Doctrine and Method in the Era of High Orthodoxy (ca. 1640–1685–1725)

1. General characteristics. The period following 1640 and extending, in two phases, into the beginning of the eighteenth century can be called the period of high orthodoxy, defined most clearly by further changes in the style of dogmatics. The architectonic clarity of early orthodoxy is replaced to a certain extent or at least put to …

“The Chief Task is to Assess the Protestant Adjustment of Traditional Scholastic Categories in the Light of The Reformation”

A Clearer Understanding of the Meaning of the Reformation Itself This entry concludes the section of Richard Muller’s work under the heading, “Doctrine and Method in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (ca. 1565-1618-1640)”. What’s been most notable for me, in publishing selections from Muller, is to notice the continuities of thought through the Reformation period. …

“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 …

From Reformers to Reformed Theology

There is a bit more to say in the digressions on Aristotle but I wanted to get back to Richard Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Muller seems to have been attempting to provide a thorough understanding of the ways that the theology of the Reformers became more complicated and sophisticated than merely polemics with Roman …

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, …