Taming the Wild

The West suffers from an unhealthy view of wilderness. Wilderness is often called innocent, pure, untrammeled, sacred, and God’s country. It is land not (yet) desecrated or sullied by human development. Humans impose themselves upon the “natural condition” of wilderness in the interest of habitation. Our development is, however necessary, an impure act. The governing …

“Dismantle the Papacy”? “Pope Francis” may be an ally in this effort.

I would see this as a positive, though incomplete, “development”. But they could not “dismantle” enough for my liking. And there is no papal repentance in this model. “The leaders of the “school of Bologna” have a very ambitious new project in the works: a history of the movement for Christian unity aimed at a …

Method and System in Early Reformed Orthodoxy

Much of what follows is merely background material, but I find it fascinating to understand what things needed to be emphasized by the early Orthodox writers. Here (as with other entries from this series), I’ve added both paragraph breaks and bold emphasis for easier reading and digestion: Early orthodoxy is also the period of Ramism. …

The hermeneutic of the WCF vs the hermeneutic of Newman

Here is my look at a comment that is instructive because it seeks to show how “Roman Catholics and Protestants do the same thing”, but where really, they are doing something completely different. In seeking to compare the Roman Catholic doctrine of “the Church” with Reformed doctrines, Erick said: Just as the expansive explanation for …

The Rise, Decline, and Fall of Reformed Orthodoxy

Richard Muller traces the arc of “Reformed Orthodoxy” through three periods (early, high, and late orthodoxy), and William J. van Asselt spends a great deal of his work (“Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism”, Reformation Heritage Books) looking at these three periods as well. The post-Reformation development of Protestantism can be divided, for the sake of convenience, …

The Continuity of “the Church” Through the Reformation

What is “the church”? Roman Catholic dogma about “the Church” leads to a misunderstanding of what Christ’s “church” actually consists of. For Roman Catholicism, Dogma #1 frequently seems to be “The Roman Catholic Church is God’s Great Gift to Mankind” – see this first sentence in the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”, Lumen Gentium: Christ …

Newman’s historical concession

A commenter wrote: I was not aware that Newman concedes the point that there was no bishop in Rome during that period and I am surprised to hear that! Could you possibly reference that for me? I’m working with the 1989 edition, published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Newman (p. 12) in discussing …