G’day Lito,

Its good but I would have liked to have seen more from Crawford. There is a section where he simply equates Owen’s view of sufficiency with Hodge’s. What is good is that he, like C Hodge, has no need to mutate kosmos there, but can affirm the sufficiency of the expiation for all sins.

Thanks
David

G’day Lito,

Thanks. I agree. What this research has shown me is that there is a whole swag of diverse ideas and “systems” out there that we have not tapped into.

I think what happened, especially since the 1960s (that is for our modern context I mean), with the revival of ‘calvinist’ inquiry there has been this great assumption that calvinist soteriology has been uniform and monolithic. With this assumption, anyone who seemed to express ideas outside the orthodox monolith was branded as unorthodox, deviant etc. We have seen this with the treatment of Amyraut by scholars like Nicole (especially Nicole because of his academic specialty on Amyraut).

This tendency to uniformity has been a constant trait in Protestant Scholastic orthodoxy post-1640s in some areas like Scotland, less so in, much less so, in England int he latter 17thC. But we seem to have inherited that Scottish legalistic bent to uniformity of ideas. Whats interesting is that this slavish desire for theological uniformity expresses itself in language games. Its all about semantic and jargon precision, over and against the historical truth. We have loaded up the language games such that we hear a phrase just not quite turned right, we see red flags and whip out our confessions to “guard” the truth.

What our community is doing now is reviving Owen or Turretin, or whoever our man is, and making our man the standard ultimate expression of biblical orthodoxy. We then measure others by the semantic and theological expressions of “our man” and by that, either embrace or exclude.

Anyway, my point is, there was such a rich complex and diverse tradition in early Reformation theology, from the 15thC through to the 17thC such that there is almost something for everyone. If you are into high predestinarian schemas then Zanchi may be your favourite. If you are into pastorally driven theology that emphasizes the revealed will, then someone like Bullinger would be appealing. There are subtle shades and combinations, such as Melancthon or Musculus. Calvin was a great exegete. Luther was fantastic at displaying his humanity (something which puritan piety is tries to sublimate and bury). I am not just talking about personalities but subtle (and not so subtle) and profound shifts and variances in theological and exegetical nuances.

The problem is, the present trends are that diversity is to be avoided. Right now, in the Reformed community, our vision of what is and is not “acceptable” is very very narrow. I would like to see the Reformed community grow up and mature, getting passed a lot of its childishness.

I don’t know the right word of phrase here, but the only way we are going to beat the militaristic language games is to demonstrate the diversity of Reformed “language” and the theological systems behind the various expressions. This means seeing early Reformation thought as more substantially as unity in diversity: including Luther, including Cranmer, including Calvin, etc. And seeing them as men trying to set out a new synthesis in the changed theological world they had placed themselves in. And for our part, even though some of these men may have considered their own particular synthesis as absolute, we are not bound to come to the same conclusion. Rather, we really are free to be eclectic in all this, and so create a new synthesis, possible by extracting the best aspects of the best men of the past. But all the while, really and truly allowing the man down to the street, whether he be Lutheran or Anglican to be who he is without judgment from me.

Anyway, thats my soapbox and part of why I and others are interested in this huge project.

Take care,
David

Hey Lito,

Yes thats truly for the Confessions produced in the Protestant Scholastic era. For the ones written in the 16thC, there is a difference. The Second Helvetic for example. The Heidelberg, though written later, at the beginning of the Protestant Scholastic tradition, reflected the older theological traditions of Melancthon (Ursinus had studied under Melancthon) and others.

Supralapsarianism was the first cause of the bad turn, and then the whole lapsarian enterprise dug the pit, and then Protestant Scholasticism fell into it. :-) Of course, other factors bear on their fall, of course.

Thanks
David