 Charles Hodge: A voice for today’s PCUSA?
By John H. Adams The Layman Volume 36, Number 2 Posted April 21, 2003 Every once in a while, Charles Hodge (1797-1878), with a little help from his friends, tries to sit up in his grave and give an accounting for the theology that shaped the beliefs and lives of Presbyterians in America for generations. But as time goes on, with mainline Presbyterians mired in a backwash of cultural enlightenment, Hodge’s voice has become increasingly muted. Liberals would silence him altogether. Evangelicals forget. He needs a new platform.
And while the 12 professors are not uncritical apostles of Hodge, they do provide a compelling examination of one of the most influential theologians in American history. He is a theologian who needs to be heard today, even with his warts, they say. The Hodge Revisited essayists demythologize the stereotypical view that Hodge was an ultrarationalist, a fundamentalist who was disengaged from the real world and cared more about what Presbyterians believed than how they served their Lord. They bring to the fore a theologian who was politically, socially and emphatically Biblically astute. Hodge, a towering world figure in theology, and other members of Princeton’s faculty were charged with remaining faithful to the historic Christian faith as it was passed down from Scripture, through Augustine, Luther, Calvin and other reformers. For his contribution to American Christianity, Hodge has been ridiculed, esteemed and all but silenced in today’s mainstream Presbyterian Church (USA). Hodge Revisited sees his residue in the Presbyterian Church in America and other orthodox Presbtyerian denominations, but little in the Presbyterian Church (USA). That silence is unfortunate, co-editor James H. Moorhead, professor of American church history at Princeton, says in the afterword of Hodge Revisited. Moorhead sees resistance to the Hodge legacy on both sides of the theological spectrum. “Those who self-conscientiously claim Hodge’s legacy will not be eager to share it with those whom they regard as betrayers. By contrast, most mainstream Protestants seldom think of Hodge; but those who do, wishing themselves rid of him, will probably greet the notion of his persisting legacy with an enthusiasm akin to Ebenezer Scrooge’s when he encountered the ghost of Jacob Marley.” The theology that Hodge articulated and passed down to generations of ministers collapsed at Princeton and in the mainline denomination in 1929 in the aftermath of a decade of blistering debate between its advocates and opponents. Liberals succeeded in getting the General Assembly of the northern wing of the denomination to declare that it was no longer essential to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the literal bodily resurrection of Christ and the reality of Jesus’ miracles. The 1920s purge has evolved into theological whimsy. Today, the PCUSA’s governing body has officially decreed that there are no essentials, yet every officer is required to subscribe to some imagined standards. In light of the ban on essentials, Question No. 3, which candidates for ordination as deacon, elder or minister must answer affirmatively, seems disingenuous at best.
The descent continues, even gaining momentum, in a denomination that, now shorn of its orthodoxy, can count on only one constant: that another 35,000 or so Presbyterians will flee this year, following the 1.7 million who have already departed since 1965. Hodge taught that there are essentials, and where to find them: foremost, that the Bible was infallibly true, but also that the Westminster Confession of Faith was a reliable and systematic way to understand the Word of God. His arguments overwhelmed the revisionists of his day and continued to do so decades later. Hodge Revisited brings out the other side of the theologian as well. He was a social activist who did not believe that faith in Christ was simply a private affair. Christians had public and political duties as well. By making their faith real in political and social realms, Christians could prick the conscience of those who governed their affairs. Hodge took on the issues of his time, albeit sometimes too slowly. The issue that is most embarrassing in his legacy is slavery. In the 1830s, when the Princeton itself owned slaves, Hodge deplored their mistreatment but did not attack institutional slavery. Hodge’s rationale for slavery was church-related. He hoped to keep Southern and Northern Presbyterians united in that time of American crisis. He believed the abolitionists were schismatic – and, indeed, America’s Presbyterian Church split in 1861 and remained divided until the Northern and Southern denominations reunited in 1983. In the North, Hodge’s reputation was soiled by his virulent anti-abolitionist writings. Southern Presbyterians held him in high regard for the same reason. But Hodge suddenly changed in 1846, declaring that he did not “see how any Christian can say that [slavery] is a desirable condition, or that the ignorance or degradation, without which slavery cannot exist, should be perpetuated.” With that change, and his public support of President Lincoln, Hodge lost much of his Southern base. Notwithstanding his views on slavery, Hodge left more good than bad. He was not like modern activists, who call for a just society in pursuit of fashionable causes, such as today’s popularized “justice-love” ethic that regards adultery, homosexual practice and teen-age sex as appropriate. For Hodge, a just society did not cave in to culture; it emerged from the truth of God’s Word that defied cultural aberrations. It confronted society with the claims of God, not denials that God made those claims. Hodge sought to “anchor the Christian faith – and its mandates for a Christian way of life and a more just society – in an utterly reliable, ‘as written,’ Biblical record rather than in the muddy bottoms of Kantian rationality or Romanticism’s many moods,” says Princeton’s John W. Stewart, co-editor of Hodge Revisited. Essayist Richard J. Carwardine of the University of Sheffield in England provides some interesting insight into Hodges’ activism. “The political activism that Hodge expected of individual Christian citizens, he did not automatically concede to, or expect of, the church itself.” Hodge was wary of the institutional church bearing down on political issues for a number of reasons. As Carwardine points out: “In an era of plural and proliferating denominations, vigorous party politics and divisive and polarizing issues, it was a matter of institutional self-protection for churches to avoid taking a collective stance on political questions.” If heeded today, Hodge’s caution against institutional pronouncements on public affairs would probably close the Washington Office of the PCUSA, eliminate the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, end the boycott of Taco Bell and muzzle the pacificist rhetoric of Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick. Welcome back, Charles Hodge. |
||
| Theology
that Matters index Respond to this article |
||
| Home
· News
· PLC
Publications ·
The
Presbyterian Layman Online Reviews · Archives · History of the Lay Committee · Feedback · Links |
||
