Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Some of the most important lives in history are not especially enthralling. Their importance derives not from their intrigue but from their reliable return to labors short on glamour but long on reach. After prodigious archival research, Paul Gutjahr has written the definitive biography of the "Pope of Presbyterianism," theologian Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Over fifty-seven episodic chapters, Hodge's life emerges as one of central importance to any history of nineteenth-century American Christianity. Yet, as Gutjahr gently reiterates, Hodge's work as a conservative religious thinker is connected to his humdrum habits and maddeningly achromatic stances on hot subjects. From his quiet vantage as a seminarian in southern New Jersey, Hodge maintained an "utter consistency of conviction" that was never contested by competing philosophies, theologies, or epistemologies (363). In every aspect of his person, Hodge had a "love of habit and systemization," and focused on "hard work, self-denial, and personal achievement" achieved through "the known, the established, and the functional" institutional and ecclesiastical pathways of the Presbyterian Church (29, 30, 150). These tendencies permeated Hodge's hermeneutics. In his two-volume constitutional history of the Presbyterian Church, Hodge condemned "every person and action bringing disorder and confusion" like evangelists George Whitefield and James Davenport, "while he praises everything and everyone promoting a spirit of peace, orderliness, and unity" (191). Looking out onto an American landscape rife with self-appointed preachers and renegade religious movements, Hodge wished for more presbyteries and fewer heresies. "The strictest age of any particular church has almost always been its best age," Hodge explained with a sigh (190).In the study of American religion, strictness is often embodied by the figure of John Calvin and the creeds that emerged from his writings. The nineteenth century is imagined as an epoch in which Calvinism was slowly diluted by the forces of democratization and liberalization. Such a history portrays a concentration made watery, as if Calvinism was a fresh-squeezed orthodoxy that became a theological Sunny Delight. Within this narrative, Hodge starred as a "peerless advocate for the tenets of conservative Calvinist Christianity in America" (213). Born into an established Philadelphia family, Hodge made a profession of faith in 1815 and began an academic life that coincided propitiously with the development of religious education at Princeton. From the beginning of his career, Hodge argued that Christian lives ought to be ruled by the Bible, and for Hodge the "best single synopsis of the whole scope of God's creation and the doctrines taught in the Bible" could be found in the Westminster Confession (356). This doctrinal exclusivity became a Princeton trademark. Hodge stated that the Seminary had adhered to a single guiding principle, namely that, "[t]he Bible is the word of God . . . what the Bible says, God says. That ends the matter" (363).Yet it hardly did. Knowing what that word of God was required relentless reading and reiteration, especially in a post-revolutionary country pervaded by talk of empowerment and individualism. Over his lifetime Hodge produced a lengthy bibliography of treatises bent upon supplying responsible scholarship the conveyed correct biblical interpretations. He founded the journal Biblical Repertory with other Princeton faculty to assist this cause and, optimistically, to reach a broad audience. …