Summary
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Fred G. Zaspel’s “Princeton and Evolution” examines Old Princeton’s engagement with evolutionary theory. While open to science, Princetonians, including Charles Hodge, were “committed to the idea of the harmony of all revealed truth.” Hodge distinguished between theistic evolution, which he allowed within limits but deemed “impossible and unproven,” and atheistic Darwinism. B.B. Warfield, initially “a Darwinian of the purest water,” later “fell away from this, his orthodoxy,” stating he “outgrew evolution himself” by 1881. Warfield consistently criticized evolution’s “inadequacy” for origins, “inherent naturalism,” and “lack of evidence,” calling it a “vast mass of speculation.” He noted its “conflict with Scripture,” particularly regarding human creation and the *imago Dei*. Though Warfield conceded Scripture “could accommodate” evolution “if it were ever proven true,” he “never did accept it,” affirming “man came into the world just as the Bible says he did.”