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Charles Hodge (December 27, 1797 – June 19, 1878) was a Reformed Presbyterian theologian and principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878.
He was a leading exponent of the Princeton Theology, an orthodox Calvinist theological tradition in America during the 19th century. He advocated for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Many of his ideas were adopted in the 20th century by Fundamentalists and Evangelicals.George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (2006) pp. 19–20, 111–113
Hodge's two brothers died in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 and another yellow fever epidemic in 1795. Hugh Lenox, was born in 1796 and survived his childhood. He is Charles Hodge's brother. Hugh Lenox became an authority in obstetrics He maintained a good relationship with Charles and provided financial assistance to him. Charles was born on December 27, 1797. His father died seven months later of complications from the yellow fever he had contracted in the epidemic of 1795. They were brought up by relatives and Mary Hodge. She, with the help of the family's minister Ashbel Green, also provided the customary Presbyterian religious education using the Westminster Shorter Catechism. They moved to Somerville, New Jersey in 1810 in order to attend a classical academy, and again to Princeton in 1812 in order to enter Princeton College, a school originally organized to train Presbyterian ministers. As Charles prepared to enter the college, Princeton Theological Seminary was being established by the Presbyterian Church as a separate institution for training ministers in response to a perceived inadequacy in the training ministers were receiving at the university as well as the perception that the college was drifting from orthodoxy. Also in 1812, Ashbel Green, the Hodge's old minister, became president of the college.
Archibald Alexander, the initial president of Princeton Seminary, offered help to Hodge. He instructing him Greek and accompanying him on itinerant preaching excursions. Hodge named his first son after Alexander. Hodge developed close friendships with future Episcopalian bishops John Johns and Charles McIlvaine, as well as future Princeton College president John Mclean. In 1815, amid a period of intense religious fervor among the students inspired by Green and Alexander, Hodge joined the local Presbyterian church and resolved to enter the ministry. He enrolled at the seminary shortly after finishing his undergraduate studies in 1816. The course of study was tough, forcing students to recite scripture in its original languages and employ the dogmatics written in Latin in the 17th century by Reformed scholastic Francis Turretin as a theological textbook. Professors Alexander and Samuel Miller also inculcated an intense piety in their students.
After Hodge graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1819, received additional instruction privately from Hebrew scholar Rev. Joseph Bates in Philadelphia. He was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1820, and he preached regularly as a missionary in vacant pulpits in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia, the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, and Woodbury, New Jersey over the subsequent months. In 1820 he accepted a one-year appointment as assistant professor at Princeton Seminary to teach biblical languages. In October of that year he traveled throughout New England to speak with professors and ministers including Moses Stuart at Andover Seminary and Nathaniel W. Taylor at Yale Divinity School. In 1821 he was ordained a minister by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, and in 1822 he published his first pamphlet, which allowed Alexander to convince the General Assembly to appoint him full Professor of Oriental and Biblical Literature. Financially stable, Hodge married Sarah Bache, Benjamin Franklin's great-granddaughter in the same year. In 1824, Hodge helped to found the Chi Phi Society along with Robert Baird and Archibald Alexander. He founded the quarterly Biblical Repertory in 1825 to translate the current scholarly literature on the Bible from Europe.
Hodge's study of European scholarship led him to question the adequacy of his training. The seminary agreed to continue to pay him for two years while he traveled in Europe to "round out" his education. He supplied a substitute, John Nevin on his own expense. From 1826 to 1828 he traveled to Paris, where he studied French, Arabic, and Syriac; Halle, where he studied German with George Müller and made the acquaintance of August Tholuck; and Berlin where he attended the lectures of Silvestre de Sacy, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, and August Neander. There he also became personally acquainted with Friedrich Schleiermacher, the leading modern theologian. He admired the deep scholarship he witnessed in Germany, but thought that the attention given to idealist philosophy clouded common sense, and led to speculative and subjective theology. Unlike other American theologians who spent time in Europe, Hodge's experience did not cause any change in his commitment to the principles of the faith he had learned from childhood.
In 1833, Hodge suffered severe leg pain and lost the use of his limbs. He continued to write articles for Biblical Repertory, now renamed the Princeton Review. During the 1830s he wrote a major commentary on Romans and a history of the Presbyterian church in America. He supported the Old School in the Old School–New School Controversy, which resulted in a split in 1837. In 1840 he became Professor of Didactic Theology, retaining, however, the department of New Testament exegesis, the duties of which he continued to discharge until his death. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Old School) in 1846. Hodge's wife died in 1849, shortly followed by Samuel Miller and Archibald Alexander, leaving him the senior professor of the seminary. He was recognized as the leading proponent of the Princeton theology. On his death in 1878 he was recognized by both friends and opponents as one of the greatest polemicists of his time. Of his children who survived him, three were ministers; and two of these succeeded him in the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, C. W. Hodge, in the department of exegetical theology, and A. A. Hodge, in that of dogmatics. A grandson, C. W. Hodge, Jr., also taught for many years at Princeton Seminary.
Other works followed at intervals of longer or shorter duration – Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (1840); Way of Life (1841, republished in England, translated into other languages, and circulated to the extent of 35,000 copies in America); Commentary on Ephesians (1856); on First Corinthians (1857); on Second Corinthians (1859). His magnum opus is the Systematic Theology (1871–1873), of 3 volumes and extending to 2,260 pages. His last book, What is Darwinism? appeared in 1874. In addition, he contributed upward of 130 articles to the Princeton Review, many of which, besides exerting a powerful influence at the time of their publication, have since been gathered into volumes, and as Selection of Essays and Reviews from the Princeton Review (1857) and Discussions in Church Polity (ed. W. Durant, 1878) have taken a permanent place in theological literature. All of the books that he authored have remained in print over a century after his death.
Hodge has great influence in his time. He was granted the uncommon privilege of achieving distinction as a teacher, exegete, preacher, controversialist, ecclesiastic and systematic theologian over the course of a long existence, and 3,000 ministers of the Gospel underwent his instruction. He was a great teacher who displayed popular gifts in the pulpit and revealed homiletic powers of a high order in the "conferences" on Sabbath afternoons.
Hodge has made great contributions to the Princeton Theological Review, many of which are acknowledged masterpieces of controversial writing. They cover a wide range of topics, from apologetics questions that concern common Christianity to questions of ecclesiastical administration, in which only have been supposed to take interest. But the questions in debate among American theologians during the period covered by Hodge's life belonged, for the most part, to the departments of anthropology and soteriology; and it was upon these, accordingly, that his polemic powers were mainly applied.
He was conservative by nature, and his life was spent in defending the Reformed theology as set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Westminster Shorter Catechisms. He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial Calvinism of a later day. Hodge is classed among the great defenders of the faith, rather than among the great constructive minds of the Church. He had no ambition to be epoch-making by marking the era of a new departure. But he earned a higher title to fame in that he was the champion of his Church's faith during a long and active life, her trusted leader in time of trial, and for more than half a century the most conspicuous teacher of her ministry. Hodges' understanding of the Christian faith and of historical Protestantism is given in his Systematic Theology.
The Presbyterian General Assembly of 1818 had affirmed a similar position, that slavery within the United States, while not necessarily sinful, was a regrettable institution that ought to eventually be changed. Like the church, Hodge himself had sympathies with both the abolitionists in the North and the pro-slavery advocates in the South, and he used his considerable influence in an attempt to restore order and find common ground between the two factions, with the eventual hope of abolishing slavery altogether.
Hodge's support of slavery was not an inevitable result of his belief in the inerrancy and the literal interpretation of the Bible. Other 19th century Christian contemporaries of Hodge, who also believed in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, denounced the institution of slavery. John Williamson Nevin, a conservative, evangelical Reformed scholar and seminary professor, denounced slavery as 'a vast moral evil.' D. G. Hart, John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist , Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: 2005). 55. Hodge and Nevin also famously clashed over polar-opposite views of the Lord's Supper.
The debate between Hodge and McCosh exemplified an emerging conflict between science and religion over the question of Darwin's evolution theory. However, the two men showed greater similarities regarding matters of science and religion than popularly appreciated. Both supported the increasing role of scientific inquiry in natural history and resisted its intrusion into philosophy and religion.Bradley J. Gundlach, "McCosh and Hodge on Evolution: A Combined Legacy," Journal of Presbyterian History 1997 75(2): 85-102,
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