“What is Darwinism? It is atheism.” This was the well-known blanket condemnation of Darwinian evolution penned by the doyen of American Reformed theology, Charles Hodge, professor at Princeton Seminary. Bradley J. Gundlach, however, wishes to complicate this picture by arguing that Princetonians, including Hodge, actually embraced a version of developmentalism between the years 1845–1929. This well-written volume maintains a sharp institutional focus on Princeton. Both the college/university and the seminary, and individuals such as Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander Hodge, Caspar Wistar Hodge, Jr., J. Gresham Machen, James McCosh, Francis Patton, and Benjamin B. Warfield form the center of investigation. It is a group for which the author expresses his own admiration and suggests that “their assessment of and answers to the evolution question can best serve our generation” (14).
Several themes frame the book. Foremost, in the narrative of the ways in which the Princetonians defined and answered the question of evolution, is what the author calls, “providential developmentalism.” This was the idea that the unfolding of built-in potentials over time and in interaction with the environment was God's usual way of doing things. Where some contemporary Presbyterians, such as Robert Lewis Dabney, often invoked divine fiat as an explanation of causation, the Princetonians affirmed the supernatural sovereignty of God but also recognized the ubiquity of secondary causes as the way by which that sovereignty typically expressed itself. Gundlach depicts the Princetonians, from Charles Hodge through James McCosh and on to Benjamin Warfield recognizing the importance of scientific inquiry, seeking to keep up with its results, but always framing their response within theological categories of divine sovereignty, providence, and sin. McCosh, for example, was the first major religious leader in America to promote a form of evolutionary thinking, so long as it was “properly limited and explained” (102). Similarly, Warfield, and even Machen, both of whom the author admires, expressed their respect for science, though they were quick to circumscribe the boundaries of scientific inquiry.
Another theme in this volume is the development of a policy by James McCosh during his tenure as president of Princeton College to identify and cultivate a cohort of promising Princeton graduates who could be called back to assume professorships at their alma mater. Of the nineteen appointments, principally in the sciences, which McCosh made after 1880, ten were Princeton graduates. These “bright young men,” as McCosh called them, were intended to mold the age through their instruction of the Princeton students who were expected to become leaders in American society. Indeed, Francis Patton, McCosh's successor as president of the college, continued McCosh's program because he believed that “scholarship undertaken by faithful men, founded on theistic presuppositions, offered the safest road to both the preservation and the progress of truth” (202). If theologians such as Hodge or Warfield were tasked with meeting the implications of Darwinian evolution, then the faculty at Princeton, men “under God” as McCosh put it, were given the institutional support to foster and develop generations of Princeton men within a theistic mold.
By the late 1870s Darwinian evolution was very widely accepted within the American scientific community, even though there were holdouts and others, such as Edward Drinker Cope, who advocated Neo-Lamarckianism. Neo-Lamarckianism enjoyed a vogue in America in the 1880s, because its doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characteristics substituted the mechanism of use inheritance for the Darwinian model of natural selection. For its advocates Neo-Lamarckianism suggested that purposive development rather than blind chance was operative. The Princetonians reinforced the Neo-Lamarckian condemnation of randomness by characterizing development as a conservative unfolding of predetermined plans. Often presented as a “growth metaphor,” it was Princeton's way of maintaining God's purposes in the world while still affirming developmentalism (211).
While the author strives to let the Princetonians speak for themselves, he does emphasize the crucial importance of dualistic supernaturalism for the Princetonians. This distinction between dualistic supernaturalism and monistic naturalism remained intact for the Princetonians throughout the course of the years covered in this volume. As early as the 1840s, the Princetonians had criticized Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation for its “monism, its methodological blindness to the spiritual realm” (26). Similarly, McCosh's support for evolution denied that evolution extended to the human species because “humanity's moral and spiritual side could never be accounted for by the operation of physical forces” (110). Warfield simply descanted on the same theme in an address entitled, “Christian Supernaturalism.” This supernatural dualism operated in two important ways for the Princetonians. On the one hand, it provided a basis for the intervention of divine activity in the context of human sinfulness, a context the Princetonians never stopped emphasizing. On the other hand, for the Princetonians asserting the integrity of supernatural divine intervention, it allowed them to distance themselves from affirming that God worked exclusively through natural causes, which amounted, in their view, to a simplistic naturalism.
As historians of science have amply demonstrated, by the nineteenth century, there was a high degree of consensus among scientists that scientific practice used mechanistic models of causality and thus rejected supernatural explanations that were beyond scientific examination and outside the realm of natural causes. Recognition of this consensus helps to contextualize the acceptance of Darwinian evolution among American scientists by the late 1870s as noted above. Some recent scholars have concluded that Princeton made peace between evangelical religion and evolution on the condition of prescribing significant modifications to suit their theology. The author of this volume believes that the Princetonians did not simply make peace with evolution—they embraced it. While it will be up to each reader to decide whether a position that centers on supernatural intervention can ever embrace the modern scientific attitude with its commitment to naturalistic causation, this reviewer remains unconvinced by this volume's exposition.
