The Calvinist International
Anyone familiar with the Simpsons’ Groundskeeper Willie, knows that old-fashioned Presbyterians did not celebrate holidays. Even Christmas was seen as illegitimate, and Christmas was not celebrated in early Puritan America. This stance has given way pretty decisively, and in the present day, the overwhelming majority of even conservative Presbyterians think Christmas is at least permissible. […]
Picking back up with this series… We last left Charles Hodge in March of 1827. According to his son’s “Life,” Charles next mentions Schleiermacher in a journal entry of Wednesday, April 18, 1827. Here, Hodge meets Schleiermacher himself for the first time, on the occasion of the celebration of the Chancellor of the University in […]
Charles Hodge’s next reference to Schleiermacher comes, once again, less than a week after the last, and, once again, involves August Tholuck. In the conversation summarized here, Tholuck defends Schleiermacher as “strenuous” on behalf of “some” of the “peculiar doctrines” of the Reformed church, and relays his view that this gives Reformed churches their greater […]
Charles Hodge’s next reference to Schleiermacher in his notes as preserved in his son’s Life comes from less than a week after the last reference, 14 March 1827 (a Wednesday, if you’re curious). This journal-entry deals with the subject of pantheism, whether Schleiermacher was a pantheist, and the relation of the philosophy and religion. Hodge says: […]
Last time we looked at Charles Hodge’s first mention of Friedrich Schleiermacher as recorded in his son A.A. Hodge’s The Life of Charles Hodge, from 4 March 1827. The next reference to him comes in a journal entry only four days later, on 8 March 1827, and again involves August Tholuck. Hodge writes: This morning, at […]
Many people are familiar with Charles Hodge’s famous footnote about Friedrich Schleiermacher in heaven. Hodge was quite far from Schleiermacher’s theological principles (to put it mildly), yet he had this to say in note 372 of his Systematic Theology (2.3.4.9): When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher’s church. The hymns to be sung were printed on […]
I said in my initial post that limbo, with respect to those dying in infancy, “does not reckon seriously enough with the grace of God, the character of the atonement, or the relation of sacraments to the application of redemption.” This remark has wider applicability than merely to that bit of postmortem theological fancy. It […]
In my last post, I noted that A.A. Hodge “is much more forthrightly assertive [about the salvation of all who die in infancy] than he is [in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith].” While the topic does not arise in his Outlines of Theology, as I mentioned before, it does come up several […]
In an entertaining passage of the third volume of his Systematic Theology, Charles Hodge argues that John Henry Newman proves by his own principles that the papacy is the (really, an) Antichrist according to the Scriptural descriptions of that figure. Hodge says of the popes: They assume the honour which belongs to God not merely by […]
Limbo is a thing; but it is a fond thing, vainly invented. In the Reformed tradition, on the other hand, there is a strong strand that affirms the salvation of all those who die in infancy. In this and future posts, we will look at some representative examples. Why does speculation on limbo exist? Limbo, […]