Charles Hodge

Charles Hodge (1797 - 1878), was a highly influential American theologian best known for formulating the "Princeton Theology" that later became the foundation of much Fundamentalist thought. Hodge was a Presbyterian who revised Calvinism, adding an emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible.

Career

Hodge was the son of a surgeon in Philadelphia. He was educated at Princeton College (class of 1815) and at the Princeton Theological Seminary (class of 1819), where he studied with Archibald Alexander. He took advanced training in France and Germany, where he studied the theology of Calvin and Turretin. Alexander was the founder of Princeton Theology, but Hodge systematized and deepened it. Hodge taught at Princeton Seminary 1820 to 1878, helping establish its reputation. He was professor of Oriental and Biblical literature from 1822 to 1840, and then of theology.

Hodge has a powerful impact on student--as much from his personal piety as his lectures. The Bible was his guide, and he developed the doctrine of verbal inspiration and infallibility. Hodge said his theology was only the teaching of the Bible, and his views hardly varied over time. He famously boasted after 50 years as a professor, "A new idea never originated in this seminary." While Calvinism was losing its role elsewhere in in American thought, Hodge stood as a solid wall against revivalism (which flourished in the Third Great Awakening), against the German higher criticism was altering understanding of the Bible, and against the notion that society and morality was continuously evolving. Princeton Theology became a powerfully conservative force in the thought of the Presbyterian Church and of other American Protestant denominations.

Hodge's writings were highly influential in conservative circles in America and Scotland. He began the Biblical Repertory in 1825 and edited it for more than forty years. His own essays and long book reviews treated theology, Biblical criticism, philosophy, ethics, politics, ecclesiastical polity, and the affairs of the Presbyterian Church. His major books were A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1835; 19th edition 1880), The Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (2 vols., 1839-40), commentaries on other Pauline epistles, The Way of Life (1841), and finally his monumental Systematic Theology (3 vols., 1872-73).

He was a leader in the conservative or "Old School" wing of the Presbyterian church. He was moderator of the General Assembly (Old School) in 1846, and an active member of the missionary and educational boards. Though opposed to the institution of slavery, he strongly denounced the abolitionists, and contended that slave-holding was not necessarily a sin. During the Civil War, he resisted the church's declaring itself on the question of political allegiance, but he supported the Federal government. In the January 1861 Princeton Review Hodge laid out his case against secession, calling it unconstitutional.

Theology

Historians agree that Alexander and Hodge were strongly influenced by Common Sense Realism, a Scottish philosophy, and some have argued that have argued that they departed from Reformed Presbyterian orthodoxy by accommodating the prevalent "orthodox rationalism" of the period. Helseth (1999), however, says both theologians worked within a traditional Reformed view of the moral unity of the soul, which insists that mind, will, and emotion are determined by the moral character of a unified acting agent rather than the rational faculty alone. From this moral perspective, the emphasis on objectivity in Old Princeton apologetic need not be understood as an overly intellectualized faith but one whose concept of "right reason" leaves room for Reformed orthodoxy's theological and subjective concerns.

Hodge in 1822 he married a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin; two of their eight children, Archibald Alexander Hodge and Caspar Wistar Hodge, became professors in Princeton Seminary.