A Reformed Perspective on Natural Beauty

The universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God. ~ Belgic Confession of Faith Swiss Alps The Protestant Reformers spoke often of the beauty of creation. Indeed, natural beauty[1] plays an important role in some …

Calvin and Winthrop Between the Ages: Medievalism, Hierarchy, and Modernity (Part 2 of 4)

This is Part 2 of a series on Calvin and modernity. This post covers Calvin’s two-kingdom theology and his theology of work. I show that Calvin’s thought cannot be the foundation of modernity and that his thought is a modification of medieval thought, not a radical break from it.                                 Chillon Castle, near Geneva, Switzerland …

Natural Theology 3: Vermigli on the Natural Knowledge of God

Richard Muller rounds out the Reformers’s view of “natural theology” with a section on Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562). Vermigli was a “Thomist-trained” Italian who, “of all the early Reformed codifiers of doctrine, produced the most extended treatment of the problem of the natural knowledge of God in relation to theology.” It is telling that “in …

Echoes of Scotus, Ockham, and Eck in the Reformed Orthodox discussion of faith and reason

On this topic, I present what Muller has to say, without comment: Medieval Antecedents to the Reformed Discussion The Reformed orthodox debate echoes the debate over the Scotist distinction between the infinite and perfect theologia in se and the various forms of finite theology typical of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. On the one hand, …

Eyes of the Soul: Puritan Faith and Imagining the World to Come

This post continues my explication of the Puritan rejection of the world (see here). Here I outline the Reformed view of faith using the works of John Bunyan and others. In the philosophy of religion, the term “faith” often denotes a belief apart or above reason. The conversation centers on the relationship of faith to …

All I have is Jesus

I was thinking about writing an article about our response to our own depravity (both what it often is and what it should be) and as I struggled to put my thoughts onto the page, I remembered a hymn that I had written when feeling extrodinarily guilty about a sin some time ago. It is …