Leonard Hodgson was born on 24 October 1889 at Fulham, England, the son of Walter Hodgson, an official stenographer to the House of Commons. Leonard attended St. Paul’s School, London, where his diligent work earned him a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford. In Oxford he gained firsts in both Greats and Theology. In 1913 he was ordained a deacon after spending a year at St. Michael’s College, Llandaff. In 1914, after a curacy at St. Mark's, Portsmouth, Hodgson became Vice-Principal of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, at the behest of his former tutor, H. H. Williams.

In 1919 Hodgson became Dean of Divinity and Tutor in Theology at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a year later he married Ethel Margaret du Plat. He was a canon of Winchester from 1931, until his election in 1938 as Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, an appointment that carried with it the role of Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. In 1944 Hodgson succeeded Oliver Chase Quick as Regius Professor of Divinity at Magdalen College, a position he retained until his retirement in 1958. He died on 15 July 1969 at his home in Leamington Spa and was buried in Epwell churchyard, Oxfordshire.

Hodgson emphasised an essential harmony between philosophy and theology. He believed that the two types of knowledge could work cooperatively to reveal the fundamental intelligibility of the universe.

Hodgson’s principal works include: Essays in Christian Philosophy (1930); The Grace of God in Faith and Philosophy (1936); Towards a Christian Philosophy (1942); The Doctrine of the Trinity (1943); Christian Faith and Practice (1950); The Doctrine of the Atonement (1951); For Faith and Freedom: The Gifford Lectures, 1955–1957 in the University of Glasgow (1956); Sex and Christian Freedom: An Enquiry (1967)