Burning with the charge to defend orthodoxy given him by his predecessor, Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge became Professor at Princeton Seminary in 1841.
Princeton always inculcated a learned defence of the faith so Hodge's picture of theologians studying the Bible as other scientists study nature was not new. It was with well-honed reverence for facts and a deep suspicion of theories paraded as facts that Hodge witnessed the advent of Darwinism in 1859. Far from receiving the new hypothesis enthusiastically as fact, Hodge was ready to denounce (in no uncertain terms) one crucial aspect of Darwinism as Atheism.
Hodge's response, in his book, What is Darwinism? begins by portraying the biblical account of God's creating nature as a theory that fits the facts. Other theories of origin are all inadequate, including those which, although theistic because they have God as the first cause, are unscriptural because they rule out secondary causes. Darwinism merits careful examination but it is known, for indeed Darwin himself admits it, that both evolution and natural selection were recognised by others first. Darwin's distinctive contribution is to deny that God's design is needed for the origin of species so Hodge accuses Darwinism of Ateleology: denial of design.
