Home › Library › Charles Hodge › Systematic Theology Vol. 2
Primary Source

Systematic Theology Vol. 2

Charles Hodge 1872
Hodge's second volume of systematic theology addresses anthropology, soteriology, and Christology within a comprehensive Reformed theological framework.

New York: Charles Scribner and Company; London and Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1872 (first edition), vol. 2. Internet Archive systematictheolo02hodg (Princeton Theological Seminary Library scan), OCR text with printed page numbers

From the text

The opening of the work as printed, from p. 3, in the spelling of this edition.

p. 3SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY.

Having considered the doctrines which concern the nature of God and his relation to the world, we come now to those which concern man ; his origin, nature, primitive state, probation, and apostasy ; which last subject includes the question as to the nature of sin ; and the effects of Adam's first sin upon himself and upon his posterity. These subjects constitute the department of Anthropology.

The Scriptural account of the origin of man is contained in Genesis i. 26, 27, " And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female created He them." And Gen. ii. 7, " And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul."

Two things are included in this account ; first that man's body was formed by the immediate intervention of God. It did not grow ; nor was it produced by any process of development. Secondly, the soul was derived from God. He breathed into man "the breath of life," that is, that life which constituted him a man, a living creature bearing the image of God.

Many have inferred from this language that the soul is an emanation from the divine essence ; particula spiritus divini in cor-pore inclusa. This idea was strenuously resisted by the Christian p. 4fathers, and rejected by the Church, as inconsistent with the nature of God. It assumes that the divine essence is capable of division ; that his essence can be communicated without his attributes, and that it can be degraded as the souls of fallen men are degraded. (See Delitzsch's " Biblical Psychology " in T. and T. Clark's " Foreign Library," and Auberlen in Herzog's " Encyclopiidie," article " Geist der Menschen.")

Heathen Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation.

The Scriptural doctrine is opposed to the doctrine held by many of the ancients, that man is a spontaneous production of the earth. Many of them claimed to be yr^ycvei?, amoxOov^^, terrigena. The earth was assumed to be pregnant with the germs of all living organisms, which were quickened into life under favoui'able circumstances ; or it was regarded as instinct with a productive life to which is to be referred the origin of all the plants and animals living on its surface. To this primitive doctrine of antiquity, modern philosophy and science, in some of their forms, have returned. Those who deny the existence of a personal God, distinct from the world, must of course deny the doctrine of a creation ex nihilo and consequently of the creation of man. The theological view as to the origin of man, says Strauss, " rejects the standpoint of natural philosophy and of science in general. These do not admit of the immediate intervention of divine causation. God created man, not as such, or, ' quatenus infinitus est, sed quatenus per elementa nascentis telluris expllcatur.' This is the view which the Greek and Roman philosophers, in a very crude form indeed, presented, and against which the fathers of the Christian Church earnestly contended, but which is now the unanimous judgment of natural science as well as of philosophy." ^ To the objection that the earth no longer spontaneously produces men and irrational animals, it is answered that many things happened formerly that do not happen in the present state of the world. To the still more obvious objection that an infant man must have perished without a mother's care, it is answered that the infant floated in the ocean of its birth, enveloped in a covering, until it reached the development of a child two years old ; or it is said that philosophy can only establish the general fact as to the way in which the human race originated, but cannot be required to explain all the details.

p. 5Modern Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation.

Although Strauss greatly exaggerates when he says that men of science in our day are unanimous in supporting the doctrine of spontaneous generation, it is undoubtedly true that a large class of naturalists, especially on the continent of Europe, are in favour of that doctrine. Professor Huxley, in his discourse on the " Physical Basis of Life," lends to it the whole weight of his authority. He does not indeed expressly teach that dead matter becomes active without being subject to the influence of previous living matter ; but his whole paper is designed to show that life is the result of the peculiar arrangement of the molecules of matter. His doctrine is that " the matter of life is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated."^ "If the properties of water," he says, "may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules." ^ In his address before the British Association, he savs that if he could look back far enouo;h into the past he should expect to see " the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter." And although that address is devoted to showing that spontaneous generation, or Abiogenesis, as it is called, has never been proved, he says, " I must cai*efully guard myself against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such thing as Abiogenesis has ever taken place in the past or ever will take place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call ' vital,' may not some day be artificially brought together." ^ All this supposes that life is the product of physical causes ; that all that is requisite for its production is " to bring together" the necessary conditions.

Keep reading

Full text search, AI synthesis across 1,234 Reformed primary sources, and seamless reading — all in one place.

Start Free Trial to Read

Contents

  1. Part II. Anthropologyp. 3
  2. § 1. Scriptural Doctrine.p. 3
  3. § 2. Anti- Scrij^tural Theorics.p. 4
  4. § 3. Antiquity of Man.p. 33
  5. § 1. Scripture Doctrine.p. 42
  6. § 2. Trichotomy.p. 47
  7. § 3. Realism.p. 51
  8. § 4. Another form of the Realistic Theory.p. 61
  9. § 1. Theory of Preexistence.p. 65
  10. § 2. Traducianism.p. 68
  11. § 3. Creationism.p. 70
  12. § 4. Concluding Remarks.p. 72
  13. Part II. Anthropology, Chapter IV. Unity of the Human Racep. 77
  14. § 1. Meaning of the Word, or the Idea of Species.p. 78
  15. § 2. Evidence of Identity of Species.p. 82
  16. § 3. Application of these Criteria to Man.p. 86
  17. § 4. Philological and Moral Evidence.p. 88
  18. § 1. The Scriptural Doctrine.p. 92
  19. § 2. Man Created in the Image of God.p. 96
  20. § 3. Original Righteousness.p. 99
  21. § 4. Dominion over the Creatures.p. 102
  22. § 5. The Doctrine of the Romish Ohurch.p. 103
  23. § 6. Pelagian and Rationalistic Doctrine.p. 106
  24. Part II. Anthropology, Chapter VI. Covenant of Worksp. 117
  25. § 1. God entered into Covenant with Adam.p. 117
  26. § 2. The Promise.p. 118
  27. § 3. Condition of the Covenant.p. 119
  28. § 4. The Penalty.p. 120
  29. § 5. The Parties to the Covenant of Works.p. 121
  30. § 6. Perpe-tuity of the Covenant of WorTcs.p. 122
  31. Part II. Anthropology, Chapter VII. The Fallp. 123
  32. § 1. The Nature of the Question to he Considered.p. 130
  33. § 2. Philosophical Theorics of the Nature of Sin.p. 132
  34. § 3. The Doctrine of the Early Church.p. 149
  35. § 4. Pelagian Theory.p. 152
  36. § 5. Augustinian Doctrine.p. 157
  37. § 6. Doctrine of the OhurcJi of Rome.p. 164
  38. § 7. Protestant Doctrine of iSin.p. 180
  39. § 8. The Effects of Adam's Sin upon his Posterity.p. 192
  40. § 9. Immediate Imputation.p. 192
  41. § 10. Mediate Imputation.p. 205
  42. § 11. Preexistence.p. 214
  43. § 12. Realistic Theory.p. 216
  44. § 13. Original Sin.p. 227
  45. § 14. The Seat of Original Sin.p. 254
  46. § 15. Inability.p. 257
  47. Part II. Anthropology, Chapter IX. Free Agencyp. 278
  48. § 1. Different Theorics of the Will.p. 280
  49. § 2. Definition of Terms.p. 288
  50. § 3. Certainty Consistent with Liberty.p. 295
  51. Part III. Soteriologyp. 313
  52. § 1. Q-od has sueh a Plan.p. 313
  53. § 2. Supralapsarianism.p. 316
  54. § 3. Tnfralapsarianism.p. 319
  55. § 4. " Hypothetical Redemption.''.p. 321
  56. § 5. The Lutheran Doctrine as to the Plan of Salvation.p. 324
  57. § 6. The Remonstrant Doctrine.p. 327
  58. § 7. Wesleyan Armintanism.p. 329
  59. § 8. The Augustinian Scheme.p. 331
  60. § 9. Objections to the Augustinian Scheme.p. 349
  61. § 1. The Plan of Salvation is a Covenant.p. 354
  62. § 2. Different Views of the Nature of this Covenant.p. 355
  63. § 3. Parties to the Covenant.p. 357
  64. § 4. Covenant of Redemption.p. 359
  65. § 5. The Covenant of Grace.p. 362
  66. § 7. Different Dispensations, First, from Adam to Abraham.p. 373
  67. § 1. Preliminary Remarks.p. 378
  68. § 2. The Scriptural Facts concerning the Person of Christ.p. 380
  69. § 3. The Hypostatical Union.p. 387
  70. § 4. Consequences of the Hypostatical Union.p. 392
  71. § 6. Doctrine of the Reformed Churches.p. 405
  72. § 7. Lutheran Doctrine.p. 407
  73. § 8. Later Forms of the Doctrine.p. 418
  74. § 9. Modern Forms of the Doctrine.p. 428
  75. § 1. Christ the only Mediator.p. 455
  76. § 2. Qualifications for the Work.p. 456
  77. § 3. The Threefold Office of Christ.p. 459
  78. § 1. Nature of the Prophetic Office.p. 462
  79. § 2. How Christ executes the Office of a Prophet.p. 463
  80. § 1. Christ is truly^ not figuratively, a Priest.p. 464
  81. § 2. Christ our only Priest.p. 466
  82. § 3. Definition of Terms.p. 468
  83. § 1. Statement of the Doctrine.p. 480
  84. § 2. The Intrinsic Worth of Chrisfs Satisfaction.p. 482
  85. § 3. Doctrine of the Scotists and Remonstrants.p. 485
  86. § 4. Satisfaction rendered to Justice.p. 489
  87. § 5. The Work of Christ Satisfies the Demands of the Law.p. 493
  88. § 6. Proof of the Doctrine.p. 495
  89. § 7. Objections.p. 527
  90. § 1. State of the Question.p. 544
  91. § 2. Proof of the Augustinian Doctrine.p. 546
  92. Part III. Soteriology, Chapter IX. Theories of the Atonementp. 563
  93. § 1. The Orthodox View.p. 563
  94. § 2. Doctrine of some of the Fathers.p. 564
  95. § 3. The Moral Theory/.p. 566
  96. § 4. The Governmental Theory.p. 573
  97. § 5. The Mystical Theory.p. 581
  98. § 6. Concluding HemarJcs.p. 589
  99. § 1. Christ our Intercessor.p. 592
  100. § 2. Its Nature.p. 593
  101. § 3. Its Objects.p. 594
  102. § 4. Intercession of Saints.p. 594
  103. § 1. The Church Grod^s Kingdom.p. 596
  104. § 2. Christ is truly a King.p. 597
  105. § 3. Nature of Christ'' s Kingdom.p. 599
  106. § 4. The Kingdom of Glory.p. 608
  107. § 1. Includes his Incarnation.p. 610
  108. § 2. He was made under the Law.p. 612
  109. § 3. His Sufferings and Death.p. 614
  110. § 4. He endured the Wrath of God.p. 614
  111. § 5. His Death and Burial.p. 615
  112. Part III. Soteriology, Chapter XIII. The Exaltation of Christp. 626
  113. § 1. Resurrection of Christ.p. 626
  114. § 2. Ascension of Christ.p. 630
  115. § 3. Sitting at the Right Hand of God.p. 635
  116. § 4. Chrisfs coming to judge the World.p. 638
  117. § 1. Scriptural Usage of the Word.p. 639
  118. § 2. The External Oall.p. 641
  119. § 3. Common Grace.p. 654
  120. § 4. Efficacious Grace.p. 675
  121. § 5. Proof of the Doctrine.p. 689
  122. § 6. Objections.p. 709
  123. § 7. History of the Doctrine of Grace.p. 710

Other works by Charles Hodge

Systematic Theology Vol. 1
→
Systematic Theology Vol. 3
→

Related works

A Blow at the Root of the Refined Antinomianism of the Present Age
Joseph Bellamy
→
A Body of Divinity
Thomas Watson
→
A Body of Divinity
James Ussher
→
A Brief Catechism Containing the Doctrine of Godliness
John Norton
→
A Calm and Sober Enquiry Concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead
John Howe
→

Browse the full Reformed theology catalog — 1,234 primary sources.