19th century, and not a distinctive of the Princeton theologians. Princeton was, however, distinguished by the academic rigor with which it approached the Bible. Alexander and his successors sought to defend the doctrines they found in the Bible against rival claims from learned scholars. Charles Hodge saw faithfulness to the Bible as the best defense against higher criticism as well as the overly experiential focus of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Princeton theologians saw themselves in the line of Reformed Protestantism stretching back to John Calvin. The dogmatics of Francis Turretin, a Reformed scholastic of the 17th century, was the primary textbook of theology at Princeton. In a world which increasingly valued the new over the old, these theologians preferred the theological systems of the 16th and 17th centuries. The various Reformed confessions were viewed as harmonious voices of a common theological tradition, which the theologians held as simply a distillation of the teaching of the Bible. References Footnotes Bibliography Calvinist theology Orthodox Presbyterian Church Princeton Theological Seminary