The Calvinist International
Athanasius of Alexandria’s doctrine of the deity of Christ rest upon two basic concepts. These are that the divine nature is simple and incapable of division and that the Son is generated or begotten from the essence of the Father, that divine essence which is simple. When you combine these two concepts, you get a […]
Athanasius of Alexandria actually has a lot to say about the divine nature. He says that it is fruitful. He says that its essence and its existence are identical. He says that it is simple and infinite. And yet, he also says that the divine nature is, in itself, unknowable to us. We have nothing […]
I noted a couple of years ago Calvin’s possibly revealing use of the word summa (as in, Summa theologiae) “so prominently in the first sentence [of the final edition of the Institutes (1559)],” and commented that [t]he gesture would signal, I think, a radical simplification of the theological enterprise, reconfigured in radically non-speculative terms (he is interested only […]
For good reason, one might find John Calvin referred to as an “anti-speculative” theologian. But as with so many other monikers applied to Protestant theologians (e.g. “anti-scholastic”), one must take the label in its relative rather than its absolute signification. When confronted with biblicism, Calvin could sound a philosophical and “speculative” note. B.A. Gerrish observes […]
Our next installment in our series from Zacharias Ursinus’s teaching on the doctrine of God (see also part 1 and part 2) is his defense of the traditional theological explanation against the detractors of his day. You will notice that the Reformed churches were opposed by the “biblicists” of their day. Ursinus does respond by […]
Given the recent widespread confusion about the doctrine of God among Reformed theologians, we thought it would be helpful to post some excerpts on the basic concepts of theology proper from Zacharias Ursinus. Ursinus gives a scholastic treatment of the question, one that is both traditional and succinct. The following comes from his Commentary on […]
In the recent polemical engagement between John Frame, James Dolezal, and various other commentators, the role of history in theology has been a major talking point. Should we stick to the historic tradition or should be free to be unapologetically “biblical”? To what extent can we criticize past theologians? Should we view constructive theology with […]
James Dolezal – All That is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017), 162 + xiv pages. James Dolezal has written an important book, a passionate and pastoral defense of a doctrine (divine simplicity and its implicates) which has fallen on hard times. In Professor […]
I want to put forth an argument against Arminianism based upon an internal flaw within the Arminian scheme of predestination. My argument, simply stated: “The Arminian position on predestination is inescapably Calvinistic (of sorts). Because this is so, the only option is to embrace open theism or Calvinism.” In the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic […]
In the final edition of the Loci communes (1559), Philip Melanchthon provides a good example of how to move from a philosophical to a theological definition of God. Melanchthon had added a section de Deo, missing in the first edition, to later editions of the Loci, but the passage below is not found in the second aetas, or “age,” […]