For almost 60 years, Charles Hodge taught at Princeton Seminary. By any measure he was a great man. The two hundredth anniversary of his birth this month, on Decem­ber 27, 1797, is sufficient reason, if any is needed, for us to take a fresh look at his life and legacy.

B.B. Warfield, who sat under Charles Hodge as a student at Princeton, said that "in that room of Systematic Theology, I think I had daily before me examples of perfect teaching... Every jot of that learning, consecrated to the Master's cause, was ready to be utilized in the recitation room" (The Life of Charles Hodge, pp590-1). Dr William Paxton said of him that "His intel­lect penetrated so far down into the deep well of truth, that the water which he brought up was as clear as crystal" (Life, p592). Even his critics acknowledged Hodge to be the authority on theological matters; Robertson Smith said at one point that he "glanced over the standard religious authority – (Charles) Hodge a few days ago. He has no conception of the modern form of the problem" (quoted in D. B. Calhoun Prin­ceton Seminary: The Majestic Testimony, p.84). The 'problem' concerned higher critical views of the Bible; the interesting thing is that Hodge is represented as the standard orthodox author­ity.

The Life of Charles Hodge⤒🔗

Charles Hodge was born in Philadelphia, the son of Christian parents. Hodge writes of his mother that "To our mother, my brother and myself, under God, owe absolutely everything. To us she devoted her life. For us she prayed, laboured and suffered" (Life, p9). Under the pastoral care of Ashbel Green, who was to become president of Princeton College, Hodge was blessed with Gospel influences on his life from a young age, and made a profession of faith in Christ in January 1815, during a time of revival among the students of the College.

Hodge matriculated at Princeton Seminary in 1816, four years after its founding. Hodge worked hard while he was there, and his course drew to a close in 1819. It was at that point that Archibald Alexander suddenly asked him 'How would you like to be a Professor in this Semi­nary?' His son and biographer, says that often his father would tell him that "this question overwhelmed him with surprise and confusion" (Life, p65). But it was enough to persuade Hodge to remain at Princeton as a teacher of biblical languages; and in 1822 he describes himself as "most highly favored" (Life p91). That year the General Assembly appointed Charles Hodge Professor of Oriental and Bibli­cal literature; and in the same year he married his first wife, Sarah Bache. They made their home from 1825 in a house on the Seminary ground. "In this house Mr. Hodge lived all his remaining life, here all his children, except the eldest, were born, and here he did his life-work and died" (Life, p95). Thus Hodge's life was to mirror the devel­opment and growth of Princeton as an establishment for the proclamation of Calvinistic orthodoxy.

From 1826-1828 Hodge was in Europe. There he studied French, Arabic and Syriac, and became acquainted with the burgeoning German disci­pline of Biblical criticism. Through his subsequent lectures at Princeton, as well as by his literary productions in the developing Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, Hodge's influence was to grow, and his commitment to Calvinistic ortho­doxy became increasingly apparent. The material in the Review, according to his son, were characterised by "knowledge, clearness and faith... he experienced the whole Calvinistic system and would defend it at all cost as the truth of God, from loyalty to Christ, and love for human souls" (Life, p251).

In 1834-5, while confined to his home through illness, Hodge wrote his Commentary on Romans. Gerald Bray describes it as "notable ... in which (Hodge) maintained a strictly Calvinist position" (Biblical Interpretation p.343). Cunningham said of him that "His talents and attainments seem to fit him equally for the critical and exact interpre­tation of Scripture statements, and for the didactic and polemic exposition of leading doctrines" (Life, p.428). The Commentary is nothing if it is not exact; and the summary of Doctrine as well as the practical Remarks at the end of each section make it one of the most relevant and useful works on Romans to have been written. Hodge corre­sponded with Archibald Alexander during the writing of the Commentary; in a letter written towards the end of the project, Alexander re­marked that "My opinion of its value increases with the perusal of every new portion" (Life, p276).

In 1840 Hodge became Professor of Exegeti­cal and Didactic Theology at the Seminary. William Paxton wrote of him that he "gave us a subject with massive learning, in its logical development, in its beautiful balance and connection with the whole system" (Faith and Learning, p.261). The nineteenth century was a period of ferment and change. Hodge was called to serve at a critical time, when the very foundations of the Christian faith were under sustained attack. His magnum opus, the Systematic Theology, published in 1872 was the fruit of many years of theological study and enquiry, and was to become the standard theological textbook in Princeton. It was heralded by Dabney as being characterised by "the fulness of its refutations of the materialistic and atheistic infidelity on the one hand, and of the pantheistic speculations on the other, which are the banes of the recent movements in science" ("Hodge's Systematic Theology" in Discussions, Vol. 1, p229). Although Dabney goes on to take issue in particular with Hodge's view of imputation, the article is high in its praise.

Hodge was no stranger to controversy, and was not out to court popular favour. He wrote strong articles against slavery, and addressed various ecclesiastical issues. Following the example of Chalmers, he advocated a sustentation scheme in the American churches, and argued for the validity of Romish baptism. Of dancing, he said that, along with card-playing and wine- drinking, "they are not in their essential nature sinful. But there may be a kind of dancing, a kind of card-playing, and a kind of wine-drinking in their nature evil; and when not evil in themselves it may be very wrong for professors of religion to indulge in them. They are all so associated with frivolity and worldliness that no minister or church member in this part of the country can countenance them in any form without injuring his influence and the cause of reli­gion" (Life, p397). Such forthright statements were hardly designed to curry favour, but serve to demonstrate Hodge's concern for clear and unambiguous witness to Christ.

Charles Hodge died in June 1878. He saw his family embrace their father's faith, and at one time three Hodges taught at Princeton (as there had been three Alexanders). A.A. Hodge, his son, was to die suddenly eight years later. Between them, they made Princeton synonymous with the old paths of Westminster ortho­doxy. Charles Hodge may have described himself as "a poor little stick", which God picked up and did something with; but his monumental works of theology and ex­egesis have shaped the course of Systematic Theology for twentieth-century evangeli­calism.

Hodge's Legacy←⤒🔗

The first outstanding characteristic of Hodge, acknowledged by all who knew him, was his piety. A 'kneeling rather than a sitting theologian' is how David Wells describes him. He loved music, "and espe­cially singing, which appealed to the religious affections" (Life, p227). Andrew Hoffecker, in his study of Princeton piety says that for Hodge, "both a theology of the intellect and a theology of the feeling must be true" (Piety and the Princeton Theolo­gians, p.60). Hodge's relationship with God, cultivated in the rigorous disciplines of his personal devotional life, overshad­owed all his work. Paxton observed that "There is not one point of the Calvinistic system that he obscures, but he lets in upon it the full light of God's love and mercy until the heart melts into submission to His sovereignty" (Life, p599).

Related to this, secondly, was the pri­macy of the Bible in his thinking. "It is enough for Dr. Hodge to believe a thing to be true that he finds it in the Bible" wrote one of his critics (quoted in The Majestic Testimony, p.34). In a letter to Cunning­ham in 1857, Hodge wrote that his one object had been "to state and to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformed Church. I have never advanced a new idea..." (Life, p.430). The latter claim has been dismissed by some as a nonsense; and from one point of view it is. On the other hand, it is true to the extent that Hodge's starting-point was always the Word of God, and he sought to yoke his theology to the revelation of Scrip­ture. What others would consider to be a weakness was the great strength of his work.

Third, we must note Hodge's engage­ment with the scientific progress and enquiries of the nineteenth century. His work shows a dependence on the Scottish philosophy of commonsense, which pos­ited an analogy between the structure of the universe and the rationalism of the human mind. He acknowledged the "frankness and fairness" of Darwin, and had a sound grasp of the relevant scientific data. David Livingstone summarises Hodge's obstacle to Darwinian biology thus: "it had nothing to do with biblical exegesis or authority.  It was, quite simply, that Darwin had overthrown design" (Darwin's Forgotten Defenders, pp 103-4). So although Darwin­ism contained much to commend it to Hodge's doctrine of creation and provi­dence, the fact that it was atheological meant that it was virtually atheistical, be­cause "the denial of design in nature is virtually the denial of God" (quoted in Darwin's Forgotten Defenders, p105). Although much in Darwinism could be accommodated to Hodge's thought, and although Livingstone hails Hodge as a de­fender of Darwinism, the botanist Asa Gray concluded that Hodge's work What is Dar­winism? "will not contribute much to the reconcilement of science and religion" (quoted in The Majestic Testimony , p17). Hodge demonstrates the farreaching na­ture of theology, impinging as it does upon all intellectual and scientific inquiry.

Fourth, one has to deal with the charge of intellectualism against Hodge. David Cairns, who was to become Professor of Dogmatics and Apologetics in the United Free College in Aberdeen, says, writing as a student in the 1880s: "I hated Charles Hodge, with his hard dogmatism" (A.C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk, p75). But the charge also arose within the very evangelical constituency in which Hodge himself worked. Adolphe Monod wrote of his Commentary on Romans, for example, that the matter was "rather more precise and formal in Dr. Hodge's exposition than in the Bible itself. We have learned from this Holy Book to have some dread of formulas that are too straitened..." (Life, p278). Lloyd-Jones makes the same point when he says of Hodge: "Too much phi­losophy comes in, and you tend in the end to have an intellectualist system rather than the dynamic living faith and preaching which we see in the New Testament, and which we see in every period of reformation and revival" (Knowing the Times, p209). Inter­estingly, though, it was Hodge's Systematic Theology which Lloyd-Jones recommended as a primary textbook when the newly ap­pointed Principal of Elim Bible College wrote to him for advice about books (The Fight of Faith, p421; Letters 1919-1981 p128).

Hodge himself believed in a scientific method of theology. This is clear from the opening sections of his Systematic Theol­ogy, in which he urges that theologians be guided by the same rules and principles as scientists, collating and arranging the data and facts of Scripture, in order to deduce principles from them. If Hodge is open to the charge of cold, overintellectualised theo­logical orthodoxy, it is because of the thoroughness of his inductive method which assumes before any theological enquiry can begin, that Scripture contains all the facts of theology. It is arguable, too, that A.A. Hodge's Outlines of Theology represents a far greater clinicalism than the writings of his father.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

Two hundred years ago this month, God gave the church Charles Hodge. In the ferment and the changes of the nineteenth century, his was to be a clarion and defini­tive voice in the church, one which urged the supremacy of Scripture and the need for child-like faith in the Christ of God. Many sons of Westminster have had reason to thank God for the gift, and have been lifted by Hodge's works to new heights of under­standing and new visions of God. Paxton's comment summarises the Hodgian method: "When God speaks, and we understand his meaning, there is nothing left for us but to bow and adore" (Life, p593).

At last, Hodge's legacy is of a theology that worships, and a worship based on truth.