Hodge’s Systematic Theology

Before English textbooks were common in American higher education, many were written in Latin. On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols describes how Charles Hodge responded to linguistic shifts at Princeton by writing a three-volume work for his students.

Last week, we were together; we talked about the president of Princeton University. Well, one of those students who went to Princeton University shortly after Witherspoon died was Charles Hodge. He attended Princeton University from 1812 to 1815. Before that—let's back it up a little bit—he was born in Philadelphia in 1797. His father was a medical doctor, but he died as a young Charles Hodge was one going on two, so he never really knew his father. Just before he died, his father invested in the Philadelphia shipping yards, and so the family was able to have an income even after his father passed away. But in 1812, Thomas Jefferson issued an embargo because of the War of 1812 that shut down the shipping yards at Philadelphia and that choked off the money for the Hodge family. Well, Mrs. Hodge sold her home there in Philadelphia, took their remaining assets, and bought a large home in Princeton, and decided to take in boarders as a way to have income; and off Charles went to Princeton.

After he graduated from Princeton University, he entered right into Princeton Theological Seminary. It had been founded in 1812. When he entered in 1816, it was still a fledgling, newborn seminary. It had two faculty. Archibald Alexander taught theology, and Samuel Miller taught, well, pretty much everything else. And he jumped right into Princeton. After he graduated from Princeton in 1819, he served in pulpit supply for about a year and then he was back in 1820 at Princeton as a professor, and he stayed there right up until his death of 1878. On his tombstone, and he's there in the Princeton Cemetery and the Princeton Seminary Row, it says on his tombstone, "The second professor of Systematic Theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary." So, Archibald Alexander, his beloved teacher, was first, and Hodge was second.

The textbook that Alexander used, and then Hodge used, was Francis Turretin's Systematic Theology, three volumes. But here was the challenge with Turretin—it was in Latin. By the 1860s, early 1870s, all these students coming to Princeton did not know Latin, and so Hodge very reluctantly wrote a new Systematic Theology that would be in English for all these students who struggled with their Latin. So, from 1871 through 1873, the three volumes of Hodge's Systematic Theology rolled off the press.

Now, if you've ever read through Hodge's Systematic Theology, or if you go out and find a copy either online or a print copy, you will notice something as you begin to read it—that Hodge, while he writes in English, uses a lot of Latin, and he doesn't translate it for you. In fact, what Hodge does is he'll set up a theological problem, he'll present the different views, and then he'll say, “But the best way to think about this theological issue is in the words of Turretin,” or in the words of some other theologian, and then he will quote the Latin. The punchline is in Latin. So, it was a way of Charles Hodge sort of giving in, but not entirely, in his Systematic Theology.

There are two elements to Hodge's Systematic Theology that are not always brought together well by theologians. One is a true precision, exactitude. Hodge thought theology a science. As the scientist works in nature to discover not just the bits, but to connect the bits and to understand the laws that are underlying what is happening in nature, so the theologian studies both nature, God's world, but most importantly, God's word—His authoritative revelation to not to see data points or bits of information, disconnected bits, but to see the connections and then to pull those connections together in what we would say as “theological confession.” So, Hodge was very much about precision, but he was also about piety. He was also about theology leading to worship. So, I heartily recommend to you this three-volume work from the 1870s, Hodge's Systematic Theology, written by the second professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Charles Hodge.

I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.