Showing posts with label Richard Muller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Muller. Show all posts
Monday, September 18, 2017
Saturday, May 27, 2017
Friday, May 15, 2015
Agricola, “Loci”, and the Birth of Systematic Theology
The question may be asked as if by a youngster: “Daddy, where did systematic theology come from?”
(For the benefit of the Roman Catholics in our audience, I am making a joke: I’m taking the question that is frequently asked, “where do babies come from”, and applying it to “systematic theology”. This should not be construed as if I’m suggesting that Protestant theologies only came into existence in the 16th century. They did not. The bases for these theologies had existed since Old Testament times. The problem is that Rome, because of its supposed position of authority and influence, had not only allowed but actually fostered some fairly distorted viewpoints and doctrines to flourish; and so the Reformers and the Reformed Orthodox, interested in “how to think rightly about God and the things He is doing in the world”, had to disentangle all of the distortions from all of the right thinking that also been carried through the centuries…)
This blog post will seek to show how the Reformed Orthodox writers (those who wrote in the generations after Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin) came upon their method first of all for understanding what the sources of theology were, and then what the topics of theology were.
Keep in mind that once you reject “Church authority” as a principle of “how we know what to believe” – and that is precisely what was done at the Reformation – you have to try to understand really what it is that you understand, and how you understand it.
That involves understanding the long-term relationship that God, who has the genuine authority, has sought to create and foster with sinful mankind, and also how He communicates to us.
Richard Muller describes “the development of theological method in the mid-sixteenth century…”
(For the benefit of the Roman Catholics in our audience, I am making a joke: I’m taking the question that is frequently asked, “where do babies come from”, and applying it to “systematic theology”. This should not be construed as if I’m suggesting that Protestant theologies only came into existence in the 16th century. They did not. The bases for these theologies had existed since Old Testament times. The problem is that Rome, because of its supposed position of authority and influence, had not only allowed but actually fostered some fairly distorted viewpoints and doctrines to flourish; and so the Reformers and the Reformed Orthodox, interested in “how to think rightly about God and the things He is doing in the world”, had to disentangle all of the distortions from all of the right thinking that also been carried through the centuries…)
This blog post will seek to show how the Reformed Orthodox writers (those who wrote in the generations after Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin) came upon their method first of all for understanding what the sources of theology were, and then what the topics of theology were.
Keep in mind that once you reject “Church authority” as a principle of “how we know what to believe” – and that is precisely what was done at the Reformation – you have to try to understand really what it is that you understand, and how you understand it.
That involves understanding the long-term relationship that God, who has the genuine authority, has sought to create and foster with sinful mankind, and also how He communicates to us.
Richard Muller describes “the development of theological method in the mid-sixteenth century…”
Thursday, May 14, 2015
“The art of speaking in a probable way”
Down below, in response to the question “how do you know?” Steve Hays commented:
A Roman apologist like Bryan Cross will tend to propose that God’s method for creation and revelation involves rigorous logical deduction. The problem with that is, the history that God has given us is not a rigorous sequence of causes and events; Scripture and history are not comprised of rigorously logical arguments or sets of arguments.
For Rome, and for Bryan following, however, “the Church” (meaning the “Roman Catholic Church”) was given by God in a logical and an ontological way in Matt 16:18, never to change. The same exact ontological structure that it has today was ontologically in place at Matt 16:18, and therefore it (and all of its rules and strictures) must be obeyed as if Rome’s rules and strictures come to us directly from the very mouth of Christ.
That, of course, is merely an assumption: it is an empty, unprovable assumption upon which the whole Roman edifice is resting: all of its historical claims to authority, its claims of epistemological certainty, its sacraments, its treadmill of religious practices – all of the Roman Catholic “things you gotta do” to appease God are resting upon a meaningless claim of authority.
There is a way of thinking about these things that is more respectful of both the natural ordering and the history of things, bypassing strictly logical deduction in favor of a more inductive, inferential way of thinking.
This is outlined by Richard Muller in his work “The Unaccommodated Calvin”:
Why must we “know” that we have the right interpretation? Why is it not enough to have the most reasonable interpretation?
If God holds us responsible for what we can know, and if our interpretations come down to the most reasonable or probable interpretation, then that’s all that God requires of us.
A Roman apologist like Bryan Cross will tend to propose that God’s method for creation and revelation involves rigorous logical deduction. The problem with that is, the history that God has given us is not a rigorous sequence of causes and events; Scripture and history are not comprised of rigorously logical arguments or sets of arguments.
For Rome, and for Bryan following, however, “the Church” (meaning the “Roman Catholic Church”) was given by God in a logical and an ontological way in Matt 16:18, never to change. The same exact ontological structure that it has today was ontologically in place at Matt 16:18, and therefore it (and all of its rules and strictures) must be obeyed as if Rome’s rules and strictures come to us directly from the very mouth of Christ.
That, of course, is merely an assumption: it is an empty, unprovable assumption upon which the whole Roman edifice is resting: all of its historical claims to authority, its claims of epistemological certainty, its sacraments, its treadmill of religious practices – all of the Roman Catholic “things you gotta do” to appease God are resting upon a meaningless claim of authority.
There is a way of thinking about these things that is more respectful of both the natural ordering and the history of things, bypassing strictly logical deduction in favor of a more inductive, inferential way of thinking.
This is outlined by Richard Muller in his work “The Unaccommodated Calvin”:
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
“How do you know?” – How do you begin to know?
Before we go too far into PRRD, Muller clarifies a couple of things about how the Medievals thought about religion. Keep in mind, too, that Muller is distinguishing “the Reformers” from those writers who followed, the “Reformed Orthodox”, in order to show both “continuities and discontinuities” from the times of the Reformers (including Calvin) until the later “Reformed Orthodox” writers of the later 17th and early 18th centuries, from their actual writings. He does this as a response to some of the “Calvin vs the Calvinists” writers of the 20th century who sought to create a wedge between these two.
I want to reiterate that I’m not picking up this information to suggest that we go back to living and worshiping as these men did. Theirs was a completely different era. And yet today, there is a notion that we must “recover” their “Confession” and their “Theology, Piety, and Practice”.
I’m suggesting that there are tremendous things that we can learn from these generations of writers, without “recovering” their every move.
There is a story from an old book that meant a lot to me as a young man, “The Perfect Joy of St. Francis”. This was a “biographical novel” about Francis of Assisi, who, as we know, embraced a simple life of itinerant poverty, and after whom “Pope Bergoglio” seems to have fashioned himself.
Yes, this is directly to address Scott Clark, and the method of “recovery” that he has adopted and that he has been advocating. But Clark is not imitating Francis of Assisi. In this respect, Clark rather reminds me of “Brother Jack”, a character from that novel (and for all I know, a real-life character) who sought in a very simple way to imitate Francis:
The theologians of this era served their times by thinking through what the Christian faith meant to their own times. They did it using a language (Latin) and a philosophical thought-system (largely Aristotelian) that was prevalent in their own era. They wrote “confessionally binding documents” not for people who would live three and four centuries later, but for themselves … to set themselves apart from their own world, in terms that their own world would understand.
They lived at times when “being a Christian” (and specifically, “being a Protestant”) meant going to war and standing up to persecutions while at the same time producing “a clearer identification of the theological task in its university setting. From the very beginning of Luther’s protest, the university and university-trained theologians were at the center of the movement”.
The great mark of this era was not that the great theologians had somehow conformed themselves to some kind of outward “Piety and Practice” or another (although those things were important too, but not in the “Brother Jack” kind of way). It was because they had thought through the challenges of their own day, and they sought to address those challenges in their own terms.
I want to reiterate that I’m not picking up this information to suggest that we go back to living and worshiping as these men did. Theirs was a completely different era. And yet today, there is a notion that we must “recover” their “Confession” and their “Theology, Piety, and Practice”.
I’m suggesting that there are tremendous things that we can learn from these generations of writers, without “recovering” their every move.
There is a story from an old book that meant a lot to me as a young man, “The Perfect Joy of St. Francis”. This was a “biographical novel” about Francis of Assisi, who, as we know, embraced a simple life of itinerant poverty, and after whom “Pope Bergoglio” seems to have fashioned himself.
Yes, this is directly to address Scott Clark, and the method of “recovery” that he has adopted and that he has been advocating. But Clark is not imitating Francis of Assisi. In this respect, Clark rather reminds me of “Brother Jack”, a character from that novel (and for all I know, a real-life character) who sought in a very simple way to imitate Francis:
Everything was a peaceful as a scene in the Gospels. Francis was in the little chapel, praying. And Brother Jack was behind him. Whenever Francis bent over, Jack bent over too. When Francis sighed, Jack sighed also. When Francis coughed, Jack coughed after him. That was simply Jack’s way of following Francis …
Thereafter he imitated Francis in everything he did … Jack, like the simple dove that he was, merely said, “Francis is a saint. So if I imitate him, the devil will have no hold on me” (pgs 119-120).
The theologians of this era served their times by thinking through what the Christian faith meant to their own times. They did it using a language (Latin) and a philosophical thought-system (largely Aristotelian) that was prevalent in their own era. They wrote “confessionally binding documents” not for people who would live three and four centuries later, but for themselves … to set themselves apart from their own world, in terms that their own world would understand.
They lived at times when “being a Christian” (and specifically, “being a Protestant”) meant going to war and standing up to persecutions while at the same time producing “a clearer identification of the theological task in its university setting. From the very beginning of Luther’s protest, the university and university-trained theologians were at the center of the movement”.
The great mark of this era was not that the great theologians had somehow conformed themselves to some kind of outward “Piety and Practice” or another (although those things were important too, but not in the “Brother Jack” kind of way). It was because they had thought through the challenges of their own day, and they sought to address those challenges in their own terms.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
“How do you know?” – Early definitions take shape
From: Muller’s PRRD Chapter 5: The Parts or Divisions of Theology
5.1 The Identification of the Discipline: Changes in Style and Definition between Reformation and Orthodoxy
A. Reformation Era Backgrounds
The theology of the Reformers, even when it attained relatively full systematic expression, as in Melanchthon’s Loci communes, Calvin’s Institutes, Bullinger’s Decades, or Musculus’ Loci communes, did not include a self-conscious definition of the nature of theology as discipline in the traditional sense—whether as scientia or sapientia, and as a theologia in via—or to offer formal prolegomena apart from brief methodological statements.
This is not to ignore the several treatises from the period on the manner or ratio of studying theology, which do offer considerations of the methodus and the loci for study.
The theologies of the Reformers, particularly those that took the form of loci communes, did offer a finely conceived approach to the extraction of topical materials from Scripture and to the gathering of these materials into the topics or loci and did offer a refined sense of method and order for the organization of the loci, in accord with the humanist models of the era.
Still, there remains a formal difference between the large scale theologies of the second generation Reformers and the major dogmatic compendia of their successors, a difference identifiable in part by an increasingly detailed theological definition of the task of theology.
Monday, May 11, 2015
“How do you know?”
It is said:
In light of recent blog posts of mine that repeat statements to the effect that “The [Roman Catholic] Church is founded on the Word Incarnate, that is, on a divinely revealed truth” and that Rome, and Rome alone, can define “true biblical faith”, it’s important to look at these presuppositions on the part of the Roman “Church”, and to talk about how such a happy situation [not!] may have come about.
The question of “how do you know?” comes up frequently. It’s a question that is at the heart of Rome’s dismissal of Sola Scriptura, and at the same time, it appears to be at the heart of its own claims for authority.
I’ve been reading through Richard Muller’s “Post Reformation Reformed Theology”. His “Volume 1: Prolegomena”, discusses how the Reformed Orthodox (those writers in the period following the Reformation) thought about their task of understanding God and theology.
Writers from this period genuinely thought about that question, and went to great lengths to respond properly to it.
“The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the [Roman Catholic] Church alone” – quoting CCC 85.
In light of recent blog posts of mine that repeat statements to the effect that “The [Roman Catholic] Church is founded on the Word Incarnate, that is, on a divinely revealed truth” and that Rome, and Rome alone, can define “true biblical faith”, it’s important to look at these presuppositions on the part of the Roman “Church”, and to talk about how such a happy situation [not!] may have come about.
The question of “how do you know?” comes up frequently. It’s a question that is at the heart of Rome’s dismissal of Sola Scriptura, and at the same time, it appears to be at the heart of its own claims for authority.
I’ve been reading through Richard Muller’s “Post Reformation Reformed Theology”. His “Volume 1: Prolegomena”, discusses how the Reformed Orthodox (those writers in the period following the Reformation) thought about their task of understanding God and theology.
Writers from this period genuinely thought about that question, and went to great lengths to respond properly to it.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Theological Study in the Reformation and Post-Reformation Years
Models for Study in the Era of the Reformation:
From Catechesis to Academics: Matters of Motivation. For the Reformed Orthodox:
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 1: Prolegomena To Theology (2nd Ed., Pp. 210–211). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Andreas Hyperius’ massive De theologo, seu de ratione studii theologiae carries on this model for theological study in vast detail. Hyperius understood theological study as a carefully constructed discipline but also as a spiritual or pious exercise, not merely a form of knowing or scientia, but also a wisdom, sapientia.
Study ought to be grounded in the recognition that “the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge (scientia)” (Prov. 1:7) and the student should “prepare [his] soul for the diligent reading of sacred letters” through prayer for personal humility and spiritual illumination. This piety is to be the foundation for a rigorous course of study.
Hyperius’ catalogue of the kinds of study “necessary” to theological training is daunting: grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium), arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium), philosophy, physics, ethics, politics, oeconomics, metaphysics, history, architecture, and agriculture, and above all Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
In theology itself, he distinguishes a series of subdisciplines: Scripture and its interpretation, doctrine as gathered in the loci communes, and practice as identified in the history and governance of the church, its polity, worship, and preaching.
From Catechesis to Academics: Matters of Motivation. For the Reformed Orthodox:
The study of theology was an enterprise intended for all Christians—and the detailed academic study of the subject was to be the practical foundation for sound study on all levels.
Mastricht notes that this theological “knowledge of the truth according to piety” (cognitio veritatis secundum pietatem) is studied by teachers (doctors) and ministers whose office is to understand, teach, interpret, propound, and apply theology.
It is also to be studied by magistrates so that they might be acquainted with the Law, as demanded in Scripture (Deut. 17:18–20; Josh. 1:8; Ps. 19:7–14), that they might rightly order the lives of their subjects, guard the church from its adversaries, and govern wisely recognizing the Lordship of Christ.
Even so, all Christians should study it so that they might have access to Christian truth, and might advance more and more in it, support their lives by it, and make it known to others.
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 1: Prolegomena To Theology (2nd Ed., Pp. 210–211). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
In the choice between “catholicity” and “correctness”, “correctness” should win every time
The topic of Biblicism is being raised again, in a way that is not helpful.
For example, citing this article, I think (the provided link simply went to a TGC page), Mark Jones has made this statement on Reformation21:
And Ryan McGraw writing at The Aquila Report makes this statement:
A third writer picks up McGraw's argument and takes it further:
First of all, no “Biblicist” that I am aware of advocates “readily discarding the confessional formulations of the church anytime … [a Christian] … arrives at a personal interpretation distinct from confessional orthodoxy”. This is just simply a mischaracterization of what is being said.
Second, Jones shows, in making the statement that I cited above, that he has failed to read the original article he cited with any discernment:
For example, citing this article, I think (the provided link simply went to a TGC page), Mark Jones has made this statement on Reformation21:
Theology, thankfully, has never been done in terms of "pure biblicism." When it has, the consequences have always been deleterious. "Pure biblicism" is a Socinian way of theologizing, historically speaking. And biblicism can lead someone to hell.
And Ryan McGraw writing at The Aquila Report makes this statement:
Frame unashamedly notes that he includes less historical theology than other comparable works because he wants to be biblical. While this sounds appealing to many Christians, it is impossible to do theology in a historical vacuum… Ignoring historical theology as a conversation partner in the name of producing a theology that is more biblical gives readers a false impression and threatens to confuse Frame’s innovations with a bare reading of Scripture.
A third writer picks up McGraw's argument and takes it further:
Of all of Frame’s bizarre constructions, the one which seems to have gained favor among the confessional-revisionists of our circles is his claim to adopt an approach that is “something close to biblicism.” This sounds quite admirably sola-scripturish, but ultimately it amounts to readily discarding the confessional formulations of the church anytime that the Christian, alone with his Bible, arrives at a personal interpretation distinct from confessional orthodoxy.
First of all, no “Biblicist” that I am aware of advocates “readily discarding the confessional formulations of the church anytime … [a Christian] … arrives at a personal interpretation distinct from confessional orthodoxy”. This is just simply a mischaracterization of what is being said.
Second, Jones shows, in making the statement that I cited above, that he has failed to read the original article he cited with any discernment:
Friday, November 14, 2014
Getting the Starting Points Right
For the last six months or so, I’ve been working through Richard Muller’s “Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics series. Here at Triablogue, I’ve been posting selections from his Volume 2: Doctrine of Scripture. In the coming months and years, I hope to continue to do that. And at Reformation500, I’ve been posting mostly from his Volume 1: Prolegomena.
I’ve entered a new section over there, Getting the Starting Points Right, which looks at the historical development of theological prolegomena. Now, I know, to modern ears, that kind of study sounds about as fun as having a root canal done. But in reality, if it can be said that “the rise of the European universities” was probably the most significant event of the previous 1000 years (yes, greater than the Reformation – I’ve heard it said), then this next section is essentially “the story of how they did it”.
Of course, it’s a long story, with lots of granular detail.
But you hear it all the time: “We all bring our presuppositions” to this study or that study. The real question is, “what constitutes good presuppositions to have?” Where did these come from? How did we get them? And where did “bad presuppositions” come from?
After all, if we presuppose that “God exists and that he rewards those who seek him”, we must also “always [be] being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”.
If we want to approach “the world” today with “a Christian worldview”, then it behooves us not only to do so “with gentleness and respect”, but also (if we are going to speak to the “thought leaders” of the world today, among whom we might classify academia, politics, and the media), to do it with a level of historical awareness and philosophical rigor. To be able to compare worldviews.
In this respect, Roman Catholicism is a bankrupt system, doctrinally and philosophically. I’ve commented in the past, in response to the question, “why are there so many ‘intellectual’ converts to Roman Catholicism?” – the answer to this question lies in the fact that there are still Roman Catholic universities such as Notre Dame that still retain the veneer of philosophical sophistication, and there are individuals such as Edward Feser who are supporting Roman Catholic viewpoints by trotting out the 13th century philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, as if it were somehow a great panacea to all that ails the world today.
There is no doubt, Aquinas was “state-of-the-art” for his era, but his blend of neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism does not and cannot adequately describe our world today.
Trying to present “philosophical sophistication” using the Roman Catholic Church today is going to force upon us its justifications for syncretism, and “and-and” theology, and “development”, and “ex opera operato” sacraments, and justifications for the medieval Roman hierarchy (which remains in place today) in spite of the pure evil that that hierarchy has been responsible for in the world [much of it in the name of justifying its own authority]. It’s going to end up giving us someone like “Pope Francis”, for whom a tremendous degree of justification is going to be needed.
Martin Luther rejected a lot of Aquinas as nonsense, [and rightly so, as should we], without having given too much of a reason why. But in our day, we need to be able to say why.
I think Muller is a great place to start.
I’ve entered a new section over there, Getting the Starting Points Right, which looks at the historical development of theological prolegomena. Now, I know, to modern ears, that kind of study sounds about as fun as having a root canal done. But in reality, if it can be said that “the rise of the European universities” was probably the most significant event of the previous 1000 years (yes, greater than the Reformation – I’ve heard it said), then this next section is essentially “the story of how they did it”.
Of course, it’s a long story, with lots of granular detail.
But you hear it all the time: “We all bring our presuppositions” to this study or that study. The real question is, “what constitutes good presuppositions to have?” Where did these come from? How did we get them? And where did “bad presuppositions” come from?
After all, if we presuppose that “God exists and that he rewards those who seek him”, we must also “always [be] being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you”.
If we want to approach “the world” today with “a Christian worldview”, then it behooves us not only to do so “with gentleness and respect”, but also (if we are going to speak to the “thought leaders” of the world today, among whom we might classify academia, politics, and the media), to do it with a level of historical awareness and philosophical rigor. To be able to compare worldviews.
In this respect, Roman Catholicism is a bankrupt system, doctrinally and philosophically. I’ve commented in the past, in response to the question, “why are there so many ‘intellectual’ converts to Roman Catholicism?” – the answer to this question lies in the fact that there are still Roman Catholic universities such as Notre Dame that still retain the veneer of philosophical sophistication, and there are individuals such as Edward Feser who are supporting Roman Catholic viewpoints by trotting out the 13th century philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, as if it were somehow a great panacea to all that ails the world today.
There is no doubt, Aquinas was “state-of-the-art” for his era, but his blend of neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism does not and cannot adequately describe our world today.
Trying to present “philosophical sophistication” using the Roman Catholic Church today is going to force upon us its justifications for syncretism, and “and-and” theology, and “development”, and “ex opera operato” sacraments, and justifications for the medieval Roman hierarchy (which remains in place today) in spite of the pure evil that that hierarchy has been responsible for in the world [much of it in the name of justifying its own authority]. It’s going to end up giving us someone like “Pope Francis”, for whom a tremendous degree of justification is going to be needed.
Martin Luther rejected a lot of Aquinas as nonsense, [and rightly so, as should we], without having given too much of a reason why. But in our day, we need to be able to say why.
I think Muller is a great place to start.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
The Authority of Scripture and the Science of Theology in the 13th Century
More from Muller:
The doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture stood, in the systems of the great thirteenth-century scholastics, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas, in a profound and crucial relationship to the emerging concept of theology as a science.
Inasmuch as a science consists in a knowledge of first principles and of the conclusions that can be drawn from them, the issue of certainty in theology is crucial to the conduct of the discipline.
Logically derived conclusions, no matter how expert and precise the logic, cannot be endowed with certainty unless certainty is known to reside in the principles from which they have been drawn.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Muller on “The Breadth Of The Reformed Orthodox Phenomenon”
Just a while ago Steve Hays posted a link to Paul Helm’s brief analysis of Oliver Crisp’s “Deviant Calvinism” on the discussion between “freedom of the will” and “grace” in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
I don’t intend to get into the specifics of that discussion. But in my own reading of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, I’ve found that Muller has found a tremendous amount of leeway “within the boundaries established by the major national confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches”, wherein things may legitimately be termed as “Reformed”.
This goes against the grain of some of those who require more narrow boundaries around “the Reformed Confession” – yes, I’m thinking of Scott Clark, especially with regard to some of the things he’s written about John Frame. But yes, Muller paints the “Reformed Orthodox” period with a very broad brush.
Here’s that selection from Muller.
I don’t intend to get into the specifics of that discussion. But in my own reading of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, I’ve found that Muller has found a tremendous amount of leeway “within the boundaries established by the major national confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches”, wherein things may legitimately be termed as “Reformed”.
This goes against the grain of some of those who require more narrow boundaries around “the Reformed Confession” – yes, I’m thinking of Scott Clark, especially with regard to some of the things he’s written about John Frame. But yes, Muller paints the “Reformed Orthodox” period with a very broad brush.
Here’s that selection from Muller.
Aquinas and Bonaventure on the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture
Here’s another long selection from Richard Muller, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, Volume 2. But it’s important background information for what follows:
Like the majority of the scholastic teachers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Thomas Aquinas did not develop a separate question or article dealing with the doctrine of Scripture.
He did, however, make a major contribution to the medieval doctrine of Scripture and included an extended comment on the sources and grounds of sacred theology in the first question of the Summa.
There, he clearly argues what Alexander [of Hales] stated by implication: that Scripture by its very nature is the ground or foundation of necessary argument in theology—whereas other sources, such as the church’s normative tradition, yield up only “probable” arguments.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Untangling “Tradition” from Scripture in the 13th Century
“Alexander’s comment indicates, thus, his sense both of the priority of Scripture as a source of Christian doctrine and of the sufficiency of the biblical record for the salvation of human beings.”
This is an example of moving back from the brink. At another point, Richard Muller pointed out how “Scripture and ‘the tradition’ had become conflated”, a process that peaked during the 12th century. Later (in the 13th century), this conflation began to come undone, and the “distinction” between the two enabled an emerging doctrine of Scripture to take form during the high Medieval years.
It was discussions of precisely how this came about that led to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
This is an example of moving back from the brink. At another point, Richard Muller pointed out how “Scripture and ‘the tradition’ had become conflated”, a process that peaked during the 12th century. Later (in the 13th century), this conflation began to come undone, and the “distinction” between the two enabled an emerging doctrine of Scripture to take form during the high Medieval years.
It was discussions of precisely how this came about that led to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
Just as the medieval view of text, canon, and exegesis is the proper background against which the Reformation and the subsequent development of Protestant approaches to Scripture must be understood, so also is the medieval doctrine of Scripture the necessary background to an understanding of the development of an orthodox Protestant doctrine of Scripture.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
The Text and Interpretation of Scripture in the Middle Ages
Here’s more from Richard Muller, with some scintillating and not-well-known commentary from John Bugay:
Note that even the most famous Medieval writer, Thomas Aquinas, blended very much “legend” with his theology and philosophy. For example, the “global influence of Dionysius on the metaphysic of Aquinas”, according to Francis O’Rourke, “extends to such central questions as the very nature of existence, the hierarchy of beings, the nature of God, and the theory of creation” (O’Rourke, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphyics of Aquinas”, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, © 1992, 2005, pg xvi).
This is even though Aquinas (and others of his era) mistakenly thought that the fifth-century writer “Pseudo-Dionysius” was actually the companion of Paul from Acts 17.
Similarly, Aquinas’s Contra errors Graecorum, written in 1263, (commissioned by the Curia for Pope Urban IV), relied very heavily on the Symmachan forgeries, the forged “Donation of Constantine”, and the “Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals”.
You don’t find many loose copies of that major work of Aquinas lying around – a testimony to Rome’s tidiness in the face of its own profound embarrassments.
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation Of Theology (2nd ed., pp. 33–35). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
I’ve been publishing selections from Richard Muller’s Volume 2, dealing with the doctrine of Scripture through the Middle Ages, here at Triablogue, at the following links:
Richard Muller, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, Volume 2: Scripture, September 25, 2014
“Scripture interprets Scripture” through the centuries, October 2, 2014
The Medieval Biblical Canon Revisited, October 3, 2014
How Scripture and Tradition Became Conflated in the Middle Ages, October 13, 2014
The issue of text and interpretation was further complicated by the many popular Bibles of the Middle Ages, both Latin and vernacular, prose and verse, and by the interrelationship of Scripture, tradition, and legend with the medieval identification of the literal meaning of the text and the temporal sojourn of the people of God as historia.
Note that even the most famous Medieval writer, Thomas Aquinas, blended very much “legend” with his theology and philosophy. For example, the “global influence of Dionysius on the metaphysic of Aquinas”, according to Francis O’Rourke, “extends to such central questions as the very nature of existence, the hierarchy of beings, the nature of God, and the theory of creation” (O’Rourke, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphyics of Aquinas”, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, © 1992, 2005, pg xvi).
This is even though Aquinas (and others of his era) mistakenly thought that the fifth-century writer “Pseudo-Dionysius” was actually the companion of Paul from Acts 17.
Similarly, Aquinas’s Contra errors Graecorum, written in 1263, (commissioned by the Curia for Pope Urban IV), relied very heavily on the Symmachan forgeries, the forged “Donation of Constantine”, and the “Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals”.
You don’t find many loose copies of that major work of Aquinas lying around – a testimony to Rome’s tidiness in the face of its own profound embarrassments.
Works like the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais and the Speculum humanae salvationis of Ludolph of Saxony functioned as biblical paraphrases that mediated the sacred history of the Scriptures together with legendary additions and augmentations, some of which, in the case of the latter work, come from ancient secular history, and virtually all of which serve the underlying hermeneutical purpose of manifesting the movement through history from obscurely promised salvation under the Old Testament to clearly offered redemption under the New.
The typological interpretation of the entirety of history by means of the New Testament fulfillment is not only characteristic of these works and others of their type, it is also the basis, by way of these popular Bibles, of much of the art of the Middle Ages.
This gradual accommodation of the text to its interpretation and the “corruption” of the text through scribal errors did not pass unnoticed during the scholastic era. Virtually at the same point that the Paris text, the Glossa ordinaria, and Lombard’s Sententia became standard components of a highly organized and interrelated program of theological study, the text of the Vulgate itself became the subject of debate.
Even in the twelfth century a few theologians had raised questions about the relationship of the Vulgate to the Hebrew Old Testament: at the beginning of the century (1109), Stephen Harding, abbot of Citeaux, had excised, with the help of a convert from Judaism, passages in the Vulgate not found in the original Hebrew.
Similar efforts characterize the work of another Cistercian of the twelfth century, Nicholas Manjacoria. Nicholas had studied Hebrew and worked to remove additions that had been made to the text of the Vulgate. He specifically singled out for criticism the idea that the most elaborate version of a text was the best, and he spelled out his approach to the text at length in a treatise, the Libellus de corruptione et correptione Psalmorum (ca. 1145). Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141) had also noted textual corruptions in the Vulgate.
In the thirteenth century, particularly in the great teaching orders, there was a concerted effort to disentangle text and gloss and even to correct the text on the basis of the Hebrew and Greek originals.
Thus, Hugh of St. Cher tested the text of the Vulgate against Jerome’s commentaries, several pre-Carolingian codices, and the Hebrew text.
So extensive was this effort that Hugh and his associates produced a supplement to the gloss—in effect, “a new apparatus to the whole Bible.”
On the one hand, Hugh superintended the production of a massive concordance organized alphabetically; on the other, he developed a new set of postils or annotations on the entire Bible in which he emphasized parallels between texts and stressed, as did his contemporaries Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, the priority of the literal sense as the basis for the examination of the other three senses of Scripture.
The thirteenth century was, moreover, responsible for the standardization of the text and its chapter divisions in the so-called Paris text, begun by Stephen Langton and carried forward in the corrections of Hugh of St. Cher and in the adept edition of William de la Mare, who knew both Hebrew and Greek.
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise And Development Of Reformed Orthodoxy; Volume 2: The Cognitive Foundation Of Theology (2nd ed., pp. 33–35). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
I’ve been publishing selections from Richard Muller’s Volume 2, dealing with the doctrine of Scripture through the Middle Ages, here at Triablogue, at the following links:
Richard Muller, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, Volume 2: Scripture, September 25, 2014
“Scripture interprets Scripture” through the centuries, October 2, 2014
The Medieval Biblical Canon Revisited, October 3, 2014
How Scripture and Tradition Became Conflated in the Middle Ages, October 13, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
How Scripture and Tradition Became Conflated in the Middle Ages
The word “tradition” has been a wax nose throughout church history, used in various ways at various times, as described here: Four different kinds of “tradition”.
Today, Rome claims that “Scripture and Tradition” together form “one common source” of divine revelation, with “two distinct modes of transmission”. Its official teaching from the CCC states it this way:
Today, Rome claims that “Scripture and Tradition” together form “one common source” of divine revelation, with “two distinct modes of transmission”. Its official teaching from the CCC states it this way:
Friday, October 03, 2014
The Medieval Biblical Canon Revisited
Protestants are frequently treated to the unworthy accusation that their “interpretive paradigm” (“IP”) produces “merely human opinion” whereas the Roman Catholic “IP” actually provides [the mere possibility] of providing a hard, clean line between “mere human opinion” and “divine revelation”.
For example:
Well, the Medievals, it seems, were in the same boat as the post-Tridentine Protestants, because the “infallible Church” with the “unbroken succession” during those centuries really hadn’t ruled authoritatively what the “infallible canon” was to be. In fact, the claim was, they didn’t need one.
So the “Catholics” of that day had the same problems that the Protestants had. As Richard Muller relates:
For example:
the Protestant has no way, other than fallible arguments, to secure his account of what belongs in the canon, which account, in the case of the OT, runs counter to what the older traditions of Catholicism and Orthodoxy eventually concluded. Therefore, he has no way, other than the use of fallible arguments, to show how the canon should be identified. And if he doesn’t have more than that, then he has no way of making certain that the way he identifies the norma normans for the other secondary authorities is correct.
[For Roman Catholics] there is a principled as opposed to an ad hoc way to distinguish the formal, proximate object of faith from fallible human opinions about how to identify it in the sources. And that is the way in which the Catholic can distinguish the assent of faith from that of opinion.
Well, the Medievals, it seems, were in the same boat as the post-Tridentine Protestants, because the “infallible Church” with the “unbroken succession” during those centuries really hadn’t ruled authoritatively what the “infallible canon” was to be. In fact, the claim was, they didn’t need one.
So the “Catholics” of that day had the same problems that the Protestants had. As Richard Muller relates:
Thursday, October 02, 2014
“Scripture interprets Scripture” through the centuries
In his work “Holy Scripture: The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume II (“An Historical Defense of the Reformation Principle of Sola Scriptura” Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources ©2001), William Webster notes that there were a number of “General Principles of Patristic Interpretation” (pg 193). He notes:
He lists these principles as follows:
While there was disagreement among the Church fathers over the practical application of the interpretation of Scripture, it is important to note that there was general agreement on a number of fundamental exegetical principles which we will examine in some detail.
He lists these principles as follows:
Friday, September 26, 2014
Vermigli on the Natural Knowledge of God
From Muller’s discussion of “Natural Theology” in the Reformers: Vermigli on the Natural Knowledge of God:
In sum, Vermigli stands in agreement with Calvin on the uselessness of natural knowledge of God in salvation, but he appears also to take more cognizance of the relative validity of philosophical argumentation based on natural revelation. On this point, Vermigli’s nuanced views may offer a clearer antecedent than Calvin for the later Reformed orthodox position.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Richard Muller, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, Volume 2: Scripture
This is the beginning of Volume 2 of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology”. Elsewhere, I’ve been working through Volumes One (“Prolegomena”) and Three (“Doctrine of God”) of the four-volume series.
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