“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. …

Post-Reformation Systematization and Continuities

It was one thing for the Reformers to rebel against the abuses of Rome; it was quite another thing to put together a cohesive program of what the church ought rightly to be in the world. To this end, the generations of thinkers following the Reformation looked to other disciplines. So, not only was “systematization” …

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 …

“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 …

Richard Muller’s Operating Assumptions

Among other things, Muller is going to look for, and find, continuities among the Medieval church, the Reformation, and the “Post-Reformation” Reformed writers. An operating assumption of the work has consistently been that the theology of the Reformers is not utterly identical to the theology of their orthodox successors, and that continuity between the theologies …

James Swan Defends the Reformers on Marriage

One Roman apologist charges that the Reformers denial that marriage is a sacrament and “hence took God out of marriage, placing it in the hands of the state government.” He charges that the contemporary mess of marriage can entirely be laid at the feet of the Reformers. On the contrary, James Swan, a student of …

More on the nonsensical distinction between “Mortal Sins” and “Venial Sins”

There is still a bit of a discussion going on, in a thread that’s several months old, between a Protestant writer Curt Russell, and Bryan Cross, on the topic of sin. More specifically, it involves the nonsensical distinction between “mortal sins” and “venial sins”. I know, I know, the interlocutor is “Curt” Russell”, not “Kurt” …