The Breadth Of The Reformed Orthodox Phenomenon

The Calvinist philosopher Paul Helm has recently published a brief review or commentary on Oliver Crisp’s “Deviant Calvinism” on the discussion between “freedom of the will” and “state of grace”. He states the issue: “An attempt will be made to show not that there are two rival metaphysical views of human freedom side by side …

Natural Theology 2: Calvin’s Conception of the Knowledge of God

Jacob Aitken writes, “Any discussion of the imago-dei (“Image of God” in man) is better served, not by speculating on essences and accidents, but on man’s role as priest-king-prophet in creation and New Creation”. Down below, you’ll see much the same conclusion from Muller regarding Calvin’s understanding of the imago dei: it must be informed …

Natural Theology 1: Toward Clarity and Apologetics

Muller goes on at some length about distinctions among archetypal and ectypal theologies, and I may or may not return to that topic, but next in his queue is the question of “natural theology”. Commenting on “Calvin’s view of general and special revelation”, Stephen cited Warfield “that while fallen man continues to receive natural revelation …

Reformation era background to the discussion of archetypal and ectypal theology

The discussion of “archetypal” and “ectypal” theology seems to follow from an understanding of Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law…” Muller moves from a discussion of …

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 …

Putting Peter Lombard Into Perspective

Moreso than Anselm, Peter Lombard (c. 1100-1160) was influential in defining the shape of subsequent discussions of the Doctrine of God: B. The High Scholastic Doctrine of God: Theologians of the Thirteenth Century Once scholastic theology has been arranged in a definitive form, such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences became for the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth …

Called Out of Confusion

I received this unsolicited email yesterday: Hi John, You don’t know me, but I wanted to thank you for the work you are doing on Triablogue and in comment boxes on various reformed blogs across the internet. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try to encourage you and share what a positive impact your …