2008 Benjamin Breckinridge
Warfield Memorial Lecture
On
The Church and Culture
With
Dr. Gene Edward Veith
Friday, May 9th, 2008
at the
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
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology
1887-1921
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield
was born near Lexington, Kentucky on the 5th
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
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 17th
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
