Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology
Dados do Periódico
| Tipo | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Editora | Oxford University Press (GB) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780198723912 |
| Open Library | OL21703516W |
| Total de publicações | 40 |
| Período coberto | 2020 - 2020 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Fator de impacto | 0.025 |
Reformed theology remains one of the most vibrant fields of discussion in the study of Christian faith and practice. This volume looks back to past resources that have informed Reformed theology, and surveys present conversations among those engaged in Reformed theology today. First, the volume offers accounts of the major historical contexts of Reformed theology, the various relationships (ancient and modern) which it maintains and from which it derives. Recent research has shown the intricate ties between the patristic and medieval heritage of the church and the work of the Reformed movement in the sixteenth century. The past century has also witnessed an explosion of Reformed theology outside the Western world, prompting a need for attention not only to these global voices but also to the unique (and contingent) history of Reformed theology in the West (hence reflecting on its relationship to intellectual developments like scholastic method or the critical approaches of modern biblical studies). Second, the volume assesses some of the classic, representative texts of the Reformed tradition, observing also their reception history. The Reformed movement is not dominated by a single figure, but it does contain a host of paradigmatic texts that demonstrate the range and vitality of Reformed thought on politics, piety, biblical commentary, dogmatic reflection, and social engagement. Third, the volume turns to key doctrines and topics that continue to receive attention by Reformed theologians today. Contributors who are themselves making cutting-edge contributions to constructive theology today reflect on the state of the question, and offer their own proposals regarding a host of doctrinal topics and themes.
Reformed Theology and the Enlightenment
Reformed theologians both promoted and opposed philosophical trends, such as Cartesianism and Christian Epicureanism, normally associated with the Enlightenment. But although Reformed theologians initially divided over response to more moderate forms of Enlightenment associated with Descartes and Locke, they remained firmly opposed to the radical Enlightenment represented by Spinoza and deism. Reformed theology was also impacted by the growing po…
Redemption Applied: Union with Christ
Union with Christ is a crucial theme for Reformed soteriology with far-reaching implications in numerous areas, including the theology of the covenant, the sacraments, eschatology, and the outworking of the doctrine of grace as justification and sanctification in Christ. Through engagement with scriptural exegesis and the refining of various catholic and characteristically Reformed elements, a Reformed doctrine of union with Christ has much to of…
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is treated as a key to Calvin’s own development as a Reformer and an international theologian. What started (in 1536) as a modest catechetical work became (in 1539/1541) a volume of systematic theological loci and then (by 1559) a treatise in four books. It was Calvin’s theological key to his many commentaries. This chapter attempts a survey of the various stages in which the literary nature of the In…
Creation and Providence
Reformed thought on creation is throughout its history deeply influenced by the knowledge that this world comes from the triune God, who we know as Father, Son, and Spirit. The world is approached with the expectation that it somehow bears the traces of the Father, Christ, and the Spirit. God remains actively involved in the continuation of his creation. Already in Calvin’s work this aspect is very clear in his rejection of the Epicurean idea of …
Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
The most significant Reformed theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, exercised a remarkably critical role relative to the classical traditions of Reformed Theology. His theological project drew on modern biblical criticism, post-Kantian philosophy, and early twentieth-century approaches to Christocentrism. Nevertheless, he prepared to offer a systematic theology by going to school with the classic texts of the Reformed tradition and by …
Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism
Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism make available in printed form his 1898 Stone Lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary, locating ‘Calvinism’ amongst other major philosophies and religions. Given the erroneous manner in which each of these other world-views—Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Modernism—depict the fundamental relationship between God and the world, they cannot help but fall far short in their understandings of the o…
Martin Bucer’s Kingdom of Christ
Martin Bucer’s Kingdom of Christ [De Regno Christi] was written while he was in exile in England. It served as advice to King Edward VI (ruled 1547–53) on how to pursue more effectively reform of the English Church and commonwealth, and as constructive criticism of what had been done. The treatise was a summary of Bucer’s thinking on the relationship between church and society, and on how the Gospel should influence every aspect of life, resultin…
Last Things
Concentration on God makes Reformed theology ‘reformed’, and this concentration will form the basis for the treatment of eschatology in the present chapter. I pursue three things in this chapter. First, I provide a brief account of a few of the main themes of eschatology in Reformed perspective in conversation with the leading English-speaking Reformed theologian of the twentieth century, Thomas F. Torrance. Second, I provide a distinctive and su…
Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and explain the inherent ambivalence of the reception of patristic writers in (early modern) Reformed theology by concentrating on the early modern period, when patristic authority was discussed intensely, and on those aspects of the reception history that are, more or less strictly, concerned with theology. The theological continuity between Reformed theology and the church fathers is visible most obvio…
Reformed Theology and Medieval Theology
This chapter examines the relationship between medieval theology and Reformed theology. The Reformation broke with medieval thought upon key issues, but in many areas, medieval influence remained. Many of the Reformers, including Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and Vermigli, were trained in various forms of medieval thought, such as Thomism, Scotism, and Nominalism. Calvin was unique in that he was mostly self-trained in theology, although the nature of …
The Divine Decree
This chapter explores the doctrine of the divine decree in Reformed theology, with specific attention to the tradition’s teaching on election and reprobation. It begins by considering the shape of the doctrine in general, noting some of the doctrine’s more controversial possibilities. It proceeds to focus on the way in which the early Reformed tradition understood the decree in both its positive and negative aspects, drawing variously on the text…
The Doctrine of God
The Reformed doctrine of God has bequeathed to the church catholic a God who is truly Lord, a majestic sovereign who rides in the ancient heavens. He exercises his own good pleasure eternally, affirming and attesting and delighting in his own perfect goodness; and he turns toward his creatures in that perfect goodness to enact his justice and his mercy. Utterly self-sufficient, gloriously free, this God seals the covenant with creatures through t…
Future Prospects for Reformed Theology
Whatever reform might mean and what could possibly be intended by the moniker ‘Reformed’, then, must be thought amidst a distinctly Christian and overtly theological portrayal of the theological act, indeed, of the theologian as a person. While we might construe reform in many terms—ranging from the register of the market to the evolutionary adjustments of the biological world and many other idioma beside them—a claim about ‘Reformed theology’ of…
Covenant
As the Reformed tradition faced different contexts, both in time and place, there could be a spectrum of emphases. Covenant has been a crucial theme for helping to hold together those emphases and maintain a sense of biblical and theological breadth and proportion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, federal or covenant theology employed the covenant concept as one organizing theme for viewing all redemptive history and observing connecti…
Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades
Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades, presented as a set of sermons on the major points of Christian doctrine, was one of the first comprehensive statements of Reformed theology. The 50 sermons provide a robust defence of the orthodoxy of the Zurich church by demonstrating its adherence to the historical teachings of the early church. Bullinger wrote the work both to instruct and edify, and the tone of the Decades is deeply pastoral, offering a guide to …
John Owen’s Discourse on the Holy Spirit
John Owen’s Pneumatologia: Or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit was first published in 1674. Owen considered this work, and projected further volumes on the Holy Spirit, to be the very first attempt of its kind; and it is still one of the most exhaustive accounts of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in English-language theology. Whereas many had treated various aspects of pneumatology, Owen views this as the first attempt to deal compre…
Reformed Theology in North America
The development of Reformed theology in North America is inextricably linked with the story of European immigration and settlement of the New World. Just as diverse geographic and political circumstances crucially shaped a variegated network of Reformed churches in Europe, the immigration of key groups and figures from this network brought a similar diversity of Reformed Christian thought and practice to the New World. These interrelated traditio…
Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology
As among the most prominent works in the history of Reformed theology, Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology merits attention and recognition as representative of Reformed orthodoxy and the scholastic method that contended for that orthodoxy. This we seek to do—first, exploring (only briefly) the theological background of Turretin’s scholastic theology; second, the origin and occasion of this work; next, and third, we treat the genre…
The Westminster Standards
The Westminster Standards were penned at the end of England’s second Reformation, and symbolized the high-water mark of Protestant scholasticism. The cluster of 1640s texts both codified prior developments in Reformed doctrine and standardized theological vocabulary, with the result that they have played an enduring role in the history of theology. This chapter addresses the unique contributions of the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and the flow a…
Reformed Theology and Global Christianity: The Cases of South Africa and Korea
From its inception, Reformed Protestantism was an international phenomenon. Invariably, the places where European and American missionaries went were the very same locations where European powers operated a vast set of economic and political enterprises. Furthermore, because the missionaries themselves were the product of Christian developments in the West—whether the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism or intra-Protestant squabbles (Luthe…
Politics, Society, and Law
From the sixteenth century, the Reformed movement was committed to a programme of social reform in which church and civil authorities worked together in partnership not only in the cause of ecclesiastical reform but with a view to establishing a ‘godly society’ in accordance with the Word of God. Sanctification thus extended to the entire social order, often through appeal to Old Testament ideals and the concept of ‘covenant’. This chapter explor…
Reformed Ethics
Within the wider field of ethical reflection and moral theology, Reformed ethics is tasked with understanding and orienting human action theologically by formative reference to the fundamental description of moral reality provided by Reformed doctrine. The essential features of this moral reality can helpfully be displayed and coordinated around the themes of belonging, gratitude, law, and holiness. Consideration of these themes helps to bring ou…
Holy Scripture
Since key concepts in the Reformed doctrine of scripture resonate with John’s Gospel, this exposition begins with an account of the Word (John 1:1–18) in relation to God’s Spirit, the living water for which we are thirsty (John 4:10–13, 19–26; 7:37–9). Then the exposition turns to the font of the Reformed tradition on scripture, notably John Calvin; the early flow of the Reformed tradition on scripture, namely the boundaries set in historic confe…
Jonathan Edwards’ A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
In the face of two extremes—the excesses of the revivals and the reactive rejection of them—Jonathan Edwards posits religious affection as the key feature of the truly religious life. Affection, understood in light of the divine blessedness and its communication to the creature in regeneration, serves to ground knowledge of God in a distinctively spiritual register, distinguishing between regenerate and non-regenerate knowledge of God. But non-re…
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith
This chapter discusses Friedrich Schleiermacher’s mature theology in his Christian Faith (1830/31), or Glaubenslehre. The chapter situates the work in its modern context, highlights its ecclesial and ecumenical function, and introduces its dogmatic genre and theological method. The chapter argues that Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre is beneficially interpreted within the Reformed tradition, and offers two hermeneutical keys that unlock its Reforme…
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Reformed Theology and the Enlightenment
Reformed theologians both promoted and opposed philosophical trends, such as Cartesianism and Christian Epicureanism, normally associated with the Enlightenment. But although Reformed theologians initially divided over response to more moderate forms of Enlightenment associated with Descartes and Locke, they remained firmly opposed to the radical Enlightenment represented by Spinoza and deism. Reformed theology was also impacted by the growing po…
Redemption Applied: Union with Christ
Union with Christ is a crucial theme for Reformed soteriology with far-reaching implications in numerous areas, including the theology of the covenant, the sacraments, eschatology, and the outworking of the doctrine of grace as justification and sanctification in Christ. Through engagement with scriptural exegesis and the refining of various catholic and characteristically Reformed elements, a Reformed doctrine of union with Christ has much to of…
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion
Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is treated as a key to Calvin’s own development as a Reformer and an international theologian. What started (in 1536) as a modest catechetical work became (in 1539/1541) a volume of systematic theological loci and then (by 1559) a treatise in four books. It was Calvin’s theological key to his many commentaries. This chapter attempts a survey of the various stages in which the literary nature of the In…
Creation and Providence
Reformed thought on creation is throughout its history deeply influenced by the knowledge that this world comes from the triune God, who we know as Father, Son, and Spirit. The world is approached with the expectation that it somehow bears the traces of the Father, Christ, and the Spirit. God remains actively involved in the continuation of his creation. Already in Calvin’s work this aspect is very clear in his rejection of the Epicurean idea of …
Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
The most significant Reformed theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, exercised a remarkably critical role relative to the classical traditions of Reformed Theology. His theological project drew on modern biblical criticism, post-Kantian philosophy, and early twentieth-century approaches to Christocentrism. Nevertheless, he prepared to offer a systematic theology by going to school with the classic texts of the Reformed tradition and by …
Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism
Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism make available in printed form his 1898 Stone Lectures delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary, locating ‘Calvinism’ amongst other major philosophies and religions. Given the erroneous manner in which each of these other world-views—Paganism, Islamism, Romanism and Modernism—depict the fundamental relationship between God and the world, they cannot help but fall far short in their understandings of the o…
Martin Bucer’s Kingdom of Christ
Martin Bucer’s Kingdom of Christ [De Regno Christi] was written while he was in exile in England. It served as advice to King Edward VI (ruled 1547–53) on how to pursue more effectively reform of the English Church and commonwealth, and as constructive criticism of what had been done. The treatise was a summary of Bucer’s thinking on the relationship between church and society, and on how the Gospel should influence every aspect of life, resultin…
Last Things
Concentration on God makes Reformed theology ‘reformed’, and this concentration will form the basis for the treatment of eschatology in the present chapter. I pursue three things in this chapter. First, I provide a brief account of a few of the main themes of eschatology in Reformed perspective in conversation with the leading English-speaking Reformed theologian of the twentieth century, Thomas F. Torrance. Second, I provide a distinctive and su…
Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and explain the inherent ambivalence of the reception of patristic writers in (early modern) Reformed theology by concentrating on the early modern period, when patristic authority was discussed intensely, and on those aspects of the reception history that are, more or less strictly, concerned with theology. The theological continuity between Reformed theology and the church fathers is visible most obvio…
Reformed Theology and Medieval Theology
This chapter examines the relationship between medieval theology and Reformed theology. The Reformation broke with medieval thought upon key issues, but in many areas, medieval influence remained. Many of the Reformers, including Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and Vermigli, were trained in various forms of medieval thought, such as Thomism, Scotism, and Nominalism. Calvin was unique in that he was mostly self-trained in theology, although the nature of …
The Divine Decree
This chapter explores the doctrine of the divine decree in Reformed theology, with specific attention to the tradition’s teaching on election and reprobation. It begins by considering the shape of the doctrine in general, noting some of the doctrine’s more controversial possibilities. It proceeds to focus on the way in which the early Reformed tradition understood the decree in both its positive and negative aspects, drawing variously on the text…
The Doctrine of God
The Reformed doctrine of God has bequeathed to the church catholic a God who is truly Lord, a majestic sovereign who rides in the ancient heavens. He exercises his own good pleasure eternally, affirming and attesting and delighting in his own perfect goodness; and he turns toward his creatures in that perfect goodness to enact his justice and his mercy. Utterly self-sufficient, gloriously free, this God seals the covenant with creatures through t…
Future Prospects for Reformed Theology
Whatever reform might mean and what could possibly be intended by the moniker ‘Reformed’, then, must be thought amidst a distinctly Christian and overtly theological portrayal of the theological act, indeed, of the theologian as a person. While we might construe reform in many terms—ranging from the register of the market to the evolutionary adjustments of the biological world and many other idioma beside them—a claim about ‘Reformed theology’ of…
Covenant
As the Reformed tradition faced different contexts, both in time and place, there could be a spectrum of emphases. Covenant has been a crucial theme for helping to hold together those emphases and maintain a sense of biblical and theological breadth and proportion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, federal or covenant theology employed the covenant concept as one organizing theme for viewing all redemptive history and observing connecti…
Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades
Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades, presented as a set of sermons on the major points of Christian doctrine, was one of the first comprehensive statements of Reformed theology. The 50 sermons provide a robust defence of the orthodoxy of the Zurich church by demonstrating its adherence to the historical teachings of the early church. Bullinger wrote the work both to instruct and edify, and the tone of the Decades is deeply pastoral, offering a guide to …
John Owen’s Discourse on the Holy Spirit
John Owen’s Pneumatologia: Or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit was first published in 1674. Owen considered this work, and projected further volumes on the Holy Spirit, to be the very first attempt of its kind; and it is still one of the most exhaustive accounts of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in English-language theology. Whereas many had treated various aspects of pneumatology, Owen views this as the first attempt to deal compre…
Reformed Theology in North America
The development of Reformed theology in North America is inextricably linked with the story of European immigration and settlement of the New World. Just as diverse geographic and political circumstances crucially shaped a variegated network of Reformed churches in Europe, the immigration of key groups and figures from this network brought a similar diversity of Reformed Christian thought and practice to the New World. These interrelated traditio…
Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology
As among the most prominent works in the history of Reformed theology, Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology merits attention and recognition as representative of Reformed orthodoxy and the scholastic method that contended for that orthodoxy. This we seek to do—first, exploring (only briefly) the theological background of Turretin’s scholastic theology; second, the origin and occasion of this work; next, and third, we treat the genre…
The Westminster Standards
The Westminster Standards were penned at the end of England’s second Reformation, and symbolized the high-water mark of Protestant scholasticism. The cluster of 1640s texts both codified prior developments in Reformed doctrine and standardized theological vocabulary, with the result that they have played an enduring role in the history of theology. This chapter addresses the unique contributions of the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and the flow a…
Reformed Theology and Global Christianity: The Cases of South Africa and Korea
From its inception, Reformed Protestantism was an international phenomenon. Invariably, the places where European and American missionaries went were the very same locations where European powers operated a vast set of economic and political enterprises. Furthermore, because the missionaries themselves were the product of Christian developments in the West—whether the Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism or intra-Protestant squabbles (Luthe…
Politics, Society, and Law
From the sixteenth century, the Reformed movement was committed to a programme of social reform in which church and civil authorities worked together in partnership not only in the cause of ecclesiastical reform but with a view to establishing a ‘godly society’ in accordance with the Word of God. Sanctification thus extended to the entire social order, often through appeal to Old Testament ideals and the concept of ‘covenant’. This chapter explor…
Reformed Ethics
Within the wider field of ethical reflection and moral theology, Reformed ethics is tasked with understanding and orienting human action theologically by formative reference to the fundamental description of moral reality provided by Reformed doctrine. The essential features of this moral reality can helpfully be displayed and coordinated around the themes of belonging, gratitude, law, and holiness. Consideration of these themes helps to bring ou…
Holy Scripture
Since key concepts in the Reformed doctrine of scripture resonate with John’s Gospel, this exposition begins with an account of the Word (John 1:1–18) in relation to God’s Spirit, the living water for which we are thirsty (John 4:10–13, 19–26; 7:37–9). Then the exposition turns to the font of the Reformed tradition on scripture, notably John Calvin; the early flow of the Reformed tradition on scripture, namely the boundaries set in historic confe…
Jonathan Edwards’ A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
In the face of two extremes—the excesses of the revivals and the reactive rejection of them—Jonathan Edwards posits religious affection as the key feature of the truly religious life. Affection, understood in light of the divine blessedness and its communication to the creature in regeneration, serves to ground knowledge of God in a distinctively spiritual register, distinguishing between regenerate and non-regenerate knowledge of God. But non-re…
Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith
This chapter discusses Friedrich Schleiermacher’s mature theology in his Christian Faith (1830/31), or Glaubenslehre. The chapter situates the work in its modern context, highlights its ecclesial and ecumenical function, and introduces its dogmatic genre and theological method. The chapter argues that Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre is beneficially interpreted within the Reformed tradition, and offers two hermeneutical keys that unlock its Reforme…