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 …

Debate and Polemic, Within and Without the “High Orthodox”

I didn’t grow up Reformed, and so some of the distinctions that are made in and among Reformed churches are difficult for me to contextualize. This section is somewhat long, but it moves quickly, and I found it very helpful in sorting out “what all the discussions were about” during the Reformed “High Orthodox” period …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

“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 …

Some Specific Features of the Post-Reformation Doctrine of God

Elsewhere it has been noted that the Reformed Orthodox were not monolithic in their theologies; this section fleshes out some of those diversities. This is really a “for-what-it’s-worth” compendium of how the Reformed Orthodox thought about God. However, it was interesting to see the areas where there was some flexibility, and kinds of things that …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 5): The Starting Point

In this series, and following the work of Richard Muller (“Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”), I’ve been making the claim that the Reformed Orthodox writers, who wrote in the two centuries following the Reformation, borrowed from Aristotle’s methods, but not much at all from his own lines of thinking. As a reference for those who may be …