Princeton Seminary (1812–1929)

Its Leaders' Lives and Works

Gary Steward

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781596383975
• eBook ISBN: 9781629951393
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Many key ideas of the modern era were formulated at the time of "Old Princeton." This is a popular introduction to the major figures and some of their key writings.

1

The Founding of
Princeton Seminary

Few institutions have probably been more useful, in any land or in any age, than the Theological Seminary at Princeton.

—Cortlandt Van Rensselaer (c. 1844)

The agency of the Log College in the establishing of our Presbytery, and indeed of the Church, has never been properly appreciated.

—Thomas Murphy (1889)

In the winter of 1742, in the midst of the Great Awakening, David Brainerd was expelled from Yale. This personal setback for Brainerd formed part of a chain of events which eventually brought Princeton Seminary into being. While “The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America at Princeton, New Jersey”—or Princeton Theological Seminary as it is now known—was not established until 1812, the events that brought it about were set in motion many years before, with godly men like Brainerd from both sides of the Atlantic
having a part in its eventual formation. Once established, “Old Princeton” (the seminary as it existed from its beginning in
1812 to its reorganization in 1929) became a vibrant center for theological education and spiritual cultivation. It operated within the historic, confessional stream of Protestantism and Reformed orthodoxy, and it supplied thousands of churches in America with theologically trained and spiritually devout pastors. As the religious landscape in America fragmented into differing denominations and sects in the nineteenth century, Old Princeton stood like a bulwark for biblical fidelity, revival piety, evangelical activism, and the confessional Calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646).

Being established and run by great men, Old Princeton produced great men. James Petigru Boyce, a Baptist, studied at Princeton Seminary for two years before becoming the founding professor of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1859, first in Greenville, South Carolina, and later in Louisville, Kentucky. Basil Manly Jr., another prominent Baptist leader, graduated from the seminary in 1847. Charles Colcock Jones, the famous slave evangelist of Georgia, studied at Princeton from 1829 to 1830 before embarking on his tireless work of evangelism among Southern slaves. John Bailey Adger graduated from the seminary in 1833 and went on to become a missionary to Armenia and one of the leading figures in the Southern Presbyterian Church. The prolific pastor-theologian William Swan Plumer attended Princeton, as did biographer extraordinaire William Buel Sprauge. Ashbel Green Simonton graduated from Princeton in 1859 before enjoying great success as a pioneer Protestant missionary in Brazil. Before becoming a chaplain at West Point and a respected Episcopal bishop, Charles P. McIlvaine graduated from Princeton in 1820, as did Samuel Simon Schmucker, later a renowned Lutheran theologian and educator in antebellum America. In addition to these, Cortlandt Van Rensselear noted in 1844 that “some of the most useful ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church received their instructions at Princeton [Seminary],” listing Samuel Blanchard How, Thomas Edward Vermilye, George Washington Bethune, and others as examples. In countless ways such as these, Old Princeton shaped the development of both American and global Christianity far beyond the bounds of its espoused Presbyterianism.

At the seminary’s centennial celebration in 1912, E. Y. Mullins noted the widespread impact Princeton Seminary had made on other centers of theological learning in its first one hundred years by stating:

As Mt. Blanc enriches the valleys so Princeton Seminary has stood like Mt. Blanc among the seminaries of this country. In a thousand ways, you have not known, she has sent down her largess of blessing into the valleys, and we rejoice in what she has done. And the reason Mt. Blanc can thus bless the valleys is because she lifts her head to the very skies where, from the inexhaustible heavens themselves, she draws her supply, and so Princeton has drawn her supplies from the eternal sources.

It is hard to overstate the impact of Old Princeton on the development of Christianity in America. While some have continued to draw theological guidance and spiritual encouragement from Old Princeton, the men of Old Princeton and their writings are not as widely known as they should be. How this seminary came to be is a worthy story in and of itself—one which has its roots in the Great Awakening and in the humble beginnings of Presbyterian higher education in colonial America.

William Tennent and the Log College

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it was almost universally expected that clergymen would be credentialed by an institution of higher learning. Given this need, the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wasted no time in starting a university for the training of its clergymen. In 1636 they established Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just sixteen years after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. This was the first institution of higher learning in America. Harvard very quickly departed from its original Puritan and Calvinistic roots, and in 1701 a more conservative group of Congregationalists started Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The Anglicans had started the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1693, but this was not an attractive option for dissenting (non-Anglican) Protestants. For non-Anglicans in colonial America wanting to become clergymen before 1746, there were only three main options for receiving the expected education: Harvard, Yale, or Europe.

Many clergymen came to the colonies from Europe having already received their education. One such individual was William Tennent. Tennent, who was born in 1673, served as a chaplain in northern Ireland before immigrating to the American colonies. He arrived in Pennsylvania with his wife and five children and was admitted into the Presbyterian Church in 1718. At the time of Tennent’s arrival, the Presbyterian Church in America had only recently been established. The first presbytery in America, made up almost entirely of Scottish or Irish immigrants, was formed in Philadelphia in 1706—just twelve years before Tennent became a part of it. While formally orthodox in their theology and thoroughly committed to the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Presbyterians of the early 1700s had lapsed into a spiritually cold and lifeless state, not unlike other Protestant groups at that time in the English-speaking world. Spiritual vitality was at a low ebb, and a complaisant coldness had replaced the fervent spirit which had defined the Presbyterians and Congregationalists for much of the seventeenth century.

William Tennent stood out from his contemporaries as a man of great spiritual zeal. Although highly-educated, perfectly fluent in Latin, and well-read in theology, Tennent believed that fervent piety was as important a ministerial qualification as a good education. In 1726, adjacent to his manse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, not far from the Neshaminy Creek, Tennent built a simple building made of logs to serve as an informal school and seminary for his four boys and others. Located some twenty miles north of Philadelphia, this structure became known derisively as “the College” or “the Log College.” While other clergymen looked down upon his school, Tennent labored away at it faithfully all the while engaged in his normal pastoral ministry, giving his students a general and theological education infused with his own emphasis on fervent piety and genuine religious experience.

Tennent’s concern for authentic spirituality and genuine conversion united him with others in his day who were zealously proclaiming the need for conversion, especially George Whitefield. Tennent had heard of the young evangelist before Whitefield arrived in Philadelphia in 1739, and he rode close to thirty miles on horseback to meet Whitefield in person. Almost two weeks after their first meeting, Whitefield accompanied the elder Tennent to his home, where Whitefield preached to a crowd of roughly three thousand people. Whitefield also saw Tennent’s humble seminary firsthand, and recorded his impressions of “the College” in his famed Journal, stating:

The place wherein the young men study now is, in contempt, called the College. It is a log-house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad; and to me it seemed to resemble the school of the old prophets, for their habitations were mean. . . . From this despised place, seven or eight worthy ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are almost ready to be sent, and the foundation is now laying for the instruction of many others. The devil will certainly rage against them; but the work, I am persuaded, is of God, and will not come to nought. Carnal ministers oppose them strongly; and, because people, when awakened by Mr. Tennent, or his brethren, see through them, and therefore leave their ministry, the poor gentlemen are loaded with contempt, and looked upon as persons who turn the world upside-down.

Even though they had just met, Whitefield quickly recognized how out of step Tennent’s ministry was with the prevailing religious climate. While the Log College was nothing impressive to look at, Whitefield realized that Tennent shared the same evangelical spirit as those leading the trans-Atlantic awakening. Whitefield noted of Tennent that:

He is a great friend of Mr. [Ebenezer] Erskine, of Scotland; and as far as I can learn, both he and his sons are secretly despised by the generality of the Synod, as Mr. Erskine and his friends are hated by the judicatories of Edinburgh, and as the Methodist preachers (as they are called) are by their brethren in England.

It was not long before the animosity sensed by Whitefield came out into the open. Within a few short years, the four to five “Log College men” that made up the Presbytery of New Brunswick (New Jersey) came into open conflict with the body of fifty or so clergymen that made up the Presbyterian Synod. The immediate cause of the conflict was the licensure of John Rowland, a student of the Log College, but the central issues that divided the two sides were much deeper. At issue was the adequacy of a “Log College” type of education for ordained ministry, along with the appropriateness of the preaching itinerancies of Log College revival preachers like Gilbert Tennent and Samuel Blair. The success of Whitefield’s 1739–40 preaching tour through the Middle Colonies crystallized the differences between the two sides, with the “Old Side” Presbyterians viewing the itinerant preaching of Whitefield as a serious assault on Presbyterian propriety, and the “New Side” Presbyterians welcoming it as a divine blessing. The two sides separated in 1741, with the larger presbyteries of New York and New Castle (Delaware) joining with the Presbytery of New Brunswick in 1745 to form the Synod of New York, a rival to the Old Side Synod of Philadelphia.

Although the spiritual coldness of some Old Side Presbyterians was certainly deplorable, Tennent and his sons were somewhat at fault for unduly provoking the separation between the two sides. In their zeal to promote the new birth and genuine piety among Presbyterian churches, they were guilty of giving undue offense to those who were sincerely evangelical but simply took a more cautious approach to the Awakening. After accompanying Whitefield on his ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. The Founding of Princeton Seminary
• 2. Archibald Alexander
• 3. Old Princeton and Spiritual Experience: Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience
• 4. Samuel Miller
• 5. Old Princeton and the Ministry: Samuel Miller’s The Ruling Elder and Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits
• 6. Charles Hodge
• 7. Old Princeton and the Church: Charles Hodge’s Princeton Review Articles on the Church
• 8. James Waddel Alexander and Joseph Addison Alexander
• 9. Old Princeton and Nineteenth-Century American Culture: James W. Alexander’s Forty Years’ Familiar Letters
• 10. Archibald Alexander Hodge
• 11. Old Princeton and Theology: Archibald Alexander Hodge’s The Atonement
• 12. Old Princeton: Past, Present, and Future
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Illustrations
• Index of Persons
• Index of Scripture
• About the Author
• Also from P&R Publishing