(Receive our blog posts in your email by clicking here. If the author links in this post are broken, please visit our Free PDF Library and click on the author’s page directly.)
Innovation in theology ought to be a red flag to Christians that signals a warning of trouble. Charles Hodge certainly thought so, as Ralph J. Danhof tells us in Charles Hodge as a Dogmatician, p. 43 (1929). We see this very clearly in a letter that Hodge wrote to the great Scottish Presbyterian William Cunningham dated August 24, 1857, which may be found in A.A. Hodge’s The Life of Charles Hodge, p. 430 (1880):
I have had but one object in my professional career and as a writer, and that is to state and to vindicate the doctrines of the Reformed Church. I have never advanced a new idea, and have never aimed to improve on the doctrines of our fathers. Having become satisfied that the system of doctrines taught in the symbols of the Reformed Churches is taught in the Bible, I have endeavored to sustain it, and am willing to believe even where I cannot understand.
At the semi-centennial celebration of Dr. Hodge’s professorship at Princeton Theological Seminary, on April 24, 1872, Hodge took the occasion to state:
I am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in this Seminary.
While decrying any claim to originality in his ideas, Hodge was indeed gifted in his ability to articulate and to systematically summarize that which was Biblical and orthodox. For this gift, we in the 21st century, who continue to study the writings of this great theologian, give thanks to God.
