Category: Reformed Orthodoxy

“The Holy Ghost needs no ‘Movements'”: Karl Barth in and on the Third Reich

by Joshua Shaw Karl Barth (1886 – 1968) is a controversial and, as seems these days all too common, a polarizing figure; for some he was an outgrowth of the 19th century’s decadent theology, for others the greatest of modern theologians. This fact alone (his polarizing character and the subsequent polarized characterisations) suggests to me… Read More “The Holy Ghost needs no ‘Movements'”: Karl Barth in and on the Third Reich

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Roots of Reformed Confession (I): Calvin on Election and Caution

by Joshua Shaw Roots, echoes, shadows, precedents – all good working ways to think about a series of posts which I intend to revisit and extend over the coming months (and years). I want to take a look at direct historical sources or, barring that, more widely representative or influential treatments of the theological themes… Read More Roots of Reformed Confession (I): Calvin on Election and Caution

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The Pagans and the Atheists in C. S. Lewis and Herman Bavinck

by Matthew Gaetano Joshua Shaw has been presenting Eusebius’s rich and complex polemic against paganism alongside his dialogue with Platonism. He has illuminated the reasons for the contrast between Eusebius’s approach and C. S. Lewis’s way of defending Christianity. Like many defenses of the Christian religion in the Renaissance and beyond (and in Late Antiquity… Read More The Pagans and the Atheists in C. S. Lewis and Herman Bavinck

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Pascal and Bavinck on Science and Theology

by Joshua Shaw In the beginning of Pascal’s Pensées, Part I, Chapter I (online here), there is the famous distinction between those subjects whose material is contained entirely in books, and so dependent entirely upon authority, and those subjects whose material (the corporeal world) is dependent upon sense perception (i.e., experience) and reason (paraphrasing the… Read More Pascal and Bavinck on Science and Theology

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The True, the Good, and the Beautiful in Reformed Scholasticism

by Matthew Gaetano This title is a bit misleading because I only intend to offer brief remarks about Bartholomew Keckermann’s statements about the transcendental properties of being in his Compendious System of the Science of Metaphysics (1611). I hope that it helps to develop the remarks about scholasticism and the Reformed tradition from previous posts. A Reformed… Read More The True, the Good, and the Beautiful in Reformed Scholasticism

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Cocq vs. Hobbes on the Church and Ministry

by Matthew Gaetano Dutch Calvinist (discussed elsewhere at TRF) Gisbertus Cocq opposes Thomas Hobbes’s view of the Church and ministry in his Anatomy of Hobbesianism. In reply to Hobbes’s teaching that there are as many churches as there are Christian kingdoms or republics, Cocq says, “If there exist particular churches, there necessarily also exists a universal… Read More Cocq vs. Hobbes on the Church and Ministry

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Peter Martyr Vermigli and the Scholastic Inheritance: Potentia Absoluta and the Voice of Nature

by Joshua Benjamins In my last post, I highlighted the sharply divergent conceptions of the proper role of philosophy which emerge in the course of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s controversy with Johannes Brenz over the ubiquity of Christ’s glorified body. Another intriguing element of this particular debate is the way the two men appeal to divine… Read More Peter Martyr Vermigli and the Scholastic Inheritance: Potentia Absoluta and the Voice of Nature

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