Charles Hodge: Systematic Theology

Charles Hodge is a noted American theologian who specialized in the field of Systemic Theology. Along with being a theologian, he was also a preacher, an educator and an author as well . He spent almost five decades at the Princeton University as a teacher and was responsible for initiating the journal there which today is known as the Princeton Review. He is most renowned for his contribution to the American Presbyterianism and Calvinism in America in the nineteenth century . In this essay an attempt is made to understand the religious philosophies of Charles Hodge with a special focus on the reasons of his opposing the evolution theory proposed by Charles Darwin.
Charles Hodge was born on 28th December, 1797 in Philadelphia to Hugh and Mary
According to him, the main objective of the biblical theology was to ascertain and state the facts of the Scripture. On the other hand, systematic theology has the objective of considering all the facts that biblical theology presents and analyze them. This analysis should involve correlating the facts with each other, performing their critical evaluation and demonstrating their consistency and validity . He has even proclaimed that theology should be considered as a field of science. In fact, in this book Charles Hodge has compared features of theology with the various streams of science multiple times and has even provided frequent scientific analogies for theological issues in order to substantiate his claims. He has even provided a new definition of theology in terms of Biblical facts and science of religion6. He has also discussed on various topics like how the Knowledge of God is independent of the process of reasoning, and is also not dependent on the traditions. Instead the knowledge of God is innate to an individual. He even briefly discussed the concept of evolution in these
Charles Darwin has a purely scientific outlook in providing an explanation of the creation of mankind, their ancestors and how the race evolved into its current form. However, Charles Hodge widely criticized these principles of Darwinism as they lacked an involvement of God in the role of creation and development of mankind. He even termed these principles as being based on atheism1. While he praised Charles Darwin for his intelligence and his works, he argued that it was impossible that highly sophisticated and complex species such as the human beings could have been created by chance and without having any particular reason. He even published a book titled “What is Darwinism” in the year 1874 to specifically cater to the questions of evolution those Darwin has explained in his books and philosophies. While this book was based on the principles that were already described in his previous series of books titled Systematic Theology, all those principles were centered around the concept of evolution in what is