Charles Hodge: What Is Systematic Theology?
What is systematic theology? Today, Stephen Nichols delves into Charles Hodge’s definition of theology as a science, reflecting on how Hodge arranged biblical truths in a harmonious system while emphasizing the necessity of the Holy Spirit.
Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are going to put a question before the church history figure Charles Hodge, and it's a very important question, what is systematic theology? Well, Hodge is in a great position to answer that question because for 50 years, from 1822 to 1878, he taught theology at Princeton Seminary. Hodge was born in Philadelphia in 1797. When his father died, his mother moved him over to Princeton. He was a student there at the university, then went to the seminary and it was there in Princeton that he died in 1878. Well, in the years 1871 to 1873, after all that teaching, five decades of teaching, and after a lot of living, seven decades of living, Hodge was ready to write his systematic theology. It was published in three volumes and in the very first volume, the very first chapter and the very first section, Hodge calls theology a science.
He speaks of the science of chemistry or the science of astronomy or even history or political science. And in those fields, scholars in those fields do not simply know truths. They also know the relationships of those truths, the connections, the causal relations. They can even use that knowledge to think about what's going to happen in the future, and even in some cases sort of predict events that are going to happen in the future. And so, Hodge says that “if theology be a science, it includes something more than a knowledge of facts.” And that's something more than is again, the relationship of those facts. Hodge is zeroing in on this expression systematic, a system, an arrangement of truths that shows the relations. Hodge even likes the word, the harmony of these truths. He wants us to see how all of these truths fit together. For instance, what we think about the doctrine of God has everything to do with what we think about the doctrine of humanity, and what we think about the doctrine of Christ has everything to do with how we think about the doctrine of salvation. Or take the doctrine of the church, it too is related to who God is, who Christ is, and who the Holy Spirit is.
So Hodge, after thinking about what Scripture teaches about who God is in a systematic and harmonious fashion, he'll also in this opening chapter talk about the different methods that are available to a theologian. He identifies three big categories. The first is speculative and under here he gives a lot of examples. This would be taking a priori principles and using those principles to apply to Scripture and is very much a rational exercise, an intellectual exercise. He'll contrast that with what he calls the mystical method. This has little to do with the intellect and has a lot to do with our inward experience. And rather than being rational, this is much more existential. And of course, through much of the Middle Ages, there was this mystical method of knowing God and discerning God's will and understanding God's works and ways. And in one sense, both the speculative method and the mystical method are not just moments in church history. You see them side by side throughout the centuries of church history.
Well, Hodge, of course, sees the faults in both of those methods, and so, he prefers what he calls the inductive method. This is the discovery of the truths of the knowledge of God as revealed in God's word. But Hodge is quick to say that there is one thing that is really important, and in fact it's how he ends this first section, and that is it's the teaching of the Holy Spirit. In fact, he'll say, “The question is not first and mainly what is true to the understanding, but what is true to the renewed heart. The effort is not to make the assertions of the Bible harmonize with the speculative reason, but to subject our feeble reason to the mind of God as revealed in His word and as revealed by His Holy Spirit in our inner life.”
Well, that's a great definition of systematic theology. So thank you, Mr. Hodge, and I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.
