1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hodge, Charles

HODGE, CHARLES (1797–1878), American theologian, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 28th of December 1797. He graduated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1815, and in 1819 at the Princeton Theological seminary, where he became an instructor in 1820, and the first professor of Oriental and Biblical literature in 1822. Meanwhile, in 1821, he had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister. From 1826 to 1828 he studied under de Sacy in Paris, under Gesenius and Tholuck in Halle, and under Hengstenberg, Neander and Humboldt in Berlin. In 1840 he was transferred to the chair of exegetical and didactic theology, to which subjects that of polemic theology was added in 1854, and this office he held until his death. In 1825 he established the quarterly Biblical Repertory, the title of which was changed to Biblical Repertory and Theological Review in 1830 and to Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review in 1837. With it, in 1840, was merged the Literary and Theological Review of New York, and in 1872 the American Presbyterian Review of New York, the title becoming Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review in 1872 and Princeton Review in 1877. He secured for it the position of theological organ of the Old School division of the Presbyterian church, and continued its principal editor and contributor until 1868, when the Rev. Lyman H. Atwater became his colleague. His more important essays were republished under the titles Essays and Reviews (1857), Princeton Theological Essays, and Discussions in Church Polity (1878). He was moderator of the General Assembly (O.S.) in 1846, a member of the committee to revise the Book of Discipline of the Presbyterian church in 1858, and president of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in 1868–1870. The 24th of April 1872, the fiftieth anniversary of his election to his professorship, was observed in Princeton as his jubilee by between 400 and 500 representatives of his 2700 pupils, and $50,000 was raised for the endowment of his chair. He died at Princeton on the 19th of June 1878. Hodge was one of the greatest of American theologians.

Besides his articles in the Princeton Review, he published a Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1835, abridged 1836, rewritten and enlarged 1864, new ed. 1886), Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (2 vols., 1839–1840); The Way of Life (1841); Commentaries on Ephesians (1856); 1 Corinthians (1857); 2 Corinthians (1859); Systematic Theology (3 vols., 2200 pp., 1871–1873), probably the best of all modern expositions of Calvinistic dogmatic; and What is Darwinism? (1874), in which he opposed “Atheistic Evolutionism.” After his death a volume of Conference Papers (1879) was published. His life, by his son, was published in 1880.

His son, Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823–1886), also famous as a Presbyterian theologian, was born at Princeton on the 18th of July 1823. He graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1841, and at the Princeton Theological seminary in 1846, and was ordained in 1847. From 1847 to 1850 he was a missionary at Allahabad, India, and was then pastor of churches successively at Lower West Nottingham, Maryland (1851–1855); at Fredericksburg, Virginia (1855–1861), and at Wilkes-Barré, Pennsylvania (1861–1864). From 1864 to 1877 he was professor of didactic and polemical theology in the Allegheny Theological seminary at Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where he was also from 1866 to 1877 pastor of the North Church (Presbyterian). In 1878 he succeeded his father as professor of didactic theology at the Princeton seminary. He died on the 11th of November 1886. Besides writing the biography of his father, he was the author of Outlines of Theology (1860, new ed. 1875; enlarged, 1879); The Atonement (1867); Exposition of the Confession of Faith (1869); and Popular Lectures on Theological Themes (1887).

See C. A. Salmond’s Charles and A. A. Hodge (New York, 1888).