Systematic Theology: The Complete Three Volumes

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The doctrine of God, which now usually comes immediately after Holy Scripture, is almost always subdivided into the oneness of the divine being and the threeness of his Persons. It is the tradition of Western theology to begin with the one and move on to the three, a method that can be justified from the Bible, which reveals the oneness of God in the Old Testament and the Persons of the Trinity in the New. Proponents of this approach may choose a theme like love (Augustine) or revelation (Karl Barth) and then look at the Trinity as a pattern revolving around this principle. God may then be seen as the Lover (Father), the Beloved (Son) and the Love that flows between them (Holy Spirit), or correspondingly, as the Revealer, the Revealed and the Revelation. Recently, Gerald Bray has attempted to take the principle of divine love and apply it across the board, combining the inner nature of the divine being with its outward expression in the Bible. He continues to put the doctrine of Scripture ahead of the doctrine of God but does so in a way that combines them by making the former an expression of the latter. Introduction". In Ramsey, James Beverlin (ed.). The spiritual kingdom: an exposition of the first eleven chapters of the book of the Revelation. Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication. pp.i–xxxv. LCCN 40016574. OL 23339154M. LCC BS2825 .R35 Dewey: 228.

Why is so much technical theology still being written today? Judging from the reams of complex linguistic and historical data issuing from the university presses, one might well conclude that an omnivorous army of scholars is poised nearby, eager to consume every newly discovered verbal form. It is not so. One does not have to be overly cynical to agree with Hexter that these presses have gone into high production to advance not so much the world of learning as the private careers of the learned. Every ambitious scholar wants to be able to demonstrate in print his mastery of this whole world of strange equations and forgotten languages. Professional mobility upward (promotion) and sideward (a better job) depends on what and how much such a person has published. This is not what Hodge was like. Instead, we find in his work an almost classic realization of the kneeling, as opposed to sitting, theologian. He had seen the grace and glory of God, and in his Systematic Theology he turns to the world to explain his vision. When he writes, he writes clearly; what he writes has that extraordinary and elusive ability of reproducing in the reader the sense of worship that was its own original inspiration. Here is no armchair theologian, but one who has felt the deep imprint of divine truth in his own inner life and whose sole desire, as a result, is to let God be God over all that he thinks, does, and writes. What Hodge writes, therefore, has a purpose seldom found in contemporary theological writing, whose jargon and complexity are lost on all but an initiated elite. ed. (1825–29). "Biblical repertory" (Journal). 1 – v. 5. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Press. LCCN sf89090823. OCLC 08840509. LCC Microfilm 01104 no.229, 566-567 AP. {{ cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= ( help) Christ fulfilled the covenant by his life, death, and resurrection, a pattern that is recounted in the ancient Creeds and repeated in modern systematic theologies. By his life, he fulfilled the demands of the Father for obedience to his word. By his death, he paid the price for human sinfulness and made it possible for the Father to forgive those who had rebelled against him. By his resurrection, he gave his followers a new and eternal life that is still being worked out in believers on earth but is fulfilled in and by those who have gone to heaven.Hodge’s education was unusual for its thoroughness and its Presbyterian emphasis. He went from small schools to Princeton Academy, Princeton College, and the newly founded Princeton Theological Seminary. A few years after he had begun his teaching career, in 1826 and 1827, he went to Germany for the finishing touches. Petrus Van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology(1698). With only the first of seven volumes published, I’m not able to give a proper assessment of this massive work. But we know that Jonathan Edwards considered it superior to Turretin and the best book on divinity besides the Bible. Mastricht treats each topic exegetically, dogmatically, elenctically (polemically), and practically. The work is both highly technical and rigorously doxological, with a complex outline, moments of eloquence, and (at times) very long lists. Level: Hard (one volume currently, with six others planned)

April 1876). "Christianity without Christ". The Princeton Review. New York: G. & C. Carvill. 5 (18): 352–362 . Retrieved March 23, 2013. The constitutional history of the Presbyterian church in the United States of America. Philadelphia: W.S. Martien. ISBN 9780790551555. LCCN 42027085. OCLC 390536. LCC BX8936 .H6 1839.Richard Muller, Post-Reformed Reformed Dogmatics (2003). No one know the theology of the Reformed Orthodox period better than Muller. His command of the original sources (usually in Latin) is amazing. Not for the faint of heart, but worth having and consulting often. Level: Hard (four volumes) All systematic theology starts from a fundamental principle, which is then expanded and developed to embrace the entire range of Christian teaching. Usually this principle is either the doctrine of God or the doctrine of Holy Scripture, with the latter being more common in modern times. The reason for this is that the Bible is the basis of academic theology, and among Protestants it is recognized as the only permissible source for Christian doctrine. In practice, this means that the nature and extent of Scripture must be examined before its contents can be applied to Christian teaching, and so questions relating to its infallibility or the extent of the canon tend to be emphasized more than they were in earlier times. R. C. Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian (2014). This is the book I recommend to Christians who are completely new to systematic theology. It’s a great, relatively brief, introductory volume with Sproul’s typical energy and clarity. Level: Beginner (one volume) There are two elements to Hodge's Systematic Theology that are not always brought together well by theologians. One is a true precision, exactitude. Hodge thought theology a science. As the scientist works in nature to discover not just the bits, but to connect the bits and to understand the laws that are underlying what is happening in nature, so the theologian studies both nature, God's world, but most importantly, God's word—His authoritative revelation to not to see data points or bits of information, disconnected bits, but to see the connections and then to pull those connections together in what we would say as “theological confession.” So, Hodge was very much about precision, but he was also about piety. He was also about theology leading to worship. So, I heartily recommend to you this three-volume work from the 1870s, Hodge's Systematic Theology, written by the second professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Charles Hodge.

He was a leading exponent of the Princeton Theology, an orthodox Calvinist theological tradition in America during the 19th century. He argued strongly for the authority of the Bible as the Word of God. Many of his ideas were adopted in the 20th century by Fundamentalists and Evangelicals. [1] Biography [ edit ] The Way of Life (Sources of American Spirituality). Mark A. Noll, ed. Paulist Press (1987). ISBN 0-8091-0392-3

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Starting in the 1830s Hodge suffered from an immobilizing pain in his leg, and was forced to conduct his classes from his study from 1833 to 1836. He continued to write articles for Biblical Repertory, now renamed the Princeton Review. During the 1830s he wrote a major commentary on Romans and a history of the Presbyterian church in America. He supported the Old School in the Old School–New School Controversy, which resulted in a split in 1837. In 1840 he became Professor of Didactic Theology, [8] retaining, however, the department of New Testament exegesis, the duties of which he continued to discharge until his death. He was moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Old School) in 1846. [ citation needed] Hodge's wife died in 1849, shortly followed by Samuel Miller and Archibald Alexander, leaving him the senior professor of the seminary. He was recognized as the leading proponent of the Princeton theology. On his death in 1878 he was recognized by both friends and opponents as one of the greatest polemicists of his time. [9] Of his children who survived him, three were ministers; and two of these succeeded him in the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, C. W. Hodge, in the department of exegetical theology, and A. A. Hodge, in that of dogmatics. A grandson, C. W. Hodge, Jr., also taught for many years at Princeton Seminary. It is now a century since Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology first appeared (1873–4). His study was part of an unseasonal blooming in Calvinistic theology, a blooming that also included the theologies of Strong, Shedd, and Smith. It appeared when Calvinism was entering the late autumn of its fortunes in American church life and when evangelicalism was about to gird itself for the conflict that, within sixty years, would leave it largely separated from the denominational mainstream. Hodge’s Systematic Theology is in large measure a summary of nineteenth-century evangelical faith, especially on its Calvinistic side, but was also a determining factor in the emergence of twentieth-century fundamentalism, at least in its early phase. Some have said that Hodge lies buried in these three stout volumes. They are wrong. It would be difficult to overestimate the influence that this study has had and continues to have in forming evangelical beliefs. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (1679-1685). This was the textbook at Old Princeton until Charles Hodge wrote his own. It’s hard to overstate the influence Turretin has had on the development and transmission of Reformed theology. Some of the debates will seem overly philosophical and arcane. But for comprehensiveness and careful delineation of categories, you will not find anything better. Level: Hard (three volumes) Hodge supported the institution of slavery in its most abstract sense, as having support from certain passages in the Bible. He held slaves himself, but he condemned their mistreatment, and made a distinction between slavery in the abstract and what he saw as the unjust Southern Slave Laws that deprived slaves of their right to educational instruction, to marital and parental rights, and that "subject them to the insults and oppression of the whites." It was his opinion that the humanitarian reform of these laws would become the necessary prelude to the eventual end of slavery in the United States. [10] A sermon, preached in Philadelphia ... American Sunday-school Union, May 31, 1832. Philadelphia: The Union. LCCN 96229925. LCC YA 30459 YA Pam.

Hodge, A. A. (1880). The life of Charles Hodge: Professor in the Theological seminary, Princeton, N.J. C. Scribner's sons. Reissued 1979 by Ayer Co. Pub. ISBN 0-405-00250-5

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This article includes content derived from the public domain Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914. Further reading [ edit ]