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The Idea of Design: The Vicissitudes of a Key Concept in the Princeton Response to Darwin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1874;‘It is Atheism.’ As is commonly the fate of great men, Hodge's conclusion has frequently been reduced to mere crusade slogan, more often reported than examined, more often repeated than explained. It is for this reason, then, together with Hodge's formative role in the construction of modern conservative evangelicalism, that I want to turn in the first part of this esssay to his response to Darwin's theory of evolution. Moreover, with the recent emergence of a vociferous and uncompromising ‘scientific creationist’ movement claiming the imprimatur of theological orthodoxy, a reassessment of the reaction to Darwin by the powerful ‘Old School’ Princetonians in its broader intellectual context is, I think, both timely and instructive. And Hodge's central position in that tradition makes reflection on his response to the question a logical place to begin.
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References
page 329 note 1 Hodge, Charles, What is Darwinism? (London and Edinburgh: T. Nelson and Sons, 1874), pp. 176–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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page 332 note 12 ibid., p. 52. Exactly the same argument was earlier presented in his Systematic Theology in a section headed ‘The atheistic character of the theory’, II, pp. 15–19.
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