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 …

A clarification on absolute-claims

My recent posts on finitude was misread in thinking I held that “absolute knowledge” was impossible for humans.  That is not what I meant.  I was simply following traditional Reformed theology (see Muller) on the theologia unionis: The Christological problem follows the [epistemological issue]:  if the human nature of Jesus, as finite, is in capable …

“Suppressing the Truth by Wickedness”

John Thayer Jenson, you asked in Comment 271: I don’t see how this helps me to know which of us is right and which is suppressing the truth by his wickedness. I believe God’s Voice has told me the Catholic Church is His Body and men can be saved only through it; you believe – …