For those of you excited about the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 (its never too early, right?), check out the Refo500 Foundation (NL: Stichtung Refo500), which just launched an English version of their web-site detailing various exhibitions, trips, conferences, seminars, and so forth. The first council meeting for its US complement, Refo500 Council North America, will meet in June on the Emory Law School campus in Atlanta, GA. The first stateside Reformation conference in the US will be held at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY on September 27th -28th. (more…)

I thought this was an odd bit of trivia, but at least interesting to know what was in the library of arguably one of the best biblical theologians of the modern era. I found this in Calvin Seminary’s copy of Friedrich Spanheim’s Opera in tome 2, bookmarking pages 913-914 on Sacraments in the Old Testament. It is a postcard from a bookseller in Philadelphia to Geerhardus Vos, postmarked August 1, 1891. Granted it is all circumstantial, he may have bought the book and never read it, he may have just stuck it in there (I did find some pressed flowers in another section among the leaves too!!), etc. etc. But like I said, at the very least, its interesting that this book was in his library.

Friderici Spanheimii F. F. Professoris Batavi Primarii Operum tomus-tertius. Lugduni-Batavorum: Boutestein, Luhtmans, du Vivie, Severino, 1701-1703.

After finding Gratian’s Decretals cited frequently in Musculus recently, I also ran across a more recent commentary on the Iuris Canonici - Canon Law here.

If the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology comes anywhere near you, you need to go. For details, see here. I am not able to make it to the first address so I will be heading to the meetings tomorrow and the seminars tomorrow afternoon. There are some good historical theologians involved and I am looking forward to it.

In Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, Gustaf Aulén sets forth Irenaeus as an early champion of Christ as victor over sin, the death, and the devil as a construction of the doctrine of the atonement devoid of penal substitution. His interpretation of Irenaeus burst upon the continental scene in 1931 and crossed into English-speaking discussion thereafter. To give a hint at his significance for modern approaches to the doctrine of the atonement, between 1969 and 1979 Macmillan Publishing went through 7 editions in trade paperback form. My interest in Aulen’s approach to the atonement rises primarily in his interpretation of Irenaeus that claims to be the proper historical doctrine of the atonement. So did Aulen get Irenaeus right? (more…)

I don’t often stray into the modern interest in theological panentheism as an explanation of the Christian faith in neo-Platonic categories filtered through Jakob Böhme and other German Idealists of the late 18th century and the early 19th century. (For obvious reasons … !) And it is only because I am working on a paper for a class on the philosophical foundations of modern theology that I am reading through it all. Frankly, for starters, Schelling et al. are not viable options for Christian orthodoxy given the  flattening of the Creator and creature distinction into a dangerously open construction of the relationship between God and creation (Namely, God is a becoming totality/realization, a WorldSoul, and humanity subsists in Him as part of Nature and as a bit of the WorldSoul … separate sort of, but not really due to the neo-Platonic construction of immanence). In short God’s consciousness of Himself is mediated through human consciousness and develops in history over time. It’s really the grand-daddy of Open and Process theology … So how open is it? (more…)

Can you guess what I’ve been reading? (amended 5 pm)

The Torrance trajectory: (Foedus or Pactum?)
* J. B. Torrance “The Concept of Federal Theology - Was Calvin a Federal Theologian?” in Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor, ed. de Jonge.
* J. B. Torrance Covenant or Contract? Scottish Journal of Theology, 23: 1970, p. 51-76.
* T. F. Torrance - Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell. T & T Clark.

If you have read anything from the Torrance brothers (James and Thomas) on this question over the past 40 years, you know this line of thought. It’s either covenant or contract. In very rough form Calvin was great. Beza wasn’t. The problem is that Beza gutted Calvin and made Calvinism the mean, cold, predestinarian system it is today- word’s like bilateral contract are employed.  Bilateral being a contract quid pro quo. This is contrasted with a warm gracious unconditional arrangement characterized as a unilateral covenant, a marriage as it were. In this line of thinking it is the bilateral view of covenant that causes the problems.

The Miller trajectory: (Miller, Trinterud, Møller, Baker et al …)
Down another trajectory, others have variously argued that in fact it is the unilateral view that is the problem. Geneva vs. Zurich or the Rhineland. Calvin vs. Bullinger. In this construct unilateral  covenants tend towards predestination and cause problems. In this line it is the bilateral covenant theology that is  what was corrupted by the Genevan predestinarianism of Calvin and Beza.

The Ramist vs Aristotelian trajectory:
Still others, in a different trajectory (Letham for instance in “Foedus Operum,” Sixteenth Century Journal, Winter 1983), maintains that the development of the covenant of works idea/theology is really the theological embodiment of the philosophical struggle between Aristotelian and Ramist logic. The claim is that Heidelberg and Cambridge were major centers of Ramism (p. 465). 

Without getting into deep weeds quickly, a few cursory musings …
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