240 - The Princeton Theology 1812-1921

The Princeton Theology 1812-1921

Edited and compiled by Mark A. Noll

Grand Rapids, Baker, 1983. 344 Pp. $14.95.

This book contains thirty-one selections. Two of them deal with the founding of Princeton Theological Seminary, three are taken from Archibald Alexander's theological work, twelve from Charles Hodge, three from Archibald Alexander Hodge (including one written with Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield), and eleven from Warfield. The three subjects treated are Scripture, science, and theological method. Each of the selections is well introduced, and there is a good general introduction. The footnotes and bibliographies are extensive-if not, by Noll's own admission-complete. It is worth remarking that Lefferts Loetscher's The Broadening Church is referred to in seven footnotes. This is a testimony to Noll's perception that Loetscher was a fair critic. The dates in the title refer to the founding of the Seminary in 1812 and the death of Warfield in 1921.

From Alexander to Warfield, the Princeton theologians were gradually backed into a corner with regard to the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Textual criticism and archaeology, along with the comparison of parallel passages in the Bible, showed that there were errors in any recoverable Bible. When errors were found in the Bible, the response was, "The error is not in the original autograph; it is only in our imperfect copy." Warfield wanted to have it both ways: an infallible Bible, with errors in it. He came, in effect, to believe in the verbal inspiration of the theory of verbal inspiration. He found himself in a kind of theological Vietnam: with so much invested in the theory of verbal inspiration, it seemed impossible to pull out. On the whole, Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge are preferable to Archibald Alexander Hodge and Warfield, in much the same way that the Synoptic Gospels are superior to the Pastoral Letters, or Calvin superior to Wollebius.

I expected the Princeton theologians to be anti-scientific. I thought that all of them in general, and Warfield in particular, would be

242 - The Princeton Theology 1812-1921

obscurantist. My expectation was based on what I knew of their attitude to Scripture. But my expectations were not fulfilled. The word "science" used to mean "knowledge" in a much broader way than we use the word today. Hodge was aware of science in our twentieth century use of the word, and he took it seriously. Warfield made a kind of hobby of science, again in our twentieth century usage. To paraphrase a famous remark about Hodge, I had the impression that Warfield was buried in the ten volumes of his collected works. Not so. He gladly accepted a theistic version of evolution.

I judge that there are two groups who will not like the book. Extreme evangelicals (we used to call them fundamentalists) will want to treat this book as a piece of contemporary theology and discuss it on this level. There is one uncharacteristic sentence where Noll himself seems to take this position. In reference to an 1881 pamphlet by A.A. Hodge and Warfield, Noll writes, "In this modern debate, those who (like-myself) are at least generally satisfied with the 1881 essay usually exonerate Hodge and Warfield of any damaging innovation, while those who are not, regard it as a serious misstep" p. 220). But this is taken out of context, and is not fair to Noll's general position, which is expressed much more characteristically in a sentence in his introduction: "But my argument can be stated immediately: the men of Old Princeton can teach us much about nineteenth-century history and the doing of theology, but only if we resist the temptation to treat them as contemporaries" (p. 11). And the book will also be unsatisfactory to extreme evangelicals because it is not presented as contemporary theology.

Those who do their theology in an historical vacuum will also find it unsatisfactory. Some think the history of theology has nothing to teach us. Yet this book places its sources against the background of the times in which, they were written. It is a book of theology, historically presented.

ROBERT S. BEAMAN

Hightstown, New Jersey