The Importance of Social Customs in the Christian Tradition

Perhaps because the “sophisters, economists, and calculators [have] succeeded” (Edmund Burke), it is fashionable today for Christians to forget or dismiss the importance of social customs, traditions, and manners in the maintenance of societal order. These rarely receive consideration in discussions on Reformed social ethics; and, when considered, they are discarded as “old prejudices” or unreasoned habits useful …

Aquinas and Calvin on Spiritual Equality

The importance of the Reformation is on full display when one compares the thought of Thomas Aquinas with John Calvin’s on the topic of spiritual equality. Aquinas believed in an enduring spiritual inequality, one based on the limits according to each person’s nature. Grace “perfects” nature, but only to the extent of each person’s given …

Aquinas gets this wrong, and much confusion follows

There are a lot of moving parts in this discussion, I admit. Here we have a discussion about a concept, in which the discussion moves from Aristotle to Aquinas to Scotus to Luther to Calvin to Turretin and Warfield. In my recent blog post, Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Metaphysics, I cited Muller as …

“What God Knows” and “What He Reveals”

What is “theology”? Richard Muller shows how the Reformed Orthodox began to define the term in using some pre-existing categories; in doing so, he also fleshes out the difference between an epistemology of Thomas Aquinas and that of other writers. A. To “define theology”: Muller writes: The theologies of the Reformers, particularly those that took …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God Part 4: “Knowing God”

Richard Muller moves along to the 13th century, in which commenting upon Peter Lombard’s Sentences became normative for the study of theology. Even a younger Martin Luther commented upon the Sentences (though not upon the Doctrine of God) and Calvin viewed the work as foundational for Medieval theology. With that said, I’m skipping a lot …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God, Part 1: Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury and the Beginnings of “Classical Theism” The Westminster Confession of Faith explicitly endorses reason as well as Scripture as being a source of doctrine, when it says, “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 7): Logic and Categories

[Subtitle: How Aquinas Fudged Aristotle to Settle Transubstantiation]: In recent posts, I’ve cited Willem van Asselt with an overview of the Works of Aristotle, and also Arthur Lovejoy noting that “the God of Aristotle had almost nothing in common with the God of the Sermon on the Mount”. But that doesn’t mean that Aristotle didn’t …

“The Real and True Nature of Anglicanism”

There are Anglicans who still believe this: The Real and True Nature of Anglicanism Our ultimate question does not concern the real and true nature of Anglicanism but the real and true nature of Christianity and as to how well the Anglican tradition of Christian faith comports with the revealed faith of the Lord Jesus …

“Suppressing the Truth by Wickedness”

John Thayer Jenson, you asked in Comment 271: I don’t see how this helps me to know which of us is right and which is suppressing the truth by his wickedness. I believe God’s Voice has told me the Catholic Church is His Body and men can be saved only through it; you believe – …

Sin

Just how serious is it? And who has the correct understanding of its seriousness? Rome’s view of sin is based on an allegorical interpretation of Luke 10:30, as I describe below, as well as a view of reality provided by the neoplatonist imposter Pseudo-Dionysius. The Reformers had a much more honestly biblical view of sin, …