38 Facts About Charles Hodge

Charles Hodge was a Reformed Presbyterian theologian and principal of Princeton Theological Seminary between 1851 and 1878.

Charles Hodge was a leading exponent of the Princeton Theology, an orthodox Calvinist theological tradition in America during the 19th century.

Charles Hodge advocated for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God.

Charles Hodge's father, Hugh, was the son of Andrew Hodge who was a successful international businessman emigrated from Northern Ireland early in the eighteenth century.

Charles Hodge maintained a good relationship with Charles and provided financial assistance to him.

Charles Hodge's father died seven months later of complications from the yellow fever he had contracted in the epidemic of 1795.

In 1815, amid a period of intense religious fervor among the students inspired by Green and Alexander, Charles Hodge joined the local Presbyterian church and resolved to enter the ministry.

Charles Hodge enrolled at the seminary shortly after finishing his undergraduate studies in 1816.

Charles Hodge 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.

Financially stable, Charles Hodge married Sarah Bache, Benjamin Franklin's great-granddaughter in the same year.

In 1824, Charles Hodge helped to found the Chi Phi Society along with Robert Baird and Archibald Alexander.

Charles Hodge founded the quarterly Biblical Repertory in 1825 to translate the current scholarly literature on the Bible from Europe.

Charles Hodge supplied a substitute, John Nevin on his own expense.

Charles Hodge 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, Charles Hodge's experience did not cause any change in his commitment to the principles of the faith he had learned from childhood.

Charles Hodge continued to write articles for Biblical Repertory, now renamed the Princeton Review.

Charles Hodge was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1846.

Charles Hodge's wife died in 1849, shortly followed by Samuel Miller and Archibald Alexander, leaving him the senior professor of the seminary.

Charles Hodge was recognized as the leading proponent of the Princeton theology.

Charles Hodge began writing early in his theological career and continued publishing until his death.

Charles Hodge 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.

Charles Hodge 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.

Charles Hodge has made great contributions to the Princeton Theological Review, many of which are acknowledged masterpieces of controversial writing.

Charles Hodge refused to entertain the narrow views of church polity which some of his brethren advocated.

Charles Hodge repudiated the unhistorical position of those who denied the validity of Roman Catholic baptism.

Charles Hodge 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.

Charles Hodge 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.

Charles Hodge is classed among the great defenders of the faith, rather than among the great constructive minds of the Church.

Charles Hodge had no ambition to be epoch-making by marking the era of a new departure.

Charles Hodge supported the institution of slavery in its most abstract sense, as having support from certain passages in the Bible.

Charles Hodge was a leader of the Old School faction of Presbyterians during the division of the Presbyterian Church in 1837.

Charles Hodge held a resistant opinion to the Civil War in 1861.

Charles Hodge was a strong nationalist and led the fight among Presbyterians to support the Union.

Charles Hodge's views determined the position of the Seminary until his death in 1878.

Charles Hodge thus argued that Darwinism was not atheistic nor in irreconcilable hostility to the Bible.

Charles Hodge was often critical of the traditional understanding of divine simplicity, instead teaching a more moderate form of simplicity.

Charles Hodge rejected the traditional notion of divine impassibility, rejecting traditional notions that God's love is not to be understood as a feeling.

Charles Hodge however affirmed the doctrine of eternal generation, as taught by the Council of Nicaea.