Who Was A. A. Hodge? Princeton Theologian and Son of Charles Hodge

Biography Theology Church History

Archibald Alexander Hodge was an American Presbyterian minister and theologian who lived from 1823 to 1886. He was the eldest son of Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian, and in his last years he took his father's chair at Princeton Seminary. But he came to that chair by a long road: three years as a missionary in India, thirteen years as a pastor, and thirteen more teaching in Pittsburgh. He wrote some of the clearest books on Reformed theology ever published in America, above all his Outlines of Theology and his Commentary on the Confession of Faith.

Here's a look at his life, what he taught, and where to start reading him.

A Princeton childhood

Hodge was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on July 18, 1823. His father was then a young professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the boy was named after his father's teacher and friend, Archibald Alexander, the seminary's first professor. He grew up among the leading Presbyterian scholars of the day, in a home full of students, visitors and prayer.

He graduated from the College of New Jersey, as Princeton University was then called, in 1841, and from Princeton Seminary in 1847.

India

The same year he finished seminary, Hodge was ordained and sailed with his wife for India as a missionary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. He worked at Allahabad in the north. His health broke in the climate, and after three years he had to come home. He never forgot India, and he kept a keen interest in missions all his life.

Thirteen years a pastor

Back in America, Hodge served three churches: a country congregation at Lower West Nottingham in Maryland from 1851, then Fredericksburg, Virginia, from 1855, and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, from 1861. He was a pastor first, and his best-known book came straight out of that work. In Fredericksburg he gave a lecture on doctrine to his congregation every Sunday night, working from careful outlines. He tells the story in his preface:

The several chapters were in the first instance prepared and used in the same form in which they are now printed, as the basis of a lecture delivered otherwise extemporaneously to my congregation every Sabbath night.
Outlines of Theology, Preface to the First Edition

Those outlines became Outlines of Theology, published in 1860. It sets out the whole of Christian doctrine in numbered questions and answers. It was translated into several languages, and he rewrote and enlarged it in 1879.

Professor in Pittsburgh

In 1864 Hodge became professor of systematic theology at Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. In these years he wrote The Atonement (1867), a defense of the doctrine that Christ died as the true substitute for His people, and A Commentary on the Confession of Faith (1869), which explains the Westminster Confession section by section. Both are still in print today.

Back to Princeton

In 1877 Princeton called him home to assist his aged father. Charles Hodge died the next year, and his son took over the chair of systematic theology. He also wrote his father's life, The Life of Charles Hodge, published in 1880.

In 1881 he and a younger colleague, B. B. Warfield, published a long article titled Inspiration. Hodge wrote the first half and Warfield the second. It set out the doctrine that the Bible, in its original words, is the inspired and errorless Word of God, and it is still one of the most cited statements of that view.

Students loved him. He was a quick, lively teacher with a gift for putting deep things in plain words, and people crowded to hear his popular lectures on doctrine, printed after his death. He died at Princeton in November 1886, at sixty-three, after a short illness. His friends mourned that he had held his father's chair for only eight years.

What he taught

Hodge taught the Reformed faith of the Westminster Confession, the same theology his father had taught. He didn't try to say anything new. He tried to say the old truths clearly, prove them from Scripture, and answer the objections to them.

At the heart of it was Christ the substitute. In The Atonement he put the idea in one sharp line:

A substitute is not a different man in a different place, but a different man in the same place.
The Atonement, Christ's Sufferings Were Strictly and Definitely Vicarious

He was careful to say that the cross was the fruit of God's love, not its cause:

The love of God is everywhere represented as the ground of the gift of Christ, not the work of Christ the ground of the love of God.
Outlines of Theology, Predestination

And he refused to separate sound doctrine from a holy life:

A saved soul is a holy soul, and a holy soul is one whose faculties are all engaged in works of loving obedience.
A Commentary on the Confession of Faith, Of Good Works

Why he's still read

Hodge is read today because he is clear. Many systematic theologies are long and hard going. His Outlines ask one question at a time and answer it in a paragraph, and his commentary on the Confession has been used by generations of elders, Sunday school teachers and students. Pastors still hand it to new church officers. He shows that careful theology can be written for ordinary believers.

Where to start

TheWay Library has five of his books, all free to read. For most readers, start with A Commentary on the Confession of Faith. It follows the Westminster Confession chapter by chapter and is easy to use a little at a time. For a full course in doctrine, use Outlines of Theology. If you want to understand the cross, read The Atonement. Inspiration is short and can be read in an evening, and The Life of Charles Hodge tells the story of his father and of old Princeton.

Our guide to A. A. Hodge's books describes all five, and our collection of A. A. Hodge quotes gathers his best lines. All his books are on the A. A. Hodge author page. For his co-author on Inspiration, see who was B. B. Warfield.