Dr. Charles Hodge Weighs In

Charles Hodge, the Princeton theologian, wrote a little book, The Way of Life. Sadly, it is little known.[1] This is Presbyterian theology as it used to be, written for “educated youth.” This article on same-sex passions is affected by a chapter in that book, “Holy Living.”

Hodge presents sanctification on the basis of union with Christ:

To Hodge true religion is the harmony of the soul with God. Spiritual life begins when one has been born of God. Feelings then become different. Spontaneous love for God makes for obedience to him under the Spirit’s persuasion.

The breadth of sanctification

Of particular note in the current crisis is Hodge’s insistence that sanctification is of the whole person. “The mind becomes more and more enlightened, the will more submissive, … and the affections more thoroughly purified.”  1 Thessalonians 5:23 is not, “May the God of peace sanctify you partially…” Rather, it is wholly. In other words, the Spirit’s work extends to all our faculties in a work not finished in this life, but also not limited to certain areas of life. Though Hodge did not speak of homoerotic lust among professing Christians, he taught that the Spirit cleanses and purifies our desires.

Graces such as benevolence, meekness, and patience are different manifestations of the same principle of goodness. Just as holiness is being produced across the breadth of our individual lives, it is also across the spectrum of graces. Hodge argues that it’s a contradiction to say that someone is a ‘good’ man who, though he is just, is unkind – because goodness includes both justice and benevolence. Likewise, it is a contradiction to say a man is religious if he is not honest. One cannot have holiness with some virtues subtracted. Sanctification cannot be broken into parts, and it does not have sovereign exclusions of special sins. In Hodge’s theology, in my opinion, had he encountered Side B homosexual doctrine, he would have said it does not have a leg to stand on. [2]

Hodge loved good illustrations. He observed that growth in plants and animals has harmonious development. There are no trees where the roots enlarge and deepen while the trunk remains the same. A man does not become an adult in height, weight, and girth while his hands are the hands of a baby. The Holy Spirit does not produce distortions. The fruit of the Spirit is not a list where features may be on or off. Yet Hodge does not argue for uniform lockstep growth in God’s children. Just as gifts differ from person to person so does spiritual development.

My point is that in the sovereignty of God there are no omitted virtues, with some not produced in us at all. In the phrase of John Owen, the Lord calls for universal obedience. He can do no other, for he is holy. God has no inscrutable policy to produce graces with exceptions. Such a suggestion uses a perverted doctrine of divine sovereignty in support of carnal arguments. Israel had Ten Commandments in the covenant box in the holy of holies. After Moses smashed them, when they were written again they were the same ten. God may pass over sinners and not save them; he has no such passes when it comes to righteousness required. He cannot compromise himself. The obedience of Christ included sexual purity, and the righteousness infused by the Spirit in his children does not omit this blessing.

The new St. Louis doctrine is that in the inscrutable privacy of God’s mind, the Holy Spirit, contrary to his public word (Scripture) may make exceptions. Allegedly, he has inscrutably decided not to strive against some elders’ sexual desire for persons of the same gender. We have not yet been informed whether there are other sins which receive a bye, or whether other divine secrets may be opened to us.

Still, Dr. Hodge does not avoid the pervasiveness of sin. The sinful deeds of the body are more than matched by “the evil dispositions of the heart.” “Pride, vanity, envy, malice, and the love of self are more formidable foes than mere bodily appetites.” These are deep-seated, so that putting off the old man [i.e., what we were before Christ] is “the most difficult of Christian duties, and it renders the believer’s life a perpetual conflict.” Sympathy for others’ suffering such temptations is a Christian virtue too. All of us have reason to be sober about sin within.

Concerning the power of heart sin and perpetual conflict with it, Hodge continues:  The flesh lusts against the Spirit, the Spirit lusts against the flesh, thus the better principle [the Spirit] is “habitually victorious” – not uniformly but habitually. This is a stupendous claim! It sounds like the Westminster Confession: “Although the remaining corruption may prevail for a time in this war, yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate nature does overcome.” Christians are renewed “so as to be holy.” They love God. They are obedient children “not fashioning themselves according to their former lusts” (1 Peter 1:14), or in the ESV, “passions of your former ignorance.”  “They are holy in all manner of conduct.” Hodge calls this a “victory over themselves.” Christians “keep up a constant opposition to the more subtle evils of the heart.” The victory Hodge had in mind is overcoming in the face of continuing internal battles. He certainly did not adopt notions of triumphalism.

It is a common mistake to dismiss general truths as mere generalities. Ability to apply truth accurately across the board is a great gift. We are surrounded with general statements in the Bible, for example, God is holy. In this life there is no maturity level which is equal in all. Hodge explains, while it is certain that godly traits are all essential to the Christian character, he does not assert that all Christians are alike in character. We may differ in Christian graces, but all are led by the Spirit, and all produce good and necessary fruit (John 15:5-7) if indeed we have been born of God. By these sweeping assertions, the great theologian has painted himself into a corner – deliberately and ready for challenge.

The necessity of holiness is absolute

Because sanctification is holiness underway, Hodge did not embrace sinless perfection this side of heaven. But real salvation entails the Spirit’s cleansing now. We must not teach that sexual desire in the wrong direction is merely the potential of sinning, and that we are not responsible for the desires of our hearts. In this error, God’s promise to transform the heart is deleted from the new covenant. But he does not cleanse from select sins only, but all. He does not overlook same-sex desire. Our cleansing does not await kingdom come, since it plainly says that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin (1 John 1:7) – in the present. Let us not exchange plain truth for exotic and esoteric insights. Generations of reformed Bible readers had not seen sin so protected before PCA homosexuals began to proclaim reduced sanctification. In the process a crucial presbytery has been corrupted! (No presbytery can correct a false doctrine it has adopted.)

Sin in our desires is weighty stuff, and Hodge knew it. He does not let up. “The Bible knows nothing of proud, selfish, covetous, impure Christians. Christians are partakers of a holy calling; they are washed, and sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” He repeats himself, but his burden shows in his repetition. Be sure to hear him, “it is plain that unless we are sanctified, we cannot be saved… Holiness arises out of the very nature of God …” And even there Hodge does not stop, because he knows that to protect some sin from the Spirit’s cleansing “subverts the whole gospel, and makes the death of Christ of no effect …”  “The whole design and mission … of the Savior would be frustrated …”   We should not miss Hodge’s burden: sanctification without holiness is not sanctification at all. The Holy Spirit does not observe “no trespass” zones. A person without sanctification has not been saved.

Later in the means of sanctification Hodge continues, “It ceases to be the gospel if we abstract from it the great truth that the Spirit of God, as the purchase and gift of Christ, is ever present with his people, guiding their inward exercises and their outward conduct, and bringing them at last, without spot or blemish, to the purity and blessedness of heaven.” Thus we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14).

An approach that fails

We are not made holy by the practice of virtue. If the heart is not renewed, achieving any holiness by personal discipline fails. The conscience lacks the power to call into existence right feelings towards God and our neighbors. “The affections do not obey the dictates of reason, or the commands of conscience … they cannot be changed in their nature. They follow their own law. They delight in what is suited to the disposition of the one who exercises [these affections].” Charles Hodge would discern the Missouri Presbytery’s blunder when it spoke of its minister’s failure to rid himself of his “undiminished same-sex attraction.” Missouri states that “to this point he hasn’t been able to be rid of it.” In this way, that presbytery speaks of his determined effort to conquer sin apart from the power of God. Of course it has not worked.

Hodge’s counsel is still relevant: It is not by the strength of our own purposes, nor by the force of moral considerations, nor by the rules of discipline, that the life of God can be either produced or sustained.”

The only way to live is by faith:

What shall we say when some sin overcomes all of our efforts to get rid of it? John Owen attributes this to sin lacking repentance elsewhere in one’s life. Hodge warns that the Spirit may be grieved, and in judgment God often withdraws these influences from those who offend him. Faith works when the truth concerning God is made to operate upon the mind, often and continuously! But if the heart is often moved to evil by the thoughts or sight of sin, no one should expect affections which correspond to holiness to gather strength within. Those who are sensual are unregenerate.

In an overview of what the Spirit does in Christians, he gives a flurry of Scriptures. [3]  They are born of the Spirit, called spiritual, are sanctified, led by the Spirit, strengthened and filled. They have access to God, and pray and sing in the Spirit. He is the source of all their knowledge, joy, and love. “The doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is so wrought into the texture of the gospel as to be absolutely essential to it.”  All we need to do is run from our sins, passions and false hopes to Christ. From him comes the Spirit with all the energy of God to make us like Christ, because of God’s infallible faithfulness to all that he promises. With the unregenerate it is not so; they do not have the Spirit active in the inner man. Only the children of God have the Lord the Spirit who has been sent to care for Israel, and he neither slumbers nor sleeps. He does not fall down on the job.

Thus when deliverance from homoerotic passion for one’s own gender is so absent that a minister’s presbytery can describe it as “undiminished same-sex attraction,” whatever has gone wrong is not found in God. His word and promise are far too comprehensive to allow some secret exception. God is light with no darkness at all, not a smidgen. Any presbytery that allows a doctrine wherein God breaks covenant has changed sides. In new covenant promise (Hebrews 10:16) God has committed to every believer to change our hearts, the seat and source of all our sins. When Side B teachers face the new covenant they move the goal posts. Forget dealing with passions in the heart; what matters to them is the much lighter goal of celibate conduct. This different sanctification, reduced, on sale, and hollowed out allows homosexuality to sit comfortably in the heart. Pray that all our elders may be converted men.

In his closing paragraph, Charles Hodge, with the Lord now for 143 years, encourages us to believe and apply all truth to holy living.

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do … And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Galatians 5:16,17,& 24; Matthew 5:6)

[1]  The book “The Way of Life” is available in print and in Kindle.  A modernized version by my friend, William H. Gross is available on line:  www.onthewing.org   I have used The Way of Life so much, I must say so. Rearranging some of his thoughts in my article admittedly runs some risk of misrepresentation. Much in this article is Hodge’s even when quotation marks are not used. Of course, he did not proof read this article. I heartily recommend the book and Mr. Gross’s edited presentation which I have gladly and profusely employed. 

[2]  Side A homosexuals are practicing ones, while Side B persons try to hold to a standard of celibacy, while defending their unfulfilled appetites vigorously as needing no repentance. Some claim they mortify them.

[3]  Galatians 2:20; 5:5, 22, 25; Luke 3:16; John 3:5; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:11; 14:15; Romans 8:13, 14; Ephesians 1:17; 2:18; 3:16; 5:18; 1 Thessalonians 1:6.