A. A. Hodge, Professor in Systematic Theology at Princeton Seminary from 1877 until his death in 1886, urged that the aim of every Christian teacher should be to produce a vitalising impression- giving students ‘theology, exposition, demonstration, orthodoxy, learning, but giving all this to them warm.’ ‘He taught the knowledge of God,’ said one of his hearers, ‘with the learning of a scholar and the enthusiasm of a loving Christian’. These qualities not only crowded his classrooms, they also led to frequent appeals for the delivery of popular lectures, and therein lay the origin of this volume; the contents are made up of nineteen lectures delivered in Philadelphia early in 1886.

Many elements of Hodge’s make-up combine in these pages. Here, as Patton writes, is the professor and preacher at his best, giving a defence of those truths which are, for the most part, the common inheritance of all who love the Lord. Here, too — for the addresses are shorthand reports — are the asides and colloquialisms not to be found in his other writings, as well as burning convictions on national and social issues which the passage of time has only rendered more critical. Certainly these pages reveal what W. G. T. Shedd called Hodge’s ‘uncommon ability to popularise scientific theology.

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Charles Hodge is acknowledged to be one of the most influential leaders in the history of the church in America, and perhaps the greatest American theologian of the nineteenth century. yet paradoxically he confessed, ‘I have never advanced a new idea’, and remarked of Princeton Seminary where he taught for more than fifty years, ‘I am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this Seminary.’ Hodge went on to explain that his sole object had been to state and vindicate the doctrines of the Reformed faith, not to improve on them. His great achievement, therefore, was that what might have seemed a recipe for stagnation and decline gave rise rather to a period of extraordinary vitality, vigour and advance in the American Presbyterian Church.

This life of Hodge by his son and successor, Archibald Alexander Hodge, written shortly after his father’s death, brings together a wealth of material from Hodge’s letters, diaries, journal articles, and personal reflections. The story is likely to appeal to more than one kind of reader. Those who know Hodge as the author of a famous Systematic Theology and several Bible commentaries, but have little knowledge of the man, will find here an absorbing account of his joys and sorrows, struggles and victories, travels and friendships, and strongly held views on a vast range of subjects; while those who, with C. H. Spurgeon, ‘value every morsel about the Princeton worthies’, will delight in the mine of information here opened up. In addition, those with a more general interest in American and nineteenth-century history will be able to assess the reactions of a conservative but generous-minded thinker to the Civil War, the expansion of the United States, and almost every major issue of the time. For all kinds of readers, Charles Hodge will come alive in these pages.

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Reviews

• Review by Knox Hyndman
• Review by Kenneth Macleod

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‘We commend the Outlines of Theology to all who would be well instructed in the faith. It is the standard textbook of our college. We differ from its teachings upon baptism, but in almost everything else we endorse Hodge to the letter’. — C. H. SPURGEON

Book Description

A. A. Hodge, son of Charles Hodge, first issued this, his best-known work, in 1860- following three years’ missionary work in India and eleven in American pastorates. Enlarged and revised, it was reprinted in its final form in 1878 when the younger Hodge had reached his full maturity and entered upon his eight memorable years’ teaching at Princeton. As a masterful condensation, not only of what had been taught at Princeton Seminary for more than sixty years but of the doctrinal positions of historic Christianity itself, the Outlines earned for the author the description given him by Dr. Shedd, ‘the populariser of scientific theology’. ‘It will be difficult’, wrote another contemporary, ‘to find a work of the same size where so much theology is so clearly presented, and at once so briefly and so interestingly discussed’. Yet A. A. Hodge was more than an able condenser, he was  himself one of the great theologians of the world, possessed–as W. M. Paxton declared at his death–of some of the sublimities of genius, ‘the mighty elements of great thinking’.

Speaking of his aim as a teacher of theology, the author once wrote, ‘I would pray and labour that in gaining breadth we may not lose height, and in gaining peace and love we may not lose purity and truth’.

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‘Sound theology, clear thinking and helpful exposition, with a fresh and direct style.’– IRISH EVANGELICAL

Book Description

In this commentary A. A. Hodge, son and successor of Charles Hodge at Princeton Theological Seminary, analyses the chapters and sections of the Confession, gives proofs and illustrations of its teaching, and helps the learner and teacher by adding a series of questions to each chapter. The result is a fine handbook of Christian doctrine explaining all the leading doctrines of Scripture in simple language.

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