Defending the Faith; Denying the Image – Abstract Ligon Duncan Summary: How 19th century Presbyterians simultaneously faithfully defended historic Christian orthodoxy against Enlightenment rationalistic anti-supernaturalism, and accommodated (indeed undergirded) America’s original sin: race-based chattel slavery (and later segregation). The Faithfulness of the Old School 19th century American Presbyterians in the Old School in both North and South recognized the threat of deistic, rationalist, materialist, anti-supernaturalist, Enlightenment thought. When Princeton Seminary was founded, for instance, in 1812, students were expected to be familiar with the “Deistical controversy” and its principal sources and arguments, and well-armed to rebut them with Scripture and Confession. In particular, Charles Hodge (and other Old School theologians) realized that the kind of theology flowing from Germany, and particularly the stream from Schleiermacher, was going to have deadly effects on the church. Schleiermacher re-understood doctrine subjectively and experientially and balked at doctrines like plenary verbal inspiration, penal substitutionary atonement and the like. They proved prescient. Theological Liberalism has killed the church wherever and whenever it has prevailed. The Princetonians (and Southern Presbyterians) in this context became the great champions of the historic Christian view of Scripture and doctrine. They articulated the biblical doctrine of the inerrancy and authority … Continue reading Defending the Faith; Denying the Image – 19th Century American Confessional Calvinism in Faithfulness and Failure