This paper will compare and contrast five distinct models of union with Christ in 16th and 17th century Reformed theology. The “models” to be discussed will be restricted to the various understandings of what the union actually is. The models discussed will be those of John Calvin, William Perkins, John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and Richard … Read more
It has become common amongst contemporary Reformed theologians to claim that one of the differences between the 17th century Reformed and Roman Catholics was whether Christ had the beatific vision during his earthly life. The Reformed Orthodox are said to deny Christ’s beatific vision during his earthly ministry while the Roman Catholics affirm. Michael Allen, … Read more
Bénédict Pictet, largely an overlooked figure of Reformed orthodoxy, is most often remembered as the one who delivered the funeral oration for his uncle, Francis Turretin. And yet, considered in his own right, Pictet was an influential and important theologian and pastor within the Swiss early-modern context of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. … Read more
The Lutheran and Reformed traditions share a common root in the Protestant Reformation, but the relationship has been something of a sibling rivalry. The debates were perhaps most acrimonious in the 16th and 17th centuries, but the present climate could be described as cold and isolated. On the Reformed side at least, theologians rarely engage … Read more
In 1629–30 Maximus of Gallipoli sat in a room in the Dutch embassy overlooking the Golden Horn on the Bosporus Strait in Constantinople, today Istanbul. A learned monk ordained as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church, he labored on the first ever translation of the New Testament into the Greek vernacular. Maximus’s text, published … Read more
The influence of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples on the Reformation is an understudied aspect of Reformation history/theology. Lefèvre was an important thinker whose work traversed the realms of Renaissance humanism and early Reformation thought. His biblical and theological works were influential on early Reformers throughout Europe. For example, his ‘Commentarii in Epistolas D. Pauli (1512/1515),’ was … Read more
Though Richard Hooker (1554?–1600) aligned with a moderate Puritan like William Perkins (1558–1602) on the basic nature and some obligations of ministers in the Church of England, their differences over the source of a minister’s authority and responsibility to preach sermons rendered Hooker’s vision of the ministry fundamentally distinct from Perkins’. After the Restoration, historians … Read more
At the 2022 Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Denver, Reformed theologian J. V. Fesko offered a historical-theological critique of John Piper’s book, What is Saving Faith? Fesko argued that Piper failed to understand how the Reformed tradition articulated the relationship between love and faith. That is, according to Fesko, “Piper makes inaccurate appeals to various … Read more