Paul Helseth and David P. Smith eds., "New Perspectives on Old Princeton, 1812-1929" (Routledge, 2024)

July 9, 2026

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“The standard storyline has been that the old Princetonians embraced certain elements of the Scottish Enlightenment and those elements led them to abandon Reformed orthodoxy.” That is the “old perspective” that Paul Helseth and David P. Smith, editors of New Perspectives on Old Princeton, 1812–1929 (Routledge, 2024), aim to challenge. Their volume collects twelve essays arguing that Princeton Theological Seminary’s theologians—figures like Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, Samuel Miller, and B.B. Warfield—remained orthodox Reformed thinkers. The Scottish common-sense realism they used, the editors contend, did not subvert their theology but flowed out of it. The book reexamines Old Princeton on topics from natural law and politics to slavery, German scholarship, and evolution, offering a corrective to a generation of historiography that has seen the seminary’s theology as compromised by Enlightenment accommodation.

What “Old Princeton” Was—and What It Was Accused Of

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What you'll learn

1 (07:00) **What is "Old Princeton"?** - David Smith defines Old Princeton as Princeton Theological Seminary from 1812 to 1929, a stalwart Calvinist institution whose theologians fought Protestant liberalism until the seminary was reorganized.
2 (09:35) **The "Old Perspective" vs. the "New Perspective"** - Paul Helseth explains the standard historiographical critique: that Old Princetonians compromised Reformed orthodoxy by accommodating the Scottish Enlightenment.
3 (14:57) **Warfield's Theological View of Knowledge** - David Smith argues that Warfield's epistemology was grounded in the doctrine of God as Creator, not in Scottish Common Sense Realism as a secular foundation.
4 (19:37) **Samuel Miller on Learning, Piety, and "Sanctified Judgment"** - Paul Helseth explains that for Miller, knowing is a moral, whole-soul activity, not a merely intellectual one.
5 (25:36) **Charles Hodge in Transatlantic Context** - Annette Albert's chapter shows Hodge's engagement with German scholars like August Tholuck and Ernst Hengstenberg, highlighting his fight against rationalism.
6 (30:07) **Evolution, Development, and Organic Science at Old Princeton** - Bradley Gundlach's chapter argues that Old Princeton had a dynamic, organic view of science and history, not a static one.
7 (36:14) **Recommended Essays from the Volume** - The editors highlight several other chapters that advance the "new perspective."

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Show Notes

New Perspectives on Old Princeton, 1812-1929 (Routledge, 2024) focuses on Princeton Theological Seminary and the theologians who taught there from the time of its founding in 1812 to the time of its reorganization in 1929. It confronts the standard assessment of Old Princeton in the historiography of North American evangelicalism and sets out why a new paradigm is needed. The volume critically engages with the 'Ahlstrom thesis' and other more recent scholarship concerning Old Princeton's relationship to the Scottish intellectual tradition. The contributions seek to move beyond Old Princeton's alleged indebtedness to Enlightenment thought and advance a more constructive reading of the Old Princetonians, their theology, and their place in the American evangelical experience. The book offers a fresh and more accurate assessment of the theological and philosophical assumptions that held sway at Old Princeton and through the seminary to the American continent and beyond. It will appeal to scholars interested in theology, religious history and intellectual history.

Paul K. Helseth (PhD, Marquette University) is associate professor of Christian thought at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of Right Reason and the Princeton Mind (2010).

David Smith (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is pastor in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and adjunct faculty in historical theology at Erksine Theological Seminary. He received his M.Div. from Covenant Seminary (1995) and completed his dissertation, published as B. B. Warfield’s Scientifically Constructive Theological Scholarship in 2010, under John Woodbridge.

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