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.