A Historical Tour of Princeton Theological Seminary
By Michael J. Paulus, Jr.
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2. The Establishment of the Seminary at Princeton
The period following the Revolution was one of great uncertainty. As the new republic
began to establish a workable system of government, stabilize its economy, expand
westward, and form its identity, church leaders began reevaluating the manner in
which ministerial candidates were being educated. Ministers of the gospel, they hoped,
would be instrumental in shaping the new nation. This would not happen unless they were well-trained.
Ashbel Green
Samuel Miller
Throughout the eighteenth century, Protestant theological education was included
as part of the undergraduate curriculum in colleges and universities. But as the
national demand and need for pastors increased, colleges such as the College of
New Jersey became less concerned with producing ministerial candidates and were
not graduating enough of them. In the early 1800s, two Presbyterian ministers,
Ashbel Green from Philadelphia and Samuel Miller from New York City, began discussing
the establishment of a Presbyterian school that would be dedicated solely to the
Archibald Alexander
education of ministers. Green and Miller were unhappy with the administration of
the College of New Jersey, which would have been the logical place to locate their
theological school, so they decided to establish a separate school. They also decided
that the curriculum of this new school would supplement rather than replace a classical
college education. This plan meant that Presbyterian ministers would be among the most
educated in the country.
Two events in 1808 propelled forward the Presbyterian movement for a theological school. In 1805,
a Unitarian had been appointed to the chair of divinity at Harvard. A group of New England
Congregationalists responded to this event by opening in 1808 the first formal, post-graduate
“theological seminary” at Andover, Massachusetts. That same year, at the 1808 General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Archibald Alexander, a pastor in Philadelphia
The Plan
and former president of Hampden-Sydney College, preached a sermon that called on the church to
establish seminaries to ensure a regular and sufficient supply of qualified ministers.
In 1811, following a series of overtures and committee reports, a plan for a theological
seminary was approved by the General Assembly. The guiding principle of the plan was to
form a theological seminary that would be “a nursery of vital piety, as well as of sound theological learning.”
The church did not only want educated ministers with “solid learning”;
it needed transformed ministers who had experienced “the renewing and sanctifying grace of God.”
Alexander Hall
The General Assembly of 1812 elected a board of directors for the Seminary and Archibald
Alexander as the Seminary’s first professor. After reaching an agreement with the trustees
of the College of New Jersey that defined a cooperative rather than competitive relationship
between the two schools, the General Assembly resolved to locate its new seminary in Princeton.
In August, 1812, Alexander was inaugurated and began teaching the Seminary’s first three students
in his temporary home in Princeton.
Hodge House
More students came to study at Princeton Seminary, and in 1813 Samuel Miller was appointed the
Seminary’s second professor. By then, the Seminary was operating out of Nassau Hall and was ready
for a building of its own. In 1815, the cornerstone was laid for the Seminary’s first building,
Alexander Hall, which was in use by 1817. Initially referred to as Old Seminary, Alexander Hall
had dormitory rooms for about 100 students; a refectory and kitchen; a large oratory, which was
used for lectures, chapel services, and student meetings; and, by 1820, it accommodated the
Seminary’s growing library.
Charles Hodge
As work was concluding on Alexander Hall in 1819, the Seminary built
a house next to it for Alexander. A house for the Seminary’s third professor, Charles Hodge,
was completed in 1825 on the opposite side of Alexander Hall. Hodge graduated
from the Seminary in 1819, joined the faculty as an instructor in 1820, and was
appointed the Seminary’s third professor in 1822. The plan for the Seminary called
for at least three professors, each specializing in a different area. With the addition
of Hodge to the faculty, by its tenth anniversary the Seminary’s plan was fully implemented.