklahoma A&M, and visiting professor at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Regent College, and Wheaton College.  He has been a Fellow at the Capital Research Center and the Heritage Foundation.  Dr. Veith  serves as the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary which is dedicated to working out the implications of the Lutheran doctrine of vocation and engaging contemporary culture with the truths of the Lutheran confessions.  He is also a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals which is committed to engaging our culture and churches with Reformed theology.  Dr. Veith has written 17 books dealing with various aspects of Christianity and culture, and his Postmodern Times was the winner of the 1994 Christianity Today Book Award.  He and his wife, Jackquelyn, reside in Purcellville, VA.

Topic

Dr. Veith will examine the tragic proposition of why the Church looks and thinks so much like our contemporary culture.  For example, the divorce rate of our culture and the Church is the same.  Evangelical teenagers are just as sexually active as their non-Christian friends.  If our conduct mirrors our culture and indeed there is ample evidence to suggest this, then what compelling message do we bring to the world?  As tragic, the rise of postmodern thought has also entered the Church.  The result is a loss of the transcendence of God, absolute truth, and an acceptance of syncretism, pragmatism, and pluralism.  Dr. Veith will explore the implications of such conduct and theology and the history that has brought us to this point and remind us that the Church is to counter our culture with our distinctive message rather than be co-opted by it.

Books by Dr. Veith

Postmodern Times:  A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture

The Spirituality of the Cross:  The Way of the First Evangelicals

God at Work:  Your Christian Vocation in All of Life

Register at (800) 956-2644 or through the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Location

The School of Business is located on the eastern boundary of the campus of Oklahoma City University at 27th & McKinley.  The physical address is 2701 N. Blackwelder. Note that Blackwelder is blocked off; therefore, use McKinley.

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology

Princeton Theological Seminary

1887-1921

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born near Lexington, Kentucky on the 5^th of November 1851.  He graduated from Princeton in 1871 with the highest of honors at the age of nineteen, excelling in mathematics and physics.  While studying in Europe, he announced his intention of preparing for Christian ministry. 

    Upon graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1876, he returned to Europe again to further his studies.  Returning to America, Warfield served a short period as a pastor and then accepted a position in the Department of New Testament Language and Literature at Western Theological Seminary.  He remained there for nine years. 

     In 1887, he was called to Princeton Theological Seminary to succeed A.A. Hodge as the Charles Hodge professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology.  He continued in this position for thirty-three years until his death on the 17^th of February 1921.  Dr. Warfield combined erudition in Greek exegesis, systematic theology, and church history.  He was a tireless defender of the Reformed faith.

The core of the Christian profession is, according to Warfield, the confession of a supernatural God, who may and does act in a supernatural mode, and who acting in a supernatural mode has wrought out for us a supernatural redemption, interpreted in a supernatural revelation, and applied by the supernatural operations of His Spirit.  The starting point of his theology was the majesty of God and his authority over creation.

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     Throughout the history of the Church, the great doctrines of the faith were forged in the fires of debate as in Pelagius & Augustine, Luther & Erasmus, Calvin & Eck, and Whitefield & Wesley. In sponsoring this lecture series, it is the desire of Grace Bible Church to promote the exchange and examination of the great historic doctrines of the Church, foster a corporate sense of the relevance of the Christian faith and Reformed theology to our culture, and challenge the individual believer to connect with the historic Christian faith.