Who Was C. I. Scofield? The Man Behind the Scofield Reference Bible

Biography Bible Study Prophecy Holy Spirit

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American Bible teacher who lived from 1843 to 1921. He's remembered above all for the Scofield Reference Bible, first published by Oxford University Press in 1909. Its notes printed on the same page as the King James text taught millions of readers to see the Bible as one unfolding plan, divided into ages or "dispensations," with a distinct future for Israel and the church. Few books shaped American Bible reading in the twentieth century more.

But Scofield came late to faith. He was a lawyer and politician before he was a preacher, and he was thirty-six when he was converted. Here's the story of his life, what he taught, and which of his books to read first.

Michigan, Tennessee and the war

Scofield was born on August 19, 1843, in Lenawee County, Michigan. His mother died soon after his birth, and while he was still a boy the family moved to middle Tennessee. He grew up there, reading what books he could find. When the Civil War came he was a teenager, and he served for a time in the Confederate army.

Kansas law and politics

After the war Scofield studied law in St. Louis and then settled in Kansas. He did well quickly. He was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives, and in 1873 he was appointed United States District Attorney for Kansas.

Those years ended badly. He left the office within a short time, he was drinking hard, and his first marriage broke apart. Friendly accounts of his life passed over much of this, and later writers have found debts and legal troubles from the same years. Scofield himself never pretended he had been a good man before Christ found him.

Converted in St. Louis

In 1879, back in St. Louis, a friend spoke to him plainly about Christ, and Scofield believed. He began at once to study the Bible under James H. Brookes, a Presbyterian pastor in the city who taught the Bible book by book and was a leader in the prophecy conferences of that day. Scofield helped in D. L. Moody's meetings in St. Louis, and he soon felt called to preach.

His own conversion explains a lot about his preaching. He knew that the Christian life is not the old self made better, but a new life given:

The old man under the new gospel is to be crucified with Christ, not improved by higher ideals.
The New Life in Christ Jesus, The Imparted Life

Pastor in Dallas and Northfield

In the early 1880s Scofield went to Dallas, Texas, to a small Congregational mission church. He was ordained in 1883. The church, which became the First Congregational Church of Dallas, grew under his teaching from a handful of members to several hundred. In 1884 he married again, to Hettie Hall von Wartz.

In 1888 he published Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth, a small book that set out his way of reading the Bible. In 1890 he helped found the Central American Mission to take the gospel to Central America. He also began a Bible correspondence course that thousands of students took by mail. Many of their questions and his answers were later gathered in Dr. C. I. Scofield's Question Box.

In 1895 Moody asked him to become pastor of the Congregational church at East Northfield, Massachusetts, the home of Moody's schools and summer Bible conferences. Scofield taught at those conferences for years. He later returned to the Dallas church for a time.

The Reference Bible

Around 1902 friends urged Scofield to put his teaching into the margins of the Bible itself. He spent most of the next seven years on the work, much of it in England, where he had the help of scholars at Oxford. The Scofield Reference Bible came out in 1909, and a revised edition followed in 1917. It gave chain references for following a subject through Scripture, headings for every section, and notes explaining the dispensations, the covenants, prophecy and the difference between Israel and the church.

One line from his answers to students sums up how he read the Old Testament:

It is well to remember that all Scripture was written for us, but all Scripture was not written to us.
Dr. C. I. Scofield's Question Box, Israel and the Church

In 1914 he helped found the Philadelphia School of the Bible. He spent his last years writing, teaching and answering letters, and died at his home on Long Island, New York, on July 24, 1921.

What he taught

Scofield's name is tied to prophecy, and his Addresses on Prophecy show why. He taught that this age is not meant to convert the whole world but to call out the church, that Christ will come for His people before the great tribulation, and that Israel will be restored and Christ will reign on the earth for a thousand years. He insisted that prophecy is practical, not a puzzle:

There is not a proposition of truth which is not intended by Almighty God to have an influence upon conduct.
Addresses on Prophecy, Influence of Prophetic Truth upon Character and Conduct

But the heart of his preaching was grace. He drew a hard line between law and grace and loved to show that salvation rests on Christ's finished work alone:

We are not saved by Christ's death and something else, but by His death, and by that alone.
No Room in the Inn, and Other Interpretations, The Atonement

He also taught a great deal about the Holy Spirit. In Plain Papers on the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit he argued that every believer is already indwelt by the Spirit, but that being filled with the Spirit is something to be sought, and that it is not optional for a holy life and fruitful service.

Why he's still read

Christians still argue about the details of Scofield's system. Even so, his influence is everywhere. The Bible colleges, prophecy conferences and study Bibles of the twentieth century carry his stamp. And readers who come to his own books find something they may not expect: a warm, plain teacher who keeps pointing to Christ. His sermons on the inner life are as practical as anything he wrote on prophecy.

For his life as his friends saw it, read The Life Story of C. I. Scofield by Charles G. Trumbull, written while Scofield was still alive. It's an admiring portrait and leaves out the hard parts of his early years, but it's full of firsthand detail.

Where to start

TheWay Library has six of Scofield's books, all free to read. Start with The New Life in Christ Jesus, nine short addresses on moving from defeat to victory and joy. Then read Plain Papers on the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, only about an hour long. If you want his teaching on the last things, go to Addresses on Prophecy.

Our guide to C. I. Scofield's books explains all six, and our collection of C. I. Scofield quotes gathers his best lines with their sources. You'll find his books on the C. I. Scofield author page.