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Faith and Life: Readings in Old Princeton Theology 05HT6160 RTS-Houston – Fall 2021 John R
Faith and Life: Readings in Old Princeton Theology 05HT6160 RTS-Houston – Fall 2021 John R. Muether ([email protected]) Meeting Dates October 1-2 (Friday and Saturday) December 3-4 (Friday and Saturday) Course Description A survey of the “majestic testimony” of Princeton Theological Seminary from its founding in 1812 to its reorganization in 1929, with readings from major figures including Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, and others. Emphasis will fall on its defense of the Reformed faith against the challenges of its time, its influence on the establishment of American Presbyterian identity, and its role in shaping contemporary American evangelicalism. Course Outline (Subject to Change) 1. Introduction: What was Old Princeton? 2. Archibald Alexander 3. Charles Hodge 4. A. A. Hodge 5. B. B. Warfield 6. Other Voices 7. J. G. Machen 8. Conclusion: The Legacy of Old Princeton Assignments 1. Completion of 1000 pages of reading. (10%) 2. Class presentation on a representative of Old Princeton theology (20%) 3. Research Paper (50%) 4. Class attendance and participation (20%) Readings Students will compile a reading list of primary and secondary sources in consultation with the instructor. It should include 1. Selections from Calhoun and/or Moorhead 2. Readings from at least four members of the Old Princeton faculty 3. At least two selections from both The Way of Life by Charles Hodge and Faith and Life by B. B. Warfield. 4. Resources for their class presentation and research paper. Research Paper The research paper is a 3000-4000 word paper which will explore in depth a particular figure in the story of Old Princeton. -
POSTMODERN OR PROPOSITIONAL? Robert L
TMSJ 18/1 (Spring 2007) 3-21 THE NATURE OF TRUTH: POSTMODERN OR PROPOSITIONAL? Robert L. Thomas Professor of New Testament Ernest R. Sandeen laid a foundation for a contemporary concept of truth that was unique among evangelicals with a high view of Scripture. He proposed that the concept of inerrancy based on a literal method of interpretation was late in coming during the Christian era, having its beginning among the Princeton theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He ruled out their doctrines related to inspiration because they were based on rational thinking which he taught was absent from earlier Christian thought. Subsequent evaluations of Sandeen’s work have disproved his assumption that those doctrines were absent from Christianity prior to the Princeton era. Yet well-known Christian writers have since built on Sandeen’s foundation that excludes rationality and precision from an interpretation of Scripture. The Sandeenists criticize the Princetonians for overreacting in their response to modernism, for their use of literal principles of interpretation, for defining propositional truth derived from the Bible, and for excluding the Holy Spirit’s help in interpretation. All such criticisms have proven to be without foundation. The Princetonians were not without fault, but their utilization of common sense in biblical interpretation was their strong virtue. Unfortunately, even the Journal of the inerrantist Evangelical Theological Society has promoted some of the same errors as Sandeen. The divine element in inspiration is a guarantee of the rationality and precision of Scripture, because God, the ultimate author of Scripture, is quite rational and precise, as proven by Scripture itself. -
Adorable Trinity” Paul Kjoss Helseth
Charles Hodge on the Doctrine of the “Adorable Trinity” Paul Kjoss Helseth Paul Kjoss Helseth is Professor of Christian Thought at the University of Northwest- ern, St. Paul, Minnesota. He earned his PhD from Marquette University in Systematic Theology. Dr. Helseth is the author of“Right Reason” and the Princeton Mind: An Unorth- odox Proposal (P&R, 2010). He is also a contributor to Four Views on Divine Providence (Zondervan, 2011) and Reforming or Conforming?: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church (Crossway, 2008). In addition, Dr. Helseth is co-editor of Reclaiming the Center: Confronting Evangelical Accommodation in Postmodern Times (Crossway, 2004) and Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Crossway, 2003). Introduction Shortly after the untimely death of his brother’s son in December 1850, Charles Hodge wrote to his brother Hugh gently to remind him that the only way to cultivate the kind of sorrow that “is [in] every way healthful to the soul” is to mingle sorrow “with pious feeling, with resignation, confidence in God, [and] hope in his mercy and love.”1 “The great means of having our sorrow kept pure,” Hodge counseled, “is to keep near to God, to feel assured of his love, that he orders all things well, and will make even our afflictions work out for us a far more exceeding and an eternal weight of glory.”2 But precisely how did Hodge encourage his brother Hugh to “keep near to God,” and in so doing to cultivate the kind of sorrow that works life and not death, the kind of sorrow that is best described as “sorrow after a godly sort”?3 In short, Hodge encouraged his brother to cultivate godly and not “worldly”4 SBJT 21.2 (2017): 67-85 67 The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 21.2 (2017) sorrow by remembering the doctrine of the Trinity. -
Faith and Learning the Heritage of J
REVIEW: Hoffecker’s Charles Hodge by Barry Waugh NewHorizons in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church OCT 2012 OCT Faith and LearninG The Heritage of J. Gresham Machen by Katherine VanDrunen ALSO: NEW BOOKS ON OLD PRINCETON by D. G. Hart and John R. Muether V o l u m e 3 3 , N u m b e r 9 NewHorizoNs iN tHe ortHodox PresbyteriaN CHurch Contents Editorial Board: The Committee on Christian Education’s Subcommittee on Serial Publications Editor: Danny E. Olinger FEATURES Managing Editor: James W. Scott Editorial Assistant: Patricia Clawson Cover Designer: Christopher Tobias 3 Faith and Learning: The Heritage of Proofreader: Sarah J. Pederson J. Gresham Machen © 2012 by The Committee on Christian Education of By Katherine VanDrunen The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are 6 The Personal Side of Charles Hodge from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publish- By Alan D. Strange ers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Articles previously published may be slightly edited. The Legacy of Geerhardus Vos 8 New Horizons (ISSN: 0199-3518) is published monthly By Danny E. Olinger except for a combined issue, usually August-Septem- ber, by the Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 607 N. Easton Road, 19 Planning for a Minister’s Retirement Bldg. E, Willow Grove, PA 19090-2539; tel. 215/830- By Douglas L. Watson 0900; fax 215/830-0350. Letters to the editor are welcome. They should deal with an issue the magazine has recently addressed. -
Salvation in Christ.Qxp 4/29/2005 4:09 PM Page 299
Salvation in Christ.qxp 4/29/2005 4:09 PM Page 299 Those Who Have Never Heard: A Survey of the Major Positions John Sanders John Sanders is a professor of philosophy and religion at Huntington College, Huntington, Indiana. orphyry, a third-century philosopher and critic of Christianity, asked: “If Christ declares Himself to be the Way of salvation, the Grace and the Truth, and affirms that in Him alone, and Ponly to souls believing in Him, is the way of return to God, what has become of men who lived in the many centuries before Christ came? . What, then, has become of such an innumerable multitude of souls, who were in no wise blameworthy, seeing that He in whom alone saving faith can be exercised had not yet favoured men with His advent?”1 The force of his question was brought home to me personally when Lexi, our daughter whom we adopted from India as an older child, asked me whether her birth mother could be saved.2 The issue involves a large number of people since a huge part of the human race has died never hearing the good news of Jesus. It is estimated that in the year AD 100 there were 181 million people, 299 Salvation in Christ.qxp 4/29/2005 4:09 PM Page 300 Salvation in Christ of whom one million were Christians. It is also believed there were 60,000 unreached groups at that time. By AD 1000 there were 270 million people, 50 million of whom were Christians, with 50,000 un- reached groups. -
University of Groningen Developments in Structuring Of
University of Groningen Developments in Structuring of Reformed Theology van den Belt, Hendrik Published in: Reformation und Rationalität IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Final author's version (accepted by publisher, after peer review) Publication date: 2015 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): van den Belt, H. (2015). Developments in Structuring of Reformed Theology: The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) as Example. In H. J. Selderhuis, & E-J. Waschke (Eds.), Reformation und Rationalität (pp. 289-311). (Refo500 Academic Studies; Vol. 17). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 11-02-2018 1 Henk van den Belt 2 3 4 Developments in Structuring of Reformed Theology: 5 6 The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625) as Example. 7 8 9 10 11 12 Abstract 13 14 The Synopsis Purioris Theologiae (1625), an influential handbook of Reformed 15 dogmatics, began as a cycle of disputations. -
Does Classical Theism Deny God's Immanence?
Scholars Crossing LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations 2003 Does Classical Theism Deny God's Immanence? C. Fred Smith Liberty University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lts_fac_pubs Recommended Citation Smith, C. Fred, "Does Classical Theism Deny God's Immanence?" (2003). LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations. 147. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lts_fac_pubs/147 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in LBTS Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BiBLiOTHECA SACRA 160 (January-March 2003): 23-33 DOES CLASSICAL THEISM DENY GOD'S IMMANENCE? C. Fred Smith HE CONCEPT OF THE OPENNESS OF GOD has recently gained a foothold among some evangelical thinkers. Others who have T sought to refute this view have done so by emphasizing God's transcendent qualities. This article examines the criticism of clas sical theism by advocates of open theism and seeks to demonstrate that they portray classical theism inaccurately and that they have accepted a false understanding of God. OVERVIEW OF OPEN THEISM The movement's foundational text is The Openness of God, pub lished in 1994.l Most of what open theists have said since then amounts to a reiteration of arguments made in that book. Basic to open theism is the idea that God's being is analogous to that of humans, and so God experiences reality in ways similar to the ex periences of human beings. As evidence of this point Rice cites the fact that humankind is created in the image of God.2 In addition C. -
Christian Afterlife
A contribution to the Palgrave Handbook on the Afterlife, edited by Benjamin Matheson1 and Yujin Nagasawa. Do not cite without permission. Comments welcome. CHRISTIANITY AND THE AFTERLIFE Joshua R. Farris, Houston Baptist University https://www.academia.edu/21851852/CHRISTIANITY_AND_THE_AFTERLIFE “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13) “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20-21) “As all Christians believe in the resurrection of the body and future judgment, they all believe in an intermediate state. It is not, therefore, as to the fact of an intermediate state, but as to its nature that diversity of opinion exists among Christians.” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Part IV. Ch. 1 “State of the Soul after Death,” 724) Lisa is a middle-aged female who has worked all of her life as a server in a cafe. One day, while its rainy and cold, she has a car accident with an 18-wheeler truck. The truck slams into the side of her car pressing her against the side rails. She loses a lot of blood and is rushed to the hospital. Her husband meets her there. Realizing that it is too late and that death is near, he comforts her with these words, “your pain will be gone soon.” June is 90 years old. -
The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A
Our blessed Saviour, for the edification of the visible Church, which is his body, hath appointed officers, not only to preach the gospel and administer the Sacraments; but also to exercise discipline, for the preservation both of truth and duty; and, that it is incumbent upon these officers, and upon the whole Church, in whose name they act, to censure or cast out the erroneous and scandalous; observing, in all cases, the rules contained in the Word of God. Truth is in order to goodness; and the great touchstone of truth, its tendency to promote holiness. No opinion can be either more perni- cious or more absurd, than that which brings truth and falsehood upon a level, and represents it as of no consequence what a man‘s opinions are. There is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Form of Government, 1788, Ch. I 4 The Presbyterian Church In the U.S.A. SO far in our attempt to set forth the history behind the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, we have dealt wholly with the Reformed Presbyterian side. In chapter 2 we have followed the history of the Reformed Presbyterian Church from her origins in Scotland through her establishment upon American soil. In Chapter 3 the 150-year history of the General Synod, from its inception in the early 1899‘s to the crisis of the 1950‘s, has been before us. How- ever, this is only half, or perhaps we should say a quarter, of the story! Of the two streams of American Presbyterian his- tory which merge to form the RPCES, the Reformed Presby- terian one is by far the smaller. -
The Reformed Faith
THE REFORMED FAITH To describe the Reformed Faith in the limits of an article is no easy task. Any adequate account of it would require an expo- sition of the historical theological situation out of which it arose, and the theological views which it opposed. This in itself would be a task requiring too much space for an article in a theological Review. The mysticism which misunderstood the nature of revelation and minimised or destroyed the authority of the Word of God as the principium of theological knowledge ; the sacramentarianism and sacerdotalism of the Church of Rome, which denied the immediacy of the relation of the sinner to God in Salvation; the obscuration of the Augustinian conception of sovereign grace —all these theological movements would demand a somewhat lengthy consideration in order to reach an adequate understanding of the essential nature of the Reformed Faith. Obviously we must content ourselves with the mention of these theological errors which the Reformers opposed, and which met their most radical opposition in the Reformed Reformation. But if our task is not easy, it is, nevertheless timely and important. In this connection we would call attention to some trenchant words of Karl Barth1 in his Address, “ Reformed Doctrine, its Nature and Task.” He quotes from an account of the proceedings of a meeting of the eastern section of the Reformed World-Alliance held in Zurich in 1923. The words he quotes, he says, are from the pen of one of the leaders of that meeting. They are as follows : “ It could not escape an atten- tive observer, what a small role unfruitful theological discussions played in these days (i.e., of the meeting). -
H Bavinck Preface Synopsis
University of Groningen Herman Bavinck’s Preface to the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae van den Belt, Hendrik; de Vries-van Uden, Mathilde Published in: The Bavinck review IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2017 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): van den Belt, H., & de Vries-van Uden, M., (TRANS.) (2017). Herman Bavinck’s Preface to the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae. The Bavinck review, 8, 101-114. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 24-09-2021 BAVINCK REVIEW 8 (2017): 101–114 Herman Bavinck’s Preface to the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae Henk van den Belt and Mathilde de Vries-van Uden* Introduction to Bavinck’s Preface On the 10th of June 1880, one day after his promotion on the ethics of Zwingli, Herman Bavinck wrote the following in his journal: “And so everything passes by and the whole period as a student lies behind me. -
Calvinists Among the Virtues
SCE0010.1177/0953946815570595Studies in Christian EthicsVos 570595research-article2015 Article Studies in Christian Ethics 2015, Vol. 28(2) 201 –212 Calvinists among the © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Virtues: Reformed sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0953946815570595 Theological Contributions to sce.sagepub.com Contemporary Virtue Ethics1 Pieter Vos Protestant Theological University, The Netherlands Abstract Since virtue and the virtues have been important in Reformed theology for most of its history, this essay is devoted to the question of how this tradition may contribute to and interact with contemporary virtue ethics (MacIntyre, Hauerwas). Reformed concepts of sanctification as open to moral growth, covenant as a narrative context of divine commandments, and unio cum Christo as defining human teleology and virtuousness provide valuable contributions to the development of such an ethics. On the other hand, Reformed conceptions of (social) reform, natural law, common grace (Calvin) and christological eschatology (Barth) offer theological arguments for overcoming Hauerwas’s problematic overemphasis on the distinctiveness of the church’s ethic. Keywords Reformed theology, virtue ethics, moral growth, grace, natural virtues It is commonly held that Reformed ethics is basically accomplished as an ethics of divine commandments, creational orders and—to a lesser extent—(human) rights, whereas theological virtue ethics is in particular developed in the Roman Catholic tradition. However, since Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre and others initiated a revival of 1. I would like to thank my colleagues Theo Boer, Frits de Lange and Petruschka Schaafsma and other members of the ‘Ethics Colloquium’ at the Protestant Theological University for their helpful remarks on an earlier draft.