Richard B. Gaffin Jr., arguably the preeminent Reformed biblical theologian of the last half century, not only grew up in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but providentially has been involved in its life in remarkable ways. The son of missionaries Richard and Pauline Gaffin, he may have been the first covenant child born—on July 7, 1936, in Peiping, China—in the then twenty-six-day-old Presbyterian Church that J. Gresham Machen and others founded. When World War II broke out and the Gaffin family had to relocate to America, the entire family, including Richard Jr.’s grandparents, Harold and Jesse, poured themselves into Grace OPC in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Richard Sr. pastored, Harold served on the session as a ruling elder, and Pauline gave herself endlessly in teaching youth. For Richard Jr., it was an education both in trusting Christ as the one who builds the church and in servant-leadership as modeled by his family members.

In November 1947, Richard Sr. returned to China on behalf of the Committee on Foreign Missions (CFM) to explore the possibility of reestablishing a mission there. Pauline and the children—Margaret, Richard Jr., Harold, and John—went to live in Wildwood, New Jersey, where the Boardwalk Chapel had just opened. Here Richard Jr. was exposed to evangelism and outreach in the OPC. Then in 1950, he participated in the inaugural French Creek Bible Conference and there met fellow camper Jean Young.

When the door to service in China closed, the CFM asked the Gaffins to consider service in Taiwan. Richard Sr. left for Taiwan in 1951, and Pauline and the three boys moved to Wyncote, Pennsylvania. There they joined nearby Calvary OPC in Glenside. Fourteen-year-old Richard Jr. made public profession of faith and became a communicant member in April 1951. Even after his high school graduation from the William Penn Charter School when he left to attend the University of Southern California in 1954, his ties to the OPC were evident as he worshiped at Faith OPC in Long Beach, and even lived with Pastor Glenn Coie and family for two summers.

In 1956, Richard Jr. transferred to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was due to the strong encouragement of Robert Atwell, his pastor at Calvary OPC, and the presence at Calvin of many of his friends, including Bernard “Chip” Stonehouse, Peter Steen, Donald Duff, and especially Jean Young. Two years later, on August 23, 1958, Richard Jr. married Jean. Soon after, he enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS), a school whose faculty included OP ministers Cornelius Van Til, John Murray, Ned Stonehouse, Edmund Clowney, Meredith Kline, John Skilton, Paul Woolley, and Richard Jr’s new father-in-law, Edward Young.

Working Hard at WTS

For his master’s dissertation at WTS under Murray, Gaffin chose to study John Calvin’s doctrine of the Sabbath. The topic of the Sabbath held interest for Gaffin because the members of the OPC in the main, and more specifically his parents, were Sabbatarians who embraced the teaching of the Westminster Standards on religious worship and the Sabbath. He sought to know whether the Bible supported such Sabbath-keeping. Gaffin’s answer after researching the topic was yes, that a weekly Sabbath continues in force until Christ returns to make the promised consummation rest a reality for believers.

It was in arriving at this conclusion that the theological genius of Princeton theologian Geerhardus Vos began to dawn on Gaffin. Vos argued that the Sabbath’s main significance rested in its pointing forward to the eternal issues of life and history. In Genesis 2:2–3, eschatological Sabbath rest is in view prior to the fall into sin and its consequences. As Gaffin would later point out in his article “A Sabbath-Rest Still Awaits the People of God,” a difference existed, however, between Creator and image-bearing creature. The creating work of God is finished and his rest begun (Heb. 4:3b–4); Adam’s task had yet to be performed, his rest being still future (Heb. 4:9). Gaffin further gleaned that the shift in observance from the seventh day in the old covenant to the first day in the new covenant is an index of hope realized, that is, of the new creation rest inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians begin each week gathering in the presence of the risen Christ on the Lord’s Day. This Sabbath-rest is a sign that salvation is not just a future hope but a present possession. For Christians to keep the Sabbath is an act of confession that witnesses to the reality that God is the Lord over our time and that our time is really his time.

Awarded the WTS faculty stipend for graduate study, with the provision that it must be used for study abroad, Gaffin attended the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany, in 1962–1963. He then returned to Philadelphia and took a job working as a statistician to support his growing family, Richard III having been born in 1962 (Steven would be born in 1964 and Lisl in 1967). In 1964, WTS hired Gaffin as a teaching fellow and the next year promoted him to the faculty as an instructor in New Testament. He was ordained on June 15, 1965, as an OP minister. His ordination service was a family affair: his father read Scripture and prayed, and his father-in-law preached. Later that summer, he and his father drove to Portland, Oregon, where they both served as commissioners to the Thirty-Second (1965) General Assembly.

Teaching at WTS, Gaffin sought to promote Machen’s Reformed orthodoxy, Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic, and Vos’s biblical theology. He taught that the method of the theological enterprise is found in Scripture itself. Further, believers share a common redemptive historical horizon with the Apostle Paul—together, they look back to the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, while they await his return from heaven. Believers “already” are new creation and experience resurrection-life through faith-union with Christ, although that resurrection life is “not yet” bodily existence in heaven with Christ. A basic interest of theology, then, should be the expounding of “already, not yet” as it relates to the mystery that has been kept secret for ages but now is manifested with the coming of Christ.

Resurrection and Redemption

In 1969, Gaffin finished his PhD dissertation, Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Pauline Soteriology. Building again upon Vos, Gaffin sought to show the centrality of the believer’s union with the now-exalted Christ. A key passage was 1 Corinthians 15:42–49. In verses 42–44a, Paul contrasts the dead body of the believer with his resurrection body. The one body is characterized by perishability, dishonor, and weakness. The other body is characterized by imperishability, glory, and power. But, as Gaffin points out, Paul then makes a new argument in verse 44b (“if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body”) while still preserving the parallelism and contrast of verses 42–44a. Paul’s new argument is this—Adam by virtue of creation and not by virtue of the fall into sin anticipated a Spiritual hope of bodily life in heaven with God in full. This higher hope was lost through the sin of Adam, but it was regained and realized through the resurrection of the second Adam, Jesus Christ (“Thus, it is written, ‘the first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit,’ ” [v. 45]). In Gaffin’s judgment, the perspective from which then Paul views the believer’s resurrection is nothing less than cosmic. Resurrection life in Christ brings to completion the goal of heavenly life in a different body suited for full communion with God, which was set before Adam from the beginning.

Laboring for the Church

The same year that Gaffin finished his dissertation, his involvement in service to the OPC increased. He was elected by the Thirty-Sixth (1969) General Assembly to serve on the Committee on Foreign Missions (CFM). That assembly also elected him to a Special Committee on Sabbath Matters and a Special Committee on Scripture and Inspiration. Then, the Thirty-Eighth (1971) General Assembly elected him to serve on the Committee on Proof Texts for the Shorter Catechism. This was followed that summer by the CFM elevating him to president.

WTS promoted Gaffin in 1978 to professor of New Testament. In his inaugural address, “The Usefulness of the Cross,” Gaffin focused on what it means for believers to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven, which has dawned with the resurrection of Christ. He appealed to Philippians 3:10, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,” to show that the believer’s transformation from glory to glory is conformity to Christ’s death and suffering. Gaffin concluded that where the church is not conformed to its Savior in suffering, it ceases to be true to itself as the church. It is without glory and will not inherit glory.

In 1979, Gaffin published Perspectives on Pentecost, which defended the cessationist view of revelatory gifts of the Spirit. Gaffin argued that the teaching of the New Testament about the Spirit’s work was focused on Christ’s work at Pentecost. At Pentecost, Christ comes as life-giving Spirit to the church. The gift of the Spirit is not a post-conversion, second-blessing experience that some believers possess and other believers do not. All believers joined by faith to Christ share in the gift of the Spirit.

OPC and the 1980s and 1990s

Recognizing both his outstanding theological contributions to the Reformed world and his servant-leadership as president of CFM, the Fifty-First (1984) General Assembly elected Gaffin as moderator. But it was not just on the general assembly level that Gaffin was giving himself to the church. The same year he served as moderator, he also volunteered with his wife Jean to serve as part of the kitchen staff at the French Creek Bible Conference, something the two of them did for fifteen years.

The 1980s also marked a transition to glory of many of the first generation of Orthodox Presbyterians whom Gaffin had known since childhood, including Cornelius Van Til. Much like Van Til had the solemn honor of preaching at Vos’s memorial service, Gaffin preached from 1 Corinthians 1:18–25, “The Scandal of the Cross,” at Van Til’s memorial service at WTS. God gives to believers wisdom—Christ-centered, age-to-come wisdom—that the rulers of this age view as foolishness, he reflected.

In 1993, Gaffin helped to start a new mission work, Gwynedd Valley OPC (since 2007 Cornerstone in Ambler, Pennsylvania). For the next twenty-five years, he would be involved (and Jean also) in nearly every part of that congregation’s life, including many years on the session. He continued his active participation in the Presbytery of Philadelphia, administering the Greek examination for men under care, and at the general assembly level with membership not only on the CFM, but also on the Committee on Ecumenicity and Interchurch Relations (1989–2004), the Special Committee to Study Admission to the Lord’s Supper (1991–1993), and the Special Committee on the Doctrine of Justification (2004–2006). The respect that the general assembly of the OPC has shown for Gaffin is seen in the fact that no individual in the history of the OPC has been elected or appointed to serve on more special committees than the fourteen that he has served on over the span of six decades.

Resting Well

In 2008 at the age of seventy-two, Gaffin retired as full-time professor at WTS. During his forty-three years teaching there, over 350 future ministers in the OPC sat under his ministry. No other teacher in the history of the OPC has approached such personal engagement with so many men aspiring to gospel ministry. This number does not include the many other pastors and ruling elders who sat under Gaffin’s teaching ministry at countless camps and conferences where he served as a speaker, nor the many who have read his books and articles.

At the Seventy-Ninth (2012) General Assembly, he had the privilege once more of being part of a father-son duo at the assembly, as both he and his son, Richard III, served as commissioners. Throughout the decade, Gaffin continued as president of the CFM.

In 2019, Jean, his beloved wife of sixty years, died and went to be with the Lord. At that time, Gaffin also transferred to the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic as he had moved with Jean in 2016 to the Washington, DC, area and begun worshiping at Grace Presbyterian in Vienna, Virginia, where Richard III serves as a ruling elder. In 2021, after fifty-two years of service on the Committee on Foreign Missions, Gaffin retired from committee service.

Still, his service to the church and to his Lord continues, as seen with the publication this year of In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul. In the preface to the book, Gaffin stated that during his ministry he has seen himself as involved, in large part, in building upon Vos’s redemptive-historical insights into the wonderful riches of God’s Word, a labor which Gaffin was deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to do.

We who have benefitted from the teaching of Gaffin are also deeply grateful.

The author is editor of New Horizons. New Horizons, October 2022.