Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845–1929. By Bradley J. Gundlach. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2013. xiv + 374 pp. $39.00 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845-1929 . By Bradley J. Gundlach . Grand Rapids : William B. Eerdmans , 2013. xiv + 374 pp. $39.00 paper.Book Reviews and Notes"What is Darwinism? It is atheism." This was the well-known blanket condemnation of Darwinian evolution penned by the doyen of American Reformed theology, Charles Hodge, professor at Princeton Seminary. Bradley J. Gundlach, however, wishes to complicate this picture by arguing that Princetonians, including Hodge, actually embraced a version of developmentalism between the years 1845-1929. This well-written volume maintains a sharp institutional focus on Princeton. Both the college/university and the seminary, and individuals such as Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander Hodge, Caspar Wistar Hodge, Jr., J. Gresham Machen, James McCosh, Francis Patton, and Benjamin B. Warfield form the center of investigation. It is a group for which the author expresses his own admiration and suggests that "their assessment of and answers to the evolution question can best serve our generation" (14).Several themes frame the book. Foremost, in the narrative of the ways in which the Princetonians defined and answered the question of evolution, is what the author calls, "providential developmentalism." This was the idea that the unfolding of built-in potentials over time and in interaction with the environment was God's usual way of doing things. Where some contemporary Presbyterians, such as Robert Lewis Dabney, often invoked divine fiat as an explanation of causation, the Princetonians affirmed the supernatural sovereignty of God but also recognized the ubiquity of secondary causes as the way by which that sovereignty typically expressed itself. Gundlach depicts the Princetonians, from Charles Hodge through James McCosh and on to Benjamin Warfield recognizing the importance of scientific inquiry, seeking to keep up with its results, but always framing their response within theological categories of divine sovereignty, providence, and sin. McCosh, for example, was the first major religious leader in America to promote a form of evolutionary thinking, so long as it was "properly limited and explained" (102). Similarly, Warfield, and even Machen, both of whom the author admires, expressed their respect for science, though they were quick to circumscribe the boundaries of scientific inquiry.Another theme in this volume is the development of a policy by James McCosh during his tenure as president of Princeton College to identify and cultivate a cohort of promising Princeton graduates who could be called back to assume professorships at their alma mater. Of the nineteen appointments, principally in the sciences, which McCosh made after 1880, ten were Princeton graduates. These "bright young men," as McCosh called them, were intended to mold the age through their instruction of the Princeton students who were expected to become leaders in American society. Indeed, Francis Patton, McCosh's successor as president of the college, continued McCosh's program because he believed that "scholarship undertaken by faithful men, founded on theistic presuppositions, offered the safest road to both the preservation and the progress of truth" (202). If theologians such as Hodge or Warfield were tasked with meeting the implications of Darwinian evolution, then the faculty at Princeton, men "under God" as McCosh put it, were given the institutional support to foster and develop generations of Princeton men within a theistic mold. …