The Development of Theological Prolegomena

I’ve been posting selections from Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics” series here for about six months now. What Muller has reported in earlier chapters is mere overview – in terms of the history and development of Reformed Orthodoxy – have been the continuities and discontinuities between the Medieval period of theology, and the Post-Reformation (especially …

The Rise of Post-Reformation Systematics

I’ve been working through Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”. Some time ago, Muller was discussing the rise of “a revised scholasticism”, “as a result, not of doctrinal change, but of the participation of [Protestant] theological faculties in the academic culture of the age”, and as “a more suitable systematic vehicle in and through which to …

Proofs for the existence of God

Here is how Richard Muller introduces the topic of “Proofs for the existence of God”: An example that will be addressed at the very outset of the topical section of this study is the use of arguments for the existence of God where, contrary to much received opinion, the Reformers did not scorn the issue …

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, …

“Codifiers and perpetuators” of the Reformation

I’ve recently acquired an electronic copy (yes, I paid for it – one of the benefits of working as much as I do these days is that I can afford to buy all the books that I’ve wanted) of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”. Since this was expensive, and many people don’t have access to …