Theopedia

Princeton Theological Seminary

Overview

Princeton Theological Seminary is a Presbyterian seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, established by the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1812 with Archibald Alexander as its first professor.1 For its first century the seminary was the institutional home of “Old Princeton” theology, which Herman Bavinck described as “in the main a reproduction of the Calvinism of the seventeenth century as it was laid down in the Westminster Confession and the Helvetic Consensus and elaborated especially by F. Turretin in his Theologia Elenctica.”2 A 1929 reorganization of the seminary’s governing board prompted a circle of conservative faculty, led by J. Gresham Machen, to leave and found Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia that same year.3

Historical Development

Old Princeton (1812-1929)

Archibald Alexander held Princeton’s first professorship from the seminary’s founding in 1812 until his death in 1851.1 Charles Hodge, Alexander’s student, joined the faculty in 1822 and held a Princeton chair for the rest of his life, a tenure of fifty-six years; in 1825 he founded the Biblical Repertory, later renamed the Princeton Review, which he edited for four decades.4 Hodge’s own son, A. A. Hodge, succeeded him in the chair of systematic theology on Charles Hodge’s death in 1878 and held it until his own death in 1886.5 McCormick traces the same theological line, on the specific question of Christ’s active obedience in justification, from Alexander through both Hodges to Machen, and concludes that “the influence of Princeton Seminary during the 1800s (and early 1900s) can hardly be overestimated.”6

The 1929 Reorganization

In 1929 the Presbyterian Church USA reorganized Princeton Seminary’s governing board. McCormick writes: “With the reorganization of Princeton Seminary in the 1920s, the Seminary soon lost the strong confessional (and evangelical) stance it once maintained.”7 Machen and a circle of colleagues left Princeton for Philadelphia that same year to found Westminster Theological Seminary “to be the successor seminary of Old Princeton.”3 Machen was later removed from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church USA over his promotion of an independent foreign-missions board, a dispute at the origin of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.8

Historiographical Debate: Did Princeton “Go Liberal” in 1929?

A popular account, traced by Kenneth Stewart to Edwin Rian’s 1940 book The Presbyterian Conflict and repeated as recently as a 1980 article in the Journal of Presbyterian History, holds that the “Princeton theology” was “eclipsed” at Princeton itself in 1929 and “found its new home” only in the seminary Machen founded at Philadelphia.9 Stewart calls this a “mythology”: the majority of Princeton’s own faculty, “Calvinists all,” remained in place, including Charles Erdman, Frederick Loetscher Sr., William Park Armstrong, Caspar Wistar Hodge Jr., and Geerhardus Vos.9 Stewart also notes that Princeton made conservative appointments in 1929 itself (missionary scholar Samuel Zwemer, homiletics professor Andrew W. Blackwood) and that a conservative Reformed Church in America theologian, John Kuizenga, filled the Charles Hodge Chair of Theology from 1940. He concludes that “for a decade or more beyond the reorganization of 1929, the theological stance of Princeton’s faculty was extensively as it had been previously.”10

Notable Faculty and Alumni

Faculty

Alumni

Related Doctrines

External links

References

  1. Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 72-73. ↩ ↩2

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩

  3. Samuel Eldon Waldron, “Sola Fide in Norman Shepherd,” in “Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 163. ↩ ↩2

  4. Wikipedia contributors, “Charles Hodge,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed September 15, 2026. ↩

  5. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, s.v. “Hodge, Archibald Alexander” (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1908-1914). ↩

  6. McCormick, “Historical Survey,” 73. ↩

  7. McCormick, “Historical Survey,” 73. ↩

  8. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed,” n. 39: Oswald T. Allis “resigned from Westminster in 1935 because he would not endorse the rival mission agency which J. Gresham Machen had promoted and for support of which Machen was eventually removed from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church USA.” ↩

  9. Kenneth J. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed: The Resurgence of Calvinism Across the 20th Century,” Themelios 50, no. 2 (2025): 288. ↩ ↩2

  10. Stewart, “Hardier than Supposed,” 289. ↩