Getting the Starting Points Right

Richard Muller has provocatively titled his section on “the beginnings of prolegomena” as “Setting the Stage after the Production—on the Construction of Prolegomena”. We exist in our own time (just as the post-Reformation writers existed in their own time). The challenge for Christians today (as was the challenge for them, in their day) was, “what …

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 …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 2): “’Not Informed by God’s Revelation”

Ever since Tertullian famously asked “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” the relationship between theology and philosophy has been full of ups and downs. And while Christianity emerged from Old Testament Judaism, in Palestine, Christianity itself entered a world that was largely Greek-speaking and “Hellenistic” – that is, one that was shaped by Greek …

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 …

More Definitions of Terms

As I continue to work through Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, I’ll likely be stumbling across a lot of names and concepts that simply aren’t familiar to 21st century believers. So it’s good that Muller helpfully explains a lot of these terms. A comment is also necessary here concerning the terms used throughout the study. …

The ‘Word of God’: is it a Greek or a Hebrew concept?

Some modern skeptics want to say that the New Testament is suffused with concepts of paganism and Gnosticism. Look at John 1:1-2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The Greek word for “Word” is “λόγος” or logos. …

The Roman Catholic “System”

I’ve wanted to get into the topic of “Roman Catholic ecclesiology” for some time now, but it is a massive topic, and there are always other things to be concerned with. But just recently, a commenter at Green Baggins recommended a work by Dr. Leonardo De Chirico, who is now a commentator for Reformation21, entitled …

Bonhoeffer on Luther and Costly Grace, part 2

Justification by God’s costly grace involves the justification of the sinner, not the justification of the sin. Following up on the first part of Bonhoeffer’s treatment of Luther and Costly Grace, I want to point out that it’s Roman Catholics who want to “justify sin”. Consider this explication from the not too distant past: What’s …

Bonhoeffer on Luther and Costly Grace, part 1

In his formerly world-renowned book “The Cost of Discipleship” (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. edition, printed 1963), Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”. In his words, “cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church” (45). Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The …

Please Share

Dear Readers: Down below, Andrew said: “We need to know what we believe more than we need to know why the beliefs of others are false. There is a place for that and polemics are good; but polemics must be balanced and even handed.” Those of you who know me know that I’m a pretty …