Systematic Theology: The Complete Three Volumes

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Encountering some of the most prominent (read: liberal) scholars of his day, Hodge remained steadfast in his commitment to Calvinist orthodoxy. In a Christian view of Scripture ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself’ is consistent with ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ and ‘Our God is a consuming fire’, and it is the task of the systematic theologian, as far as he is able, to display this consistency. Well, one of those students who went to Princeton University shortly after Witherspoon died was Charles Hodge. As a pillar of orthodoxy in an era of theological modernity, Hodge was a dominant figure in 19th-century America. Finally (at least as far as we are concerned) according to Hodge 'principles are derived from facts, and not impressed upon them'.

Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical Theology in a Post-Theological Era , (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2000 pp. Bavinck sharply distinguishes this method from the 'empirical or experimental method' of Charles Hodge. His three-volume magnum opus, Systematic Theology, was published in 1872-73, and confirmed him as the outstanding Calvinistic systematic theologian of the nineteenth century. To these methods - perhaps 'approaches' would be a better word - very broadly sketched, Hodge opposes 'the inductive method'. His only proper course is to derive his theory of virtue, of sin, of liberty, of obligation, from the facts of the Bible.As we've already noted, he believes that the Epistles of the New Testament are unique among the other books of the Bible in providing for us fragments of systematic theology.

This version is a careful abridgment of Hodge's three-volume systematic theology in a convenient single volume. lives in communion of faith with the church of Christ and confesses Scripture as the only and sufficient basis ( principium ) of the knowledge of God, Accordingly, the dogmatician receives the content of his faith from the hands of the church'. These traits are said to reveal him as expressing the mentality of the Enlightenment, 'the assumption of modernity', in his pursuit of objectivity, a mentality perhaps fostered by the influence upon him of one of the most notable figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Thomas Reid, and perhaps by the dreaded 'Reformed Scholasticism'.

In my estimation, this appraisal says more about the egalitarian views of Hodge’s biographer than of Hodge himself (251–55). Moreover, since Gutjahr depends almost entirely on primary resources—personal letters, classroom notes, journal entries, etc—the book reveals much of Hodge’s personal life. This monumental work, now a standard for theological students, was written while Hodge served as a professor at Princeton, where he permanently influenced American Christianity as a teacher, preacher, and exegete. Following his father’s untimely death a few years after he was born, Charles and his brother were raised by their godly widowed mother.

A prolific author, Hodge served for many years as editor of the seminary journal, Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review. p.12) It must be remembered that Hodge's remarks about the nature of theological method have to do in particular with systematic theology, building on the results of biblical theology.Systematic Theology is not founded on the direct and primary results of the exegetical process; it is founded on the final and complete results of exegesis as exhibited in Biblical Theology. Gutjahr blames Hodge’s extensive study of Paul and his patriarchal mentors for his own view that men are superior to women.