15 Jun 2017
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Mark Jones wrote a fun essay last week explaining why he doesn't like the name "Calvinism." I agree with all of the substantive points and have made many of them myself. I also liked the playful jab at the name of this site. Good ol' Mark. Still, I want to give a word or two in defense of using the expression...
Read more → 12 Jun 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
Memini me fiere pavom... "I remember that I became a peacock..." Biblical inspiration is obviously different from poetic inspiration. But there is a long tradition of the latter going back to Hesiod's vision of the Muses at the beginning of the Theogony: And one day [the Heliconian Muses] taught...
Read more → 30 May 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
After asserting that man's physiology bears witness to the three kinds of "worlds" that exist and the kinds of knowledge that correspond to them, Zanchi notes that natural philosophy is useful for two of them (the lower and the middle), he adds--in reliance on the Platonici--that there are three kinds...
Read more → 26 May 2017
Posted by Simon Kennedy 
In a 1973 article on the social contract tradition, Patrick Riley notes an important distinction in how we understand "the state". He notes that "the mere excellence of an institution would no longer be enough; it would now require authorization by individual men understood as "authors"'. Riley then...
Read more → 22 May 2017
Posted by Simon Kennedy 
In his 1911 volume which began the trilogy of Pro Rege, Abraham Kuyper reflects on the importance of Matthew 11:20–30 for our understanding of the kingship of Christ. In that passage, Jesus is denouncing the cities where he worked and preached and then affirms the authority that has been given to him by the Father. In...
Read more → 17 May 2017
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. (1 Timothy 2:1-2) Like many of you, I have allowed myself...
Read more → 11 May 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In today's installment from his prolegomena to Aristotle's Physica, Zanchi again explains man as microcosm, which he now refers to as "smaller world" (minorem mundum,) in different terms--the terms of human physiology--in a way that will presumably strike most modern readers as passing strange. I leave...
Read more → 08 May 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson 
In the next installment, Zanchi notes that the kind of natural philosophy he has in view ranks second only to the Word in helping us to learn the things that we need to know about nature, God, and ourselves (more on this in a moment). Zanchi here invokes the Platonist hierarchical schema to describe...
Read more → 08 May 2017
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
It's been a while, but we now return to Zanchi's prolegomena to Aristotle's Physica, in which Zanchi discusses his views of philosophy in general and of natural philosophy in particular. At the end of the previous installment, we saw Zanchi's conclusion that the study of philosophy is eminently appropriate...
Read more → 07 May 2017
Posted by Steven Wedgeworth 
Though it triggers some Presbyterians to say so out loud, John Calvin was not a Sabbatarian. He did have a strict Sunday practice (and thus he most likely did not go lawn bowling on that day...), but this was always explained as a matter of human and not divine law. In fact, Calvin argues that the early...
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