Post-Reformation

Reformed Dogmatics
The Rise and Development of Reformed
Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725
VOLUME 4
The Triunity of God
RICHARD A. MULLER

© 2003 by Richard A. Muller

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example,
electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the
publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muller, Richard A. (Richard Alfred), 1948–
Post-Reformation reformed dogmatics: the rise and development of
reformed orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 / Richard A. Muller—(2 ed.).
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Prolegomena to theology—v. 2. Holy Scripture—v. 3.
The divine essence and attributes—v. 4. The triunity of God.
ISBN 10: 0-8010-2617-2 (v. 1: cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8010-2617-1 (v.: cloth)
 ISBN 10:0-8010-2616-4 (v. 2: cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8010-2616-4 (v. 2:cloth)
ISBN 10: 0-8010-2294-0 (v. 3: cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8010-2294-4 (v.3: cloth)
ISBN 10: 0-8010-2295-9 (v.4: cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8010-2295-1 (v. 4: cloth)
1. Reformed Church—Doctrines—History—16 century. 2. Reformed
Church—Doctrines—History—17 century. 3. Reformed Church—
Doctrines—History—18 century. 4. Protestant Scholasticism. I. Title.
BX9422.3.M85 2002
230’.42’.09—dc21 2002026165
 Contents
Preface
PART 1. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1. The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Christian Tradition: The
Medieval Background
1.1 The Doctrine of the Trinity in the West
A. Premises and Issues for Charting Its Development from the Twelfth
through the Seventeenth Century
1. The trajectory of trinitarian doctrine in relation to issues of
continuity and discontinuity in the development of Protestant
thought
2. Drawing out the Protestant orthodox trinitarian trajectory in
relation to its antecedents
3. Issues of Scripture and tradition: patristic study, philosophical
issues, and the question of norms
B. Scholarly Approaches: A Preliminary Survey of Historiography
1. The historiographical problem and the general histories of
doctrine
2. Monographic literature and shorter studies relevant to the later
development of the doctrine of the Trinity
1.2 Early Scholastic Examination of the Doctrine of the Trinity: From
Anselm to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)
A. Early Scholastic Developments: From Anselm to Abelard
1. Roscellin and Anselm on the Trinity: the Synod of Soissons
(1092)
2. Anselm and the Greeks: the Council of Bari (1098)
3. Abelard and the “conceptualist” model of the Trinity: the Synods
of Soissons (1121) and Sens (1141)
4. Gilbert de la Porrée and the Synod of Rheims (1148)
B. Speculative Development and Conciliar Conclusions, ca. 1150 to
1215
1. The trinitarianism of Richard of St. Victor: Augustinianism,
 mysticism, and the difficulty of defining “person”
2. The heresies of Joachim and the Fourth Lateran Council
1.3 The High and Late Scholastic Development of Trinitarian Doctrine
A. The Scholastic Doctors of the Thirteenth Century
1. Foundational formulations: William of Auvergne, Alexander of
Hales, and Albert the Great
2. Bonaventure
3. Thomas Aquinas
4. The Council of Lyons (1274)
B. Late Medieval Developments
1. Peter Auriole and Durandus of Sancto Porciano
2. Duns Scotus and William of Ockham
3. The Council of Florence (1438–1442)
Chapter 2. The Doctrine of the Trinity from the Sixteenth to the Early
Eighteenth Century
2.1 Scripture and Traditional Trinitarian Language in the Era of the
Reformation
A. The Reformers from the Time of Luther to the Mid-Sixteenth
Century, ca. 1520–1565
1. Prologue: the problem of the history of the doctrine of the Trinity
in Reformation and post-Reformation Reformed thought
2. The doctrine of the Trinity in the thought of the earliest Reformers
3. Reappropriation of traditionary norms in the doctrinal treatises of
the Reformers
B. Antitrinitarianism in the Era of the Reformation
1. The sources and context of sixteenth-century antitrinitarianism
2. The theology of Michael Servetus
3. The “Italian antitrinitarians”
C. In Debate with the Antitrinitarians: Further Developments in
Reformation-Era Trinitarianism
D. The Trinitarian Orthodoxy of the Reformed Confessions
 2.2 Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Era of
Protestant Orthodoxy
A. The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity in Early Orthodoxy,
1565–1640
1. Positive doctrinal developments in the early orthodox era
2. Early orthodoxy and the antitrinitarians
B. Socinianism in the Seventeenth Century
1. Continental developments
2. Socinianism and antitrinitarianism in seventeenth-century Britain
C. The New Philosophies and the Problem of God-Language
D. Orthodox Trinitarian Formulation in the High Orthodox Era, 1640–
1685
1. The confessional foundation: the Declaration of Thorn and the
Westminster Standards
2. The continental writers
3. Major British thinkers and doctrinal developments
2.3 The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Late Seventeenth and the Early
Eighteenth
Century
A. Perspectives on the Trinitarian Problem in a Time of Transition,
1685–1725
B. Trinitarian Debate in Britain
1. From Bull’s Defense (1685) to The Naked Gospel (1690)
2. William Sherlock and the broadening debate
3. Renewed debate: Whiston and Clarke on the Trinity
C. Patterns of Trinitarian Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century
1. Changing exegetical perspectives
2. Major doctrinal models
PART 2. THE REFORMED ORTHODOX DOCTRINE OF THE
TRINITY
Chapter 3. The Doctrine of the Trinity in Reformed Orthodoxy: Basic
Issues, Terms, and Definitions
3.1 The Trinity as a “Fundamental Article” of Faith
A. The Place, Order, and Importance of the Doctrine
1. Views of the Reformers
2. The Reformed orthodox approach to the doctrine of the Trinity
3. The order and arrangement of the locus
B. The Trinity of God as a Mystery beyond Reason
1. Views of the Reformers
2. Approaches of the Reformed orthodox
3. The practical use of the doctrine of the Trinity
C. Rational Argumentation for the Doctrine of the Trinity
1. The vestigia trinitatis: Reformed approaches
2. Seventeenth-century scholastics and the ancients: partial
trinitarian conceptions granted to reason in classical philosophy
3. Keckermann, Ainsworth, and Burman on the logic of the divine
emanations
4. Trinitarian logic, Cartesianism, and reaction in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
3.2 The Terms of Trinitarian Orthodoxy
A. Reformed Definition in the Scholastic Era
1. Reformed orthodox reception of traditional trinitarian terminology
2. Trinitas
3. Substantia, essentia, ousia, and related issues
4. Homoousios
5. Persona
6. Hypostasis, subsistentia, and modus subsistendi
7. Circumincessio, perichoresis, emperichoresis
8. Proprietates, relationes, and notiones
B. Trinitarian Distinctions in the Godhead: Between Essence and
Persons—Among the Persons
1. The distinction between essence and person—rational or modal?
 2. The distinctions between the persons—modal or real?
Chapter 4. The Trinity of Persons in Their Unity and Distinction:
Theology and Exegesis in the Older Reformed Tradition
4.1 The Trinity of Persons according to the Reformers
A. The Continuity of Precritical Exegesis and the Biblical Norm:
Protestant Trinitarian Formulation and the Interpretation of Scripture
1. Shared perspectives: Trinity and pre-critical exegesis
2. The Reformers and trinitarian exegesis
3. Trinitarian exegesis in the era of orthodoxy
B. The Order and Distinction of the Persons: Views of the Reformers
1. The Reformers and trinitarian definition: general considerations
2. The views of Calvin and Bullinger
3. Musculus on the distinction and order of the divine persons
C. The Order and Distinction of the Persons: Views of the Reformed
Orthodox
1. Positive definition among the Reformed orthodox
2. Definition over against fundamental objection
4.2 Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: Reformation and Orthodoxy
A. The Trinitarian Exegesis of Scripture: Hermeneutical Assumptions
B. Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: Old Testament
1. Trinity in the Old Testament: issues in debate in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries
2. Divine threeness in the exegesis of the Pentateuch and the
historical books
3. Trinity in the Writings
4. Trinity in the prophetic books
C. Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: New Testament
1. Reformed exegesis of individual trinitarian texts in the Gospels
2. Trinitarian readings in the Epistles
3. The Johannine Comma—trajectories of interpretation
4. Trinity in the Revelation
Chapter 5. The Deity and Person of the Father
5.1 God the Father: Exegetical Foundations and Doctrinal Definitions
A. God as “Father” in Exegesis and Doctrine
1. The logic of the locus: individual discussion of the persons
2. The exegesis of “Father”: two implications of the biblical
Language
3. The personality of the Father
B. The Personal Properties of the Father
1. God the Father as personally distinct: general issues
2. Unbegottenness and aseity
3. Primacy
5.2 The Father as Origin and Source: “Works” of the Godhead Ad intra
and
Ad extra
A. Views of the Reformers
B. The Era of Orthodoxy: Traditionary Understandings
1. Divided Ad intra—undivided Ad extra: the orthodox
understanding of “works” of the Godhead in general
2. The Father’s active generation of the Son
3. The Father’s active spiration, with the Son, of the Holy Ghost
4. Personal distinctions in the undivided work ad extra
C. Reformed Approaches to Essential and Personal Works of the Trinity
Ad intra
1. The Father and the works or operations of the Trinity: general
considerations
2. The eternal decree and the election of Christ
3. The love of the Father for the Son and the pactum salutis
D. Opera Appropriata: Works Ad extra “in a Certain Manner” Personal
1. The works ad extra: undivided but trinitarian
2. The primacy of the Father in all opera ad extra
3. Creation: appropriate to the Father
 4. Incarnation—appropriate to and “terminating on” the Son
5. Regeneration as the proper work of the Spirit
Chapter 6. The Person and Deity of the Son
6.1 The Person and Generation of the Son
A. The Personality or Personhood of the Son: Issues and Debate
1. Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God
2. Sonship and the problem of subordination
3. Divine begetting and incarnation: debate over eternity and
immutability
B. The Eternal Generation of the Son
1. Orthodoxy in polemic against the Socinians
2. The positive doctrine of the Reformed orthodox
6.2 The Full Deity of the Son
A. Exegetical and Doctrinal Argument in the Era of the Reformation
1. Calvin on the deity of the Son: the shape of argument in the
Institutes
2. The divinity of Christ in Calvin’s commentaries: select texts
3. Christ’s divinity according to Musculus and Vermigli
B. Grounds of Doctrinal Argument in the Era of the Reformed
Orthodoxy
1. The deity of the Son: general argumentation
2. The divinity of the Son in the interpretation of Scripture:
hermeneutical issues
C. The Divine Names and Attributes of the Son in Reformed Orthodox
Theology
1. The name of God: “Jehovah”
2. Lord and God
3. Word of God
4. The “Angel of the Lord” and the divinity of Christ
5. Other names and titles
6. Arguments for the divinity of Christ from divine attributes
 accorded to him in Scripture
D. Other Grounds for the Divinity of Christ according to the Reformed
Orthodox
1. Christ’s divinity demonstrated ex operis divinis
2. Christ’s divinity argued from worship and faith
6.3 The Aseitas, or Self-Existence, of the Son
A. Views of the Reformers
B. The Reformed Orthodox Debate over Aseity
1. Early orthodox diversity and debate
2. Formulation of the doctrine in high and late orthodoxy
Chapter 7. The Deity and Person of the Holy Spirit
7.1 “Spirit” and Deity in the Reformed doctrine of God
A. Initial Definitions: The Positive Doctrine and the Issues Argued
1. The Reformers on the Spirit: definitions, issues, and adversaries
2. The Reformed orthodox doctrine of the Spirit—definition and
points of debate
B. The Reformers’ Views on “Spirit”
C. The Meaning of “Spirit” according to the Reformed Orthodox
1. “Spirit”: the range of biblical meanings
2. The divine “Spirit” in the language of the Bible and orthodoxy
7.2 The Personality or Individuality of the Spirit
A. Arguments of the Reformers
B. The Reformed Orthodox Approach to the Person of the Spirit
1. The problem of the personality of the “Spirit”: objections to the
doctrine and Reformed responses
2. The names, attributes, and operations of the Spirit
3. The distinction of the Spirit from the Father and the Son
4. Theophanies and “personal actions” of the Spirit
7.3 The Full Deity of the Spirit
A. The Divinity of the Spirit in the Teaching of the Reformers
 1. Reformation-era approaches to the divinity of the Spirit
2. Divine names, titles, and attributes given to the Spirit
3. Divine works attributed to the Spirit
B. The Reformed Orthodox Approach to the Deity of the Spirit
1. The framework of argument
2. The divine names given to the Spirit
3. The divine attributes acknowledged to belong to the Spirit
4. The divine works performed by the Spirit
5. The divine honor and worship accorded to the Spirit
6. The placement of the Spirit at the same divine “rank and order,”
with the Father and the Son
7.4 Operations of the Spirit Ad intra and Ad extra
A. The Ad intra Operation or “Procession” of the Spirit
1. Processio or ἐκπόρευσις defined
2. The demonstration of the filioque: “double procession”
3. Procession and the scholastic tradition: Reformed reservations
B. The Ad extra “Sending” and the Office of the Spirit
1. The “sending” of the Spirit
2. The “office” of the Spirit
Chapter 8. Conclusion: The Character of Reformed Orthodoxy
8.1 The Problem of Continuity in the Protestant Theological Tradition
A. The Historical Assessment of Reformed Orthodoxy
1. Patterns and paradigms of analysis
2. Reforming and the Reformed: trajectories from the later Middle
Ages to the close of the era of orthodoxy
3. Reformed orthodoxy in its confessional breadth and theological
diversity: restating issues of continuity and discontinuity
B. Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, and the Trajectories of Late
Renaissance Philosophy, Logic, and Rhetoric
1. Central dogmas, scholasticism, Aristotelianism, and rationalism:
toward closure on an old debate
 2. Patterns and trajectories in the Reformed reception of scholastic
models
8.2 The Character of Protestant Scholasticism: Prolegomena and Principia
as Indices of Post-Reformation Orthodoxy
A. Theological Prolegomena
1. The rise of theological prolegomena and the question of
continuity, discontinuity, and development
2. The example of Ramism
3. The prolegomena and the problem of rationalism
B. The Doctrine of Scripture and the Continuity of the Interpretive
Tradition in Orthodox Protestantism
1. Continuity, discontinuity, and the problem of perspective
2. Exegetical continuities and developments
C. The Doctrine of God in Its Protestant Development
1. The Reformed orthodox doctrine of God: rethinking the question
2. Exegetical continuities and the issue of dicta probantia
3. The issue of natural theology and metaphysics in relation to the
doctrine of God
4. Essence, attributes, and Trinity—issues of development,
discontinuity, and continuity
D. Reformation and Orthodoxy: Final Assessments and Directions
Bibliography
I. Primary Sources
II. Secondary Sources
Index
 Preface
The appearance of this preface indicates the conclusion of a rather long but
hopefully fruitful journey. My own interest in post-Reformation Reformed
dogmatics has not come to an end, and I have certainly not presented in this
and the three preceding volumes an exhaustive overview of the teachings of
scholastic Protestantism. I have simply arrived as a conclusion to the plan of
study that I undertook some twenty-five years ago, with the intention of
producing a monograph on the patterns or trajectories of development of
Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with attention
to the declared principia, or “foundations,” of that older theology.
In addition to offering the final section of the proposed study of theological
prolegomena and principia, the present volume also offers a concluding
chapter on the character of Reformed orthodoxy in which an attempt is made
to draw together the findings of all four volumes into a more cohesive
analysis of scholastic Protestantism than was possible either in the
introduction to volume 1 or in the brief concluding sections of volume 2.
Themes that appeared in the first and second chapters of volume 1 as theses
about the rise and implications of a scholastic and “orthodox” Protestant
dogmatics can now be stated as conclusions, in view of the research done in
all four volumes.
The concluding chapter will, accordingly, reprise the problems of the
relationship of Protestant orthodoxy to philosophy, of the development and
alteration of hermeneutics in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and of the impact of these changes on the formulation of doctrine,
together with the problem of the transition from the medieval to the early
modern era as it had an impact on the theology of the age. The discussion of
these problems, in the wake of our detailed exposition of the prolegomena and
principia of theology, should lead, finally, to a fuller and clearer definition of
the character and significance of scholasticism and orthodoxy in the
Reformed tradition.
Finally, to all of the patient (and several impatient) readers who have asked
for indices and further apparatus—you will find, at the end of this volume, the
promised bibliography. Indices appear in all four volumes.
Richard A. Muller
 Part 1
Introduction
1
The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Christian
Tradition: The Medieval Background
1.1 The Doctrine of the Trinity in the West
A. Premises and Issues for Charting Its Development from the
Twelfth through the Seventeenth Century
1. The trajectory of trinitarian doctrine in relation to issues of
continuity and discontinuity in the development of Protestant thought.
The trajectory of trinitarian thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
is markedly different from the trajectories of the other issues we have
examined in this study (the presuppositional structure of theology as defined
in the prolegomena, the doctrine of Scripture, and the doctrine of the divine
essence and attributes)—and the scholarly treatment of the doctrine is also
quite different in character from the scholarship on prolegomena, Scripture,
and the divine essence and attributes. These differences stem from a series of
issues and factors that need to be noted from the outset as determinative of the
topic and analysis of it.
First, the patterns according to which various doctrines were transmitted
from the Middle Ages, through the Reformation, and into the era of
orthodoxy remain as varied as the doctrines and many doctrinal nuances
themselves. As a result, the patterns of continuity and discontinuity that
describe the relationship of the Reformed orthodox to the Reformation and to
the Middle Ages are also varied—differing in details from the relationships
described in the study of prolegomena, Scripture, and divine essence and
attributes. As in the cases of the other doctrinal issues, it is not particularly
enlightening to the understanding of the Reformed doctrine of the Trinity to
identify one thinker in a given era and one thinker in the next and then
determine whether or not their formulations are identical. Given the nature of
the development of Protestant thought in and beyond the Reformation, that
sort of continuity will not be found in any case.1 Nor will the formulae and
the patterns of argument found in the Reformed doctrine of the Trinity track
through the same thinkers in the same way that the formulae and
argumentation tracks in the cases of other shared doctrinal topics. By way of
example, the Scotist and nominalist accents that are fairly readily identified in
the Reformed prolegomena and in the Reformed discussions of the divine
essence and attributes are less clearly marked in the doctrine of the Trinity.
Similarly, the fairly clear Calvinian stamp on the shape and topical
distribution of the later Reformed doctrine of the inspiration and divine marks
of Scripture is not as evident in the Reformed orthodox doctrine of the Trinity
—although the exegetical continuities are obvious.
Second, although it is certainly possible to speak of a generally “orthodox”
doctrine of Scripture or of the divine essence and attributes, neither of these
doctrines stands as a carefully defined dogma of ecumenical orthodoxy—as
does the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, Protestant and Roman Catholic writers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries debated the relative authority of
Scripture and tradition but did not question either the inspiration or the
normative character of Scripture itself. None of the debates over Scripture,
moreover, looked to an ancient definition of doctrine and, in fact, there was
little precedent for a formal “doctrine of Scripture” in the church prior to the
Reformation. The authority of the text as divine Word or revelation only came
under attack toward the close of the era of orthodoxy. The doctrine of the
divine essence and attributes was, by way of contrast, fully developed as a
distinct doctrinal topic long before the Reformation and, in the basic outlines
of its orthodox formulations, carried through the Reformation into the era of
orthodoxy with little alteration until its encounter with changing philosophical
currents in the seventeenth century. But here, too, there was no single
dogmatic formula that could be used as a test of orthodoxy; rather, the
doctrine contained a series of assumptions, such as eternity, infinity,
omnipotence, omniscience, and simplicity, none of which had been the
subject of a full creedal definition. The doctrine of the Trinity, by way of
contrast, had been closely defined in the patristic era and was ensconced in
ecumenical formulae.
The Reformers and the Reformed orthodox, therefore, developed their
teaching on the Trinity in conscious dialogue with the patristic and medieval
tradition, in overt agreement with the councils of the early church, and in the
tradition of the medieval conciliar decisions as well. This broad continuity of
churchly doctrine generated the peculiar character of the Protestant
development and debate over the Trinity: the Reformed churches and their
theologians did not view the traditional dogmas defined by the councils as on
a normative level comparable to that of Scripture—that was the assumption
held by the Council of Trent. From the Reformers’ perspective, the church
could not be bound to these formulae in the same way that she was
determined in doctrine by Scripture, but the formulae would stand as
normative on a biblical basis. Much of the Reformers’ work and by far the
greater part of the work of the Reformed orthodox with regard to the doctrine
of the Trinity, therefore, was the grounding of the formulae and the traditional
language more completely and explicitly on Scripture than had been done for
centuries.
Third, whereas assaults on the normative character of Scripture and large-
scale alteration of the doctrine of divine essence, attributes, and Trinity were
comparatively rare occurrences in Middle Ages (and were typically dealt with
very expeditiously), in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was
widespread debate over the doctrines of the divine attributes and the Trinity.
The churchly theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—whether
Protestant or Roman Catholic—did not typically formulate their views of
Scripture or of the divine essence and attributes over against radical denials of
these doctrines, but their doctrine of the Trinity was developed in the context
of fairly consistent denial of the doctrine by a number of highly insistent
thinkers and groups who became increasingly adept at using both Scripture
and early patristic tradition against the church’s dogma. To make the point
somewhat differently, whereas there was much debate and much very heated
polemic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries over aspects of the
doctrines of Scripture and the divine essence and attributes, the doctrines
were not formulated in the context of a large-scale assault on their basic
concepts, at least not until the mid-seventeenth century, after orthodox
Protestant dogmatics had been fully formulated. Certainly after 1550, the
opposite was the case with the doctrine of the Trinity. The seventeenth-
century orthodox formulation of the doctrine was accomplished with constant
polemic against antitrinitarian views—views that grew out of a highly
biblicistic antitrinitarianism such as Christianity had not seen since the
patristic period.
2. Drawing out the Protestant orthodox trinitarian trajectory in
relation to its antecedents. From the Western catholic perspective, inherited
by the Reformation, the development of ecumenical formulae concerning the
Trinity did not cease with the close of the patristic era. The Western
development of trinitarian doctrine rested not only on the medieval reception
of the patristic materials and the subsequent analysis, codification, and
expansion of patristic formulae in the schools but also and at least as
importantly on the conciliar development of the doctrine in the west following
the filioque controversy. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant
discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity are, certainly, the inheritors of this
rich medieval development. We must, therefore, distinguish two distinct but
not entirely separate tracks of theological development: first, there is the issue
of the Western reception of the patristic materials, notably the Western
reception of the works of Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, and Boethius on the
Trinity and the process of interpreting the early church’s teachings for the
sake both of removing potential contradictions and of establishing a clearer
set of definitions, now in Latin, over against the historical errors of
Sabellianism, Arianism, and Tritheism—errors all too easily repeated, given
the difficulties of the trinitarian language of the church. Second, there is the
development and defense of the distinctively Western line of trinitarian
argument identified by the filioque clause of the emended Nicene Creed:
when examined from the perspective of the councils, the trajectory of
medieval trinitarianism was one of profound and intense ecumenical
discussion. The mutual excommunications of the mid-eleventh century did
not bring about a silent rupture between east and west but rather stimulated
conciliar discussion and, from the Western perspective, the ecumenical
establishment of the filioque as an article of the creed. From the Western
perspective, with which the Reformers of the sixteenth century were in
accord, the filioque clause and the attendant Western development of
trinitarian definition were the final word of ecumenical orthodoxy.
The medieval scholastic development of trinitarian thought is crucial both
to an understanding of the impact and implications of Augustinian trinitarian
theory and to an understanding of the distinctive character and internal logic
of Western trinitarianism, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. With the rise
of an early scholasticism in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, there
was a notable rise in the use of philosophical and linguistic insights in the
explanation of Christian doctrine and, consequently, a rise also in debate over
the proper explanation of traditional trinitarian language. Both the theologians
and the synods of the era addressed a series of significant issues: the rift
between East and West over the filioque, the nominalism of Roscellin, the
problem of the distinction of persons and of attributes brought on by the
speculative development of Abelard’s trinitarianism, the realism of Gilbert de
la Porrée, the divergence between the views of Peter Lombard and Richard of
St. Victor, and the virtual tritheism of Joachim of Flora. Roscellin, Abelard,
and Gilbert were each responsible for distinct problems in formulation—in
the words of Michel, “excesses in dialectic and the intrusion of philosophy
into the realm of dogma” led to “three dangerous tendencies” in trinitarian
usage, specifically, the overly zealous use of nominalist, conceptualist, and
realist philosophical assumptions in explaining the dogma.2 All of these
issued were addressed and, to a large extent, settled by the major conciliar
rulings of the councils or synods of Soissons (1092), Bari (1098), Soissons
(1121), Sens (1141), and Rheims (1148) and the Fourth Lateran Council in
1215. This conciliar development culminated in the Council of Florence
(1438–42), often identified as the seventeenth ecumenical council, at which
Latin and many Greek theologians, conjointly recognized the procession of
the Spirit from the Father and the Son as a procession from a single
principium or arche and came as close as any council or group in the
thousand years of schism to repairing the breach.3 For convenience in
discussion, the medieval development can be divided fairly justly into two
distinct periods, the first reaching from the extensive trinitarian meditations of
Anselm of Canterbury at the end of the eleventh century to the intense
trinitarian meditations of Richard of St. Victor and his contemporaries and the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and the second from the flowering of high
scholasticism in the early thirteenth century to the Council of Florence (1438–
39).
3. Issues of Scripture and tradition: patristic study, philosophical
issues, and the question of norms. Just as the Reformation and orthodoxy
stood in the Western trinitarian tradition, so also did they stand in the Western
tradition of the discussion of norms in theology. But here, as we have seen in
a previous volume,4 the magisterial Reformers and their orthodox successors
stood in the line, not of the entire tradition of the west, but of that portion of
the tradition that understood Scripture as the prior and necessary norm, and
tradition as the secondary norm capable of offering probabilities in support of
biblical argumentation. In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, this
placement in relation to the earlier tradition became the basis for a complex
development of doctrine in the eras of the Reformation and of Protestant
orthodoxy. Given their biblical standard, neither the Reformers nor the
orthodox could simply reiterate the tradition—rather they saw the need to
explain the doctrine of the Trinity in biblical and exegetical terms and to rely
on the terms and formulae of the fathers and the councils only as secondary
supports of the doctrine. In addition, their wariness of philosophical
speculation rendered the more extravagant arguments of the fathers and the
scholastics unacceptable to the Reformers and the orthodox. Statement and
defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was, moreover, made increasingly
difficult by the various antitrinitarian groups that sprang up in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, groups that often advocated a starkly rational
biblicism over against the tradition, particularly against the views of the
Nicene and post-Nicene fathers.
In a sense, the development of the Protestant orthodox doctrine of the
Trinity can be described as a battle over the tradition or even as battle
between differing modes of reception of the tradition. The rise of patristic
scholarship in the era, therefore, also contributes to the picture—as does the
rise of critical perspectives on the patristic development, the character of its
doctrines, and their relationship to ancient philosophy. It was readily
recognized in the seventeenth century that the language and conceptuality of
trinitarian doctrine had altered and developed over the course of centuries—
and that, if not necessarily different in fundamental intentionality, the teaching
of the earliest fathers offered a rather different expression of the triadic nature
of the Godhead than the teaching of the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers, and
that both appeared rather different from the forms of expression used in the
Middle Ages. An eclectic appropriation of this variegated tradition was,
moreover, possible both for confessional Protestants, who did not understand
tradition as a norm coequal with Scripture, and for the more radical groups,
namely, the antitrinitarians, who were often quite willing to discard the
tradition entirely.
The Reformed had to contend in particular with the Socinian reception of
the church fathers, which not only read the patristic materials as less than
normative but which also read them as representing a steady decline from the
purity of the gospel, under the impact of Platonizing philosophical
perspectives—as a progress from Arianism before Nicaea, to tritheism after
the Nicene formula, to madness in the scholastic era. The Socinian polemic,
in turn, brought about a refinement of exegetical argument on the part of the
Protestant orthodox and, in addition, a critical assessment of the impact of
philosophy, particularly Platonism, on Christian doctrine. The Reformed
orthodox also were pressed to choose particular patterns of trinitarian
expression that coincided with their reading of the text of Scripture, their
understanding of the implications of the philosophical tradition, and with their
resultant assumptions concerning the kind of formulations suitable for the
affirmation of a trinitarian monotheism over against the monistic and
tritheistic patterns that could result from alternative readings of the tradition.
In short, the Reformed orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was no simple
restatement of the patristic norms—rather it was a complex development of
doctrine intended to recover, respect, and use the patristic definitions and
arguments insofar as they could be argued anew exegetically, under the
authority of the biblical norm. The resultant doctrine stands on trajectories of
biblical exegesis and trinitarian formulation that extend from the Middle Ages
through the Reformation into the era of Protestant orthodoxy.
B. Scholarly Approaches: A Preliminary Survey of Historiography
1. The historiographical problem and the general histories of doctrine.
The doctrine of the Trinity has been the subject of vast but highly focused
scholarly discussion, with by far the larger part of the literature examining the
patristic period. There is some justice in this emphasis, given the overarching
significance of patristic debate and development together with the
identification of a full and ecumenical dogmatic conclusion to the debates at
Constantinople in A.D. 381. Still, the tendency of the scholarship to emphasize
the patristic period and then to manifest a consistent and cumulative
diminution of interest in the trajectories of orthodox formulation during the
succeeding centuries has created a significant imbalance in the
historiography: as scholarship on the Trinity enters the later Middle Ages and
the Reformation, the balance has shifted away from the orthodox trajectory to
the heterodox trajectory, often leaving the impression that orthodox
trinitarianism from the fourteenth through the seventeenth century was a
fundamentally uncreative and uninteresting phenomenon and devoted
primarily to the refutation of heretical views. As implied in the preceding
section, this impression is unfortunate.
Although the doctrine of the Trinity is surveyed and analyzed at length in
virtually all of the standard histories of doctrine, this analysis has often been
conducted with such emphasis on the patristic development that
comparatively little attention is paid to the rich development of the doctrine in
the medieval centuries and nearly none to the development in the Reformation
and post-Reformation eras.5 The exceptions to this generalization are few and
often relate to the pattern of the older histories of doctrine, written before the
time of Harnack and Seeberg, in which all doctrines were sketched out in a
more or less systematic pattern for each era of the history—although the
discussion of the Reformation and post-Reformation developments are
sketchy at best.6 Of the more recent manuals, only the work of Villanova
offers discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity in each era of its development
that are suitably proportionate the importance of the doctrine.7 There are also
several topical histories that are devoted entirely to the discussion of the
doctrine of the Trinity.8 In no case, however, do any of these surveys offer
detailed discussions the developments in the Reformation and post-
Reformation eras.
2. Monographic literature and shorter studies relevant to the later
development of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is certainly a vast
literature of studies on numerous aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity in the
patristic period, much of which has significant bearing on the understanding
of later developments, particularly given the close reading of the fathers by
both trinitarians and antitrinitarians in the debates of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The standard histories alone amount to a considerable
bibliography.9 By way of contrast, there is a relative decline of scholarly
interest in the doctrine of the Trinity during the Middle Ages in the general
histories of Christian thought, although several of the manuals of the history
of medieval theology offer solid surveys of the materials.10 There are,
moreover, major monographs on various councils and individual thinkers that
fill out the history of the medieval development quite adequately.
The problem shifts with the beginning of the sixteenth century. There is no
history of the doctrine of the Trinity that covers the era adequately.11 The
trinitarian thought of the Reformers and their orthodox successors has, in fact,
received comparatively little treatment, except for a few scattered essays on
the views of the more famous Reformers and virtually no analysis of the
thoughts on the Trinity among their immediate successors in the late sixteenth
century. By way of example, there are several substantial discussions of
Luther’s approach to the doctrine of the Trinity—and there are several studies
of Calvin’s teaching.12 There is, as far as I know, to date, no similar body of
literature on the doctrine of the Trinity in the thought of Zwingli,
Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, Farel, Viret, Musculus, Vermigli, or other
first- and second-generation Reformers. There is, however, a reasonably large
body of scholarship dealing with the antitrinitarian thought of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, particularly when the extent and impact of the
antitrinitarian movements are compared with the development of the theology
of the magisterial Reformation.13
The same problem appears in the case of the trinitarian theology of the
seventeenth-century writers: the heresies have received significant analysis in
monograph and scholarly essays, but the orthodoxy, with few exceptions, has
been neglected.14 There is a significant series of essays on seventeenth-
century Socinianism,15 a large body of work on the Arianism of the era
(particularly that of John Milton),16 and a sizeable literature on the late
seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century British trinitarian controversies.17
The reason for the neglect of the Protestant orthodox trajectory is,
certainly, the conservatism of the Reformers and their successors, at least with
reference to this particular topic: they offer little speculative development of
the doctrine and in fact reject most of the speculative trinitarianism of the
Middle Ages. In addition, their use of the church fathers tends to be for the
sake of defining the terms of orthodoxy rather than for building or developing
the doctrinal position. By far the larger part of the doctrine of the Trinity,
whether among the Reformers or among their orthodox successors, is
exegetical.
1.2 Early Scholastic Examination of the Doctrine of the Trinity: From
Anselm to the Fourth Lateran Council
A. Early Scholastic Developments: From Anselm to Abelard
1. Roscellin and Anselm on the Trinity: the Synod of Soissons (1092).
As far as the mind of the late eleventh century was concerned, there could
have been no clearer example of the unbridled use of dialectic than the
application of a nominalist or, at least, antirealist critique to the doctrine of
the Trinity by Roscellin of Compiègne.18 It is difficult to establish precisely
what Roscellin taught, since all his works have been lost or destroyed except
for a letter he sent to Abelard. The outlines of his thought have to be
reconstructed from comments made in the writings of his contemporaries,
chiefly Anselm, Abelard and John of Salisbury. We can be fairly certain that
Roscellin was a confirmed antirealist and that he denied the extra-mental
existence of concepts of universals and as a result understood “substances”
purely as individuals. This view led him to declare that every existent thing is
a unique individual: so-called universals are “mere words.” What cannot be
ascertained is whether or not Roscellin denied that universals, as such, exist in
the mind. Copleston suggests that Roscellin may have assumed, for example,
that our idea of “a whole consisting of parts” is a subjective abstraction and
that the objective reality is merely a series of discrete individual things—so
that ideas of genus and species are also subjective judgments.19
The problem with Roscellin’s philosophical position was not the position
itself—nominalism in the later Middle Ages was perfectly orthodox, as was
the conceptualism of Aquinas and Duns Scotus—the problem was, rather, the
doctrinal application given by Roscellin to this philosophy. Since all things
are individuals and the concepts which link individuals, concepts such as a
whole composed of parts, a genus, or a species, the persons of the Trinity
must be unique entities. Any words applied to the three—namely, each is a
“person”, all three are “God”—are merely terms. There is no independently
subsistent idea of “person” somehow more real than the three individual
persons which can identify them as substantially one. Calling all three “God”
is no better solution than calling all three “person”: we are left with three
discrete individuals and might just as easily speak of three gods. On the one
hand, Roscellin could criticize traditional trinitarian language on the ground
that, if the three are one substance or thing (una res), then the Father and the
Spirit will also be incarnate with the Son—or, in what appears to have been
Roscellin’s own solution to the problem, if they are indeed three persons, they
must be three substances or things (tres res), existing separately, albeit in
accord or united in power and will.20
If the unnamed opponent in Anselm’s treatise on the incarnation is
Roscellin, then Roscellin also argued (in favor of his tritheistic view) that
those who claimed that God was “one thing” and that the trinity of persons
did not divide the Godhead were unable to explain incarnation. If God is
indeed one thing and indivisible, then the entire Godhead, Father, Son, and
Spirit, would have to be incarnate. The doctrine of the incarnation demands
that God be defined as three numerically discrete individuals.21 The historical
context in which Roscellin wrote is of some interest here—Roscellin was
born around 1050 and died in 1120, making him a younger contemporary of
Anselm (1033–1109). Both probably accepted the definition of “person”
proposed by Boethius in the early sixth century: according to Boethius a
person is “an individual substance of a rational nature.” The definition
ultimately poses all manner of problems for the doctrines of Trinity and Christ
when the concept of individual substance is taken to indicate a unique entity
essentially distinct from other similar entities.
Sufficient to make our point here is that Roscellin, as an early
nominalist,22 pressed the Boethian definition in a way that Anselm, the
philosophical realist, would not—while neither Roscellin nor Anselm argued
the problematic character of the definition itself. The definition itself was first
brought into question only after the deaths of Roscellin and Anselm—by
Richard of St. Victor in his treatise on the Trinity, ca. 1150. The process of
redefinition or clarification continues in the thought of Alexander of Hales,
Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. In addition, Roscellin—
probably on the basis of definition (“person” is an individual substance of a
rational nature)—appears to have inferred that a person, as such, could only
have one nature. Since Christ obviously has two natures, there must be two
persons. We note that traditionally the two-natures doctrine indicated two
minds and two wills. Roscellin’s nominalist logic dictated that he use the
definition to indicate two persons in Christ. His views on the Trinity implied
that three “persons” must have three substances, and he appears also to have
denied the reality of relations as a way past the problem. The implication, if
not the intention, was tritheism.23
To this Anselm responded in his Letter on the Incarnation of the Word
(1092/94)—that “person” and “nature” do not always mean the same thing,
even as a “nature” (human nature) is held in common by all human persons.24
Human nature refers to the conjunction of the several properties and
predicates that identify the nature, generally considered, as human—and this
is prior to the more particular consideration of the single person as human, as
participating in human nature. Moreover, says Anselm, if the individual
person is identified as an individual by the conjunction in one thing of several
properties, what is to prevent Christ from being identified as an individual, a
person, in whom both divine and human properties conjoin? As for the
Trinity, since universals or general concepts (genera) are real, there can be no
objection to identifying the individual persons (species) or the Trinity as one
God, “God” being the more general concept than “person.”25
Anselm also insisted that the mystery of the Trinity was not utterly at odds
with human reason: the term “nature” indicates what is absolute in God,
“person” what is relative—with the result that the unity of the Godhead
belongs to the category of nature or substance, while the plurality of the
persons is to be identified as a multiplicity of relations. In this formulation,
Anselm points the way to the formulae of the Council of Florence.26
 Anselm clearly argues in the treatise on incarnation that the notion of a
“whole” composed of parts is a reality: a “whole” cannot simply be reduced
to three discrete individuals.27 He draws on the example of the Nile—the
great river of Egypt. (The argument, incidentally, draws on the standard
patristic metaphors, with one important modification.) We understand, by
“Nile” not merely a river, but also the spring from which the river comes and
the great lake into which the river flows. The river is not the spring, and
neither river nor spring is the lake—but all three are “Nile.” “This is the
case,” concludes Anselm, “in which ‘three’ is predicated of one complete
whole and ‘one complete whole’ is predicated of three; and yet the three are
not predicated of one anther.”28 If this set of relations can be comprehended in
nature, it can be comprehended of the transcendent “simple nature” of God,
which is beyond time, place, and composition. We do not have a response
from Roscellin—but it is clear that we have a fundamental philosophical
opposition: Anselm assumes the reality of the “whole” as much as the reality
of the “part” and also assumes that the generic whole can subsist, extra-
mentally, as one in and through its parts. This is essentially the realist
position.
2. Anselm and the Greeks: the Council of Bari (1098). First, out of
chronological order, the Council of Bari: in 1098, Anselm attended the
Council of Bari and, in a discourse that he delivered before the council, took
up a theme that would occupy the attention of many of the major theologians
of the Middle Ages—the theme of the filioque, or procession of the Holy
Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father. Anselm subsequently edited
and expanded the discourse and, in 1102, published his treatise On the
Procession of the Holy Spirit. His support of the filioque rested in large part
on the Augustinian line of argument that identified the inward procession of
persons in psychological terms as a relation of love and held the impossibility
of conceiving a loving relation in the Godhead in which one person (namely,
the Son) remains separate or inactive. As for the Greek claim that the concept
of double procession resulted in the error of two ultimate principles in the
Godhead, Anselm could respond that just as the creation of the world by all
three persons does not result in a theory of three ultimate principles, so does
the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son not result in a theory
of two principles: for the three persons create as one God, and the Father and
the Son are one God in the procession of the Spirit.29
3. Abelard and the “conceptualist” model of the Trinity: the Synods of
Soissons (1121) and Sens (1141). The early to mid-twelfth century councils,
Soissons, Sens, and Rheims (discussed in the following section), reflected the
philosophical issues faced by early scholastic trinitarian debate and responded
to the conceptualistic approach of Abelard, and the problematic realism of
Gilbert de la Porrée.30 Uniting these conciliar decisions, at least negatively, is
the difficulty experienced by the church of the twelfth century in assimilating
the results of early scholastic philosophical concerns to trinitarian language.
Inasmuch, moreover, as the three councils condemned the trinitarian results of
early forms of each of the major medieval epistemological approaches, their
decisions signaled the difficulty involved in setting the doctrine of the Trinity
into any particular philosophical context.
The trinitarian thought of Peter Abelard was called into question by
councils of the church at two points in his career—first at the Synod of
Soissons (1121) and later at the Synod of Sens (1141). Our knowledge of the
former council is so sketchy that it is impossible to identify the precise points
of theology in question or even the book of Abelard that the Council required
him to burn, although it appears to have been his Tractatus de unitate et
trinitate divina,31 in which Abelard had intended to defend the doctrine of the
Trinity against the nominalist tritheism of his former teacher, Roscellin. The
long-lived Roscellin returned the favor and, in defense of his own orthodoxy,
accused Abelard of reducing the persons to names or aspects of the One God.
The charge against Abelard at Soissons, therefore, appears to have been
Sabellianism. The charge, moreover, may follow from one place in the work
at which Abelard had claimed an analogy between the threeness of the divine
persons and the multiplicity of attributes in the divine substance,32—it is also
possible that he had given his contemporaries offense by his claims that the
Trinity had been revealed by the philosophers to the ancient Greeks and by
the prophets to the Jews, a point on which he was in fact criticized and which
he ultimately retracted.33 In any case, Abelard’s book was condemned by the
council and burned. Abelard himself was imprisoned briefly in the abbey of
Saint Medard.34
At Sens, Abelard was condemned for a set of nineteen propositions elicited
from his writings by Bernard of Clairvaux. Prior to the council, Abelard’s
works, primarily the Theologia christiana, had come to the attention of
William of Saint Thierry, the friend and associate of Bernard. William
appealed to Bernard to address the problems of heresy in Abelard’s work, and
Bernard expressed his difficulty with elements of Abelard’s theology.
Abelard, in return, initially promised to correct any errors of doctrine. He
subsequently, however, appealed to the bishop of Sens and challenged
Bernard to debate on the disputed issues. At Sens, instead of the debate he
desired, he found himself condemned by a council. He appealed the council’s
decision to the pope, only to have the council’s condemnation ratified.
Abelard died shortly afterward in the spring of 1142.
The issues here too are murky: the nineteen condemned propositions are
not precisely found in Abelard’s writings, and, indeed, he later denied having
held such concepts. The propositions as condemned at Sens contain such
curious notions as the claim that “the Father is full of power, the Son [has]
some power, the Holy Spirit no power,” the denial that the Holy Spirit is of
the same substance as the Father, the identification of the Spirit as the soul of
the world,” and the restriction of omnipotence to the Father alone.35 Still, it is
certain that Abelard did propose similar teachings or at least views that could
be treated in an un-nuanced manner and result in something like the teachings
condemned by the council. His Theologia christiana did identify God the
Father as power, the Son as the divine wisdom, and the Spirit as divine
“benignity”—and it did go on to indicate that the Son’s wisdom was “a
certain power” and the Spirit’s benignity was neither power nor wisdom.
Abelard had also attempted to distinguish generation from procession and had
concluded that the Son was “from the substance” of the Father in a “proper”
sense (because generated) and the Spirit was not properly “from the
substance” of the Father, as proceeded. In the balance, there was certainly no
intentional heresy on Abelard’s part—his intention was surely to develop the
doctrine of the Trinity and to make it intelligible, as was his attempt to
distinguish generation and procession, Son and Spirit, a distinction that would
be made with relative success by the scholastic teachers of the thirteenth
century.
4. Gilbert de la Porrée and the Synod of Rheims (1148). The Synod of
Rheims resulted in a series of four propositions that dealt with the unity of
divine substance and the threeness, or triplicity, of persons in response to a
debate over Boethius’ De Trinitate, at least as interpreted by Gilbert de la
Porrée.36 The importance of the result stands rather apart from the question of
Gilbert’s actual guilt or innocence of the charge of “tritheism.” Gilbert, the
bishop of Poitiers and perhaps the most eminent pupil of Bernard of Chartres,
was one of the eminent thinkers of his age. At issue in the controversy was his
attempt to refine and explain trinitarian language of Boethius in his
Commentaria in Librum de trinitate.37 Gilbert there distinguished, at least
logically and verbally, between God (Deus) and divinity (divinitas), as well as
between person and substance and between the properties or attributes of
God, on the one hand, and the simple divine substance or essence, on the
other. His intention was to argue the correctness of the orthodox language of
Trinity against the three fundamental errors of Arianism, Sabellianism, and
tritheism: the Arian mistake was to claim that substantial or essential identity
removed all possibility of distinction; the Sabellian error similarly assumed
that identity or singularity of substance removed distinction of persons—the
former accordingly denied substantial identity in order to distinguish the
three, while the latter denied genuine personal distinction in order to confess
the one. Tritheists, beginning with the distinction of the persons, assumed
different substances. In brief, all of the major trinitarian heresies involved
difficulties with the terms “substance” and “person,” specifically, a failure to
distinguish them properly.
There appear to have been two aspects to Gilbert’s teaching on God-
language that, at least in the minds of his contemporaries, did not fully
cohere. On one hand, Gilbert affirmed the essential divine simplicity and
argued that, given the absolute, transcendent unity of God beyond all human
comprehension, nothing can be predicated of God as such: the human mind
cannot penetrate to the ultimate being of God. On the other hand, Gilbert not
only allowed discussion of the divine substantia, but claimed that heresies
had resulted by not making a proper distinction between the way in which
substantia was being considered, namely, a distinction between subsistens and
subsistentia understood as a distinction between the object or individual (id
quod est) and the manner of subsisting by which the object is what it is (id
quo est).38 The Arians had rightly held to the doctrine of one God but had
concluded that, since the Father is God, the Spirit and the Son could not be—
but the orthodox fathers recognized the truth that although the divinity, that by
which God is what God is (id quo est), is only one, the subsistent individuals
who share in the divinity are three. Thus, one can say that the Father is God,
with “God” in the predicate, and still rightly identify Son and Spirit as God—
whereas one ought not to say that God is the Father, with God as the subject,
thereby restrictively identifying “God” as the one individual. According to
Gilbert, there were three individuals identified as God in the sense of id quod
est, but one numerical divine essence considered in the sense of id quo est.39
Gilbert also held that the distinctions among the persons were relational, not
substantial, a point quite standard in the tradition of trinitarian orthodoxy, but
which, given the character of his other arguments, became a problem in his
exposition of the doctrine: his strict sense of divine simplicity coupled with
his insistence on the ultimate unknowability of the divine being led him to
identify the relational distinction of the persons as “extrinsic” rather than as
essential: finite subsistences are essentially or substantially distinct, rendering
them different things, whereas the divine subsistences are relationally distinct,
extrinsic to their essential identity, given the oneness or singularity of the
Godhead.40
For his pains, Gilbert was accused of being a tritheist and, alternatively, for
positing a divine quaternity. In 1147, a council met at Paris to decide the
question. After debating without result, the council adjourned to Rheims in
the following year. The nub of the problem, certainly, was his assumption of
the unknowability and simplicity of the divine essence coupled with the
language of extrinsic relations. On one side, his adversaries believed that he
had so separated the ultimate essence or subsistentia of the Godhead, the id
quo est, from the persons that he had posited a quaternity, three persons and,
behind them, an ultimate essence; on the other side, if the ultimacy of the
essence behind the persons were denied, then it might reduce to a mere
generic sense of essence, leaving three gods in the sense of id quod est. The
Synod of Rheims probably failed to convict Gilbert of heresy—Bernard of
Clairvaux and his associate Geoffrey of Auxerre remained convinced of
Gilbert’s heterodoxy, while John of Salisbury appears to have believed the
matter one of misinterpretation of terms on the part of Gilbert’s adversaries
and a certain opaqueness on the part of Gilbert.
At Rheims, Geoffrey of Auxerre penned a set of articles for use in
identifying the heresies of Gilbert. They were used at the council, although
not in a binding fashion, and in the aftermath of the debate and the failure to
reach a condemnatory verdict, Bernard of Clairvaux offered four heads of
doctrine as a positive dogmatic result. They survive in his Libellus contra
capitulum Gilberti. Their value, certainly, is that they reflect the stable
orthodoxy of the day against presumptions of tritheism or divine quaternity:
I. We believe and confess that there is in God a simple divine nature,
and that in no Catholic sense can it be denied that God is divinity and
divinity is God. Moreover, if it is said that God is wise by wisdom,
great by magnitude, eternal by eternity, one by oneness, God by
divinity, and other such things, we believe that He is wise only by that
wisdom which is God himself; that he is great only by that magnitude
which is God himself; that he is eternal only by that eternity which is
God himself; that he is one only by that onenesss which is God himself;
that he is God only by that divinity which he is himself; that is, that he
is of himself wise, great, eternal, one God.
II. When we speak of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, we
confess the same to be one God and one divine substance; and
conversely, when we speak of one God or of one divine substance, we
confess the same one God and one divine substance to be three persons.
III. We believe that God alone, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is eternal,
and that there are no other things that are from eternity, whether they
are called relations or properties, individualities, or unities present with
God, that are not God.
IV. We believe that the selfsame divinity, whether it is called the divine
substance or [divine] nature, is incarnate, but in the Son.41
B. Speculative Development and Conciliar Conclusions, ca. 1150 to
1215
 1. The trinitarianism of Richard of St. Victor: Augustinianism,
mysticism, and the difficulty of defining “person.” Throughout his
writings, Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) emphasized the use of reason in the
search for truth. This generalization applies equally to the mystical writings,
where the hope is not to transcend reason but that reason, through meditation,
should arrive at a purer contemplation of divine truth: “Contemplation,”
argues Richard, “is the mind’s free and clear vision, with admiration, of the
wonders of wisdom.”42 Thus, Richard’s mysticism never steps outside of the
bounds of the Augustinian or Anselmic model of faith in search of
understanding—credo ut intelligam. The highest step of the mystic, like the
work of dogmatic speculation, belongs to the intellect. This means, in turn,
that rational argumentation, even rational demonstration, and mysticism are
not necessarily opposed to each other.
Richard’s great work, De Trinitate (ca. 1150), manifests this balance: had
its author not inclined toward the contemplative vision of God, the work
could not possibly have been written—its central theme, God as love, is
profoundly allied to the mysticism of Bernard—yet the assumption of the
treatise is that intellect can conceive of the intra-trinitarian logic.43 Richard
indicates that, since God is necessarily three in persons and one in substance,
there must be a necessary reason for this fact: there is a necessary reason for
everything that exists by necessity. He admits that God is ultimately beyond
our comprehension, but this transcendence does not prevent all rational
approach to God. It is clear that God is the necessary Being and that this
necessity entails the fact that God is necessarily who and what he is—which
is to say triune. Richard’s study of the Trinity will attempt to show the logic
of triunity.44
Richard begins by offering, if not a fully logical demonstration of the
necessity of the Trinity, then an argument that the One God, if he is indeed the
God of love, will be threefold in his nature.45 This argument rests on a
distinction between essence and person: essence refers specifically to what a
thing is—in the world, it relates things to other things of the same type—but
person refers to who, to the individuality, the particular qualities of a thing.
The two together, essence and person, constitute the subsistence of the thing.
In the Godhead, there is one essence, but there are three distinct modes of
existing, defined by particular qualities or properties, namely, their relational
distinctions, specifically, distinctions of origin.
This sense of the meaning of person led Richard to reject the usual
definition of person, as given in the sixth century by Boethius: “person is an
individual substance of a rational nature” (persona est individua substantia
rationalis naturae)—since it could be applied either to the divine essence or
to the persons, if the term substantia were not qualified as subsistentia, modus
existendi, or some other equivalent of hypostasis.46 Richard proposed two
alternative definitions: first, of “person” in general: “A person is something
that exists through itself alone, singularly, according to a rational mode of
existence” (Persona est existens per se solum juxta singularem quemdam
rationalis existentiae modum); and second, of “person” as one of the divine
persons: “A divine person is an incommunicable existence of a divine nature”
(Persona divina est divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia).47
One of the more interesting elements in Richard’s argumentation is his
exclusion, based on the relation of the divine persons, of the possibility of a
divine quaternity. There is, he argues, a perfection of order and harmony
obtaining between the Father, who gives without receiving, the Son, who
receives and who also gives, and the Spirit, who only receives (without
giving). In this schema, the only possibility remaining is a person who neither
gives not receives—but such a person is solitary, not a part of the common
life of the three, so that a quaternity is excluded. What is more, only the
source of the other divine relations can exist without receiving, so that another
being who neither receives nor gives is also utterly excluded on ontological
grounds. On the principle of love the same logic obtains—for one is either
gracious, as giver, or grateful, as receiver. The Father, who gives without
receiving, is the fulness of gracious love; the Son, who gives and receives, is
the fulness of gracious love and grateful love in one; and the Spirit, who only
receives, is the fulness of grateful love. In the one God, then, there is a fulness
and a balance, a harmony of sovereign love—and by extension that which is
neither gracious nor grateful has no place in God.
If, on the one hand, Richard added no new dogmatic features to the
doctrine of the Trinity, he did succeed in drawing out implications of the
trinitarian faith toward a clearer understanding and a more precise
conceptualization of the meaning of triunity. He succeeded in developing the
doctrine speculatively within the bounds of orthodoxy—and, we note, it was
surely not his intention to change doctrine or faith but to understand it. His
procedure and his results, therefore, manifest the Augustinian and Anselmic
pattern. On the other hand, Richard was more keenly aware than his
contemporaries of the problem of the language of essence and person. His
argumentation pointed theologians toward more precise and, indeed, more
useful definition.
2. The heresies of Joachim and the Fourth Lateran Council. Another
option in trinitarian theology was propounded by the mystic chiliast, Joachim
of Flora (d. 1202). Joachim had maintained that the emphasis on oneness of
essence and “the discrimination of divine substance from the persons”48—
which was the main point made by Richard of St. Victor in his analysis of the
language of Trinity—led to Sabellianism or even to Arianism. Joachim
appears to have proposed a divine triad of persons who together constitute
one God, denying the identity of the persons as Lombard had defined it, “one
supreme reality (res),”49 and instead insisting on a generic unity. Joachim,
accordingly, used as analogies the oneness of a “herd” or of a “populace,”
allowing oneness of essence or substance only in the sense of a secondary
substance of genus.50
The full content of Joachim’s trinitarian thought is notoriously difficult to
recover. The condemnation of Joachim indicates that his heterodox views
were contained in “a small book or tractate … against master Peter Lombard
concerning the unity or essence of the Trinity (de unitate seu essentia
Trinitatis)”—but the book itself has not survived. To complicate matters
further, other surviving works of Joachim appear to offer fairly orthodox
statements of the doctrine of the Trinity. Modern scholarship has, accordingly,
asserted his orthodoxy51 and reaffirmed his heresy,52 although all agree that
Joachim opposed Lombard’s teaching on the ground that it introduced a
quaternity. Scholars are also divided on the background of Joachim’s
objections, with several arguing that he drew on Greek or Byzantine
trinitarianism.53 Leaving aside the modern debate, it remains the case that
Joachim’s counter to Lombard embodied a view that, as far as the theologians
of the early thirteenth century were concerned, was unmistakably tritheistic,
inasmuch as it removed all hint of quaternity by defining the unity of divine
essence generically rather than numerically.
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215), known also for establishing
transubstantiation as dogma, propounded the trinitarian norm for the medieval
church in two fundamental definitions. The first of these is found in the
creedal affirmation of the council, intended primarily as a full statement of the
faith against the heresies of the Albigenses and the Cathars. Here the council
presents an affirmation of the one God against the dualistic heresies, carefully
relating the language of three persons to the identification of God as one
simple essence and also defining the work of the Godhead ad extra as one
work, at the same time clearly distinguishing God from the creation, both
spiritual and material. The formula also includes the doctrine of double
procession but, sensitive to the Greek critique of the filioque, adds by way of
clarification that the three divine persons “are … the one principle of the
universe, the creator of all things, visible and invisible.” Echoing the
Athanasian Creed, the council also declares that the three persons “are
consubstantial and fully equal, equally almighty and equally eternal.”54
Against the tritheism of Joachim of Flora, the council declared the unique
reality of the divine essence, undivided in three persons:
We … believe and confess with Peter Lombard, that there is a certain
single Being (una quaedam res), something incomprehensible and
ineffable, which truly is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three
persons at once, and individually each of them. And thus in God there is
a only Trinity and not a quaternity; because any one of the three persons
is that Being (res), namely, substance, essence or divine nature, which
alone is the ground (principium) of things, outside of which nothing can
be found; and that Being (res) is not begetting, nor begotten, nor
proceeding; but it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten,
and the Spirit who proceeds, that there may be distinctions in persons
and unity in nature.55
It is important to underscore this definition, inasmuch as it represents the
fundamental distinction between the divine essence as such, belonging in
common to all three persons, and the divine persons themselves, understood
as relations within the essence: the divine essence that is the Son is not
begotten, rather the Son, considered as Son and person, is begotten. Thus, the
Son, as God, possesses such attributes as aseity, being underived or “from
himself.” The point is fundamental, given that a notion of an ultimate essence
as the principium of the Godhead and of the persons as generated or emanated
essences, as opposed to the doctrine of the Father as principium, yields, not
Trinity, but quaternity.56 This line of argument will pass directly into the
Reformed tradition.
The council clarified the point by citing Gregory of Nazianzen to the effect
that “the Father is one (alius), the Son another (alius), and the Holy Spirit
another (alius), yet there is not another thing (aliud)” given that the Father,
the Son, and the Spirit are the same res, namely, the same reality or “thing.”57
It is, thus, not the divine essence that generates divine essence, but the Father
that generates the Son:
One cannot say that [the Father] gave [the son] a part of his substance
and retained a part for Himself, since the substance of the Father is
indivisible, being entirely simple. Nor can one say that in generating the
Father transferred His substance to the Son, as though he gave it to the
Son in such a way as not to retain it for Himself … It is therefore clear
that the Son, being begotten, received the substance of the Father
without any diminution, and thus the Father and the Son have the same
substance. Thus, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit who
proceeds from both, are the same res.58
1.3 The High and Late Scholastic Development of Trinitarian Doctrine
 A. The Scholastic Doctors of the Thirteenth Century
1. Foundational formulations: William of Auvergne, Alexander of
Hales, and Albert the Great. Although these contributions of Anselm and
Richard of St. Victor to the development of the Western doctrine of the
Trinity were considerable, it was left to various teachers of the thirteenth
century, William of Auvergne,59 Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the
Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, to give the doctrine its definitive
scholastic form.60 These thinkers again took up the problem of “person”
language, giving clearer expression to the issues raised by Richard of St.
Victor and arriving at a far more viable solution than he.61 They also
addressed two other major problems of trinitarian thinking: the problem of the
identity or meaning of the intra-trinitarian emanations, specifically in relation
to the debate over the “filioque,” and the problem of the reflex or passive
relations of the Son and the Spirit. In the former discussion, the medieval
doctors affirmed the distinct subsistence of Son and Spirit by distinguishing
between the begottenness of the Son and the procession of the Spirit in terms
of the nature, intellect, and will of the Godhead. In the latter, they carefully
refined the language of circumincession by noting how the two emanations
were not merely active but also passive relations—thereby describing the
roles of Son and Spirit in the inner trinitarian life and avoiding the impression
given particularly in Greek patristic theology of an emanation out of the
Father toward externals. What is more, beginning with William of Auvergne’s
De trinitate (ca. 1223) these theologians of the thirteenth century evidence the
impact of Aristotelian thought—which had not, of course, touched the earlier
Western discussion of the doctrine of the unity and trinity of God.
As Teske indicates, William of Auvergne’s De trinitate “is not all of one
piece,” at least by later systematic standards for defining the limits of the
dogmatic treatise on the Trinity.62 William’s work begins with a discussion of
primary and secondary being and of possibility, offers a proof of the doctrine
of the Trinity, presents a massive discussion of the doctrine in critical
dialogue with the Aristotelian metaphysics of Avicenna, and concludes with
three chapters on the problems of God-language. When, however, William’s
De trinitate is set against the background of earlier medieval discussion,
including Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion and Richard of St. Victor’s
De trinitate, this concatenation of topics evidences a certain degree of
continuity with earlier medieval tradition. Anselm’s two treatises, after all,
move from proofs to the being of God, meditate on the relationship between
the necessary being of God and the contingent being of the world order, and
conclude with presentations of the doctrine of the Trinity—and Richard had
offered a proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, indicating the necessity of three
persons and the impossibility of four (or more!) on the basis of the logic of
the filioque. In addition, both Anselm and Richard understood their treatises,
at least in part, as essays in the logic of God-language.
Alexander of Hales, a somewhat neglected figure in modern studies of
medieval theology and philosophy, was one of the truly formative thinkers of
his age and, undeniably, the source of many of the distinctive features of later
Franciscan theology. One of the characteristics of his thought, as distinct from
the line of Dominican theology established by his contemporary Albert the
Great, was his reluctance to move away from a more Augustinian line of
philosophy toward rapprochement with the new Aristotelianism.63 From one
perspective, the whole of Alexander’s theology flows out of the assumption
that the good is self-diffusive, bonum est diffusivum sui.64 This principle
applies, of course, most fully to the absolute Good, which is God—and it can
be understood either essentially or personally: the former is the
“communication of divine goodness to creatures,” the latter the act by which
“one person diffuses himself in the procession of another.”65 Still, however
important the principle is to understanding Alexander’s thought in general or
his trinitarianism in particular, it remains the case that Alexander also insisted
that the doctrine of the Trinity, unlike the truth of the existence of God, was a
mystery inaccessible to human reason.66
Alexander also provided a set of definitions which provide the primary
reference of the Franciscan school on the doctrine of the Trinity. His
definitions of the persons draws on the traditionally accepted language of
Boethius, but modifies it in view of the work of redefinition and refinement
found in Richard of St. Victor and Peter Lombard.67 Like Richard, Alexander
defined the divine “person” as a particular mode of existence within the
divine essence, a mode perfect and incommunicable, which constituted each
person as complete and distinct. Also like Richard, he saw the need to go
beyond Boethius to establish essence as the general category, person as the
particular and therefore within the essence. Thus, the “distinction” of the
persons in the one divine essence is the “difference of relation or of mode of
existing” that arises “by reason of origin.”68 Alexander also saw the danger of
separating essence and person so far that essence could become a fourth thing,
a Godhead prior to the persons. “Mode of existing,” argued Alexander,
differentiates the persons from one another, but not from the divine essence.
Thus, according to Alexander, distinction in God between essence and person
is not a real distinction (secundum rem), but only a distinction of the rational
intellect (secundum intelligentiam rationis); nonetheless, the distinction
between persons is real even in God.69
Alexander objects to the claim that the distinction between persons and
essence or between relations and the divine substance must either be
according to substance or such as subsists between a thing and another thing
(secundum rem) or merely according to our intellect (secundum intellectum
solum). The first distinction would rule out divine simplicity, the latter would
render the Trinity a doctrine fashioned in the human mind. Alexander
responds that, in its inward economy, the one and same divine essence, is
disposed as Father, who is neither generated nor proceeded from another; as
Son, who is generated from another; and as Spirit, who proceeds from both—
and that this manner or mode of being is “not merely according to the
acceptation of out understanding, but in fact according to the thing itself.”
Thus the Godhead must be considered both in terms of “the identity of
substance” and in terms of “a disposition according to the consideration of
origin or first principle”—in the first instance, there is the essential identify of
the divine persons, in the second, there is the disposition or plurality of the
Godhead according to “the predicament of relation.”70
Alexander can argue from this basis that the relations of generation and
procession do not apply directly to the essence: that is, there is no generation
or procession of the essence. In order to explain these relations, Alexander
recalls in part the logic of Richard of St. Victor but adds a modification
typical of the Augustinian-Franciscan theology: the goodness of God is
communicable in two ways, by the generation of a person and by the working
of divine love—either by nature or by will. The Son is begotten of the Father
as an act of love; the Spirit proceeds from the will of the Father and the Son.
Like Lombard and in opposition to the recently condemned heresies of
Joachim, Alexander declares that the divine essence is common to the
persons, is entire in each, and is not divided in the begetting or proceeding.
Albert the Great, in contrast to Alexander of Hales, saw the need to
introduce Aristotelian philosophy more fully into a dialogue with Christian
theology—not, however, to the loss of the Augustinian tradition and its
transmission of a more Platonic philosophical model. So, too, did Albert draw
heavily not only on Augustine but also on the neoplatonic approach of
Pseudo-Dionysius.71 Albert’s doctrine of the Trinity, like that of his
predecessors and contemporaries, assumes that the doctrine is inaccessible to
reason—to the point that he even notes the patristic claim that Plato learned of
the Mosaic revelation in order to explain the vestigial trinitarianism of
Platonic thought.72
Albert is also one of the major medieval theologians who expressed
dissatisfaction with the Boethian definition of person, in fact, noting four
possible definitions—namely, one from Boethius, two from Richard of St.
Victor, and one from Abelard—and arguing that all needed modification and
qualification. He did, insist, moreover, on the basic Anselmic point that a
divine person was to be distinguished by a relation of opposition, specifically
a “relation of origin.” His understanding of the personal relations of
generation and procession adumbrated Aquinas inasmuch as Albert argued an
intellective procession of the Son as Word and a volitional procession of the
Spirit as love, although more than Aquinas, Albert understood the generative
procession of the intellect as a natural mode of emanation.73
2. Bonaventure. Bonaventure’s distinctive contribution to trinitarian
theology occurs in his Breviloquium, in his commentary on the Sentences of
Lombard, and in the well-known spiritual treatise, the Itinerarium mentis ad
Deum.74 Particularly in the Breviloquium, Bonaventure’s description of the
Triune God as “first principle” becomes central to the explanation of all
divine life and activity, particularly the multiform revelation of God as three
in the light of essential oneness. There can, of course, be no purely rational
discussion of the Trinity:
The trinity of persons in the unity of essence cannot be naturally known
through creatures, for this is proper to the divine nature alone, and its
like neither is nor can be found in creatures, nor can it be rationally
excogitated … So the philosophers never knew it.75
Faith alone knows this truth, but reason can confirm and explicate it from the
doctrines of divine simplicity, primacy, perfection and blessedness.
Nonetheless, just as there is a certain triformity belonging to natural
conceptions of the divine,76 there is also a certain logic to the doctrine of the
Trinity and that, specifically, given that there are only “two noble modes of
producing,” there must be three persons, and there can be only three
persons.77
In the Breviloquium, Bonaventure divides his treatise on the Trinity into
three major topics: the basic topic of the unity of substance and plurality of
persons; the problem of the “plurality of apparitions” or manifestations of
God in the temporal world; and last, the problem of the “multiplicity of
appropriations” or attributes which seem to be predicated more
“appropriately” to one divine person than to the others. Bonaventure
emphasizes throughout the unity of God as first principle of all things and
therefore the unity of all divine manifestations.78 Trinity or triunity, rightly
understood, allows the affirmation of the attributes of oneness (unity,
simplicity, immensity, eternity, immutability, necessity, and primacy), but also
of such attributes as “perfect fecundity,” love, liberality, equality,
interrelationship, likeness, and inseparability, which do not follow logically
from perfect unity and which would not at all be characteristic of the primary
One of a monistic philosophy.79 Bonaventure does not propose to prove his
doctrine rationally, but rather to develop its implications in the context of
faith, following out the Augustinian and Victorine teaching “that God
communicates Himself in the best manner by eternally having a loved one
and another beloved of these two, and hence God is one and triune.”80
For an understanding of this belief, sacred doctrine teaches that in the
divine persons there are two emanations, three hypostases, four
relations, and five notions, but there are only three personal
properties.81
The logic of this teaching comports with the assumption that God is the
first and highest being. From the fact that God is first it follows that God is
perfect and noncomposite or simple—since there is something prior to every
imperfect or composite being.82 On the one hand, we know that the self-
communication of the Godhead, in the generation of the Son and the
procession of the Spirit, accounts for a certain threeness in the one God,
while, on the other hand, we know that God is the first and highest and
therefore the most simple and most perfect being. The self-communication
and threeness of the first and highest being will accord with its simplicity and
perfection: the self-communication will therefore be perfect and will not
violate the divine simplicity by producing three separate things or substances.
In addition, given that the Father is considered ingenerate or innascible, the
Son generated, and the Spirit proceeded, the divine self-communication
involves only two activities or emanations, one terminating on the Son and
the other terminating on the Spirit.
Further, these emanations are in two modes, the mode of nature and the
mode of will.83 Granting that “generation” means specifically the production
or begetting of something of the same genus or nature, the correlation of
generation with an emanation according to the mode of nature has a certain
logic to it. Similarly the term “procession,” indicating movement or progress,
correlates with the faculty of will, just as the root verb of processio, cedere,
“to give,” relates to volition or will. The inclusiveness of the concept of an
emanation of nature has also the effect of ratifying the procession of the Spirit
from the Son as well as from the Father, since the common nature of the
generated Son with the ungenerated Father would indicate a common willing
and a common emanation according to the mode of will.84 Two hypostases
emanate, Bonaventure notes, and one does not: the one is the necessary
source of the others by means of a “substance-producing emanation” in order
that there not be an infinite series (as in Neoplatonism), but three hypostases
only, as required in Christian thought, with no source external to the three.
The divine self-communication by way of emanation indicates, therefore,
three hypostases, or supposita, in the Godhead, a suppositum being, simply,
an independent subsistence. Because, moreover, the terms of the emanation
(generation and procession) indicate only the relation of the Father to the Son,
the Father to the Spirit, and the Son to the Spirit, but not the relation of the
Son to the Father, the Spirit to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son, there are
more relations than there are emanations. Relations, unlike emanations, imply
reciprocity—and, therefore, imply a number exactly double that of the
emanations—but since Bonaventure accepts “double procession” the relations
between Son and Spirit are identical to those between Father and Spirit,
yielding four and not six relations. These relations are exhaustively
descriptive of the Son and Spirit as emanations, but not of the Father, who is
not emanated—so that the total description demands a fifth notion or concept,
the “innascibility” or ingenerate nature of the Father.
From this logical paradigm Bonaventure returns to the doctrinal side of the
question, showing how his language of emanation, hypostases, relations, and
notions conjoins with the scriptural language of Father, Son, and Spirit.85
Father, Son, and Spirit indicate the personal properties of the three
hypostases, three only corresponding to the pattern of emanation which
results in the three persons. The personal property of the Father, which
distinguishes him from Son and Spirit, is innascibility, or ingenerability: the
Father is the “beginning without a beginning.” This is a negative property
which indicates the Father’s position in the Trinity—“Father,” however,
implies not only the negative of innascibility but also the relation of the
Father, as person, to Son and Spirit.86
The second hypostasis has several doctrinal titles—primarily Image, Word,
and Son. These terms indicate three ways of understanding the personal
property of the second hypostasis or person. “Image” expresses the similitude
or likeness of the Son to the Father, as in Hebrews 1:3; “Word” the
intellective or expressive character of the similitude, the Son as revealer; and
“Son” the natural similitude of the Son to the Father. Since the similitude of
nature most fully refers to the subsistence of the Son as God, Bonaventure
calls it the “hypostatic” similitude.87 The Spirit or third hypostasis is both the
nexus or bond of love between the Father and the Son and the one sent by, the
gift of, both Father and Son. The sending or gift of the Spirit corresponds with
the voluntary mode of the Spirit’s emanation—the “love” manifest in the
Spirit renders the voluntary gift “especial” and the name Holy Spirit, as
indicating a substantial emanation or individual subsistence, indicates also the
hypostatic character of the Spirit—thus the Spirit is a “voluntary, especial,
and hypostatic gift.”88 This language assumes distinctions in the Godhead,
such that do not disturb its simplicity—in fact, three modes of differentiation
corresponding with the basic differentiation of the persons from the essence
as “modes of existence or emanation” (i.e., the “plurality of persons”); the
differentiation of the persons from one another but as having the same
essence (i.e., the “plurality of the substantial and relative predications”); and
finally, the differentiation of substantial properties or “essential properties and
notions” which, as the attributes of the essence as such, belong to all the
persons.89
In all of these modes of differentiation there are only two categories of
predication or two “predicaments” (praedicamenta), substance and relation.
In order to establish this point,90 Bonaventure lists the ten categories of
predication as set forth by Aristotle: substance, quantity, relation, quality,
activity, passivity, place, time, position, and habit. The last five belong to the
corporeal world and are only figuratively applied to God. The former five can
be predicated of God, but, clearly, in the case of God all but “relation” merge
with the category of substance and are defined by it—leaving only two
categories, substance and relation, which correspond to the divine essence and
the divine persons: that is, there is one divine substance or essence and there
are a series of relations which refer to the persons without dividing the
essence.
Bonaventure’s discussion of the “apparitions” and “appropriations”
addresses crucial issues concerning the manifestation and attributes of the
persons ad extra:
although God is infinite, invisible, unchangeable, nevertheless He
dwells particularly in holy men, He appears to patriarchs and prophets,
He descended from heaven, He even sent the Son and the Holy Ghost
for the salvation of the human race. Although in God there are the
individual nature, virtue and operation of the Trinity, yet the sending or
apparition of one person is not the sending or apparition of the other.
Although there is in the Trinity the greatest equality, nevertheless it is
the function of the Father alone to send and not to be sent.91
The “sending” of divine persons is rooted in the intra-trinitarian relations of
generation and procession: the Son and the Spirit are sent whereas the
unregenerate or innascible Father only sends but never is sent—and the Son,
who is generated but who is also a source of the procession of the Spirit, not
only is sent but also sends. The Spirit, who is not a source of another person
within the Trinity, is sent but does not send. When this model is applied to ad
extra acts of the Godhead, such as the incarnation of the Son and the gift of
the Spirit, it overcomes the possible implication of mutability: the “descent
from heaven” cannot be physical descent from one place to another—after all,
God is not physical and does not occupy space—rather it indicates God’s
gracious acts toward sinners. When God manifests himself in grace and
knowledge, he is said to descend, even though “He is not changed in
Himself.”92 Even in incarnation, the issue is not that the Son becomes present
where he was not present before, but that he becomes “present to us through
knowledge or grace,” as sent by the Father, from whom he is generated.
3. Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa theologiae Aquinas makes the
comment, “Jerome says that heresy comes from undue prolixity; therefore we
should address ourselves to discuss the Trinity with care and modesty.”93 Or,
as he declared in the commentary on the Sentences,
Our profession is uncomplicated, that in God exists a plurality of
persons in unity of nature; we are convinced on account of the witness
of faith, not for the reasons given above.94
Aquinas’ clearly chooses not to follow the more speculative path of Richard
of St. Victor and Bonaventure, although he expresses a deep appreciation of
the logic of triunity once confessed:
A thing may be reasonably proved either by going to the root of the
matter and producing a cogent demonstration … or by accepting it and
then showing how the consequences fit the evidence … The second
must be adopted when we would show forth the truth of the Blessed
Trinity. We start with acceptance, and then afterwards may give
recommending reasons, not that they sufficiently demonstrate the
mystery.95
Or, as he indicated in his commentary on Boethius’ De trinitate, this doctrine
is “uniquely an object of belief” that cannot be proven by demonstrations: all
arguments or reason fall short of yielding necessary conclusions; indeed, the
arguments only create probability, and that only for a believer.96 Whereas,
therefore, the philosophers knew something about the oneness of God and the
divine attributes, including some of the attributes, like power, wisdom, and
goodness, that belong peculiarly to the persons of the Trinity, they could
know nothing concerning the personal relations in the Godhead.97
In his own exposition of the Trinity, Aquinas was as concerned as
Bonaventure to outline the terms of the doctrine as one essence, two
processions, and therefore only three persons, four real relations, and five
notions or concepts.98 In contrast to Bonaventure’s understanding of
processions of nature and will, Aquinas interpreted the two processions (i.e.,
the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit) as acts of
understanding and will or processions of the Word and of Love, respectively.
Given, moreover, that God is a being of an “intellectual nature,” there can be
only two basic acts—one of intellect or understanding, the other of will—and
there cannot be any further multiplication of acts, given that “the procession
which is accomplished within the agent in an intellectual nature terminates in
the procession of the will.”99 These two processions also fall within the
explanatory model of Augustine’s metaphor of the lover and the beloved—
given that the intelligible or intellective procession of the Word is the
procession of the only beloved Son, the object of the Father’s love, that this
procession is not an act directed ad extra, but one that terminates ad intra,
and given that in an “intellectual nature” such acts involve both intellect and
will. “The operation of the will within ourselves involves also another
procession, that of love, whereby the object loved is in the lover.”100 Like
Bonaventure, Aquinas resonates with the Augustinian and Victorine language
concerning the logic of the Trinity as an expression of divine love:
Goodness is generous. God is supremely good. Therefore supremely
generous. But he cannot supremely give himself to creatures, for they
cannot receive his entire goodness. The perfect gift of himself is not to
another diverse by nature. Therefore within him there is distinctness
without division … Sheer joy is his, and this demands companionship
… Perfect love must be matched. Charity is unselfish love. But
creatures cannot be loved above all; they are not attractive enough.
Therefore in the divine begetting is there perfect lover and perfect
beloved, distinct, but of one nature.101
Neither Aquinas nor Bonaventure elaborates the point—they assume that
Augustine’s and Richard’s De Trinitate are known to their audience. In accord
with the earlier usage, Aquinas declares that this is a complete and perfect
“fecundity”: there can be no further processions, given that the two kinds of
procession, intellect and will, are completely fulfilled in the ad intra
procession of “one perfect Word, and one perfect Love.”102
Thomas was also profoundly concerned to argue the primacy of the Father
as the principium of the Son and the Spirit, but at the same time to highlight
the dangers inherent in identifying the Father as the “cause” of the other two
persons. On this point he noted an important difference between the Greek
and the Latin fathers on the issue of intra-trinitarian relationships: Athanasius,
Basil, and Theodoret spoke of the Father as the “cause” of the other persons;
the Latin fathers preferred forms like “principle” or “author,” an issue that
would be raised in the later medieval councils. In Aquinas’ view, the Latin
usage is preferable inasmuch as the Father is neither final, material, nor
formal cause of Son or Spirit—what remains is the notion of “efficient cause”
as the sole applicable concept. But an efficient cause is conceived as a
different substance than its effects: God is substantially different from the
world of which he is the efficient cause! Clearly, however, the Son is one with
the Father in substance:
to avoid reckoning the Son as of different substantial nature from the
Father, we prefer to use, instead of cause, such terms as fount, head, and
 so forth, which signify both origin and identical substance.103
In addition, speaking of the Father as “cause” implies that the Son is “effect”
and belongs to the created order: the terminology is unacceptable.
On the other hand, the Latin fathers’ language is not only more adequate, it
is scriptural. Here Aquinas posits a rule for theology that takes our minds
back to the Nicene debate and the early patristic warnings against excessive
speculation:
we should not be freer than Holy Scripture in attributing terms to God.
There the Father is called the principle or beginning: “in the beginning
was the Word.”104
Scripture never speaks of the Father as cause of the Son or of the Son as
caused—principle, principium, is the better term as more scriptural and also
as more general in scope than cause: “since divine truths are
incomprehensible and beyond definition, it is more appropriate to keep to
broad terms … when speaking about God.”105
Note that Aquinas here not only retains but utilizes substantively the
reading of John 1:1 that we noted early on in patristic theology as crucial to
the philosophical appropriation of Christianity in the ancient world but as lost
to the modern reader, whose vision has been overly influenced by the
traditional English versions. Aquinas, of course, receives his insight from the
Latin of Jerome: “In principio erat verbum,” which renders the Greek arche
more accurately than the English, “In the beginning …” The text can mean
“In the divine first principle, that is, the Father, was the Word”—a reading in
perfect conformity with v. 18 of the prologue, where the Son is said to be in
the bosom of the Father, and 17:21, where Jesus says he is in the Father and
the Father in him.
In treating of the divine persons, unlike his teacher Albert, who saw the
value in several of the available definitions of person, Aquinas, both in his
commentary on the Sentences, where Lombard provided him with the
definition, and in the Summa theologiae, where, presumably, he could have
exercised more freedom in argument, advocated the definition of Boethius,
“an individual substance of a rational nature.” Still, as Fortman comments,
after Aquinas has explained the definition and added his own qualifications
on all the terms, “it can seem that he has corrected rather than approved it,” a
conclusion justified by the alternative definitions provided elsewhere by
Aquinas—“a relationally distinct subsistent in the divine essence” and “a
distinct subsistent in the divine nature.”106 Aquinas also anticipates the
problem faced by the Reformers—namely, that the term “person” is not found
in either the Old or the New Testament and ought therefore not be applied to
God. Aquinas answers that “although the word person is not found applied to
God in Scripture … nevertheless what the word signifies is found to be
affirmed of God in many places of Scripture; as that he is the supreme self-
subsisting being, and the most perfectly intelligent being.”107
An important element of Aquinas’ doctrine of the Trinity is his fairly
traditional identification of the personal relations of paternity, filiation, and
procession as constitutive of real distinctions in the Godhead while at the
same time insisting on the simplicity of God. This pairing of the two
arguments is sometimes missed or misinterpreted in discussions of Aquinas’
doctrine: it has been claimed, for example, that “classic Latin statements of
Trinity doctrines are complicated (some would say muddled) at crucial places
by simplicity theory, i.e., by the notion that in God there are really no
distinctions at all—not even between the divine relations and the divine
essence.”108 The muddle, however, is not on the part of Aquinas. Arguably, it
arises out of a loss of clear understanding of the traditional notion of
simplicity compounded by a confusion over the meaning of “real distinction.”
Aquinas’ denial of a “real distinction” between essence and persons is hardly
a denial of all distinctions in the Godhead, but only and quite specifically a
denial of any substantial distinction between essence and person, in other
words, the denial of any distinction that would render the essence one “thing”
and the divine persons other “things”: affirmation of a real distinction
between essence and persons would be the affirmation of a divine
quaternity.109
Aquinas, thus, does deny that there is a real distinction between the divine
relations and the divine essence, but only because, with the entire orthodox
tradition, he assumes that the essence is not divided by the persons or
personal relations in the Godhead and that the essence belongs entirely to
each of the persons. In the very same article, Aquinas quite clearly indicates
that although a relation (i.e., a relation such as unbegottenness, begetting, or
proceeding) does not differ from the essence as a thing from another thing—
there can be no distinction of person or relation from the divine substance
according to substance (secundum rem)—relation and essence do differ
conceptually, “according to the consideration of the understanding”
(secundum intelligentiae rationem). As in the discussion of the distinction of
attributes where he rules out real distinctions between essence and attributes
or between the attributes themselves,110 he here denies a real distinction
between essence and person, thereby ruling out composition, but (as in the
discussion of the attributes) he does not rule out a conceptual or rational
distinction between essence and person. The language here echoes that of
Alexander of Hales in his argument for the identity of substance and
distinction of relations in the Godhead. Furthermore, Aquinas continues, in
the very next article, to argue that there not only must be distinctions in God,
but that the distinctions between the persons are “real distinctions.”111
To this argument, it might be objected that the distinction between persons
is no different from the distinction between attributes—both are distinctions
made “according to consideration of names” or “term” (secundum nominis
rationem)—with the result that the persons cannot be really distinct. Aquinas
responds by clarifying the difference between a distinction between attributes
and a distinction between relations: attributes, such as power and goodness,
do not result in any conceptual opposition and, therefore, cannot be distinct
secundum rem—but relational distinctions, namely, ingenerate and generate,
do stand in conceptual opposition and are therefore to be understood as
distinct: since the relations are in God realiter and are in relative (but not
essential or substantial) opposition to one another, there is a real distinction in
God, albeit one that is not according to the thing or substance absolutely
considered (secundum rem absolutam) but according to the thing or substance
relatively considered (secundum rem relativam).112 It is, thus, fundamentally
incorrect to claim that for Aquinas “there are really no distinctions at all” in
God: what is ruled out are real distinctions that are absolute or substantial,
such as subsist between things and other things.
4. The Council of Lyons (1274). The Council of Lyons was the first major
attempt of the Latin and Greek churches to mend the breach occasioned by
the filioque controversy of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Its formulae stand
on the intellectual ground gained both in earlier Western councils like
Soissons, Sens, Rheims, and Fourth Lateran and in the development of the
broader outlines of the Western doctrine of the Trinity at the hands of the
scholastic teachers of the thirteenth century.113 The relevant documents of the
council are the formal letter containing the Profession of Faith of Michael
Paleologus and the council’s own Constitution of the Holy Trinity and the
Catholic Faith. The former document, presented to the council by the
representatives of the eastern emperor and the Greek church as an official
letter of the Greek church, was understood by Pope Clement IV as a basis for
discussion at the council and it was written with the specific intention of
representing a favorable Greek view of the Latin church’s theology—in fact,
it appears to have been little more than a transcription of Clement IV’s own
proposals, the trinitarian portion of which reproduced the formulae of Leo IX
on the eve of the schism, sent to the emperor for his approval. The Profession
of Faith, thus, does not indicate any genuine acknowledgment of the validity
of the filioque on the part of the eastern emperor. Nor does the Profession of
Faith belong to the actual decisions of the council. Still, the Profession of
Faith was read at the council, and it contains a notable expression of the
Western trinitarian perspective, identifying Father, Son, and Spirit as “one
omnipotent God … coessential, consubstantial, co-eternal and co-omnipotent”
and arguing that “each individual person in the Trinity is the one true God,
complete and perfect.” The Holy Spirit, moreover, is “complete, perfect, and
true God, proceeding from the Father and from the Son, co-equal,
consubstantial, co-omnipotent, and co-eternal with the Father and the Son in
all things.” The Trinity, therefore, “is not three gods but one God.”114
The second major document, the Constitution of the Holy Trinity and the
Catholic Faith, is the decision of the council. It too offers a definition of the
relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son—and it reiterates the
filioque, but with the very precise modifier that “the Holy Spirit proceeds
eternally from the Father and Son, not as from two principles but from one,
not by two spirations but by one only.”115 This, the Constitution continues, is
the faith of the whole church, of all the “fathers and doctors, both Latin and
Greek.” And then, to make the definition utterly clear, the Constitution
concludes in the negative:
Therefore, in order to forestall such errors, with the approval of the holy
Council, we condemn and disapprove those who presume to deny that
the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, or who
rashly dare to assert that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and
the Son as from two principles, not from one.116
This final condemnation, with its specific denial that the double procession
can be taken to mean two first principles, or principia, in the Godhead is as
close as Lyons comes to a concession to the Greek church’s long-standing
critique of the filioque. The doctrinal explanation is, however, a considerable
development over the formula of the Fourth Lateran Council, given the clear
statement that there is a single divine principium and only one “spiration” and
that, given this understanding, the filioque must be understood as the doctrine
of all the Fathers, whether Western or Eastern. The formulae produced at
Lyons did serve to consolidate the Western understanding of trinitarian
orthodoxy but, despite the representation of the Eastern church and the
apparent acceptance of the conciliar result by the Greeks, including the
emperor, Michael Paleologus, the ecumenical effect of the council was
limited: the Greek orthodox ultimately denied the validity of both formulae.
B. Late Medieval Developments
1. Peter Auriole and Durandus of Sancto Porciano. The rise of a more
critical approach to metaphysics and epistemology, associated with what has
(rightly or wrongly) been classified as “nominalism,” led to further debate
over the doctrine of the Trinity in the early fourteenth century.117 Peter
Auriole (d. 1322) is often counted among the predecessors of Ockham, or at
least of those developments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that
restricted the impact of philosophical speculation on formulations of revealed
doctrine such as the Trinity. Still, he did develop a perspective on trinitarian
statement that drew on his predecessors’ meditations on the nature of the
procession of persons. In agreement with the decisions of the preceding
centuries, he insisted that the divine essence is itself ingenerate and that the
begetting of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit are not essential but
personal generations or emanations. Perhaps reflecting on the divergence of
the Latin and Greek fathers on the matter of procession, Auriole grounded the
distinction of persons not in their relations but in their persons: specifically,
he argued that generation and procession differ not as actions but in their
object or result. He also insisted that the personal relations are distinct not
essentially or realiter but only rationally, a point of difference with the greater
part of the tradition and a step toward the dilemma of Ockham’s
definition.118
Durandus of Sancto Porciano (d. 1334) is remembered as a philosophical
and theological renegade among the Dominicans who frequently set aside the
arguments of Albert and Aquinas. In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, he
argued, in opposition to the teachings of his order, that it was possible to offer
a rational demonstration concerning the procession of the divine persons. He
began on the assumption, contra Thomas Aquinas, but held by some
Dominicans (notably, Robert Fishacre, Ulrich of Strasbourg, and James of
Metz) as well as by Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure, that the procession
of the Word was a procession of “nature”—indeed, he argued that this was not
a “generation” but an “emanation” of a superabundant nature. Given the same
explanation for the procession of the Spirit, Durandus may have obscured the
difference between filiation and spiration that so occupied the thirteenth
century. More significant for later developments—including those in
Reformed orthodoxy—Durandus departed from Aquinas in his language of
the distinction of persons, in fact, pressing further away from the “real
distinction” proposed by Alexander: the distinction between essence and
relation, he indicated, was not merely a rational distinction, but a distinction
approaching the real distinction, not between things but between modes or
ways of possessing a particular reality. Thus a person is constituted as a
distinct individual in a way different from the constitution of an essence as
individual.119 Durandus argued a variety of modal distinction between the
divine persons—and he concluded that the foundation of the subsistence of
each person was, therefore, the divine essence itself and not the personal
relation.120 Arguably, this view is a precise extension of the decision of the
Fourth Lateran Council and a more adequate rendering of both the
Cappadocian tropos hyparxeos and its Augustinian equivalent, modus
subsistendi, as it is also a view that will carry forward into the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries whether in Calvin’s views on divine aseitas or in van
Mastricht’s approach to the distinction of persons.
2. Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Duns Scotus intended to carry
forward the basic Franciscan model of the doctrine of the Trinity—certainly
in accord with the conciliar formulae of Fourth Lateran and Lyons, but in
terms of the specifically Halesian and Bonaventuran understanding of the
intra-trinitarian emanations or processions. Specifically, he argued that the
processions are two, of nature (the begetting of the Son) and of will (the
procession of the Spirit). In accord with the fundamental assumption that the
inward distinction of the persons rests on relations of opposition, Scotus
indicated that these processions of nature and will are opposites inasmuch as
the former is “determined toward its object,” given its grounding in nature,
the latter free, given its grounding in will.121 Still, in Scotus’ view, both
processions are necessary, given that they belong to primary actuality of the
divine faculties, intellect and will. Scotus can identify the Son’s procession as
natural and intellective, given his definition of natura, drawing on both of the
traditional senses of the term: natura can simply indicate “the divine essence
itself, in which the three persons consist,” or it can indicate a generative
power belonging to an individual in its primary actuality. The latter sense of
natura corresponds to the productive capacity of the divine intellect,
understood as memory—as distinct from its operative function of knowing
objects, common to all three persons of the Godhead. The divine memory, as
a function of the Father, is productive ad intra naturally, specifically, having a
perfect, natural inclination to produce its object or determination toward its
object, namely, the Son. Given, moreover, this natural determination of the
divine intellect, it does not belong to the power or will of the Father either to
produce or not produce the Son. The generation of the Son is
“involuntary.”122
Scotus describes the procession of the Spirit in a similar manner, but in
relation to the divine will. Like intellect, will can be understood as both
productive and operative, both in primary and in secondary actuality. In its
secondary or operative actuality, the divine will is common to all three
persons of the Godhead. In its primary or productive actuality, however, it
arises out of the divine essence considered as loving power and as a lovable
object—the Father and the Son, in the traditional Augustinian language of the
lover and the beloved—and is therefore the principle productive of the Holy
Spirit. Given that this is a volitional act of the Godhead, it is a free act, neither
natural, nor necessary, nor contingent—but since it is the divine will in actu
primo, it is the will itself producing, not the result of an act of willing (which
would be the will in actu secundo). Scotus differs categorically with Aquinas,
moreover, in the understanding of this volitional act: according to Aquinas it
is a natural act that proceeds “by mode of the will.”123 Scotus views this
formulation as not doing justice to the freedom of the divine will and insists
that it cannot be called a natural procession—the persons of the Father and the
Son must be entirely free in the determination of the production of the Spirit
and in no way determined, not even in the sense that the Father is determined
to produce the Son.124
In Scotus’ version of the filioque, the Father and the Son together are the
one principium and the one spirative power that is productive of the Spirit,
but the Father spirates of himself (ex se), while the Son spirates from the
Father from whom he has the power of spiration. Put in another way, the
Father retains a radical primacy inasmuch as he has or is, in a prior sense,
both the intellective and the volitional fecundity of the Godhead in their
primary actuality—by the former he generates the Son and communicates to
the Son the latter. It is by this generation that the Father communicates to the
Son all that the Son has, according to which the Son is of one will with the
Father and therefore with the Father spirates the Holy Spirit. The Spirit thus
proceeds from both Father and Son but the principium of the Spirit remains
unitary inasmuch as it is one fecundity of will that the Father has and has
communicated to the Son.125
As to the definition of person, Scotus places himself clearly in the line of
Richard of St. Victor’s definition, “an incommunicable existence of an
intellectual nature,” and rejects the Boethian definition, “individual substance
of a rational nature.”126 Scotus’ intention is to focus on the identification of
personal properties as incommunicable in the divine essence over against the
essential properties which are communicated from the Father to the Son and
from the Father and the Son to the Spirit. This basic definition yields Scotus’
sense that the distinctions among the divine persons are not “real” but “formal
distinctions.” The personal properties do not agree in a formal sense with the
essence as such, given that the essence itself “is one thing” that neither
generates nor is generated—“a thing that generates,” Scotus argues,
“generates an other thing that is really distinct, for no thing generates
itself.”127 Were the persons really distinct from the divine essence, it would
be one thing and they three others, which is patently false. The persons ought
therefore to be understood as “formally distinct” from the divine essence,
inasmuch as according to its own “formal concept,” each person is not
identical with the divine essence considered as a unity: the divine essence is
absolute, the persons relative; the divine essence is unconstituted, the persons
constituted; the essence is communicable and is communicated from the
Father to the other persons, the persons or personal properties are not
communicable. Nonetheless, there are real distinctions among the persons:
“that which produces is necessarily distinguished realiter from what is
produced by it.”128 Scotus’ trinitarian formulations not only justify his title,
Doctor subtilis, they also stand on a sure trajectory toward the conciliar
formulae of Florence and the final shape of medieval trinitarian orthodoxy.
The point will be most clearly illustrated in the Scotist explanation of the
primacy of the Father, the single principium of the spiration of the Spirit, and
the filioque.
In the theology of Ockham, a nominalistic denial of formal or real
relational distinctions led to a profound difficulty in defining the doctrine of
the Trinity. Thus, at the same time that he recognized the need of trinitarian
language to speak of real relations or formal distinctions in the divine essence,
Ockham indicated that it was rationally or philosophically impossible to
conceive of a plurality of relations or formalities when an identity of essence
was also assumed.129 Although Ockham was clear in his affirmation of the
doctrine and its mystery, he was unable to present a clear philosophical basis
for its vocabulary, leading to the censure of his teaching at the papal court in
Avignon in 1326. Specifically, Ockham was criticized for holding that
everything conceptually true concerning the divine essence was also
conceptually true concerning the divine persons and for holding that there was
no difference between the correspondence of the essence with the divine
attributes and the correspondence of the essence with the personal relations in
the Godhead.130 In Ockham’s defense, one must note a consistency in his
thought on the question of the rationality of the faith: he also assumed that the
divine existence and unity were indemonstrable, even as he held firmly to
belief in the one God. With specific reference to the doctrine of the Trinity,
moreover, Ockham endeavored to work within the bounds of the Fourth
Lateran Council, so that his discussion of the question, “Utrum … Deus
generat Deum?” distinguished between an essential and a personal usage of
“Deus”: in the essential sense, the persons are to be considered one realiter
and God, as essence, cannot be said to be generated; in the personal sense,
where “Deus” indicates a person or suppositum, then God can be said to
generate God, inasmuch as God the Father generates God the Son.131
Ockham did uphold the normative doctrine, albeit without much
development of the more speculative language. Against Scotus, Ockham had
generally denied the formal distinction—but he admitted it in one place only,
namely, among the persons of the Trinity, and only in a limited sense. He
allowed no broad sense of formal characteristics or properties that might be
identified ad intra, but rather in the sense that the divine “essence is three
persons and a person is not three persons.”132 Ockham was drawn to this
conclusion because he viewed the traditional language of a real distinction
between persons as untenable, indeed, self-contradictory, inasmuch as the
standard syllogistic argument based on the real distinction was inapplicable to
God. Thus: “all ‘a’ is ‘b’; ‘c’ is not ‘b’; therefore ‘c’ is not ‘a’ ”—but “the
divine essence is the Son; the Father is not the Son; nonetheless, the Father is
the divine essence.” The Father is, thus, identical realiter with the divine
essence but distinguished formaliter within it by “paternity”—the Son and the
Spirit, identical with the essence realiter but distinguished formally by
filiation and spiration. There is a unity or simplicity of divine essence but a
multiplicity of relations. Ockham concurred with Scotus that the divine will is
the principle according to which the Spirit is emanated.133 Later medieval
theologians were pressed by such argumentation to affirm that the orthodox
dogma of the Trinity did not contain contradictory propositions, either in a
purely verbal or in a fully logical sense.134 Nor ought it to be concluded from
the technical nature of the late medieval discussions and debates that the
doctrine had become merely a matter of speculation. There is abundant
evidence that these late medieval trinitarian discussions had a consistent
relation to the piety of the era and could serve as a foundational theme in
preaching.135 And, of course, the doctrine remained a primary point of
ecumenical discussion with the eastern orthodox.
3. The Council of Florence (1438–1442). Less than a century before the
Reformation, the lengthy proceedings of the Council of Ferrara-Florence
(usually simply called the Council of Florence) were themselves a
continuation of the Council of Basel (1431). The council, convened by Pope
Eugenius IV, had as its fundamental purpose the healing of the schism with
the Eastern Orthodox on such issues as papal primacy, purgatory, the use of
unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the filioque.136 Eastern delegates
included the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem, plus the
metropolitan of Moscow as the representative of the Russian Orthodox. The
eastern emperor came from Constantinople for the sake of reunifying
Christians in the face of the Islamic threat.
On the specific point of the filioque, there was an extended debate over the
doctrinal question, led, among others, by Bessarion the Archbishop of Nicaea,
Markus Eugenicus of Ephesus, and Isidore of Kiev, arguing the Greek
position, and Giovanni Montenero the Dominican provincial general of
Lombardy, the Archbishop of Rhodes, and Giovanni di Ragusa arguing the
Latin view. From the Greek perspective, the Latin position not only violated
the canons of Nicaea and Constantinople, but also stood contrary to the New
Testament and the Greek Fathers. In particular, the Greeks assumed that the
language of double procession indicated two principia or sources in the
Godhead, in short, a denial of the primacy of the Father. Montenero gained
considerable respect from the Greeks through his mastery of the Fathers,
Latin and Greek. In particular he was able to argue the proximity of the Latin
tradition’s language of a procession of the Spirit from the Son, given the
primacy of the Father, with the Greek tradition’s language of a procession
through the Son.137 In the same vein, Giovanni di Ragusa argued that it was
the Latin tradition to insist on the primacy of the Father and the Father’s sole
ultimate causality in the procession of the Spirit, while at the same time
insisting that the Son, as begotten of the Father, is also God from whom the
Spirit proceeds. The argument came to a conclusion after nine sessions, with a
somewhat equivocal result. A formula was agreed on by the Latin
representatives and many of the Greeks, as well as Isidore of Kiev. There was
no final ratification of the decrees of the council in either Constantinople or
Moscow.
The decrees of the Council of Florence both extended a fairly refined basis
for reunion or at least the removal of mutual excommunication to the Greek
and Russian churches and, at the same time, defended the filioque clause as
“added into the Symbol legitimately … for the sake of clarifying the truth.”138
Still, the formula represents the Latin view as the primary model and offers
the Greek language as a matter of clarification, in fact, assimilating the Greek
view of a procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son to a theory
of double procession. It is not remarkable that the Greek theologians were not
entirely convinced. The Decree for the Greeks in fact begins with a formal
declaration of the truth of the filioque, offering only the common faith in a
single principium as an element of doctrine shared with the Greeks:
we define that this truth of the faith must be believed and received by
all and that all must profess: the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father
and the Son; he has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the
Father and the Son; he proceeds eternally from both as from one
principle and through one spiration.139
Next, the Decree offered its explanation of the agreement of the Greek with
the Latin view:
we declare: when the holy doctors and fathers say that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father through the Son, this must be understood in
the sense that, as the Father, so also the Son is what the Greeks call
“cause” and the Latins “principle” of the subsistence of the Holy
Spirit.140
This clarification of argument is a step past the conciliar formulation of Lyons
a century and a half before in that it identifies the Greek language of the
Spirit’s procession through the Son with the equally Greek trinitarian
identification of causality of subsistence and, by way of that identification, the
equivalence of the Greek and the Latin teaching. As if this statement were not
a clear enough Westernization of the Greek view, the Decree continues, “since
the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything
that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally
from the Father, for whom he is eternally begotten, that the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Son.”141 The procession of the Spirit, which is from the
Father, is bestowed on the Son in the begetting of the Son—leaving the Father
the ultimate principium, and maintaining his primacy, but understanding the
procession as given to the Son in virtually the same way that it can be said
that the Father gives to the Son to have life in himself.
After the departure of the Greek delegates, the Latin bishops and
theologians continued to meet in order to present formulae of reunion with the
Syrian church with their delegates. The Decree for the Jacobites or the Syrian
church, dating from the closing sessions of the council (1442), elaborates in
detail the divinity and distinction of the persons, echoing the Athanasian
Creed and clearly enunciating the oneness and unity of the essence over
against the distinction of the persons as an “opposition of relationship.”142
Thus, the church confesses
one true almighty, unchangeable and eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, one in essence, trine in persons: the Father not begotten, the Son
begotten from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the
Father and the Son … the Father is only the Father, the Son only the
Son, the Holy Spirit only the Holy Spirit. The Father alone begot the
Son out of his substance; the Son alone was begotten from the Father
alone; the Holy Spirit alone proceeds from both the Father and the Son.
These three persons are one God and not three gods, for the three are
one substance, one essence, one nature, one Godhead, one infinity, one
eternity, and everything (in them) is one where there is no opposition of
relationship.143
This way of construing the intra-trinitarian relations reflects the teaching of
Anselm as mediated through the major teachers of the high scholastic era,
notably Aquinas.144 This doctrine, the Decree continues, makes clear that the
unity of the Godhead is such that the persons are “wholly in” one another—a
perfect and complete co-inherence or perichoresis—and that, therefore,
“none precedes the other in eternity, none exceeds the other in greatness, or
excels the other in power.” The begetting and the procession are eternal and
without beginning.145
The Decree for the Jacobites also makes clear, in order to meet eastern
objections, that the filioque does not imply two ultimate sources or principia
in the Godhead—in fact, the filioque contravenes both a notion of two
principia and any division of the divine essence. First, the primacy of the
Father: the Father “is the origin without origin” and “all that the Son is or has,
he has from the Father” but defined in such a way as to provide a foundation
for the filioque, “he is the origin from origin.” Then, the definition of the
Spirit’s procession in terms of the filioque: “all that the Holy Spirit is or has,
he has at once (simul) from the Father and the Son.” But this doctrine does
not undermine either the primacy of the Father or the sense, now carefully
nuanced, of the single principium of the Spirit’s procession, given that “the
Father and the Son are not two origins of the Holy Spirit, but one origin, just
as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three origins of creation but
one origin.”146
In its fundamental teaching, the Council of Florence reiterated the results
of the earlier medieval councils—Bari, Fourth Lateran, and Lyons—with at
least two significant further nuances. First, as already noted, the formula
ensconces in Western trinitarian doctrine the Anselmic notion, taken up so
clearly by Aquinas, that the only real distinctions in the Godhead arise from
the opposition of relations in the emanations of Son and Spirit from the
Father. All other distinctions belong to the essence itself and must be
understood as other than real or substantial—and the real or substantial
distinctions among the persons are relational and within the “thing,” and are
therefore of a sort that they do not compromise the unity of the divine
essence: they are not distinctions from the essence or distinctions of essence,
but distinctions within the one indivisible essence.
The second highly significant nuance points toward the congruence of the
ad intra life of the Godhead with the ad extra manifestation and work,
namely, that the relation between the Father and the Son is such that, given
the character of the Father’s primacy, the Son in unity with the Father is, with
the Father, the principium of the Holy Spirit—and that this single principium
in the inner life of the Godhead mirrors the way in which the ad extra work is
also one, the three persons together being the sole principium of creation.
1 See Richard A. Muller, “Calvin and the Calvinists: Assessing Continuities
and Discontinuities Between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part II,” in
Calvin Theological Journal, 31/1 (April 1996), pp. 134–138.
2 A. Michel, “Trinité. II. La théologie latine du VI au XX siècle,” in
Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 15/2, col. 1713.
3 See Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et
Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, 32nd edition, ed. Adolfus
Schönmetzer (Barcinone: Herder, 1963), §1300–1302, hereinafter cited as
Denzinger-Schönmetzer; cf. L. van der Essen, “Council of Florence,” s.v. in
Catholic Encyclopedia, and Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A
Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1972; repr. Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1982), pp. 224–227.
4 PRRD, II, 1.3 (B.1), 5.5 (A.1–2).
5Thus, e.g., Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan, 7
vols. (repr. New York: Dover, 1961); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian
Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1971–1989); Reinhold Seeberg, Text-
book of the History of Doctrines, trans. Charles Hay, 2 vols. (1895–98; repr.,
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977); also note Barthelemy Haureau, Histoire de la
philosophie scolastique, 3 vols. (Paris: Durand et Pedone-Lauriel, 1872–
1880) for much collateral discussion.
6 Karl R. Hagenbach, A History of Christian Doctrines, trans. E. H. Plumptre,
3 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1880–81); W. G. T. Shedd, A History of
Christian Doctrine, 2 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1889; repr., Minneapolis:
Klock & Klock, 1978); Henry C. Sheldon, History of Christian Doctrine, 2
vols. (New York: Harper, 1895); Joseph Schwane, Histoire des Dogmas,
trans. A. Degert, 6 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1903–4).
7Evangelista Villanova, Histoire des théologie chréstiennes, 3 vols. (Paris:
Éditions de Cerf, 1997).
8 A. Michel, “Trinité. II. La théologie latine du VI au XX siècle,” in
Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 15/2, cols. 1702–1830; Robert S.
Franks, The Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Duckworth, 1953); Bertrand de
Margerie, The Christian Trinity in History, trans. E. Fortman (Still River,
Mass.: St. Bede’s Publications, 1982); also note, Sidney Cave, The Doctrine
of the Person of Christ (New York: Scribners, 1925); Aloys Grillmeier, Christ
in Christian Tradition (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1965).
9 Noteworthy among the older works are J. F. Bethune-Baker, Introduction to
the Early History of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: University Press, 1903);
J. Tixeront, History of Dogmas, trans. H. L. B., 3 vols. (St. Louis: Herder &
Herder, 1910); G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: S.P.C.K.,
1952); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper & Row,
1960).
10 E.g., Josef Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters vom
christologischen Standpunkte, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1873; repr., Frankfurt:
Minerva, 1966); Franz Courth, Trinität. In der Scholastik, Handbuch der
Dogmengeschichte, ed. M. Schmaus, A. Grillmeier and L. Scheffczyk, Bd. 2,
Faszikel 1b (Freiburg: Herder, 1985).
11Franz Courth, Trinitat. Von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, Handbuch
der Dogmengeschichte, Bd. 2, Faszikel 1c (Freiburg: Herder, 1996) discusses
only Luther and Calvin, and ignores entirely the trajectory of teaching in
which they stand, whether with regard to antecedents or later developments.
Cf. the exceedingly brief treatment in Fortman, Triune God, pp. 239–242.
12The most significant of these studies are Benjamin B. Warfield, “Calvin’s
Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Calvin and Augustine, ed. Samuel Craig
(Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Company, 1956), pp.
189–284 and, Thomas F. Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in
Calvin Theological Journal, 25/2 (1990), pp. 165–193. Further bibliography
on Calvin’s doctrine appears in the following chapter.
13 See Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, 2 vols. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1947–52); idem, A Bibliography of the Pioneers of
the Socinian-Unitarian Movement in Modern Christianity, in Italy,
Switzerland, Germany, Holland (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1950);
Joseph Henry Allen, An Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement (New
York: Christian Literature Company, 1894); Stanislaw Kot, Socinianism in
Poland (Boston: Starr King Press, 1957).
14 Alan Spence, “John Owen and Trinitarian Agency,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 43 (1990), pp. 157–173; Carl R. Trueman, The Claims of Truth:
John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998).
Reformed sources from the period are excerpted in Heinrich Heppe, Reformed
Dogmatics Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources, revised and edited by
Ernst Bizer, trans. G. T. Thomson (London, 1950; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1978). On the Lutheran development, see Werner Elert, The
Structure of Lutheranism: The Theology and Philosophy of Life of
Lutheranism Especially in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans.
Walter A. Hansen (St. Louis: Concordia, 1962), pp. 217–222; Robert D.
Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2 vols. (St. Louis:
Concordia, 1970–72), I, pp. 112–163; and the sources excerpted in Heinrich
Schmid, Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans.
Charles E. Hay and Henry Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg, n.d).
15 George Hunston Williams, The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the
History and Thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth and in the Diaspora 1601–1685, 2 vols. (Missoula, Mont.:
Scholars Press, 1980); Wilhelmus Johannes Kuhler, Aart de Groot, and Derk
Visser, Het Socinianisme in Nederland (Leeuwarden: De Tille, 1980); H. J.
McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1951); Paul Wrzecionko, Reformation und Frühaufklarung
in Polen: Studien über der Sozinianismus und seinen Einfluss auf der
westeuropäischen Denken im 17. Jahrhundert (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1977).
16E.g., J. H. Adamson, “Milton’s Arianism,” in Harvard Theological Review,
53 (1960), pp. 269–276; Michael E. Bauman, Milton’s Arianism (Regensburg:
Universität Regensburg, 19); idem, “Milton, Subordination, and the Two-
Stage Logos,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 48 (1986), pp. 173–182;
and idem, “Milton’s Theological Vocabulary and the Nicene Anathemas,” in
Milton Studies, 21 (1985), pp. 71–92; W. B. Hunter, Jr. “Milton’s Arianism
Reconsidered,” in Harvard Theological Review, 52 (1959), pp. 9–35; idem,
“Some Problems in John Milton’s Theological Vocabulary,” in Harvard
Theological Review, 57 (1964), pp. 353–365.
17 E. Dorothy Asch, “Samuel Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity and
the Controversy it Aroused” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Edinburgh, 1951);
Martin Greig, “The Reasonableness of Christianity? Gilbert Burnet and the
trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44
(1993), pp. 631–651; Thomas C. Pfizenmaier, The trinitarian Theology of Dr.
Samuel Clarke (1675–1729): Context, Sources, and Controversy (Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1997).
18 On Roscellin, see François Picavet, Roscelin, philosophie et théologien
(Paris: Alcan, 1911); Eike-Henner Kluge, “Roscellin and the Medieval
Problem of Universals,” in Journal of the History of Philosophy, 16 (1976),
pp. 404–414; Jean Jolivet, “Trois variations médiévales sur l’universel et
l’individu: Roscellin, Abélard, Gilbert de la Porrée,” in Revue de
métaphysique et de morale, 97 (1992), pp. 97–155; Constant J. Mews,
“Nominalism and Theology before Abelard: New Light on Roscellin of
Compiègne,” in Vivarium, 30 (1992), pp. 4–33.
19Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Wesminster, Md.:
Newman Press, 1946–1974; repr., Garden City: Image Books, 1985), II, p.
144.
20 Roscellin, as reported in Anselm, On the Incarnation of the Word,
commonly called the Liber de fide trinitatis et de incarnatione verbi, ii–iii
(PL, 158, col. 266); Michel, “Trinité. II. La théologie latine du VI au XX
siècle,” col. 1713. Note that Roscellin’s result is virtually identical with some
forms of modern “social trinitarianism”: cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity
and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Harper & Row, 1981),
pp. 148–150.
21 Cf. Anselm, On the Incarnation of the Word, ii–iii (pp. 13–17).
22 Acknowledging the cautions of William J. Courtenay, “Nominales and
Nominalism in the Twelfth Century,” in Lectionum Varietates: Hommage à
Paul Vignaux (1904–1987), ed. Jean Jolivet, et al. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991), pp.
11–48, that this early “nominalism” did not embody a significant theory of
universals and tended to contrast res with voces rather than res with nomina.
Rather, however, than refer to Roscellin as a “vocalist,” I retain the usual
usage.
23Thus, Kluge, “Roscellin and the Medieval Problem of Universals,” p. 412;
but cf. Picavet, Roscellin, philosophie et théologien, pp. 75–80, who affirms
Roscelin’s intention to submit to ecclesial orthodoxy.
24 On Anselm’s theology in general see Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the
Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972)—
chapter 4 discusses the doctrine of the Trinity.
25 Anselm, Letter on the Incarnation, xi (pp. 28–30).
26Cf. Michel, “Trinité. II. La théologie latine du VI au XX siècle,” cols.
1709–10.
27 Anselm, Letter on the Incarnation, xiii (p. 31).
28 Anselm, Letter on the Incarnation, xiii (pp. 32–33).
29 Anselm, On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, ix–x (pp. 113–117); idem,
Letter on the Incarnation, xvi (pp. 35–36); cf. Michel, “Trinité. II. La
théologie latine du VI au XX siècle,” col. 1711.
30 The trinitarian thought of Abelard and Gilbert as well as the conciliar
decision of the era is discussed in Reginald Lane Poole, Illustrations of the
History of Medieval Thought and Learning, 2nd ed. (London: S. P. C. K.,
1920).
31 Peter Abelard, Tractatus de unitate et trinitate divina, ed. R. Stölzle
(Freiburg, 1891)—the work was unknown until the publication of this
manuscript: it can now be recognized as an early version of Abelard’s
Theologia christiana.
32 Abelard, Tractatus de unitate et trinitate divina, pp. 61–68.
33J. Rivière, “Les ‘capitula’ d’Abélard condamnés au concile de Sens,” in
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 5 (1933), pp. 5–8; Eligius M.
Buytaert, “Abelard’s trinitarian Doctrine,” in Peter Abelard, ed. E. Buytaert
(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 127–152; and Fortman, Triune God, pp. 177–
181.
34 See the account in Poole, Illustrations, pp. 129–132.
35 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §721–739.
36 See the longer discussion of the debate leading to the council in PRRD, III,
1.2 (A.1).
37Gilbertus Porretanus, Commentaria in Librum de trinitate, in PL 64, cols.
1255–1412; note also the modern edition in The Commentaries on Boethius
by Gilbert of Poitiers, ed. Nikolaus M. Häring (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies, 1966). On Gilbert’s theology, see Lauge Olaf Nielsen,
Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta’s
Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation
during the Period 1130–1180 (Leiden: Brill, 1982); Michael E. Williams, The
Teaching of Gilbert Porreta on the Trinity as Found in His Commentaries on
Boethius (Rome: Gregorian University, 1951); Auguste Berthaud, Gilbert de
la Porrée, évêque de Poitiers, et sa philosophie, 1070–1154 (Poitiers, 1892;
Frankfurt: Minerva Verlag, 1985); also, A. Hayen, “Le Concile de Reims et
l’erreur théologique de Gilbert de la Porreé,” in Archives d’histoire doctrinale
et littéraire de moyen-âge, 10 (1935/36), pp. 29–102; Nikolaus M. Häring,
“The Case of Gilbert de la Porreé,” in Medieval Studies 13 (1951), pp. 1–40;
idem, “A Commentary on the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed by Gilbert of
Poitiers,” in Medieval Studies, 27 (1965), pp. 23–53; idem, “Notes on the
Council and Consistory of Rheims (1148),” in Medieval Studies, 28 (1966),
pp. 39–59; and Marvin L. Colker, “The Trial of Gilbert of Poitiers, 1148: A
Previously Unknown Record,” in Medieval Studies, 27 (1965), pp. 152–183;
and Lambertus Marie De Rijk, “Semantics and Metaphysics in Gilbert of
Poitiers: A Chapter of Twelfth Century Platonism,” 2 parts, in Vivarium, 26
(1988), pp. 73–112, and Vivarium, 27 (1989), pp. 11–35.
38 De Rijk, “Semantics and Metaphysics in Gilbert of Poitiers,” pp. 75–80.
39Cf. Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century, pp. 143–146,
with Williams, Teaching of Gilbert Porreta, pp. 59, 63–64.
40See Gilbert, De trinitate, I.5, 43; Williams, Teaching of Gilbert Porreta, pp.
68–70.
41 In Bernard, Libellus contra capitulum Gilberti, in PL, 185, col. 609; also
cited in Schwane, Histoire des Dogmes, IV, p. 193.
42 Richard of St. Victor, De gratia I.v, in PL, 196, col. 67.
43 Cf. Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate, I.v.
44 Cf. Copleston, History, II, p. 179.
45 Schwane, Histoire des dogmes, IV, pp. 254–255.
46 This usage reflects the patristic problem of distinguishing ousia from
hypostasis, both of which had been rendered in Latin as substantia and which,
after the attempt at differentiation of the terms undertaken by the
Cappadocians, were only gradually differentiated in Latin into substantia and
subsistentia. Much of the difficulty with the Boethian definition arises when
its use of substantia is understood as rendering ousia rather than hypostasis
—whereas Boethius used essentia as equivalent to ousia and specifically
understood substantia as rendering hypostasis: see Fortman, Triune God, p.
163.
47Richard of St. Victor, De trinitate, IV.xi, xxii; cf. Fortman, Triune God, pp.
191–192; Schwane, Histoire des Dogmes, IV, p. 256.
48 Seeberg, History, II, p. 108.
49Cf. the discussion in Ebeling, “Hermeneutical Locus of the Doctrine of
God,” pp. 73–83.
50Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §803; translated in The Christian Faith in the
Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, ed. J. Neuner and J. Dupuis,
2nd ed. (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1976), §317.
51 Thus, Delno C. West and Sandra Zindars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore: A
Study in Spiritual Perception and History (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1983), pp. 53–56.
52 Morton W. Bloomfield, “Joachim of Flora: A Critical Survey of His Canon,
Teachings, Sources, Biography, and Influence,” in Traditio, 13 (1957), pp.
249–311; also see his “Recent Scholarship on Joachim of Fiore and His
Influence,” in Prophecy and Millennarianism (Essex: Longman, 1980), pp.
23–52.
53 Cf. Paul Fournier, Études sur Joachim de Flore et ses doctrines (Paris:
Picard & Fils, 1909), pp. 14–16; cf. Seeberg, History, II, p. 108; Bloomfield,
“Joachim of Flora,” pp. 284–285, disagrees.
54 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §800; Neuner and Dupuis, §19.
55 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §804; Neuner and Dupuis, §318.
56 Cf. Alfonso Maieru, “À propos de la doctrine de la supposition en
théologie trinitaire au XIVe siècle,” in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics,
ed. E. Bos (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985), pp. 221–222.
57 Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §805; Neuner and Dupuis, §319, citing Gregory
of Nazianzen, Epistle to Cledonius.
58Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §805; Neuner and Dupuis, §319; also see the text
and translation in Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2
vols. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), I, p. 231.
59 William of Auvergne, De trinitate, seu de primo principio, ed. with an
intro. by Bruno Switalski (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1976); also The Trinity, or the First Principle, trans. Roland J. Teske and
Francis C. Wade (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1989).
60 A. Krempel, A. La doctrine de la Trinité chez Saint Thomas: Exposé
historique et systematique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1952); Joseph Butterworth, “The
Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure” (Ph.D.
diss.: Fordham University, 1985).
61 Cf. M. Bergerson, La Structure du concept latin de personne, in Études
d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale du XIIIe siécle, first series, vol. II (Paris and
Ottawa: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1932).
62 Roland J. Teske, Introduction, in William of Auvergne, The Trinity, p. 53.
63 Cf. the discussion in Copleston, History of Philosophy, II, pp. 232–239.
64 Thus, Fortman, Triune God, p. 211.
65 Alexander of Hales, Summa theol., pars I, [n. 330, ad. 4]
66 Alexander of Hales, Summa theol., pars I, [n. 10]
67 Schwane, Historie des Dogmes, IV, p. 260.
68 Alexander of Hales, Summa theol., pars I, [n. 312, ad. 1]
69Schwane, Historie des Dogmes, IV, p. 261, summarizing Alexander of
Hales, Summa theol., pars I, inq. II, tract. 2, q. 1, memb. 1, cap. 7, art. 3.
70 Alexander of Hales, Summa theol., pars I, inq. I, tract. 2., q. 2, ad 3.
71 See Copleston, History of Philosophy, II, pp. 293–299.
72 Albert the Great, In Sent., I, d. 3, a. 18.
73 Fortman, Triune God, pp. 203–204.
74 See Fortman, Triune God, pp. 203–204; Konrad Fischer, De Deo Trino et
Uno: das Verhältnis von productio und reductio in seiner Bedeutung für der
Gotteslehre Bonaventuras (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978); John
P. Dourley, “The Relationship between Knowledge of God and Knowledge of
the Trinity in Bonaventure’s De mysterio trinitatis,” in San Bonaventura
Maestro, ed. A. Pompei (Rome: Pontifica Facolta Teologica San Bonaventura,
1976), vol. II, pp. 41–48.
75Bonaventure, In Sent., I, d. iii, a. 1, q. 4; cited in Fortman, Triune God, pp.
212–213.
76 Cf. Dourley, “The Relationship between Knowledge of God and
Knowledge of the Trinity in Bonaventure’s De mysterio trinitatis,” pp. 43–
44.
77
Bonaventure, In Sent., I, d. ii, a. 1, q. 4, citing Aristotle, Physics, ii.6, on the
modes of production.
78 J. Guy Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure, trans. José de
Vinck (Paterson: St. Anthony Guild, 1964), pp. 110, 112; Zachary Hayes, The
Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology in St. Bonaventure
(New York: Paulist Press, 1981), pp. 56–57.
79 Cf. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.ii.2.
80 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.ii.3.
81 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.1.
82 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.2.
83 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.2; cf. Bonaventure, In Sent., I, d. 2, a.1,
q.2. Thomas Aquinas will agree that there are only two possible modes of
emanation but will refer them to intellect and will rather than nature and will,
because intellect and will are mutually exclusive and nonconvertible
functions: see Aquinas, Summa theol., I, q. 27, art. 2, 3.
84 Fortman, Triune God, p. 214.
85 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.6.
86 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.6.
87 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.6; cf. Bonaventure, I Sent, dist. 31.2, art.
1, and Hayes, Hidden Center, p. 58.
88 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.6.
89 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iv.6.
90 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iv.2.
91 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.v.1.
92 Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.v.4.
93 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 31, art. 2. On Aquinas’ doctrine of the
Trinity, see Fortman, Triune God, pp. 204–210; Robert L. Richard, The
Problem of an Apologetical Perspective in the trinitarian Theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Gregorian University, 1963); Horst Seidl, “The
Concept of Person in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in The Thomist, 51 (1987), pp.
435–460; Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992), pp. 185–206.
94 Aquinas, I Sent., dist. 2, art. 1, 4, in St. Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts,
selected and trans., with notes by Thomas Gilby (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth
Press, 1982), § 380 (hereinafter cited as Gilby).
95 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 32, art. 1, ad 2 (cited from Gilby, §79); cf.
the comments of Davies, Thought of Thomas Aquinas, pp. 188–191.
96 Aquinas, In Boetius De trinitate, I.4
97 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 32, art. 1, ad 1.
98 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, qq. 27, 28, 29, 30, 32.
99 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 27, a. 3, ad 1.
100 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 27, a. 3.
101 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 32, art. 1, ad 2
102 Aquinas, Summa theol., 1a, q. 27, a. 5, ad 3; cf. Aquinas, Compendium,
I.56.
103Aquinas, Contra errores graecorum, I, as cited in Gilby, § 98; cf. Summa
theologiae, Ia, q. 33, a. 1.
104 Aquinas, Contra errores graecorum, I, as cited in Gilby, § 98.
105 Aquinas, Contra errores graecorum, I, as cited in Gilby, § 98.
106Fortman, Triune God, p. 208, citing Aquinas De potentia., ix.4; cf. Horst
Seidl, “The Concept of Person in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in The Thomist, 51
(1987), pp. 435–460.
107 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 29, a. 3, ad 1.
108Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the
Trinity,” in The Thomist, 50/3 (July 1986), pp. 342–343.
109See the discussion of medieval doctrine of simplicity in PRRD, III, 1.2
(A.3, B.4).
110 See Aquinas, Summa theol., I, q. 3, a. 7; cf. PRRD, III, 1.2 (B.4), and cf.
ibid., 4.3, B–D.
111 Aquinas, Summa theol., I, q. 28, a. 3: Plantinga, “Gregory of Nyssa and
the Social Analogy,” cites only article 2.
112 Aquinas, Summa theol., I, q. 28, a. 3, corpus & ad 2; Note that the point
again closely parallels Alexander of Hales, Summa theol., pars I, inq. I, tract.
1, q. 3, cap. 2. What is at stake here is the levels of distinction that can be
predicated of the Godhead: there can be no real or substantial distinction
between the essence and the persons, given that this would make the persons
substantially different from the divine substance. There can be a real but
relational, not substantial, distinction between the persons, given that
although the persons are substantially identical, there is a genuine opposition
of relationality. This represents a higher level of distinction between persons
than between attributes, given that the attributes are properties of the essence
that belong equally to each of the persons and that the attributes do not stand
in relational opposition to one another, as would be the case if God were both
powerful and not powerful, good and not good.
113See F. Vernet, “Lyon, Concile de,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,
IX, cols. 1379ff.
114 The Profession of Faith of Michael Paleologus, in Denzinger-
Schönmetzer, §851–853.
115Constitution on the Holy Trinity and the Catholic Faith, in Denzinger-
Schönmetzer, §850; Neuner and Dupuis, §321.
116Constitution on the Holy Trinity and the Catholic Faith, in Denzinger-
Schönmetzer, §850; Neuner and Dupuis, §321.
117 See: Hester Goodenough Gelber, “Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of
Values in Scholastic Thought, 1300–1335” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, 1974).
118 Michel, “Trinité,” cols. 1750–1751.
119
Durandus, In Sent., I, d. 33, q. 1, n. 33; cf. Michel, “Relations divines,” in
DTC, XII, col. 2146.
120
Durandus, In Sent., III, d. 1, q. 2, n. 7; cf. Michel, “Relations divines,” in
DTC, XII, cols. 2153–2154.
121 Minges, Scoti doctrina philosophica et theologica, II, pp. 203, 209.
122 Minges, Scoti doctrina philosophica et theologica, II, pp. 201–203.
123 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 41, a. 3, ad 3.
124 Minges, Scoti doctrina philosophica et theologica, II, pp. 207–208, 211.
125 Minges, Scoti doctrina philosophica et theologica, II, pp. 210–211.
126 Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, I, d. 23, n. 4; cf. Minges, Scoti doctrina
philosophica et theologica, II, pp. 222–223.
127 Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, I, d.5, q.1, n.4; as cited in Minges, Scoti doctrina
philosophica et theologica, II, p. 223. On the various kinds of distinction and
their significance, see the discussions in PRRD, III, 4.3 (C–D.1); and below,
3.2 (B).
128 Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, I, d.26, n.8; as cited in Minges, Scoti doctrina
philosophica et theologica, II, p. 225; cf. Petrus Chrysologus Botte, “Ioannis
duns Scoti doctrina de constitutivo formali personae Patris,” in De Doctrina
Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, III, pp. 85–104.
129 Vignaux, “Nominalisme,” in DTC, XI, col. 777.
130 Cf. Amann, “Occam, Guillaume de; V. L’Église et la Doctrine d’Occam,”
in DTC, XI, col. 892.
131Maieru, “À propos de la doctrine de la supposition en théologie trinitaire
au XIVe siècle,” pp. 227–228.
132 Fortman, Triune God, pp. 223–224, citing Ockham, Summa logicae.
133 Vignaux, “Nominalisme,” in DTC, XI, col. 778–779.
134Cf. Alfonso Maieru, “Logique et théologie trinitaire: Pierre D’Ailly,” in
Preuve et raisons, ed. Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984), pp.
253–268.
135 Thus, e.g., Gabriel Adrianyi, “Pelbart von Temesvar (ca. 1435–1504) und
seine trinitarischen Predigtvorlagen,” in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott,
ed. M. Boehnke and H. Heinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985), pp. 276–
284.
136J. Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1959).
137 Gill, Council of Florence, pp. 229–231.
138Decree for the Greeks, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1302; Neuner and
Dupuis, §324.
139Decree for the Greeks, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1300; Neuner and
Dupuis, §322.
140Decree for the Greeks, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1301; Neuner and
Dupuis, §323.
141Decree for the Greeks, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1301; Neuner and
Dupuis, §323; cf. Fortman, Triune God, p. 225.
142Decree for the Jacobites, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1330; Neuner and
Dupuis, §325.
143Decree for the Jacobites, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1330; Neuner and
Dupuis, §325.
144Cf. Anselm, On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, i (pp. 86–88); Aquinas,
Summa contra gentiles, IV.xiv.15.
145Decree for the Jacobites, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1331; Neuner and
Dupuis, §326.
146 Decree for the Jacobites, in Denzinger-Schönmetzer, §1331; Neuner and
Dupuis, §326; cf. Paul Henry, “On Some Implications of the ‘Ex Patre
Filioque tamquam ab uno Principio,’ ” in The Eastern Churches Quarterly,
Supplement 19 (1948), pp. 19–20.
 2
The Doctrine of the Trinity from the Sixteenth to the
Early Eighteenth Century
2.1 Scripture and Traditional Trinitarian Language in the Era of the
Reformation
A. The Reformers from the Time of Luther to the Mid-Sixteenth
Century, ca. 1520–1565
1. Prologue: the problem of the history of the doctrine of the Trinity in
Reformation and post-Reformation Reformed thought. The history of the
doctrine of the Trinity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is, from one
perspective, little more than the history of the defense of traditional orthodox
formulations against a variety of resurgent patristic heresies—indeed, this is
the perspective taken by most of the works dealing with the problems
confronting trinitarian doctrinal formulation between the Reformation and the
Enlightenment and written contemporaneously with the debates, notably, the
histories by Maimbourg and Berriman,1 the heresiological works by writers
like Hoornbeek, Cheynell, and Edwards,2 and the historical sections of
various eighteenth-century theological systems, like those of Stackhouse and
Knapp.3 The point can easily be made that the orthodoxy of the era, insofar as
it rested overtly on the patristic definitions and never advanced speculatively
even as far as the conclusions of the medieval doctors, did not represent a
development of doctrine.
If, however, one looks to the question of the extent and manner in which
the theologians of the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy received and
used the materials of the tradition, the ways in which they dealt with the
problems of antitrinitarian heresies, and the patterns of stress and strain on
both language and exegesis caused by the philosophical and critical changes
that took place in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then a
rather different picture emerges. We can distinguish between an early
Reformation phase, extending as far as 1535 or 1540, during which the
Reformers were hesitant to use traditional trinitarian language in normative
confessional statements and compendia of basic doctrines, given their
assumption of the subordinate status of tradition, and a later stage, beginning
around 1540, during which the rise of antitrinitarian teachings demanded
response from the Reformers and the usefulness of traditional dogmatic
language became increasingly evident. Characteristic of this second phase of
development is a renewed emphasis on the usefulness of the patristic
language in the defense of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity against various
heretics and an increased emphasis on the development of an exegetically
based trinitarianism.
The Protestant view of Scripture also caused a series of difficulties for
dogmatics or doctrinal theology in the sixteenth century, particularly in
relation to the Reformation and post-Reformation critique of tradition and the
gradual shift in hermeneutics from the more typological forms of precritical
exegesis to an emphasis on the literal sense of the text, construed in an
increasingly historical and critical way—difficulties that were not
immediately obvious to all of the parties involved in theological debate or that
at least did not become pressing problems at the very outset of the
Reformation. The doctrine of the Trinity is a case in point. The magisterial
Reformers were orthodox in their trinitarian formulations, even though, at the
outset of the Reformation, they frequently expressed a sense of the limitation
of the traditional trinitarian vocabulary. Still, the Reformers placed particular
emphasis on the triune identity of God as the ultimate truth of God known
only in and through the Christian revelation; and they were concerned, as the
sixteenth-century debate progressed, over the character and right use of the
traditional language of substance and person against the various antitrinitarian
thinkers of the day—specifically, over the question of whether the language
of patristic orthodoxy, not taken directly from the text of Scripture, could in
fact be an accurate representation of the biblical message.
The early orthodox development of Reformed trinitarianism assumes the
appropriation of patristic norms in confessional documents and is
characterized by a flowering of large-scale theological treatments of doctrines
like Trinity and the Person of Christ. Not only did the theologians of the later
sixteenth and early seventeenth century recognize the usefulness of the
traditional language and definition, they also felt the need, already identifiable
in such Reformation era documents as Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto, to insist on
the catholicity of the Reformation and, as a result, in their dogmatic works to
evidence the Protestant reliance on the tradition. Early orthodoxy, as
evidenced in works like Zanchi’s De tribus Elohim and Polanus’ Syntagma
theologiae,4 drew on ancient materials in even more depth and detail than had
the Reformers. A characteristic of the early orthodox discussion of the
doctrine of the Trinity is the various theologians’ consistent reference to the
terminology of the early church in detailed discussions of the doctrine. It is
also fairly clear that the early orthodox reception of scholastic method
together with the early orthodox critical appropriation of the Christian
Aristotelianism of the older dogmatic tradition provided a methodological and
philosophical context within which traditional trinitarian language well served
the needs of orthodoxy in the face of continuing pressure from the
antitrinitarian arguments of Socinus and other critics of patristic dogmas.
Protestant orthodox adherence to traditional categories, both doctrinal and
philosophical, came under increasing strain during the era of high orthodoxy,
given the changes in philosophical language that characterize the second half
of the seventeenth century. Whereas the early orthodox writers could assume
a relatively stable usage of terms like “substance,” “essence,” “person,” and
“subsistence,” their high orthodox successors had to contend with new
rationalist philosophies that embodied radically altered assumptions
concerning substance, causality, and individual existence—and, in addition,
they had to contend with an increasingly rationalistic antitrinitarianism that
drew on or at least profited from these altered assumptions and could, far
more convincingly than the antitrinitarianism of preceding generations, argue
the impossibility of three persons or subsistences having the same essence.
The trinitarian controversies of high orthodoxy, therefore, take on a rather
different tone than those of the Reformation and the early orthodox era,
particularly to the extent that the language and conceptual framework of
Christian Aristotelianism was no longer universally accepted, even among the
orthodox writers.
The problem of antitrinitarian exegesis was, certainly, the most overtly
intense of the issues faced by the Reformers and their successors, given the
Protestant emphasis on the priority of the biblical norm. For the various
antitrinitarians consistently rejected tradition in the name of their own
exegesis of Scripture. In addition, in the seventeenth century, there was a
partial coincidence, given the textual problems of such texts as 1 John 5:7 and
1 Timothy 3:16, between the Socinian position and the views of various text-
critical scholars. The orthodox found themselves in the very difficult position
of arguing a traditional view of the Trinity against an antitrinitarian exegesis
that appeared, in a few instances, to represent the results of text criticism and,
in a few other instances, to represent a literal exegesis of text over against an
older allegorism or typological reading—at the same time that, in many of its
readings, it appeared to be a contorted and rationalizing attempt to undermine
not only the traditional but also the basic literal sense of the text. This latter
characteristic of Socinian exegesis cut in two directions: on the one hand, it
could be presented, as was typical of the Socinian argumentation, as on a par
with the text-critical results used in the Socinian reading of other passages,
giving warrant to the antitrinitarian reading at least by association; on the
other hand, it could be seen as an excessive result of the newer hermeneutical
approaches, creating an otherwise unwarranted suspicion of certain kinds of
textual criticism on the part of the orthodox. In either case, the orthodox task
of building the primary justification of the doctrine of the Trinity on exegesis
was made more difficult.
 There were, therefore, three basic issues to follow in the discussion of the
trinitarian thought of the Reformers and the Reformed orthodox—namely, the
careful use of a well-defined patristic vocabulary, increasingly tuned to the
particular needs and issues of Reformed thought, the intense battle over the
exegetical ground of the doctrine in both testaments in view of the biblicistic
assault on the doctrine from Socinians and other antitrinitarians, and the
struggle to find a suitable set of philosophical categories for the understanding
and explanation of the doctrinal result, given the alteration or at least the
fluidity of the conception of substance. At the heart of these lay the exegetical
issue, given the Reformation emphasis on the priority of Scripture over all
other norms of doctrine and alteration of patterns of interpretation away from
the patristic and medieval patterns that had initially yielded the doctrine of the
Trinity and given it a vocabulary consistent with traditional philosophical
usage.
2. The doctrine of the Trinity in the thought of the earliest Reformers.
The early Reformers proposed no variation in the received trinitarian
orthodoxy except in relation to the more speculative elements of the medieval
scholastic doctrine. Luther’s basic expressions of the doctrine, as found in the
two catechisms, simply reiterate the normative doctrine in its most basic form,
without any technical terms or elaboration. Luther clearly upheld the
traditional symbols, the Apostles’ Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan
formula, the Athanasian Creed, and the Te Deum.5 In his comments on these
creedal forms Luther notes that “belief that the three Persons are one God
takes nothing whatever away from the single true Godhead” and that “we
have indications in Scripture that there are three persons in the divine
substance.” Luther was also quite adamant that the entire Scripture, in both
Old and New Testaments, spoke this truth and that the use of the plural
Elohim to indicate the one God identified God as “single in substance” but
distinguished into “three Persons.”6 In his more detailed comments,
moreover, Luther reflects the medieval development of trinitarian language
that affirms the primacy of the Father in the order of persons while at the
same time insisting on the fulness of the divine essence or nature in each of
the persons, the simplicity of the divine essence, and the common work of the
persons ad extra—at the same time that he avoided abstruse questions
concerning the kind of distinction that obtained between persons and disputed
the validity of Lombard’s argument that the essence is neither begotten nor
proceeded, but only the persons.7 The latter point is one on which Calvin
would differ sharply with Luther, albeit without mentioning Luther’s name.8
Melanchthon was perhaps the most radical of the Reformers in his early
willingness to exclude not only traditionary language but also older dogmas
from the essentials of the faith. In the 1521 edition of his Loci communes,
Melanchthon could polemicize against the introduction of non-biblical
categories such as trinitarian vocabulary into the standard or basic loci of
Christian theology, while the Schwabach Articles introduce the standard
creedal vocabulary of the essence and persons of the Godhead, and the
Augsburg Confession offers explicit reference to “the decree of the Nicene
Synod,” which is “without doubt to be believed.”9 As subsequent editions of
the Loci communes demonstrate, Melanchthon quickly recognized the need to
offer an explicit and fully developed doctrines of the Trinity, grounded in
examination of texts in both Testaments.
This concern over the biblical grounds of theological language, coupled
with an assumption concerning the clarity and simplicity of the biblical Word,
is characteristic of Bucer’s work, including the Tetrapolitan Confession:
unlike many of the major Reformed confessions, particularly the great
national confessions of the mid-sixteenth century like the Belgic and Gallican
Confessions and the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Tetrapolitan offers no
acknowledgment of the Apostles’ Creed or the great ecumenical creeds of the
early church. Bucer had complained, before the writing of the Tetrapolitan
Confession, against the use of traditional trinitarian vocabulary in Schwabach
Articles. His reaction to this internal Protestant quandary is significant,
particularly granting his training in scholastic theology. Bucer recognized that
the language, although not strictly biblical, was certainly a valid means for
stating and codifying the biblical revelation concerning the identity of God.
He commented that he found no fault in the Schwabach Articles and
“personally could accept all these articles as they stand” and would even be
willing to defend the very words and phrases of the document.
Nonetheless, when Bucer commented on the Schwabach Articles, he found
certain points lacking “clarity” and “simplicity” and felt that some revision
was required if Protestants were to be expected to act with a unity of
theological purpose.10 “Doctor Luther,” writes Bucer,
thinks that the word “trinitas” should not be used; others object to the
word “persona” because the ordinary man—to the offense of the Jews
and all others who have not yet joined our religion—uses the word
“person” in the ordinary sense and speaks of the three Persons as
though they were three separate beings (an error which is also
suggested by the word “trinity”). It is also known how many quarrels
have arisen over the “processionibus” and “notionibus” which are not
mentioned in the Scriptures at all. Now it would be proper to speak of
such a high and incomprehensible mystery in the clearest, that is, most
scriptural manner; this would be the best way of preventing godless
quarrels.11
Bucer’s comments concerning the term persona are particularly significant,
granting both the long history of medieval discussion and debate over the
theological definition of the term,12 and the concern of the Reformers to hold
as closely as possible to the language of Scripture and to shun the niceties of
scholastic distinctions. After Schwabach, and perhaps in the light of his own
caveat, Bucer appears to have concluded that his goal of “scriptural” clarity
could only be achieved through a limited use of the traditional terminology of
Trinity and Christology: he avoided reference to the early creeds as norms—
while at the same time introducing into the Tetrapolitan Confession the Latin
terms “substance,” “nature,” “person,” and “trinity,” but not noting any of the
more technical terms, like “filiation,” “procession,” and “circumincession” or
the Greek terms “hypostasis,” and “ousia.” This limited and somewhat
critical use of the traditional trinitarian language carried over into the thought
of the second generation Reformers and became a staple of Reformed
orthodoxy—causing, among other variations and alterations in the doctrinal
discussion, an increasingly exegetical approach to the doctrine of the Trinity,
at least in Protestant circles.
3. Reappropriation of traditionary norms in the doctrinal treatises of
the Reformers. From the third or fourth decade of the sixteenth century
onward, there was a development in Protestant approaches to the doctrine of
the Trinity—on the one hand, the Reformers became more and more willing
to accept the traditional terminology as normative, while, on the other, they
distanced themselves from the increasingly loud, albeit never very large,
chorus of antitrinitarianism. These two sides of the development were, of
course, related.
If Melanchthon must be cited as the Reformer most opposed to the
inclusion of traditional dogmas and churchly dogmatic developments in a
basic statement of Christian belief, he is also the Reformer who must be
identified as most sensitive to the ecclesial need to state doctrines in a more
elaborate form. The successive editions of his Loci communes well illustrate
the point: if Melanchthon declaimed against the inclusion of the doctrine of
the Trinity in 1521, by 1543 he had recognized the importance of a well-
developed trinitarianism to the statement of Christian doctrine—in part due to
the presence of heathens at the boundaries of Christendom, in part due to the
presence of heretics within.13
The early Reformation wrestling with the problem of trinitarian vocabulary
and the consequent worry over the interpretive question of using such
language to explain the biblical text is evident also in the development of and
debate over Calvin’s trinitarian formulae. In the first edition of the Institutes,
Calvin had attempted to deal, on the one hand, with the demands of the
biblical language and, on the other, with the complaints of more radical
Protestants of the day, who objected on biblical grounds to the use of the
language of Nicene orthodoxy:
Persons who are not contentious or stubborn see the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit to be one God. For the Father is God; the Son is God; and
the Spirit is God: and there is only one God … three are named, three
described, three distinguished. One therefore, and three: one God, one
essence … Not three gods, not three essences. To signify both, the
ancient orthodox fathers said that there was one ousia, three
hypostaseis, that is, one substance, three subsistences in one
substance.14
“The heretics bark,” Calvin comments,
that ousia, hypostaseis, essence, persons, are names invented by
human decision, nowhere read or seen in the Scriptures. But since they
cannot shake our conviction that three are spoken of, who are one God,
what sort of squeamishness is it to disapprove of words that explain
nothing else than what is attested and sealed by Scripture … what
prevents us from explaining in clearer words those matters in Scripture
which perplex and hinder our understanding, yet which faithfully serve
the truth of Scripture itself, and are made use of sparingly and modestly
and not at the wrong occasion?15
Calvin further justified the language by arguing in return that no one would
claim that all theological or religious “discourses” ought to be “patched
together out of the fabric of Scripture”: it is, after all, legitimate to use words
not found in Scripture to explain the meaning of Scripture.16
Calvin’s trinitarian thinking developed quickly and polemically in the face
of a series of accusations leveled against his doctrine. Calvin’s initial
reluctance to use the traditional trinitarian language with regularity, coupled
with his insistence on the doctrine of divine aseity, had brought early
accusations of heresy from two pastors of Neuchâtel, Chapponeau and
Courtois. These two churchmen accused Calvin of denying the Trinity—
largely on the ground of Calvin’s seeming hesitancy concerning the orthodox
terminology in the 1536 Institutes and the entire absence of the traditional
terminology from the Confession of Faith issued by Calvin and Farel in 1537,
as it was from Farel’s Sommaire of 1525.17 Calvin’s friend and ally Viret
faced similar charges for his confession of 1534, in which there was no use of
the traditional terminology of Trinity, substance, and person.18 Calvin added
to the controversy by refusing to subscribe to the Athanasian Creed at the
Synod of Lausanne, held later in 1537—at which point he and the other
Genevan pastors were accused of Arianism and Sabellianism by Pierre
Caroli.19
In response to his accusers, Calvin did confess the “distinction of persons
in the one God” as the “orthodox consensus of the church” in the prefatory
epistle to the 1537 and 1538 catechisms, but significantly, he did not add the
language to the text of either the catechism or the confession.20 Relatively
complete statement, albeit still brief by most standards, appears finally in the
creedal section of Calvin’s 1539 Institutes. The underlying motive for full and
correct statement of the doctrine was, therefore, on Calvin’s part, more a
clarification and defense of orthodoxy and of the orthodoxy of the Genevan
Reformation than it was intense theological interest in the traditional
terminology. His hesitance regarding the normative use of traditionary
terminology—even the language of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds—
echoed that of Luther and Melanchthon.21 In addition, Calvin’s approach to
the traditional language evidences his clear sense of literary genre: such
language as not necessary in basic confessions of faith, but it was required in
more advanced works, particularly those designed to train clergy. As in the
parallel case of Melanchthon’s theology, Calvin’s published writings, notably
the Institutes, evidence a fairly rapid expansion of trinitarian discussion under
the impact of the polemic to the point that the patristic doctrine, which had
initially received minimal treatment but had certainly never been denied,
became a stated foundation of the faith.22
Calvin could argue quite pointedly that, beyond the doctrine of the unity or
oneness of divine essence,
God also designates himself by another special mark to distinguish
himself more precisely from idols. For he so proclaims himself the sole
God as to offer himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons.
Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about
in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God. Again, lest anyone
imagine that God is threefold, or think that God’s simple essence be
torn into three persons, we must here seek a short and easy definition to
free us from all error.23
The point is, therefore, very clearly made that the dogmatic definition of
Trinity concurs with and, in some sense, completes and clarifies the doctrine
of the divine essence and attributes. Contrary to the statement occasionally
made about the doctrine of God in the early Reformation, Calvin cannot be
seen as moving away from a classical doctrine of divine simplicity or from a
strong emphasis on the problem of the divine essence and attributes—his
purpose is rather to place the language of Trinity properly into the context of
the doctrine of God as the final identification of God in the Christian
revelation. For Calvin, it is quite enough to note the distinction of Father, Son,
and Spirit and to recognize that the distinction, albeit necessary to the right
understanding of God, “is not a distinction of essence, which it is unlawful to
make manifold.” The divine essence must always be regarded as “simple and
undivided.”24 The classical terms, “person” and “substance,” give definition
to the truth that “three are spoken of, each of which is entirely God, yet …
there is not more than one God.”25
Once having acknowledged the usefulness and rectitude of the traditional
trinitarian language, Calvin also expressed a strong antagonism to any further
speculation. Nor did he simply argue that the scholastic attempts to develop
analogical language for understanding the internal divine emanations were
illegitimate; he went so far as to criticize severely Augustine’s speculative
discussion:
Augustine, beyond all others, speculates with excessive refinement, for
the purpose of fabricating a Trinity in man. For in laying hold of the
three faculties enumerated by Aristotle, the intellect, the memory, and
the will, he afterwards out of one Trinity derives many.26
Somewhat less pointedly, Calvin wrote in his Institutes,
I really do not know whether it is expedient to borrow comparisons
from human affairs to express the force of this distinction [among the
divine persons]. Men of old were indeed accustomed sometimes to do
so, but at the same time they confessed that the analogies they advanced
were quite inadequate. Thus it is that I shrink from all rashness here:
lest if anything should by inopportunely expressed, it may give
occasion either of calumny to the malicious, or of delusion to the
ignorant.27
Such reservations would remain characteristic of Reformed theology
throughout the era of orthodoxy.
Calvin nonetheless insists on a biblical expression of the distinction among
the divine persons and goes on to frame it in a manner that reflects some of
concerns behind the rejected patristic metaphors and even some of the logic
underlying medieval scholastic discussion of the character of the divine
begetting and proceeding: “to the Father is attributed the beginning of the
activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom,
counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned
the power and the efficacy of that activity.”28 The disputative structure of
Calvin’s trinitarian discussion, moreover, which moves from an initial
definition of the subject, through an extended discussion of the divinity of the
Son, to the arguments for the divinity of the Spirit before concluding his
definition and examining the various heresies both ancient and modern,29
points toward the structure of later orthodox argument.
Similar cautions are noted by Bullinger,30 Musculus,31 Hyperius,32 and
Vermigli,33 who were considerably less concerned than Calvin with the
problem that the terms of traditional trinitarianism did not arise directly out of
Scripture and considerably more ready to present a traditionary doctrine.
Thus, after having defined the various means by which we come to a genuine
knowledge of God, Bullinger addressed at length the “doctrine of the prophets
and apostles, which teaches that to be the true knowledge of God, that
acknowledges God to be one in essence and three in persons.”34 Scripture
abounds in testimonies to the unity of the divine essence, which Bullinger
cites at length,35 and it also consistently testifies to the Trinity, in both the Old
and the New Testament.36 Bullinger is concerned, in particular, to draw these
latter trinitarian testimonies into relation to the issue of the divine threeness
and moreover to state the issue at a moderately technical level, using the
scholastic terminology of distinction without division or separation:
Now I suppose these divine testimonies are enough, and do sufficiently
prove that God in substance is one, of essence incomprehensible,
eternal, and spiritual. But under that one essence of the Godhead, the
holy scripture shows us a distinction of the Father, of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. Now note here, that I call it a distinction, not a division
or a separation. For we adore and worship no more Gods but one: so yet
that we do neither confound, nor yet deny or take away, the three
subsistences or persons of the divine essence, nor the properties of the
same.37
Hyperius provides an even more traditional pattern of argument, providing
a positive, albeit brief, discussion of patristic metaphors for the doctrine of the
Trinity, drawn from Basil the Great and Augustine.38 Musculus also manifests
a highly traditionary pattern of exposition and, at least in this place, echoes
the original shape of Lombard’s Sentences in the virtual identification of the
doctrine of God with the doctrine of the Trinity. Also of interest, in the flow
of Musculus’ argument is his adoption of the scholastic order of discussion
—An, Quid, and Qualis sit?—with the understanding of the doctrine of the
Trinity as corresponding to the question of “what sort?” or qualis.39
Also of considerable significance as an indication of the direction taken by
the Protestant doctrine of the Trinity during the era of the Reformation is
Hutchinson’s The Image of God, or laie mans booke, published in London in
1550.40 In his dedicatory epistle to Archbishop Cranmer, Hutchinson explains
that the first part of the title, “Image of God,” is a direct reference to Christ,
“the lively image of the divine majesty.” The treatise is intended as an
instruction in the truth of God, given that “this is eternal life, to know thee
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, to be the true God” (Jn. 17:3). He
subjoins the phrase “the laie mans booke,” inasmuch as “images were wont to
be named Libri Laicorum, ‘the books of the laity,’ ” and this image or book is
intended for their edification.41 Rather than present either a book simply
about Christ as image of God or a broad primer of all things having to do with
Christ and salvation, Hutchinson’s focus is on the true doctrine concerning
God, specifically, the God revealed in Christ, namely, the Trinity. The volume
serves as an introduction to the doctrine of God, in which an initial series of
nineteen chapters deal with God and his attributes and then a set of eleven
subsequent chapters present, in order, a definition of “person,” an argument
“that there be three [divine] persons,” and a conclusion teaching “that all three
are but one God.” The whole work is characterized by consistent and massive
biblical referencing of the doctrine and by recourse to patristic definition and
terminology concerning the Trinity. Equally of interest is Hutchinson’s
assumption, clarified in detail throughout the book, that all of the major
heresies are rooted in misunderstandings of the doctrine of the Trinity—
whether Arianism, Manicheeism, transubstantiation, the mass, “popish”
priesthood, the Libertines, anthropomorphism, Origenistic apocatastasis,
Epicureanism, astrology, or a host of others. In contrast to works from the
earliest stages of the Reformation, this is a major elaboration of doctrine, as
well as a significant testimony to Protestant appropriation of the tradition of
the church.
The documents and the dogmatic queries of the Reformation, therefore,
stand in a direct and positive relationship to the later development of a
traditional or classical trinitarian theory by the Protestant orthodoxy. In fact,
the statements of Bullinger concerning the difference between attributes
relating to the divine operations ad extra and the personal characteristics of
the Father, Son, and Spirit clearly presume a larger systematic context, such
as would later be developed by the early orthodox writers. Still, the
Reformers’ doctrine of the Trinity is characterized more by a fundamental
biblicism than by an overt recourse to traditionary norms. Despite the genuine
connections between the Reformers’ views on the Trinity and the earlier
Western tradition of trinitarian theology, their primary point of reference in
arguing the doctrine of the Trinity was Scripture, not tradition. Thus, the
various elements of trinitarian theology that the Reformers drew from the
tradition were nevertheless justified by them, not on the basis of the tradition,
but on the basis of the exegesis of Scripture. This approach is, of course,
precisely what ought to be expected, given the biblical norm argued by the
Reformers—but it still marks a shift in the argumentation of doctrine, given
the Reformers’ heightened sensibility concerning the potential disagreement
between the tradition (or aspect of it) and the text of Scripture.
 The character of early Reformation trinitarianism, then, as defined by the
Reformers sense of the subordination of tradition to the scriptural norm,
creates difficulties for the analysis of the doctrine and its development—
difficulties that become all the more apparent when studies of the issue take
on a dogmatic form. Thus, the hesitance of the Reformers concerning
doctrines and terms that were not explicitly announced in the pages of
Scripture speaks against the attempt of recent writers like Torrance and Butin
to understand Trinity as the central motif of Calvin’s theology.42 Similarly, the
vagueness and the hesitance of the Reformers concerning the adoption (or
adaptation) of patristic language as absolutely normative, coupled with their
stated abhorrence for the kind of speculation implied by patristic trinitarian
metaphors, renders nearly impossible any attempt to classify their trinitarian
theology as either largely Latin or largely Greek in its patristic models. Of
course, on this latter point, two opposing viewpoints are found in the
literature. The classic essay by Warfield places Calvin very much in the line
of Western, Latin trinitarianism, particularly in the line of Hilary and
Augustine.43 Others have voiced the thesis that Calvin’s teaching had a
modalistic tendency.44 More recently, Torrance has attempted to identify
Calvin as holding a fundamentally Greek patristic perspective, in the line of
Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers, notably, Gregory of Nazianzen. The
connection, however, is tenuous; Torrance even tries to argue that Calvin’s
use of Augustine draws on places in Augustine’s De trinitate where the
influence of Nazianzen must be hypothesized.45 The difficulty here is in
ascertaining Calvin’s underlying patristic preference (if indeed there is one to
be found) from a pattern of citation intended, most probably, to cite
authorities for the sake of establishing orthodoxy rather than for the sake of
identifying or defining a distinct trajectory of thought within the broad
spectrum of orthodox statement. If, moreover, the explicit use of a particular
father or set of fathers indicates any particular preference in patristic thought,
Calvin is certainly Western, Latin, and Augustinian in his perspective. The
parallel between Augustine and Nazianzen, rather than indicating a hidden
reliance on the latter, documents a greater continuity between Augustine and
the Greek fathers than some writers, including Torrance, would like to allow.
There is a similar problem in the identification of the medieval
background: the Reformers, as explicitly indicated by Bucer in his comments
on the Schmalkald Articles, tended to reject the language of medieval
theologians like Aquinas and Bonaventure, who attempted to clarify the
doctrine of the Trinity by adding terms like processiones and notiones.
Neither the terminological developments nor the speculative elaboration of
Augustinian metaphors characteristic of the medieval doctors’ approach to the
doctrine of the Trinity carried over into the Reformation, and although the
scholastic terminology reappears among the Reformed orthodox, very little of
the medieval speculation ever made its way into the Protestant orthodox
doctrine. It is, therefore, virtually impossible to identify medieval antecedents
to Protestant trinitarianism: Torrance’s attempts to associate Calvin’s work
with the thought of Richard of St. Victor, merely on the basis of Calvin’s
apparently non-Boethian understanding of persona, are particularly
vacuous:46 Calvin does not, after all, use Richard’s (or Scotus’) definition of
person as “divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia,” nor does his text
offer any explicit or implicit indications of an attempt to read the Victorine
model through the thought of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Cyril of
Alexandria. It is a far more likely explanation of Calvin’s usage that it
represents a combination of his association of persona with the preferred
Augustinian term, subsistentia, and his encounter with late medieval and early
sixteenth-century theological language, of unspecified origin, in which the
medieval debates over the implications of persona were reflected.
It is highly probable that the immediate source of Calvin’s definition of
persona (first found in the 1559 Institutes) was the Loci communes of
Melanchthon, where (from 1543 onward) the traditional Latin definition of
“person” as “substantia individua” is noted and then immediately qualified
with the explanation of the “hypostases” or persons as “three genuine
subsistences.”47 Calvin’s own definition of person as “a subsistence in God’s
essence, which while related to the others, is distinguished by an
incommunicable quality,” avoids the difficulty of the Boethian definition and
consistently uses essentia rather than substantia to indicate the oneness of
God. Calvin also declares categorically “by the term ‘subsistence’ we would
understand something difference from ‘essence.’ ” Calvin goes on to argue
that each of the subsistences is “related to the others” but “distinguished by a
special quality.”48 Calvin reinforces this latter point in a subsequent comment
on the relationships between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit:
in each hypostasis, the whole divine nature is understood, with this
qualification—that to each belongs his own peculiar quality … And
ecclesiastical writers do not concede that the one is separated from the
other by any difference of essence. By these appellations which set
forth the distinction (says Augustine) is signified their mutual
relationships and not the very substance by which they are one.49
Calvin thus, arguably, reflects much of the distinctively Western or Latin
development of the doctrine of the Trinity and in fact offers a definition that is
as much or more like the variant definitions provided by Aquinas than any of
the Victorine or Scotist definitions.50
There is also, embedded in Calvin’s definition, a strong reflection of the
dictum, characteristic of Western trinitarianism since Anselm, that the
distinctions between the persons are relations of opposition—as also the
assumption, emphasized by Lombard and ensconced in the formula of the
Fourth Lateran Council, that divine essence is unoriginated and unbegotten.51
What is more, given Calvin’s adherence to the filioque and his impassioned
defense of the aseity of the Son, his trinitarian thought, like that of the
Reformed tradition in general, follows out a fully Western or Latin paradigm,
in the trajectory of the decisions of the several medieval councils and the later
medieval writers, but lacking any interest in the more speculative elements of
the medieval development. The hypothesis of Torrance that Victorine and
Scotistic conceptions were mediated to Calvin by John Maior and then
revised or modified by specifically Greek trinitarian notions is indefensible—
as is the contention that there are modalistic tendencies in Calvin’s thought.
B. Antitrinitarianism in the Era of the Reformation
1. The sources and context of sixteenth-century antitrinitarianism.
Over against the magisterial Reformers and the Roman Catholic theologians
of the day, theologians like Michael Servetus, Giovanni Blandrata, Valentine
Gentile, and Laelius and Faustus Socinus examined the text of Scripture in a
strictly linguistic and non-traditionary exegesis and found no doctrine of the
Trinity: on the one hand, in the name of a return to the original message of
Jesus they and their followers leveled a biblical critique against the traditional
churchly doctrine of the one divine essence and three divine persons. On the
other hand, looking at the writings of the earliest church fathers, they could
argue no clear doctrine of the Trinity. Servetus in particular argued the case
for a pre-Nicene, non-trinitarian view—with the result that his theology and
that of other antitrinitarians looked like nothing so much as a reprise of
ancient heresies. It is difficult to identify the sources or grounds for these
views. On the one hand, they can be explained as a coalescence of the
humanistic philological techniques of the Renaissance with the rather typical
Renaissance humanistic polemic against the scholastic tradition, here
extended to the more intricate dogmatic developments of the late patristic
period—and with a radical, a-traditional version of the Renaissance ad fontes
and the Reformers’ sola Scriptura. That scholarly advocate of the
antitrinitarians, E. M. Wilbur, could claim that their theology was merely a
natural outgrowth of early Reformation thought and, in fact, evidence that the
antitrinitarians, unlike the Reformers, followed out the implications of their
reformist position to its logical conclusions.52 Certainly, the antitrinitarian
position is characterized by a radical biblicism coupled with a renunciation of
traditional Christian and philosophical understandings of substance, person,
subsistence, and so forth, as unbiblical accretions. Yet, it is also hardly the
case that the antitrinitarian stress on the utter and absolute unity of God to the
exclusion of personal distinctions in the divine essence was utterly a-
philosophical and simply a return to the basic biblical message, as one recent
writer has proposed.53
2. The theology of Michael Servetus. Although not the earliest of the
sixteenth-century antitrinitarians, and not the inspiration of what could be
called a “movement,” Michael Servetus was certainly the most significant
early exponent of the teaching.54 A Spaniard by birth, Servetus was highly
educated, competent in the classical and biblical languages, and well versed in
the writings of the fathers. He studied law at Toulouse. His chief work, the
Christianismi restitutio, in which he offered a biblical and patristic exposition
of his teaching, presented for the sake, as his title indicates, of restoring
Christianity to its pristine form, together with a series of letters arguing his
views against Calvin.55 Servetus’ Restitutio, a vast work of over seven
hundred pages, proposed the entire recasting of Christianity—the doctrines of
God, Christ, justification, regeneration, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The
first portion, a discourse and dialogues against the Trinity, in seven books,
echoes and expands an earlier work of Servetus.56
The roots of Servetus’ doctrine of God are not only in his revisionist
reading of Scripture and the fathers, but also and perhaps preeminently in his
nearly pantheistic philosophy, drawn in part from a reading of the Hermetica
—which, it should be noted, represent an ante-Nicene form of classical
religious philosophy, akin in many ways to middle Platonism, although in the
sixteenth century, typically understood as contemporary with Moses.57
Servetus describes God as incomprehensible, radically transcendent,
imparting existence to all things by communicating his essence to them and
containing them in himself. There is a divine trinity of sorts in Servetus’
theology—the Father alone is truly God, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God,
given his supernatural origin, and the Holy Spirit is the power of God directed
toward human beings. Servetus denies the appropriateness of the terms
Trinity, person, essence, and hypostasis in describing the Godhead and speaks
only of a threefold manifestation of God as Father, God in Christ, and God as
the power of the Spirit. Beyond the fundamental resemblance between
Servetus’ view of the Trinity and the doctrines soon to be developed by the
Socinians, there is a highly significant appropriation of patristic and classical
materials implied in these teachings: Servetus, like later Socinians, held to an
erosion of biblical truth during the patristic period and gravitated toward the
pre-Nicene fathers as a source for his doctrine of God. Servetus marks,
therefore, not only the beginnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century
dogmatic battle over the Trinity but also the beginnings of the debate over the
assessment and appropriation of the early tradition.
 3. The “Italian antitrinitarians.” A group of Italian antitrinitarians,
Blandrata, Gentile, and Alciati, all took some inspiration from the humanist
and jurist Matteo Gribaldi as well as from Servetus.58 The nature of the
connection between Gribaldi and the other “Italian antitrinitarians” is unclear:
Gribaldi had been in contact with the Italian refugee congregation in Geneva
and had expressed his views on the unity of God to members of the
congregation, and he was certainly well known to Blandrata, Gentile, and
Alciati, whose antitrinitarian speculations followed on his own within a few
years. After serving on the law faculty at Padua from 1548 to 1555, Gribaldi
left Italy under suspicion of Protestant sympathies for his estate at Farges in
the canton of Bern and, eventually, a post at the University of Tübingen. As
early as 1553, while living on his Swiss lands, Gribaldi had expressed
sympathy with Servetus’ theology. On a visit to Geneva in 1554, he was
suspected of antitrinitarian views. The Genevan consistory questioned him
but, because his estate was in Bernese territory, merely criticized his views
and proceeded no further. He appears to have held that the Father alone was
self-existent God, while the Son and the Spirit subsist as distinct persons by
reason of their derivation from the Father. Gribaldi concluded, moreover, that
each of these “persons” was divine and therefore God, with the Father as the
head or primary deity of the three. The unity of God was maintained by
Gribaldi in a generic sense, given the unity of power and wisdom in all three
persons.59
Gianpaulo Alciati, Giorgio Blandrata, and Giovanni Valentin Gentile were
all educated Italians who fled to Geneva to avoid persecution, Alciati arriving
in 1552, the others in 1556. By 1558, the Consistory was troubled enough by
their views that it demanded that all members of the Italian congregation sign
a confession of faith. Alciati is reported to have identified the persons of the
Trinity as “three devils … worse than all the idols of the papacy.”60 With the
norm of the confession in place, Alciati, Blandrata, and Gentile were
condemned and forced to leave Geneva. Calvin published a short treatise
responding specifically to Blandrata’s questions.61
Gentile, whose trial had been longer and more complex than Alciati’s or
Blandrata’s, criticized the trinitarianism of Calvin’s Institutes in 1559—
Calvin replied with his Impietas Valentini Gentilis detecta, in which Calvin
not only responded to Gentile’s theology but also recounted the debates of
1558. Gentile’s doctrine was very much like that of Gribaldi—asserting the
self-existence of the Father alone and the derivation of the other persons from
the Father. Gentile also believed that any assertion of the ultimate sharing of a
single essence by the persons led to the conclusion that there was a divine
quaternity, namely, the ultimate essence itself, distinct from the persons, and
then the three persons partaking of the essence, a view that he ascribed to
Calvin. Gentile’s doctrine of God, by contrast, argues three distinct persons,
each identified as divine, but differing in order, rank, and individual
properties.62 Thus, the Father alone is autotheos (God of himself),
agennetos (unbegotten), and the ultimate essentiator or giver of being. The
Son is deuterotheos and heterotheos (a second or other God), not of
himself but of the Father, and therefore not essentiator but essentiatus, made
or created. The Spirit, similarly, is distinct and derived—so that there is not
“one God” (unus Deus) in the numerical sense, but rather a generic oneness of
nature, given the source of the Son and Spirit in the work of the Father.
Gentile could write of a single divine nature or essence, a single generic
Godhead, but his sense of the term did not allow any conception of an
indivisible divine substance held in common by the three persons.63 Gentile
was executed for heresy in Bern in 1566.
By far the greater development of sixteenth-century antitrinitarianism took
place in Poland, where the influence of the Italian antitrinitarians was most
strongly felt. Blandrata, Alciati, and Gentile all journeyed there, as did
Laelius Socinus and Bernardino Ochino. In addition, Petrus Gonesius (ca.
1530–ca. 1571), author of the first significant antitrinitarian confession to be
presented in Poland, is thought to have been associated with Gribaldi in
Padua.64 Gonesius confessed the authority of Scripture as the norm for
Christian doctrine and insisted that Scripture taught the oneness of God. This
God, who is one in essence and person, created the world by means of his
Son, who was created by him out of his essence for the sake of his creative
work. The Son is, therefore, distinct from and subordinate to the Father and
not, in the strictest sense, God. As Wilbur points out, Gonesius’ doctrine is not
exactly Arian, inasmuch as he does not teach the creation of the Son out of
nothing.65
The theology of the two Socini, Laelio and Fausto, needs also to be
considered here.66 Laelio Socinus, an Italian refugee and correspondent with
Bullinger and Calvin, may have been connected with radical theologies in
Italy prior to his flight to Switzerland and was, in 1555, while in Zürich,
accused of false teaching. He then wrote a confession of faith, on the basis of
which he was exonerated.67 He subsequently visited Poland with the written
recommendations of Calvin and Bullinger to various supporters of reform,
including Johannes à Lasco. His connection with the antitrinitarian movement
and identification as its founder rests with the work of his nephew, Fausto
Socinus, who inherited his uncle’s unpublished manuscripts and eventually
provided the foundational theology for the Polish Unitarians of the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Like the other Italian antitrinitarians and like Servetus, Fausto Socinus
insisted on the radical oneness of God—one in essence and in person—and
viewed the doctrine of the Trinity as without any biblical foundation. Still, as
several recent scholars have pointed out, Socinus distanced himself and his
views enough from the teachings of Servetus and of Gentile, and the notion of
a simple linear historical development from Servetus, to Alciati, Blandrata,
and Gentile, to Lelio Socinus, and then to Fausto Socinus, is an
oversimplification of the history—just as there is, early on in the
antitrinitarian movement of the sixteenth century, reason to distinguish
between the quasi-trithesitic views of Gentile and the radically monotheistic
adoptionism of the Socini.68
Perhaps because of very specified acceptance of the Boethian definition of
person, Socinus held that inasmuch as a person is “an indivisible, intelligent
essence,” unity of essence implies singleness of person.69 So also did he
identify the Holy Spirit as the power of God and not as a distinct person.
Where he offered a teaching that was original was in his Christology: he
understood Jesus Christ as fully human but miraculously conceived by the
divine Spirit. This conception is the ground of our identification of Christ as
the Son of God. Socinus steps beyond the other early antitrinitarians in
denying even a subordinate deity to Christ, offering a radically consistent
monotheism of God the Father.
Despite differences in doctrinal result, a common thread runs through the
various antitrinitarian arguments. The theology of these antitrinitarians must
not be confused, as it frequently has been in the past, with an incipient
rationalism. Virtually all of the sixteenth century antitrinitarians were
biblicists. They lacked not a reverence for the text as the norm of doctrine but
rather a traditionary norm for the regulation of their exegesis. They believed
quite strongly that they had simply taken the next logical step beyond that of
the Reformers: they accepted the Reformers’ attack in the name of sola
Scriptura on the doctrinal accretions characteristic of medieval theology and
turned the new, non-allegorical, textual, and literal exegesis on a wider array
of traditional dogmas, most notably, the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of
the Trinity. Like the early Reformers, moreover, they were reluctant to use
non-biblical language in the formulation of normative doctrine—although
they invariably radicalized the point: whereas Calvin, for example, readily
admitted that the trinitarian vocabulary was not strictly biblical while at the
same time recognizing its usefulness against heresy, the antitrinitarian writers,
from Servetus and Gentile to the Socini, were convinced that the non-biblical
language was to be utterly excluded and, by way of extension of the point,
that several of the early heresies were closer to the truth than Niceno-
Constantinopolitan orthodoxy.
 C. In Debate with the Antitrinitarians: Further Developments in
Reformation-Era Trinitarianism
The fully developed use of traditional trinitarian language in the work of
second- generation Reformers like Calvin, Musculus, Vermigli, and Bullinger
must also be understood against the background of the problem of
antitrinitarianism. So also, in the development of Reformed theology, the
model of development found in Melanchthon’s Loci communes remains
highly significant—Melanchthon’s work was certainly of considerable
influence on the expansion of Calvin’s Institutes, and his theology was nearly
as important to Reformed thought as was the work of any of the second-
generation codifiers. Melanchthon’s Loci communes of 1543 was one of the
first Protestant systematic works to incorporate polemic against the
antitrinitarians, specifically Servetus, into its definition and justification of the
term “person.”
One highly significant element of Calvin’s trinitarian theology, enunciated
primarily in polemic, whether early on defending his own orthodoxy against
Caroli, Chapponeau, and Courtois or, in one of his last controversies,
defending the trinitarianism of the Reformation against Blandrata and Gentile,
is his understanding of the generation or origination of the Son from the
Father in terms solely of the intra-trinitarian relation of begottenness and not
in terms either of time or of being.70 Calvin first argued this view in response
to the critique of two pastors of Neufchâtel, Chaponneau and Courtois. From
Calvin’s perspective, these two pastors had not only misunderstood his
teaching, they had also denied a fundamental premise of trinitarian orthodoxy,
the self-existence or aseity of the Son.71
In response, Calvin interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul, “in Him
dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead” (Col. 1:19), to mean that “Christ, insofar
as he is God” partakes fully of the divine essence.72 Calvin certainly allowed
some subordination in the order of the persons—but in order only, as
indicated by the generation of the Son from the Father and by the procession
of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, but he adamantly denied any
subordination of divinity or essence. There is, after all, only one divinity, one
divine essence, that belongs indivisibly and fully to each of the persons.73 The
only conclusion capable of being drawn from this doctrine is the self-
existence, or aseity, of Christ insofar as he is divine—and the consequent
distinction between speech about the Son as person and speech about the Son
as God:
Truly this is where these donkeys are deceived: since they do not
consider that the name of the Son is spoken of the person, and therefore
is included in the predicament of relation, which relation has no place
 where we are speaking simply (simpliciter) of the divinity of Christ.74
This perspective on trinitarian language, identified by Calvin’s use of such
terms as autotheos and aseitas with reference to the divinity of Christ,
remained a prominent feature of Calvin’s trinitarianism as he continued to
debate the issue of orthodoxy with Caroli.75
Calvin repeated his point with emphasis in a debate of 1558, in response to
the anti-trinitarianism of Blandrata and Gentile. Gentile insisted that the
begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit amounted to a radical
subordination of the second and third persons, with the result that the Father
alone is truly God: “The Father is a unique essence … the Father is the only
true God; it is he who gives his essence to the other persons of the
Divinity.”76 Against Calvin’s conception of full essential equality of the
persons, Gentile argued that any such sharing of essence amounted to such an
abstraction of essence from person that it implied a quaternity rather than a
Trinity. Of course, Gentile was not defending a conception of divine Trinity:
rather he argued that the unity of God and the distinction of the Persons could
be maintained only by rejecting the notion of “Trinity” as unbiblical and by
recognizing the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father.77 Calvin’s
response not only affirmed the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, it also
argued against any essential subordination of persons by allowing that the
Father is the source only of the emanation of persons. Thus, “as to his
essence, the Son is absque principio, while considered as to his person, he
finds his principium in the Father.”78 This insistence on the begetting and
procession of personal relations but not of divine essence became
characteristic of a Calvinian line of Reformed orthodoxy, maintained in the
next generation by Beza.79
D. The Trinitarian Orthodoxy of the Reformed Confessions
Given the orthodox and catholic intentions of the Reformation and the
intense debate with antitrinitarians, the first codifiers of Reformation theology
were drawn, at the confessional level, to the traditional trinitarian vocabulary
and, in order to manifest the place and relation of trinitarian language in the
doctrine of God, to fairly traditional language of the divine essence as well.
Even more important to the issue of doctrinal formulation, moreover, is the
assertion, repeated in the doctrinal writings of the individual authors and in
the confessional documents as well, that these dogmatic concepts are
eminently biblical in their meaning and intention despite the non-biblical
origins of the language of person and substance or essence.
The Belgic Confession, like the Gallican, offers a full statement of the
doctrine of the Trinity, under the rubric, “God Is One in Essence, yet
Distinguished in Three Persons”:
 According to this truth and this Word of God, we believe in one only
God who is one single essence, in which are three persons, really
(réellement), and in truth (à la vérité), and eternally distinguished
(éternellement distinguées) according to their incommunicable
properties; namely, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The
Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things visible and
invisible. The Son is the word, wisdom, and image of the Father. The
Holy Spirit is the eternal power and might, proceeding from the Father
and the Son. Nevertheless, God is not by this distinction divided into
three, since the Holy Scriptures teach us that the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Spirit each has his person [rendered] distinct by their
properties; but in such manner, always, that these three persons are but
one only God. It is therefore evident that the Father is not the Son, nor
the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor
the Son. Nevertheless, these persons thus distinct are not divided, nor
confounded, nor mingled; for the Father has not assumed the flesh, nor
has the Holy Spirit, but the Son only. The Father has never been without
His Son, or without His Holy Spirit. For They are all three co-eternal
and co-essential. There is neither first nor last; for they are all three one,
in truth, in power, in goodness, and in mercy.80
From a purely doctrinal perspective, the Second Helvetic Confession offers a
similar basic statement of the doctrine, following a brief declaration of
oneness of the divine essence and the unity of God over against the
“multitude of gods” worshiped by the pagans. Bullinger did not hesitate
present the standard language of patristic and medieval orthodoxy—namely
distinction of persons without the division of the essence and the coequality,
consubstantiality, and coeternity of the persons. As Staedke remarked, there
are reminiscences of the Athanasian Creed in the Second Helvetic Confession
and there is a clear declaration of the filioque.81
Not content with the basic doctrinal statement, the Belgic Confession
continues its trinitarian exposition with an entire chapter devoted to the
biblical foundations of the doctrine, another concerning the divinity of Christ,
and yet another on the divinity of the Holy Spirit.82 The biblical
argumentation of the Belgic Confession is significant not only for its presence
as a characteristic Reformation-era biblicism, indicating the unwillingness of
the Reformers to confess as their fundamental faith a doctrine evidenced only
by way of the probabilities of the tradition, but also given the confession’s
assumption that the doctrine of the Trinity belongs to both Testaments, having
been given in a “somewhat obscure” form in the Old Testament and very
plainly in the New Testament. The exposition is not lengthy: only two Old
Testament passages are cited, namely, Genesis 1:26–27, with its divine plural,
“Let us make man,” and Genesis 3:22, “Behold the man has become as one of
us.” Of the numerous New Testament passages cited, it is worth noting that
the Belgic Confession offers 1 John 5:7, the Johannine Comma, assuming its
legitimacy as a canonical text.83 Debate over the antiquity of the doctrine is
not as evident in the Second Helvetic Confession, which does not cite Old
Testament trinitarian texts—or, incidentally, the Johannine Comma.84
2.2 Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Era
of Protestant Orthodoxy
A. The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity in Early
Orthodoxy, 1565–1640
1. Positive doctrinal developments in the early orthodox era. As noted
at the beginning of this chapter, the early orthodox development of the
doctrine of the Trinity evidenced several major features: the ongoing and, in
fact, intensifying debate with antitrinitarians; an increasingly exegetical
approach to the doctrine; a pronounced identification of the doctrine of the
Trinity as a “necessary” or “fundamental doctrine,” both in relation to
confessional or dogmatic concerns and in relation to piety; a broadened sense
of the significance of the doctrine as a basis for understanding the divine
operation in other doctrinal topics (notably predestination, the ordo salutis,
and covenant); and the large-scale reception of the patristic tradition. The
early orthodox development of the doctrine of the Trinity, then, continued the
tendency of the Reformers to adopt and appropriate traditionary, particularly
patristic materials and definitions in the exposition and defense of orthodoxy,
in conjunction, however, with the reformulation of doctrine in a highly
exegetical manner. In the compendia of the era, by such writers as Polanus,
Ames, Bucanus, Ainsworth, Wollebius, and Alsted,85 the definitions and
structure of the doctrine are outlined and the exegetical background indicated
by masses of references to the text of Scripture. In the larger dogmatic works,
by writers like Zanchi, Ursinus,86 and Polanus, both exegesis and patristic
referencing are evident, given in full, in the body of the argument.
The Reformed orthodox, following out the lines of argument already
established for Protestantism by the Reformers, adopted the basic positions of
the Western trinitarian tradition, positions that assume the essential equality of
the divine persons, double procession, and the removal of all subordination
except in the order of the procession and operation of the persons. This
fundamentally Augustinian model, ensconced in the medieval conciliar
tradition and refined by the medieval doctors, can be found in short form in
the thought of Calvin and his contemporaries and, much expanded and
developed in the seventeenth-century debates, in the writings of the Reformed
orthodox.
 If the polemic against the various sixteenth-century antitrinitarians rested
primarily on contention for traditional exegesis of trinitarian passages, the
positive development of the doctrine, reaching perhaps its most elaborate
formulation in Zanchi’s De tribus Elohim,87 brought with it also a return to
the theological tradition, to the fathers and to the medieval theologians—and
even to the classical philosophers—in the interest of establishing a correct use
of the terminology of trinitarian doctrine in the exposition of its scriptural
foundations. The work is significant for its exegetical (as opposed to more
speculative) emphasis and for the fact that Zanchi placed it first in order in the
model for his massive (and, unfortunately, never fulfilled system), before his
discussion of the essence and attributes in the De natura Dei. This point is,
unfortunately, ignored by most of the writers who have examined Zanchi’s
thought.88 The work is divided into two parts, the former consisting in eight
books, the latter in five. The exegetical emphasis immediately appears in the
way in which Zanchi sets forth first his premisses concerning the examination
of the doctrine of God and his basic trinitarian definitions—deriving the unity
of God from Jehovah, the Trinity from Elohim, presenting a series of texts
from both Testaments that indicate the plurality of the Godhead as Father,
Son, and Spirit, and then passing on in the six chapters of book one to
traditionary trinitarian language. The remainder of the first part is
fundamentally exegetical, reviewing the biblical basis for understanding the
divinity and personhood of the Son (books II–VI) and the Spirit (book VII),
followed by a concluding positive doctrine of the Trinity (book VIII). The
second part of the treatise engages in debate with the ancient contemporary
heretics and the antitrinitarians.
The large-scale development of the doctrine, with detailed recourse to
Scripture and to the church fathers is also characteristic of Polanus’ Syntagma
theologiae, which (of the full-scale systematic works of the era) certainly
contains the most extensive presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Polanus’ work is notable for its grasp of the older tradition, both patristic and
medieval. In its doctrine of the Trinity, the Syntagma draws most heavily on
the church fathers, but it also evidences knowledge of the medieval discussion
of the Trinity, notably the discussion of the concept of person.89
Bartholomaus Keckermann, one of the eminent philosophers and
architectural framers of Reformed doctrine in the early orthodox period,90
even went so far as to develop on Augustinian and Thomist lines a series of
rational metaphors or arguments for the triune nature of God in his theological
system. His approach was to draw on the view of God as exercising intellect
and will and to associate Word with intellect and Spirit with will, particularly
the will as exercised in an act of love. Few of the thinkers of the era of
orthodox chose to follow Keckermann—with only the semi-Cartesian
federalist Burman and the profoundly Cartesian Poiret building their doctrines
of the Trinity around a rational argument for divine threeness.91 Still,
Keckermann’s reappropriation of the Augustinian and Thomistic lines of
argument on the nature of the intra-trinitarian relations had a broader impact
than merely the question of the rationality or provability of divine threeness—
the language of the divine as mind considering itself as object and of the
divine love as generating and contemplating its own image became fairly
common among the later Reformed, and extended meditations on the divine
love and on the identity of the Son as the object of God’s love appear in
Owen’s trinitarian theology.92
Even though the larger number of theologians chose not to develop the
more speculative trinitarian metaphors or rational arguments for the Trinity,
the patristic materials became of increasing interest and were more closely
scrutinized as sources of dogma and of dogmatic problems than they had been
in the sixteenth century. This development, moreover, proceeded in two
directions: it was both a characteristic of the Reformed assumption of
catholicity as evidenced in the study and appropriation of patristic materials
and a sign of engagement with the patristic (especially the pre-Nicene)
argumentation of the various antitrinitarians of the age.93 Thus, patristic
meditation on the eternal Word, or Logos, in relation to the Father and,
specifically, to the notion of an inward generation of begetting, becomes a
major feature of the Reformed orthodox trinitarian definition, as found, for
example in Polanus and the Synopsis purioris theologiae.94
In addition, following out the line of classical linguistic scholarship begun
in the Renaissance and Reformation, the orthodox could not simply return to
the uncritical use of patristic and scholastic terminology—rather the
incorporation of terms like ousia, hypostasis, and prosopon in the Greek and
essentia, subsistentia, and persona in Latin demanded careful etymological
and philosophical analysis of the exact meaning of the words. This
etymological interest remained typical of theologians of the seventeenth
century like Polanus and Gomarus,95 and in the era of high orthodoxy, Leigh,
Marckius and Rijssen.96 Beyond the etymological issues, early orthodox
thinkers like Polanus also drew heavily on patristic sources in order to define
and nuance the doctrinal discussion of the generation of the Son and the
Spirit.97
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the doctrine of aseitas of the
second person of the Trinity was an initial point of contention in the Arminian
controversy,98 and it remained a significant point of difference between
Reformed and Remonstrant theology as the Remonstrants became
increasingly subordinationistic in their views of the Trinity. The brief
controversy over the Son’s aseity between Arminius and his colleague Lucas
Trelcatius, Jr., often forgotten because of the larger predestinarian debate of
the era, registers how much in continuity the early orthodox writers were with
the Reformers, specifically with Calvin, in their trinitarian thinking—just as it
also measures the variety of formulation that could arise in the context of an
early orthodoxy examining not only its immediate roots in the theology of the
Reformers but also its more remote roots in the older tradition of doctrine,
including the patristic period.
Arminius defined his trinitarian views more after the model of Greek
patristic theology than after the Latin, Augustinian model. Arminius
understands the vita Dei, or life of God, as the “very nature and form” of the
divine essence and argues that God has life in himself, that is, has aseitas or is
autotheos. The begetting of the Son by the Father should be understood as a
generation of the Son’s person by communication of essence and that,
therefore, the attribute of self-existence, or aseitas, belonged to the Father
exclusively. The Son, as derived, cannot be autotheos, except in the limited
sense that the Son is “one who truly and in himself” is God—any claim that
the Son is “one who is God from himself” is unacceptable.99 A doctrine that
makes such a claim implies three deities.100 This charge, leveled against
Trelcatius, resembles the complaint leveled by Gentilis against Calvin’s
doctrine of the aseity of the Son considered as to essence—and it also
resembles Joachim of Flora’s attack on Lombard. Trelcatius, by way of
contrast, had affirmed that the begetting of the Son was a begetting or
generation of sonship, so that the Son had his sonship from the Father—but
he also had argued that the divine essence, belonging to the three persons in
common, was itself ingenerate, and that the Son, considered essentially as
God has the attribute of aseity as well.101
The controversy that ensued in the faculty at Leiden not only offered a
prelude to the even more bitter debate that would arise shortly over grace and
predestination, it also offered a prelude to the century-long debate between
Reformed and Remonstrant over the doctrine of the Trinity. The question
underlying the assignment of aseitas to the Father and the Son or, on the other
side of the debate, strictly to the Father, was the question of precisely what is
generated in the generation or begetting of the Son. In the traditional Western
model, as argued by Peter Lombard and ratified in the Fourth Lateran
Council, the divine essence neither generates nor is generated; rather the
person of the Father generates the person of the Son—with the result that the
Son, considered as to his sonship, is generated, but considered as to his
essence is not. Or, to put the point another way, there is no essential difference
between the Father and the Son, the only difference being the relation of
opposition, namely, the begottenness of the Son. The Son, therefore, has all of
the attributes of the divine essence, including aseity. The early orthodox
Reformed maintained, in accord with Trelcatius, and with considerable
nuance, this characteristic feature of Calvin’s trinitarianism, the identification
of the second person of the Trinity, considered as to essence, as authotheos
or having the attribute of aseitas. Their doctrinal formulations of the point,
moreover, evidence the early orthodox effort to reappropriate the teaching of
the fathers in some depth as a basis for orthodoxy, despite their insistence that
the patristic materials were not normative in any final sense.102
As in the case of other doctrinal loci, the locus de Deo and, specifically,
the portion of the locus dealing with trinitarian issues was argued in a highly
exegetical fashion by the early orthodox writers. Their use of exegetical
argumentation, moreover, was grounded either in their own work as linguists
and commentators or in the expanding exegetical tradition of Reformed
Protestantism. Thus, among the British writers of the era, Ainsworth (already
noted as the author of a short compendium of doctrine) worked primarily as
an exegete.103 Perkins, most significant for his doctrinal and casuistical
treatises, was also a substantial commentator.104 A similar pattern is
identifiable in the work of Franciscus Junius, who was known in his time both
as a major linguist and exegete and as an eminent teacher of doctrinal
theology.105 As far as general method is concerned, the early orthodox
commentators evidence, as did the Reformers before them, a sense of the
relationship between the sacra doctrina, or sacred teaching, in Scripture and
the task of doctrinal formulation that consistently asked the exegetical
question of the precise, literal meaning of the text, but did so in the context of
the broader scope of books in Scripture and of the Bible as a whole and of a
concept of the analogy of faith. The result of this approach to the text, given
the patterns of Renaissance logic and rhetoric in which the Reformed writers
of the era were trained, led to the elicitation of topics or loci in which
theological themes were elaborated based on exegetical collations from
various places in Scripture.106 With specific reference to the doctrine of the
Trinity, the Reformed orthodox consistently raised broader doctrinal questions
in their exegesis of texts that had, in the Christian tradition, become the basis
for trinitarian formulation. Their exegesis manifests differences in the reading
of Old Testament texts, differences relating to use of typological and
figurative readings and to relative willingness to apply the broader results of
the analogy of faith and the sense of the scope of the whole of Scripture,
differences in the ways in which linguistic tools (including the use of Judaica)
were drawn into the work of interpretation, and, therefore, as well, differences
in the trinitarian understanding of the Old Testament, a matter of major debate
during the seventeenth century. So also, in their approach to various New
Testament texts, varied patterns of textual and exegetical analysis yielded
differing readings and, in particular, varied approached to disputed texts.107
2. Early orthodoxy and the antitrinitarians. The attack leveled upon the
doctrine of the Trinity, beginning with Servetus, Blandrata, and Gentile and
developed further in the thought of the two Socini, brought increased
dogmatic attention to the doctrine of the Trinity in the latter half of the
sixteenth century. The character of the orthodox Protestant formulation,
therefore, altered in this new context: the trinitarian theology of codifiers of
the Reformation, like Calvin, Musculus, Bullinger, Vermigli, and Hyperius,
had been formulated in the context of the beginnings of antitrinitarian debate
and the need for Protestants to argue their own catholicity—but the trinitarian
views of the next generations, the founders of early orthodoxy, was
formulated not merely over against the views of individual antitrinitarians but
also over against the rise of antitrinitarian churches or movements in Poland
and Hungary and against a major alteration of God-language that, in the
seventeenth century, generated a host of speculative rejections not only of the
traditional conception of God but also of the doctrine of the traditional forms
of the Trinity.
Shortly after the middle of the century, as the Reformed church in Hungary
was beginning to establish itself confessionally over against the Lutherans,
debate began within the Reformed church over the doctrine of the Trinity. In
1561, a formal disputation on the doctrine was held between Peter Mélius, the
Reformed pastor of Debreczen, and a minister, Thomas Aran, who had
written an antitrinitarian book and had preached overtly against the Trinity in
Debreczen. Suspicions were also raised concerning the views of one of the
Hungarian church’s own luminaries, Francis Dávid, who had engaged in
theological conversations with Giovanni Blandrata, already known as an
antitrinitarian. Peter Caroli, already known for his doubts about Calvin’s
orthodoxy, began to doubt Dávid’s trinitarianism and, in 1565, found his
suspicions confirmed in a brief debate.108 In February of the following year,
at the Synod of Torda, the trinitarian conflict came to the fore, beginning a
debate that lasted until the Unitarians were granted ecclesial status by the
Hungarian crown in 1571. Wilbur indicates that it was in the course of these
debates that the term “Unitarian” arose as a name for the antitrinitarians,
spreading to Polish Socinian and to English antitrinitarians only in the latter
half of the seventeenth century, by way of Hungarian students in the
Netherlands.109
The primary points in debate were the contentions of Blandrata and Dávid
that the doctrines of the Trinity and of the deity of Christ were not biblical—
as had been argued in a theological treatise written largely by Blandrata and
Dávid.110 In their view, Christ ought to be reverenced and even “adored” as
the “Lord of all” who gives access to God the Father and who bestows the
blessings of salvation on those who are his, yet not understood as essentially
divine. Only the Father is the “Most High” God.111 This approach still stood
in close relation to that of the Polish antitrinitarians, who followed Socinus’
teaching that, in view of the New Testament witness in such texts as Matthew
28:18, John 5:22–23, and Philippians 2:9–11, we may pray to Christ—
although it is only commanded that we pray to God the Father. In the fully
developed Unitarianism of his 1582 Defensio, Dávid argued, against
Blandrata and Socinus, that only God the Father is to be invoked or addressed
in prayer, as Christ himself taught, because Christ is not divine.112
Whereas the treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity in the earlier
Reformed systems—including Calvin’s Institutes—was comparatively brief,
highly scriptural, and not overly burdened by the technical aspect of
theologizing, theologians of the age of orthodoxy found it increasingly
necessary to develop trinitarian arguments both polemically and positively.
On the polemical side, response to the Hungarian antitrinitarians contributed
considerably to the development of detailed Protestant discussion: from the
Lutheran camp, Georg Maior responded to Dávid and then sharply answered
Dávid’s rejoinder.113 Among the Reformed, both a vast positive development
of the doctrine and polemical rejoinder combined in Zanchi’s De tribus
Elohim. The heated trinitarian debates of the seventeenth century focused on
the continuing presence of the Socinian or antitrinitarian side of the
Reformation—in a far more organized, articulate, and exegetically
sophisticated form than was found in the sixteenth century—and on the
related and rising tide of trinitarian subordinationism associated with the
continental Arminians, Episcopius, and Curcellaeus and with Arian, semi-
Arian, and Socinian theologians in England.
B. Socinianism in the Seventeenth Century
1. Continental developments. The impact of the Italian antitrinitarians on
the Protestant churches in Poland was considerable. The decade following
1560 saw intense debate between the antitrinitarians and the Reformed which,
rather than stifling antitrinitarianism, led to a crystallization of the movement
as a distinct church.114 By the middle of the next decade, the Polish
antitrinitarians had their first major exposition of doctrine in Georg
Schomann’s catechism and confession. The work includes a declaration of the
oneness of God and of the humanity of Jesus Christ, whose sonship consists
in his subjection to God the Father in the work of salvation.115
The arrival of Fausto Socinus in Poland in 1580, after an unsuccessful
attempt to find a common ground between himself, Blandrata, and the
Hungarian antitrinitarians under the leadership of Francis Dávid, marks the
beginning of his formative influence on the theology of the Unitarian
movement. That debate concerned the propriety of invoking Christ’s name in
prayer and worship—a point that Dávid and his associate Christian Franken
denied and Socinus affirmed. Socinus, given his own umwillingness to claim
the essential divinity of the Son, was unable to convince the Hungarians to
include Christ’s name in invocation.116 In Poland, Socinus’ views were more
readily accepted, at least on christological issues. His relationship to the
Polish antitrinitarian church remains a conundrum, given that he rejected its
doctrine of adult baptism and was probably never admitted to full
communicant membership, but still served for more than two decades as one
of the church’s major theological advisors.117
During the era of relative peace and toleration under the rule of Sigismund
III and his immediate successor, Socinianism flourished in Poland, leading to
a large-scale development and systematization of doctrine. Socinus’
Christianae religionis institutio, left unfinished at the time of his death,
became the basis for the Racovian Catechism, written out by the leading
antitrinitarians of the next generation, Valentinus Smalcius, Hieronymus
Moscorovius, and Johannes Völkel and first published in 1605 (Polish) and
1609 (Latin). From the perspective of orthodox writers of the age, this
Socinian system was little more than a combination of elements from various
patristic heresies, specifically Sabellianism, Arianism, and the dynamic
monarchianism of Artemon.118 In any case, the basic permises of the Socinian
theology were an insistence that God is both essentially and personally one;
that Christ, the Son, is not “God over all”; that the Holy Spirit is a power or
divine influence, not a person; and that Christ had no existence before his
conception and birth.
The presence of this ongoing debate created a difficult situation for
nominally orthodox Protestant theologians who developed ideas at odds with
traditional perspectives, even when their intention was not to alter
fundamental doctrines. Thus, the appearance in 1645 of Calixtus’ treatise De
trinitate and in 1649 of his more elaborate De mysteria trinitatis, anex solius
V.T. libris possit demonstrare aroused a storm of protest, not only from his
Lutheran brethren,119 but from the Reformed as well. It was Calixtus’
contention that the assumption, held by the church since the time of Justin
Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, that the doctrine of the Trinity was enough
revealed in various verses in the Old Testament that the ancient Israelites had
some, albeit vague, understanding of it, was in error—and that the doctrine of
the Trinity could not be argued on the basis of the Old Testament alone.
Unfortunately for Calixtus, not only did his arguments undermine an
exegetical argument that had belonged to basic Lutheran theological
education since Melanchthon’s Loci communes and Chemnitz’s expansion of
it,120 his views were also echoed by the Socinians.121
The publication in 1656 of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum also marks
a significant point in the development of seventeenth-century
antitrinitarianism, for although many of the Socinian works had already
appeared in print separately, they were not universally accessible.122 The
appearance of the Bibliotheca in six folio volumes not only made the Socinian
materials available more broadly, it also exhibited the scope and skill of the
Socinian exegetes and theologians, placing together for the first time the most
substantial antitrinitarian theology of the era and its extensive exegetical
foundation. A major reversal of fortune for the Socinian movement also
occurred at this time—the new ruler of Poland, Casimir, was able to battle his
Cossack and Swedish adversaries to a stalemate and then to turn from war to
matters of religion. At the Diet of Warsaw in 1658, he decreed that all
antitrinitarians were either to recant their views or to leave Poland within
three years, leading to the dispersion of the Polish Unitarian churches
following 1660.
In striking parallel with the Socinian assault on trinitarian exegesis, the
Socinian and Arian writers of the seventeenth century applied an increasingly
historical and critical method of interpretation to the documents of the early
Christian tradition and argued with increasing cogency that the standard,
orthodox terminology of Nicea was not only opposed to the language of
Scripture but was also quite at odds with the theology of the pre-Nicene
church. The opening salvo in the late seventeenth-century debate and a major
inspiration for Bull’s treatise were the work of Christophoros Sandius, the
Nucleus historiae ecclesiasticae, exhibitus in historia Arianorum (1668)—
referred to by Bull as “poisonous”123—and the Irenicum irenicorum published
anonymously by Daniel Zwicker, or Zuicker, in 1658.124 These works,
together with the writings of earlier critics of traditional trinitarianism, had a
major impact on the thought of the Remonstrant theologians Episcopius and
Curcellaeus. Episcopius declared that the Nicene Creed and the subsequent
standards of patristic orthodoxy had been “precipitously framed” out of an
excited “party spirit.”125 Curcellaeus went so far as to recommend the
historiography of Zwicker’s Irenicum, noting that it contained “unshakeable
testimonies and arguments” to the effect that Nicaea had propounded a new
doctrine.126
2. Socinianism and antitrinitarianism in seventeenth-century Britain.
The English trinitarian controversy of the second half of the seventeenth
century was only partially rooted in the continental debate over Socinianism.
After two antitrinitarians, Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman, were
burned at the stake in 1612, charged with Arianism, the Latin Racovian
Catechism was ordered burned in London in 1614, and its publication in
England banned, there was little open advocacy of variant doctrines of the
Godhead in England until the beginning of the 1640s. Still, antitrinitarian
books published in the Netherlands and in Poland made their way to England
—in 1640, Archbishop Laud issued a series of Constitutions and Canons
Ecclesiastical, the fourth of which suppressed Socinianism, without, however,
specifying the actual doctrinal points at issue. Rather it “decrees that no
persons shall import, print, or disperse any of their books, on pain of
excommunication, and of being farther punished in the Star Chamber.”127
The sense of a Socinian menace, particularly as hidden under an appeal to
Scripture alone against tradition, was registered also in a series of works
written between 1637 and 1644 against Chillingworth’s Religion of
Protestants, the most elaborate being Francis Cheynell’s Rise, Growth, and
Danger of Socinianism (1643). The beginning of controversy over indigenous
Socinianism in England, however, awaited another event: it can be traced to
the work of John Biddle, an Oxford tutor who, in 1644, was accused of heresy
after having told his colleagues that his biblical studies had led him to deny
the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.128 Biddle has been called the father of
English Unitarianism and can certainly be credited with the introduction of a
positive statement of Socinian teaching into English theology, prior to the
arrival of exiled Polish Socinians in England after their expulsion from
Poland (1660)—although, at least according to the published testimony of his
followers, he had read only Scripture and had no knowledge of the writings of
the Socinians.129
In Biddle’s view, the Father alone is God: Biddle identified essence,
individuality, and person to the point that any distinction in number or person
demanded a distinction in essence. According to Biddle, removal the
difference in number yields not equality but identity—assertion of the
difference in number yields difference in essence. Inasmuch as two persons
are different in number, they must be, in Biddle’s logic, difference in essence.
In his “XII Arguments drawn out of the Scripture,” Biddle set himself to the
task of offering syllogistic arguments against the divinity of the Spirit: “He
that is distinguished from God is not God: The Holy Spirit is distinguished
from God: Ergo … He that hath a will distinct in number from that of God is
not God: The Holy Spirit hath a will distinct in number from that of God,
Ergo.”130 Biddle denied the divinity of Christ and of the Spirit but affirmed,
on the grounds of their distinct wills, their personal identity or subsistence—
arguing Christ to be an inspired human being and the Spirit to be an angel.131
This, he held, was the simple meaning of Scripture. It was the latter
assumption that caused both Cloppenburg and Owen to identify him with the
fourth-century heresy of Macedonianism or Pneumatomachianism.132 As
Owen pointed out, moreover, Biddle’s views on the Spirit distinguished him
from “his new masters the Socinians, who deny [the Spirit] his personality,
and leave him to be only the efficacy or energy of the power of God.”133 This
teaching, together with his christological heresy, led to his condemnation and
imprisonment by Parliament. His book was ordered burned.134
Biddle’s initial defense, XII arguments drawn out of the Scripture (1647),
and his Confession of Faith (1648) were immediately attacked.135 The first
response was an anonymous tract,136 followed rapidly by several learned
treatises, perhaps the most notable by Matthew Poole, the exegete.137 Biddle
briefly obtained release from prison, but was sentenced again on the basis of a
restatement of his views in his Catechism (1654).138 During the next decade,
Biddle’s arguments continued to be attacked in England and were also
addressed by several continental theologians, one of whom, Maresius, went so
far as to argue that England had become the new center of
antitrinitarianism.139 At about the same time, new editions of the Racovian
Catechism and several continental Socinian works—the latter probably
translated by Biddle—also saw the light of day in England, licensed by John
Milton to be published by Dugard, printer to the Council of State.140
Nor was Biddle the lone English antitrinitarian of his day or the only one
to raise questions about the legitimacy of the traditional trinitarian
vocabulary: Thomas Lushington,141 Paul Best, Thomas Webb, John Fry, John
Knowles, and John Goodwin were also accused of various trinitarian heresies
following 1640.142 Moreover, as the English controversy developed and
widened to include Arian, semi-Arian, and other non-Nicene options for
trinitarian formulation, it acquired dimensions not precisely paralleled in the
continental debate. To be sure, there was a strongly subordinationistic line of
trinitarian argumentation found among the continental Arminians, but
nowhere on the continent were Arian and semi-Arian views espoused as
normative theology by so many and so eminent a group of theologians. In
addition, nowhere on the continent were theologians so pressed to extremes of
formulation as to generate, within the church, so many accusations of
tritheism and Sabellianism.
John Goodwin certainly ought not to be grouped too quickly with the
antitrinitarians, for his polemic was not so much against the doctrine as
against the legitimacy of the civil authorities acting to punish antitrinitarians!
Goodwin’s point was that Scripture used neither the term “Trinity” not the
term “person”: Scripture indicates neither that God is one person nor that God
is three persons. In the absence of clear biblical grounds for the approval or
denial of a doctrinal point, Goodwin contended that there ought to be
toleration.143 Yet, protest on the basis of Scripture, against the terminology of
orthodoxy, was characteristic of the antitrinitarianism of the era: as Thomas
Edwards commented of Best,
that fearfull Blasphemer … hath been … excused … that he was not
guilty of blasphemy, that he denied only the tripersonality, not the
Trinity, Athanasius Trinity, not the Scripture Trinity, that he denies not
the operation of the Persons, but only the name of the Persons … The
questioning of the doctrine of the three Persons hath been excused, that
the Persons were Schoole notions, that came not into the Church till
some hundreds of yeers after Christ.144
These debates were echoed in the theology of John Milton, whose views
on tolerance echo precisely those of Goodwin, and whose trinitarian theology
has excited considerable controversy in the twentieth century. In recent
studies, the teaching of Milton’s De Doctrina Christiana has been described
both as an “orthodox” pre-Nicene subordinationist and as a “classic example
of Renaissance antitrinitarianism.”145 As examination of the sources clearly
indicates, Milton’s trinitarianism did not follow the recognized patterns of
orthodoxy in his own day—and although (for reasons that will appear
presently) it does not precisely fit into any one patristic heresy, Milton’s
doctrine of God shares fundamental premisses with ancient Arianism and, in
fact, can be seen to modify them in accord with philosophical currents of the
seventeenth century. Characteristic of Milton’s discussions of the Godhead is
his assumption of the radical oneness and ultimacy of God and his declaration
that Scripture alone must be the norm for discussion, to the exclusion of
traditionary creeds. Milton also drew the conclusion from his conception of
the unity and singularity of the divine essence that there could only be one
fully divine “person.”146 This identification of singularity of essence with
singularity of person was, of course, characteristic of the seventeenth-century
Socinian argument.147 Milton also consistently denied the traditional
trinitarian formulae and noted that “Trinity” was not a biblical term or
concept. He argued that the Son was begotten or made in time according to
the eternal will or decree of God, and that the incommunicable essence of the
Father alone possesses the divine attributes.148 Given Milton’s argument that
the Son is, in effect, an exalted creature, begotten or made of the Father
before all worlds, his theology is not in the strictest sense Socinian—rather as
various scholars have argued, it is Arian, including its further identification of
the essentially distinct and subordinate Son as “God.” There is, however, one
major exception to the generalization that this view is “Arian.” Milton’s
notion of a primary generic material substance that initially or eternally
belongs to God alone and out of which God makes all things (without,
however, imparting his essential attributes to creatures)149 is rather different
from the historical Arian assumption of a creation ex nihilo and its attendant
ontic divide between God and world, and belongs instead to divergent
trajectories of seventeenth century metaphysics, perhaps to the materialism of
Thomas Hobbes.150
It was, certainly, after 1660 that the spread of Socinianism did have its
greatest impact on England, as witnessed by the publication of Crell’s Two
Books … touching one God the Father in 1665.151 The “two books” of the
work derive from the structure of its argument: in the first book, Crell mounts
a scriptural refutation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the second he
argues that the doctrine cannot be sustained by reason but is in fact rationally
unsupportable: following out the view of the Racovian Catechism, Crell
insisted that “a person is in vain distinguished from his own essence,” with
the result that a distinction of person implies a distinction of essence.152 What
is notable here, beyond the attack on orthodoxy, is the shift in meaning of the
terms—and it is difficult to determine which term has shifted the most, given
that in traditional Christian Aristotelian philosophy, all individual human
persons have the same “essence.” Crell’s language, like Socinus’ and
Biddle’s, has strong affinities with nominalism and with the trinitarian
difficulties encountered by early medieval nominalism in the person of
Roscellin.
One attempt to create a reconciliation among British Protestants over
against the continued threat of “popery,” a treatise entitled The Naked Truth
and published anonymously in 1675 by Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford,
only served to identify the depth of the controversy. The treatise proposed
Protestant reconciliation on the basis of the Apostles’ Creed—a proposal not
unlike Calixtus’ concept of constituent articles of the faith derived from the
consensus of the first five centuries—and thereby to include even the Arians
and Socinians of the era in the Protestant consensus. Even the moderate
Gilbert Burnet refused to set aside the normative status of the Nicene Creed
and criticized the Remonstrants, Episcopius and Curcellaeus for doing so.153
C. The New Philosophies and the Problem of God-Language
The rise and development of Socinianism in the seventeenth century
cannot entirely account for the variant trinitarianisms of the age, including the
English debates of the 1640s and 1650s, the variant language and historical
perspectives of the Cambridge Platonists, and the doctrinal alternative
proposed by Milton. In addition to the spread of a rational and biblicistic
Socinian critique of traditional dogmatic language, the antitrinitarianism of
the era was also fueled by developments in philosophy that challenged either
the Christianized versions of Aristotelianism that had been the norm in
theological usage or the older Aristotelian models themselves. The new
philosophies of the seventeenth century tended to detach themselves from
traditional conceptions of essence, substance, and individuality and, in so
doing, critiques not only the older philosophy but also the theology that had
grown attached to it and had reached, during the course of centuries, a
linguistic concordat with traditional philosophical vocabulary.
Notable here is the alteration in meaning of such terms as “substance” and
“essence” that can be traced among the various philosophical schools of the
seventeenth century.154 In 1611, Randle Cotgrave defined the French
substance as “substance, matter, stuffe,” substanciel as “substantiall, stuffie,”
and essence as “an essence or being, the nature or subsistence of things”—
perhaps reflecting a movement away from the older dual philosophical usage
of “essence” to mean both the individuality and the quiddity, or whatness, of a
thing, toward understanding the term in a more material and exclusively
individual sense, perhaps more as haeccitas than as quidditas. His definition
of substance, moreover, carries only the connotation of primary substance, the
actual stuff or material identity of a thing, and not the connotation of
secondary substance, the species or genus of a thing.155 Of course, when one
looks to the technical manuals, there is little difference on the point between
Thomas Wilson’s Rule of Reason (1551/52) and Thomas Spencer’s Art of
Logick (1628): both offer the identification of “first” or primary substance as
the individual thing and “second” or secondary substance as the kind of thing,
namely, the species or genus.156
There is evidence, moreover, that the newer philosophies of the day tended
to identify substance much in the way we have seen Cotgrave’s dictionary
tend—toward the identification of substance with the individual thing rather
than the species or genus. Descartes, for example, proposed a definition of
substance that, in its strictest sense applied only to God and in its looser sense
only to individual beings:
By substance we can understand nothing else than a thing which exists
so that it needs no other thing in order to exist. And in fact, only one
single substance can be understood which clearly needs nothing else,
namely God … Created substances, however, whether corporeal or
thinking, may be conceived under this common concept; for they are
things which need only the concurrence of God to exist.157
In opposition to Descartes’ mechanical view of the universe, Henry More
and Ralph Cudworth argued the genuine interaction between spiritual and
material being and concluded that all spiritual being, including God, must be
understood as having the attribute of extension as a necessary predicate.
Having made the point, however, More recognized the immediate necessity of
qualifying it: the attribute of extension was the only way in which he could
conceive of divine omnipresence, given that the normal sense of the word
implied embodiment. Yet, God does not have a body, strictly so-called, but
rather God, as a spirit, is an indivisible entity capable of penetrating
bodies.158 More and Cudworth argued the emanation of being from the divine
and, drawing on the Platonic tradition, held the creation of the material world
by the instrumentality of the World Soul, which not only produces the being
of the world but also infuses it with life—a premise directed not only against
Cartesian dualism but also against Hobbesian materialism.159
The Platonic or platonizing approach also held several difficulties for
seventeenth-century trinitarianism.160 First and foremost, as the Cambridge
Platonists themselves recognized, the concept of an emanation of being from
the ultimate Monad, or One, characteristic of the Platonic tradition and
followed, with modification, by various of the church fathers, was not a
suitable foundation for trinitarian monotheism, given its view of the emanated
Nous, or divine Intellect, and the emanated Psyche, or World Soul, not only as
lower than the Monad but also as separated from it was more readily
understood as a form of tritheism than as monotheism. Cudworth recognized,
moreover, that even a highly subordinationistic Platonic Trinity could identify
the three hypostases as homoousios, given a generic understanding of ousia,
or essence (opposed to the tendency of various forms of seventeenth-century
rationalism). Second, this reading of the implications of Platonism in turn led
Cudworth, following Petavius, to conclude that the post-Nicene fathers
generally and the Cappadocians in particular held a generic and not a
numerical unity of divine essence, leaving Athanasius as the sole significant
representative of a fully developed trinitarian monotheism—a point
appropriated directly by the late seventeenth-century antitrinitarians in their
polemic against orthodoxy. The antitrinitarians were able to argue, using
Petavius and Cudworth, that the patristic solution was a form of tritheism and,
therefore, utterly unbibilical.161
Turning from the rationalist idealism of Descartes and the English
Platonists to the rationalist materialism of Hobbes yields, interestingly
enough, a similar difficulty for traditional theology. Hobbes assumes that,
rightly understood, the terms “substance and body signify the same thing.”162
“In the most general acceptation,” Hobbes indicates, a body is “that which
filleth, or occupieth some certain room, or imagined place; and dependeth not
on the imagination, but is a real part of that which we call the universe.”
Insofar as bodies are the subjects of various predications and alterations of
properties, they are called “substances” as distinct from “accidents” or the
properties that inhere in them. Given this identification of “body” with
“substance,” the notion of an “incorporeal substance” is a contradiction in
terms: what we call “spirit” is “either a subtle, fluid, and invisible body” or “a
ghost, or other idol or phantasm of the imagination.”163 Hobbes, quite
willingly, draws the corporeal conclusion concerning the substance or “spirit”
of God. Citing Genesis 1:2, “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters,” he argues, “Here if by the Spirit of God be meant God himself, then
is motion attributed to God, and consequently place, which are intelligible
only of bodies, and not of substances incorporeal.”164 The implications of this
vocabulary for trinitarian theology are clearly negative—and point toward a
strongly heterodox, perhaps Socinian, perspective on Hobbes’ part.165
The alteration of substance-language typical of the developments in
seventeenth-century thought would cause inordinate difficulty for the
traditional doctrine of God, especially for the doctrine of the Trinity. The
older orthodoxy had been able to focus on the notion of a primary spiritual
substance as suitable to the discussion of God: secondary substance, denoting
species or genus, was, of course, excluded, given the existence of one sole
God—primary substance, the individual, functioned well, given the ability of
the traditional philosophical perspective to speak of spiritual substance and to
identify levels of distinction within that substance that did not constitute
divisions and/or indicate composition. When substance is redefined, whether
in the Cartesian or the Hobbesian manner, it becomes quite impossible to
imagine three subsistents sharing one indivisible substance—indeed, we have
returned to the problem encountered at the beginning of the scholastic era in
the thought of Roscellin, where a nominalistic understanding of language and
reality led to the identification of all substances as individuals and to a
fundamental problem in expressing the doctrine of the Trinity. Nor is the
association between the Socinian trinitarian language or Hobbes’
understanding of substance and the medieval nominalist approach to language
and reality merely incidental: Ockham continued to be seen as a significant
thinker throughout the seventeenth century, and an Ockhamist or nominalist
epistemology remained in the philosophical curriculum of the universities
throughout the period and was consistently recognized as both a viable
perspective and a significant opponent by various thinkers of the era.166
D. Orthodox Trinitarian Formulation in the High Orthodox Era,
1640–1685
1. The confessional foundation: the Declaration of Thorn and the
Westminster Standards. By the beginning of the high orthodox era, the
Reformed confessional theology had been fully established and the need to
write new confessions was no longer pressing. Still, two of the symbols of the
high orthodox era are noteworthy for their churchly trinitarianism: the
Declaratio Thoruniensis (1645), or Declaration of Thorn, and the
Westminster Standards (1647). Both documents are thoroughly trinitarian, the
former presenting the doctrine of the Trinity as a foundation of catholic
orthodoxy, the latter confessing it as a fundamental doctrine resting on the
biblical norm.
The Declaratio Thornuniensis, does not offer a full doctrine of the Trinity
but rather, in an initial section, presents a declaration of the full agreement of
Reformed doctrine with the traditions of the first five centuries, affirming the
priority of Scripture while also acknowledging the authority of the
ecumenical creeds.167 The second section of the Declaratio defines the
Reformed faith and notes points of difference with the Roman and Lutheran
confessions, specifically commenting that the “we acknowledge and believe
that the Holy Trinity and the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
theanthropos, are the articles most fundamental to the Christian faith” and
find “no dissensions between our churches and the Roman.” The Declaratio
goes on to comment on the excessive speculative development of the doctrine
at the hands of the medieval scholastics.168 From the perspective of definition
and formulation, therefore, the Declaratio is not of particular importance for
the Reformed doctrine of the Trinity—whereas from the perspective of the
identification of teachings fundamental to the Reformed faith, it makes clear
the Reformed adherence to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as a
fundamental of the faith.
The Westminster Confession provides as brief, normative statement of the
doctrine of the Trinity that emphasized both the language of substance and
person and the personal properties and relations:
In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance,
power, and eternity; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost [1 John 5:7; Matt. 3:16, 17; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14]. The
Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding: the Son is eternally
begotten of the Father [John 1:14, 18]: the Holy Ghost eternally
proceeding from the Father and the Son[John 15:26; Gal. 4:6].169
The Larger Catechism offers a bit more detail, but nothing of a speculative
nature:
Q. 8. Are there more Gods than one?
A. There is but one only, the living and true God.
Q. 9. How many persons are there in the Godhead?
A. There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in
substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their
personal properties.
Q. 10. What are the personal properties of the three persons in the
 Godhead?
A. It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be
begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the
Father and the Son from all eternity.
Q. 11. How doth it appear that the Son and the Holy Ghost are God
equal with the Father?
A. The Scriptures manifest that the Son and the Holy Ghost are God
equal with the Father, ascribing unto them such names, attributes,
works, and worship, as are proper to God only.170
2. The continental writers. The early orthodox trinitarian development,
whether in its defensive or polemical form, its patristic interest, or its broader
dogmatic forms continued during the era of high orthodoxy, both among the
continental and the British Reformed writers.171 Nearly all of the major
continental Reformed writers of the era wrote full theological systems—with
the result that the method as well as the content of their doctrine of the Trinity
is readily available, as is the relationship between their doctrine of the Trinity
and the larger topic, the doctrine of God, as well as that between their doctrine
of the triune God and the remainder of the theological system.
Inasmuch as all of the reformed writers, however much they may have
differed on narrower matters of form and definition, consistently identified
the Trinity as one of the necessary doctrines or fundamental articles of the
faith, the doctrine stands as of primary importance in their systems. It is
noteworthy—and certainly contrary to the reputation of these writers in the
older scholarship—that for all the debate of the era over the doctrine of the
divine essence and attributes, that doctrine was never accorded the status of
fundamental article, necessary for salvation. Indeed, given the importance of
the doctrine of the Trinity to the orthodox, both confessionally and
structurally in relation to the rest of their theology, it comes as close to being
the “central dogma” of Reformed orthodoxy as any doctrine: although it did
not provide a basis for deducing other doctrines, it certainly did offer a basic
guideline for the formulation of other doctrinal issues.
Among other major expositions found in the works of orthodox writers of
the mid-seventeenth century, the doctrine of the Trinity found in Johannes
Cocceius’ Summa theologiae certainly exemplifies these generalizations.172
Cocceius, moreover, is a useful example, both given the breadth of his
exposition—easily comparable to the trinitarian discussions of
contemporaries, whether non-federalist like Maccovius, Maresius, and
Voetius,173 or federalist, such as Heidanus, and Burman174—and given the
tendency of some of the older scholarship to understand him as virtually a
theologian of one doctrine, namely, covenant, and to view his covenant
theology as a biblicistic alternative to the scholasticism of his era.175 Not only
has recent scholarship set aside this stereotype, it has also placed Cocceius
more fully and definitively into his seventeenth-century context as sharing a
variant scholastic method with his contemporaries and as standing in the
central development of Reformed orthodox theology on doctrinal topics other
than covenant.176
 Like his Reformed contemporaries, Cocceius was concerned, first and
foremost, to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity was a necessary doctrine,
over against the Socinians and the Remonstrants. That there is one God in
three persons is a matter of the deepest faith—and the usage “person” with
reference to the Godhead is justified by its applicability to the biblical
materials. Cocceius also was concerned to define the terms “essence” and
“person” in such a way as to maintain the utter simplicity of the Godhead and
at the same time avoid the Sabellian implication of a single divine person.177
These concerns led him—again, like many of his Reformed contemporaries—
to a careful examination of the patristic materials and the controversy between
the Latin and the Greek churches over the filioque. These concerns yielded, in
Cocceius’ Summa theologiae and in his sets of Aphorismi, a nuanced
trinitarianism that drew on traditional concepts of the order of the persons—
with the Father understood as having primacy and standing as the fons deitatis
and with each of the persons understood as identified and distinguished by an
incommunicable personal property. Cocceius even echoes the older tradition
in his identification of these personal characteristics as notiones—namely,
paternitas, filiatio, and processio. Still, like most of his Reformed
predecessors and contemporaries, Cocceius chose not to follow the medieval
tradition further in identifying the generation of the Son as an act of intellect
and the procession of the Spirit as an act of love or will.178
Cocceius also stands in clear relation to the earlier Western tradition in his
appreciation of and rapprochement with the Greeks over the question of the
filioque. He cautions advocates of the filioque that the doctrine is not directly
available from Scripture, but rests on a series of conclusions drawn from
various readings of the text—and he warns the opponents that their language
of the Father as “cause” and “principium” of the Son holds difficulties as
well.179 He also stands ready to acknowledge the lack of propriety in the
original Western emendation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan formula, at the
same time that he argues the assimilation of the Eastern formula (procession
of the Spirit from the Father through the Son) to the Western language of
procession from the Father and the Son, much in the sense of the formulae of
the Council of Florence. Thus, the Spirit is the Spirit of both the Father and
the Son, given that both Father and Son send the Spirit. Still, in this twofold
sending, there remains only one fons deitatis, the Father, who is the source of
both Son and Spirit.180
Among the major Reformed treatises on the Trinity produced by
continental authors is Amyraut’s De mysterio trinitatis, an exhaustive
examination of the various trinitarian texts found in Scripture and of the
writings of the fathers, in which the exegetical and traditionary grounds of the
doctrine are upheld against the heresies of the time, particularly against the
increasingly subordinationist trinitarianism of the Remonstrants.181 In its
form and content, moreover, the treatise manifests a profound continuity with
the broad Reformed orthodox sensibility of a unified locus de Deo and
illustrates the placement of Amyraut within the bounds of confessional
orthodoxy in polemic against its standard opponents, despite the intensity of
the conflict over his own doctrine of the hypothetical efficacy of Christ’s
satisfaction.182 Amyraut does not begin with the discussion of the three
persons typical of the de trinitate sections of a full system—rather, he begins
his De trinitate where the theological system begins the locus de Deo, with
the unity of the divine essence, follows this discussion with a disputation on
the infinity of God, and proceeds, third in order, to a disputation on the
vestigial revelation of the Trinity in nature, including here discussion of the
“Platonic trinity.”183 The treatise then moves on to examine the “primordial”
revelation of the Trinity in the Old Testament, the New Testament revelation,
the biblical words and phrases requiring trinitarian explanation, and the
language of the fathers.184 Amyraut argues, in sum, that the biblical revelation
“wondrously agrees” with “right reason” and at the same time vastly
transcends it: in their proper use, reason and metaphysics do not plumb the
mystery, but rather help to explain and defend it—particularly against the
improper use of Boethian and scholastic definitions by Arminius and
Curcellaeus.185
The historical aspect of the debate was complicated when the Jesuit
dogmatician and historian Dionysius Petavius (1583–1682) wrote his vast and
erudite De theologicis dogmatibus (1644–50) from the perspective of a
churchly and normative development of doctrine: he accepted the historical
point that ante-Nicene doctrine was substantively different from Nicene
orthodoxy—but argued that the church, having the authority to determine true
doctrine, could develop and change its formulae.186 Bull and various other
Protestants found the work dangerous because Petavius saw nothing wrong in
the assertion that the Nicene definition stated a doctrine not known to earlier
fathers: whereas Petavius could argue the normative authority of the church in
establishing doctrine, Bull, resting on the Thirty-nine Articles, could not. The
solution, for Bull, was to refute Petavius. On the other hand, many among the
Reformed orthodox saw harmonization of the fathers as needless, given that
the fathers were not understood to be an infallible norm for doctrine—indeed,
prior to Petavius, the Reformed theologian Jean Daillé had argued not only
that even the nominally orthodox fathers had often disagreed among
themselves, but, specifically, they had disagreed over the conception of the
Trinity and over the unity of substance in the Godhead.187 The problem here,
as in the contest between the Protestant and Roman churches over the
doctrine of Scripture, arose directly out of the confrontation of a rising textual
and historical approach to the materials of the canon and of the tradition—in
the absence of an overarching allegorizing and, therefore, harmonizing
hermeneutic. Indeed, the seventeenth-century debate over the Trinity, both in
relation to the text of Scripture and in relation to the historical materials of the
early church, stands as a primary example of the great hermeneutical problem
of orthodoxy.
A second focus of continental orthodox debate was the developing
Remonstrant theology in the generations after Arminius. Against the
tendencies of orthodox Protestantism, Episcopius and Curcellaeus, echoed in
England by the semi-Arians like Thomas Emlyn and James Pierce, argued
that the history of the first five centuries manifest considerable variety of
trinitarian formulation and, in particular, that the ante-Nicene theologians held
to a subordination of the Son that was both different from the Nicene teaching
and acceptable as a foundation for a form of contemporary orthodoxy.
Episcopius and Curcellaeus, in particular, were singled out by Reformed
orthodox writers like Francis Turretin for refutation—the former for arguing
in what appeared to be agreement with the Socinians that the “mystery of the
Trinity” was not a fundamental article of the faith and the latter for his
historical arguments on the problem of the Nicene and post-Nicene concepts
of the homoousios and perichoresis, which he identified as ambiguous and
unbiblical concepts.188
Cloppenburg’s several systematic essays and his lengthy series of
polemical treatises against the enemies of orthodoxy confront the trinitarian
heresies of the day directly and evidence the theological commerce between
England and the continent. His positive doctrine, albeit not without polemical
overtones, is found in his Syntagma exercitationum selectarum,
Exercitationes ad locos communes theologicos, Protheoria theologiae
christianae; quo agitur de theologiae & religionis definitione, partitione &
distributione, and the Disputationes XV de canone theologiae.189 His
polemics attacked the Remonstrants, the Anabaptists, the Socinians, with
treatises singling out the Socinian Christology of Valentinus Smalcius and
views expressed by the English anti-trinitarian John Biddle on the Holy
Spirit.190 This latter point of reference is significant inasmuch as it once again
indicates the close relationship between theological developments on the
continent and those in England. Similarly, the defensive treatises of Nicolaus
Arnold rebuffed the Socinian readings of Christian doctrine both in their
continental form and in the works of Biddle. Arnold was particularly
important for his nearly line-by-line refutation of the Racovian Catechism.191
The massive polemical efforts of Hoornbeeck not only included a major
attack on the Socinians in his systematic survey of all religious and
theological deviations,192 they also include what is perhaps to most intense
and extended of the continental Reformed efforts to refute the
antitrinitarians.193 In the line of Hoornbeeck among the continental Reformed
in the assault on Socinianism was Andreas Essenius, who recognized the
“popular” character of the problem and wrote against the heresy in the
vernacular.194
Among the high orthodox writers who developed significant trinitarian
conceptions, Francis Turretin sums up the polemical development of the
doctrine. As is the case with all of the doctrines in his Institutio, the doctrine
of the Trinity as presented by Turretin is not the full Reformed orthodox
doctrine—rather it is the polemical or elenctical aspects of the doctrine, set
forth for the defense of orthodoxy. Turretin divides his discussion into nine
chapters, the first five arguing the doctrine of the Trinity in general, followed
by two chapters on the Son and two on the Spirit, in both cases arguing the
deity and the personhood, respectively. The specific adversaries are the
Remonstrants and the Socinians—the former for denying the status of the
doctrine as a fundamental or necessary doctrine, the latter for denying the
doctrine altogether. Against the former, Turretin argues the necessity of the
doctrine to salvation, including the possibility of arguing the doctrine from
the Old Testament as necessary to the salvation of the patriarchs and prophets.
Against the latter, Turretin defends, principally, the full divinity and distinct
personhood of the Son and Spirit, revealing the extent to which the doctrine
had become an exegetical task, linked to the work of late seventeenth-century
biblical interpreters. A positive, relatively non-polemical exposition was
presented by Turretin’s Genevan successor, Benedict Pictet.195
Mastricht, by way of contrast, offers a full discussion of the doctrine,
running from an initial exegetical argumentation for the truth of the Trinity
based on 2 Corinthians 13:14, “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you,
Amen,” in collation with a series of other texts—to a doctrinal formulation, a
refutation of the various heresies, and a practical application in which he
argues the importance of the doctrine for faith and the ways in which the
doctrine supports piety.196 Here we see the full expansion of the doctrine,
together with the broad sense of its implications for other loci in the body of
Reformed doctrine, notably election and the covenant, as witnessed both in
the trinitarian aspects of the doctrine of the eternal decree and in the pactum
salutis. In Mastricht’s exposition, not only do trinitarian elements appear in
the other loci, but elements of the other loci have a substantive presence in the
doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrinal interpenetration is perhaps most evident
in the discussion of the second Person of the Trinity, where Mastricht rests his
doctrine primarily on Psalm 2:7–8, “Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten thee,” understood as a revelation of the intra-trinitarian economy as
well as the foundation of the plan of salvation and, therefore, of the
covenantal relationship between the Father and the Son.197
Among Mastricht’s contemporaries, a related Nadere Reformatie approach
is evident in the theology of Wilhelmus à Brakel, where two portions of the
four-part model are given prominence, namely the doctrinal or dogmatic and
the practical. Brakel’s Redelijke Godsdienst offers a vernacular version of the
orthodox theology, buttressed with biblical citations and, as necessary,
rebuttals of the heresies of the era, followed by carefully-defined statements
of the relationship of the doctrine to practice or Christian “use.”198 In both
cases, Mastricht and Brakel, we have examples of the confluence of scholastic
training and piety that is characteristic of the movement inspired by the work
of the Utrecht professors Gisbertus Voetius and Johannes Hoornbeeck.199 A
detailed theology, with considerable emphasis on the Trinity, written out in
the form of extended catechetical exercises on the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s
Prayer was produced in the same era by the Utrecht covenant theologian
Herman Witsius.200 Witsius’ expositions evidence the Nadere Reformatie
interest in piety, just as they also demonstrate the breadth of his biblical and
patristic learning.
3. Major British thinkers and doctrinal developments. In separating the
British development of doctrine from the continental development of
Reformed thought, we in no wise indicate a major difference in doctrine from
the continental Reformed, only a difference in ethos identifiable in the less-
systematic character of the British Reformed approach and the tendency of
the British, at least in the beginnings of seventeenth-century Puritan and
Reformed theology, to be more attentive to the relationship between piety or
spirituality and doctrinal statement than the continental thinkers. Throughout
the seventeenth century, the British writers and the continentals were fully
aware of each others’ works and the mutual influences are obvious.
Quite significant, both in England and for the development of continental
orthodoxy was the Instructiones historico-theologiae de doctrina Christiana
by John Forbes of Corse, professor at Aberdeen. The work appeared at
Amsterdam in 1645 with prefatory letters of commendation from Polyander,
Triglandius, Spanheim, and Rivetus of Leiden, Voetius, Maresius, and
Hoornbeeck of Utrecht, Cloppenburg, and Cocceius of Franecker, Alting of
Groningen, and Vossius, then of Amsterdam.201 The various books or parts of
the volume present biblical-historical statements of the doctrines of God such
as Trinity, incarnation, sects within the church, and various heresies such as
adoptionism and Pelagianism, together with topics of polemic and debate like
Mohammedanism, the sacraments, purgatory, and the chair of Peter. The work
is noteworthy for its gathering of sources and texts: thus, on the Trinity, it
surveys the history of heresies, offers copious excerpts from Ignatius, Justin,
Athenagoras, and Irenaeus, provides texts of the Antiochene Creed against
Paul of Samosata, the Nicene, Constantinopolitan, and Athanasian Creeds,
gives selections from Athanasius and the Cappadocians, and presents a series
of topical chapters, again based on historical sources. Forbes argued the
orthodoxy of the ante-Nicene tradition, but allowed for the development of
language, recognizing the relative fluidity of terms prior to councils and other
moments of dogmatic definition. He could, therefore, argue against the
various trinitarian heretics of the day who had claimed, for example, that the
doctrine of the Trinity was a late patristic invention.202
From Forbes, the Protestant orthodox of the late sixteenth century also
received a catalogue of patristic regulae “useful for understanding the ways of
speaking (loquutiones) about the trinity of God;” first and foremost of which,
for Forbes, was the Augustinian dictum that wherever one of the persons is
named in relation to a particular work, the operation of the entire Trinity is
understood. The multiplicity of works terminating on particular persons does
not disrupt or compromise the unity of knowledge and will in the Godhead.203
Thus, too, Forbes indicates, Athanasius had insisted that the Trinity is
“undivided and united in itself, so that when the Father is named, his Word is
with him and his Spirit is in the Son.” The Spirit is not to be understood as
extra Verbum. And Gregory of Nyssa is seen to concur in his declaration that
there is no variation in glory between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.204
The virtue of Forbes’ work lies in its cogent and broad gathering of
materials indicative of the orthodox trajectory of doctrine—although its
tendency is to see the history not as a development of new concepts but as an
increasingly explicit defense of a relatively stable doctrinal point. Still,
Forbes’ work, unlike Bishop Bull’s more famous Defense of the Nicene Faith,
did not rest its claims of patristic truth on a radical harmonization of ante-
Nicene with post-Nicene doctrinal statements. Forbes, like Daillé, was willing
to recognize differences of opinion among the fathers and to recognize that,
given the fathers lack of uniformity, they could not function as a unified, final
authority in doctrinal matters.
The doctrine of the Trinity also received concentrated attention from
several of the major English Puritan divines: John Arrowsmith, Regius
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and a member of the Westminster
Assembly, wrote a massive treatise on the divinity and humanity of the Son
based on the Johannine prologue.205 Perhaps the clearest British expression
both of the positive doctrine of the Trinity and of the orthodox polemic came
from Francis Cheynell, who was, like Arrowsmith, a Westminster divine: The
Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianism (1643) and, after the Socinian
controversy broke in earnest, The Divine Triunity of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit (1650). In the former treatise, Cheynell argued the weakness of the
trinitarian theology of the Anglican church and accused both Laud and
Chillingworth of tending toward Socinianism—he was certainly correct in
noting the Arianizing direction of much theology in his time, a problem that
would become apparent in the latter decades of the seventeenth century.206
The Quaker George Whitehead produced a treatise—with specific reference
to the much-disputed “Johannine comma” (1 John 5:7)—on The Divinity of
Christ, and the Unity of the Three that Bear Record in Heaven (1669). Nor
ought the more catechetical and homiletical developments to be neglected:
British thinkers like Flavel, Vincent and Watson produced significant
catechetical discussions of the doctrine of the Trinity in commentaries on the
Westminster Shorter Catechism.207 Among the Anglican divines of the era,
moreover, John Pearson stands preeminent as an exegete and theologian,
serving as a major collaborator in the Critici sacri (1660).208 Pearson’s
Exposition of the Creed (1659) evidences his grasp of biblical, patristic,
medieval, and early modern materials and his Lectiones de Deo offer a more
scholastic approach to theological definition.209 The former work is
particularly important for its exposition of the doctrines of the Trinity and the
person of Christ.
Perhaps the greatest of the English Puritan authors of the era, both for his
massive works on Christian communion with God as Trinity, on the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, and on the glory of Christ, and for his detailed grasp of the
history and problem of Socinianism, was John Owen.210 Against the
Socinians and in response to the English antitrinitarian developments of the
mid-seventeenth century, he penned Vindiciae evangelicae; or, the Mystery of
the Gospel Vindicated and Socinianism Examined (1655) and A Brief
Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity: as also of the
Person and Satisfaction of Christ (1669).211 The trinitarian foundation of his
theology is evident in his Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost (1657), while his most enduring contribution to trinitarian theology is
certainly the Pneumatologia or, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, a
treatise that occupied Owen during the last decade of his life and that fills two
volumes in his collected works. The first portion of the Pneumatologia
appeared in 1674, with successive parts published in 1677, 1678, 1682 and
(posthumously) 1693: the work is perhaps the most exhaustive analysis of the
Person and Work of the Spirit ever produced.212 It is both a positive and a
polemical exposition of doctrine, with arguments against the Socinians, the
Quakers, and the various impieties of the era of the Restoration. Moreover, in
his works against the Socinians and his review of Grotius’ Annotationes, and,
in addition, in his major commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Owen
defended the traditional trinitarian and christological exegesis of Scripture.
Had Owen not written so expansively on the doctrine of the Trinity and
particularly on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, his contemporary
Thomas Goodwin would certainly be remembered as having produced one of
the most exhaustive treatises on the work of the Holy Spirit in the seventeenth
century. This posthumously published work, gathered together from
manuscripts into a fairly cohesive treatise in ten books by Goodwin’s son,
focuses on the work of the Spirit in the salvation of human beings.213 The
work is largely a work of piety and non-polemical in its argument. Still, it
presents numerous reflections on the place of the Spirit in the Trinity and on
the unity of the divine work as distributed among the persons, and it reflects
the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as developed by the Reformed and
Puritan divines during the seventeenth century. Similar comments can also be
made concerning Goodwin’s posthumous Discourse of Christ the Mediator,
noteworthy for its presentation of the doctrine of the work of Christ both in a
language suitable for piety and in the light of the carefully tooled scholastic
distinctions of the era. Goodwin was particularly sensitive to the trinitarian
issues underlying christological discussion, notably the issues of the intra-
traintarian foundation of Christ’s work (described by Goodwin in terms of the
pactum salutis) and of the opera appropriata of the persons as personal works
nonetheless indicative of the unity of the divine work ad extra.214
If Owen and Goodwin offered largely nonspeculative expositions of the
doctrine of the Trinity, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, intended, on the one hand,
for basic edification and, on the other, for the refutation of trinitarian errors,
their contemporary and sometime opponent in polemic Richard Baxter
produced a more speculative doctrine of the Trinity—an irony given Baxter’s
reputation as an author of works on piety. Baxter held a fundamentally
trinitarian or triadic view of the universe in general: he held that the mark of
the divine Trinity had been impressed on all things and was profoundly
attracted to the triadic models in the philosophy of Campanella.215 Taking this
triadic model of reality as his foundation, Baxter could conclude that the
triadic nature of human beings, made in the image of God, provided the best
metaphor for the Trinity: the Godhead was to be best understood in terms of
its life, intellect, and will—the Father, as the living principle; the Son, as
intellect understanding itself (intellectus se intelligens); the Spirit as will
loving itself (voluntas se amans). In the eternal act of the Godhead, the Father
by knowing generates the Son, and the Father and the Son by the
communication of divine love produce the Spirit. These internal relations of
the Godhead, moreover, according to Baxter, provide the foundation of the
relationship of the Godhead to the world: the Father is the power of the
Godhead manifest in the creation of things, the Son is the wisdom of the
Godhead manifest in the ordering of things and in the gift of grace, and the
Spirit is the love of the Godhead manifest in end or goal of all things.216
In addition, as evidenced clearly by the exegetical side of the Socinian
assault, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century revolution in hermeneutics
together with the Protestant loss of the normative functions of tradition and
churchly magisterium rendered the doctrine increasingly difficult of easy
proof. Socinian exegesis could, for example, wax eloquent over the
subordinationist implications of texts like 1 Cor. 15:28, “And when all things
shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him
that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” or John 14:28, “… I
go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I.” Orthodox Protestant
exegetes held fast to traditional patristic and medieval distinctions concerning
such texts, so that the “the Son’s subjection to his Father” is argued not to
“prove his inequality of essence or power with his Father” but only “that he
should deliver up his mediatory kingdom to his Father.”217 Or, in the case of
the latter text, “my Father is greater than I,” the words indicate that the Father
is “not greater in essence, (as the Arians and Socinians would have it,) … but
greater, 1. Either as to the order amongst the Divine Persons … Or, 2. As a
Mediator sent from the Father … in the form of a servant.”218 The orthodox
exegetes were also still able to argue, albeit with ever-decreasing grounds,
even in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, that warrant still
existed for the inclusion of disputed passages like the so-called “Johannine
comma” (1 John 5:7) or of the word “God” in 1 Tim. 3:16 in the authoritative
text.219 Such debates, moreover, spawned an entire genre of treatises in which
orthodox writers presented a verse-by-verse refutation of the Socinian
exegesis.220
The high level of polemic and the technical character of scholastic debate
should not lead to the conclusion that the trinitarian interests of the
seventeenth century were ever far removed from the context of piety: just as
the “scholastic” theology of the age was the technical form, paralleled at less-
technical levels by “positive” and “catechetical” theology, so too were the
debates fought at every level. And it must also be observed that the level of
theological technique found in tracts and treatises written by laity was very
high—as is demonstrated by the trinitarian, christological, and covenantal
argumentation found in the tracts of the self-educated John Bunyan. He
expressed major concerns over the errors of his day, particularly “taking a part
of the word only” and, for example, concluding from a text like Deuteronomy
6:4, “The Lord our God is one Lord,” that “there are not three persons in the
godhead.”221 In addition, as Bunyan’s tracts demonstrate, not only doctrinal
knowledge but also the need for precision in one’s orthodoxy was also
assumed: thus, on the subject of the Trinity, Bunyan confessed “three persons
or subsistences” in the Godhead and indicated that “these three are in nature,
essence, and eternity, equally one.”222
Some of the orthodox writers of the era noted that there were adumbrations
of the doctrine of the Trinity in the works of Plato: Plato indeed speaks of
three principles, goodness or being; the word or reason of that supreme being;
and the spirit “which diffuses its influence throughout the whole system of
beings … the soul of the world.” His followers speak of these principles as
“three hypostases.”223 These Platonic adumbrations of divine triunity
received their most exhaustive seventeenth-century exposition at the hands of
the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth.224 And although his work lies
outside of what can be properly called either Reformed orthodoxy or English
Puritanism, the scope and impact of the work is such that some notice must be
taken of it here. Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678)
was written as a quasi-historical refutation of atheism and determinism in
which the “true intellectual system” was identified as having classical
philosophical and patristic roots.
Granting the character of the Platonic models themselves and the use to
which they had been put both by theologians of the early church like Eusebius
of Caesarea225 and by trinitarian apologists of the seventeenth century, the
Reformed orthodox raise questions concerning both the origin of these
concepts in Plato and the advisability of their use in the cause of Reformed
trinitarianism. Such arguments, argues Ridgley, do not derive from “the light
of nature”: their source ultimately is the Bible. Plato traveled in Egypt and his
followers, Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphyry, most certainly borrowed their
trinitarian metaphysics from their Christian adversaries.226
The possible Judaeo-Christian origins of Platonic trinitarianism did not,
however, give universal credence to the use of Platonic argumentation in the
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Cudworth’s highly philosophical
understanding of the Trinity, particularly given the context of debate with
Socinian theology, was rapidly pronounced heretical, albeit without any great
precision: Turner pronounced him to be a “Tritheist” and subsequently, in the
same treatise, identified Cudworth as “an Arian, a Socinian, or a Deist.”227
Like the historical work of Petavius, Cudworth’s True Intellectual System
served to identify for its age the diversity of ancient trinitarian expression, a
point that had been taken up in far less detail and with far less erudition by
antitrinitarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The accusations of
heresy were, therefore, largely a matter of guilt by association. Yet
Cudworth’s work certainly fueled the fires of late seventeenth-century
trinitarian debate, particularly as it touched on the problem of pre-Nicene and
non-Nicene expressions of the doctrine. Unlike church historians of the
nineteenth century like Newman, the theologians of the seventeenth century
well recognized that the division of patristic debate between Arian and Nicene
parties was simplistic—and several authors, perhaps with reliance on
Cudworth, sought to find non-Arian but also non-Nicene options for
theological expression.228
Mastery of ancient texts is also apparent in the work of George Bull,
bishop of St. David’s. Like John Forbes’ earlier Instructiones historico-
theologiae, Bishop George Bull’s Defense of the Nicene Faith is noteworthy
for its erudite (if ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to show that historically the
church had always taught the same doctrine, albeit in varying terms, and that
the ante-Nicene and Nicene doctrines were identical in substance. Bull
published his Defensio Fidei Nicenae (1685) just prior to the outbreak of the
late seventeenth-century English trinitarian controversy. The work began as a
defense of his own orthodoxy against charges of Socinianism and developed
into an elaborate historical proof that the theology of Nicaea had preceded the
council and was, in fact, the norm of earliest Christianity. Bull, who ended his
days as bishop of St. Davids, was a high Anglican and, as far as the English
debates of the seventeenth century frame his work, no ally of the Puritans or
English Reformed tradition. Nonetheless, his work was of massive
significance for the orthodoxies of his day and respected by Puritan and
Reformed alike. Bull’s Defense not only assessed evidences from the fathers
but also developed arguments against Petavius, Sandius, Zwicker, Episcopius,
and Curcellaeus.
There is some irony, but considerable justice, in the fact that the central
logical pivot of Bull’s argument earned him the praise of the Roman Catholic
Bossuet—for Bull had argued that Christ’s promise to be with the church
always, even to the end of the world, could only be true if the church was
preserved without error in the doctrines of Nicaea. Bossuet applauded the
argument and extended it to the Council of Trent. Bull’s method was to gather
statements of the ante-Nicene church concerning Christ’s divinity and
preexistence and then read them in the light of Nicene doctrine. The result of
this rather ahistorical method was a doctrine of the Trinity which, though
staunchly anti-Arian, tended to interpret the creedal language of “God of God,
Light of Light, Very God of Very God” as an indication of derivation of the
Son and therefore also of the Spirit from the Father. The tendency, then, even
in Bull’s defense of Nicaea is toward a subordinationist doctrine of the Son
and the Spirit. Bull also published a treatise against the subordinationistic
tendencies in the Christology of Episcopius and the Remonstrants,229
demonstrating that his own subordinationist tendencies were hardly as great
as those of many of his contemporaries. The later Reformed, including De
Moor, cite Bull’s work well into the eighteenth century, noting both its
massive documentation of the fathers against various heretics, but also
arguing against its fairly radical subordination of the Son, a point of doctrine
inimical to Reformed trinitarianism.230
Bull offered what became, for many orthodox writers of the seventeenth
century, a definitive proof that the doctrine of the Trinity had been believed
“everywhere, always, and by all” in precisely the form given it by the council
of Nicaea. Bull’s Defense was viewed by many in its own time as a definitive
rebuttal and was accepted as a standard proof of the historical error of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Arianism in general and of Sandius’
work in particular long into the Age of Reason, at least by the proponents of
orthodox doctrine, as Stackhouse’s laudatory remarks indicate.231 Here, too,
however, we encounter the problem of the late orthodox inability to cope with
the new historical method and what might be called “critical exegesis.” As in
the case of the exegesis of Scripture, so also in the case of Sandius’ and
Zwicker’s exegesis of the ante-Nicene theology, the opponents of orthodoxy
were able to show that the documents, understood in their historical context,
did not easily produce the doctrines of later Christian orthodoxy—while the
orthodox theologians of the day tended to avoid issues of history and
development and to look at the documents from the point of view of the later
dogmatic result, a method in the history of doctrine not unlike the use of the
analogia fidei in the exegesis of Scripture. Bull, in other words, assumed the
universal harmony of orthodox Christian doctrine throughout the centuries
and, when he examined the ante-Nicene sources, found that they all stood in
agreement with Nicaea.
Bull subsequently penned a brief defense of his great treatise and a second,
very short, discourse against the heretical tendencies in late seventeenth-
century England.232 In the latter treatise, he identified what he saw as a
problem of Sabellianism latent in many of the orthodox responses to the
Arianism and subordinationism of the late seventeenth century. Like
Arminius, some eight decades earlier, Bull identified a problem in the various
seventeenth-century identifications of the Son as autotheos. In Bull’s view,
there is but one fountain or principle of Divinity, God the Father, Who
only is Αὐτόθεος, God of and from Himself; the Son and the Holy
Ghost deriving their Divinity from Him; the Son immediately from the
Father, the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, or from the Father
by the Son.233
Bull did not accept the distinction between the consideration of the second
Person of the Trinity as the begotten Son and consideration of the second
Person of the Trinity according to the fulness of his essence, the essence itself
(which the Son has) being a se ipso. Bull continues his argument by noting, in
support of Sherlock and, by implication, against South, that they “are very
near unto this heresy [of Sabellianism], who acknowledge only a modal
distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”234
2.3 The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Late Seventeenth and the Early
Eighteenth Century
A. Perspectives on the Trinitarian Problem in a Time of Transition,
1685–1725
The transformation of Christian doctrine that took place at the end of the
seventeenth and in the early eighteenth century under the impact of rationalist
philosophy and altered patterns and models of exegesis is nowhere more
apparent than in the doctrine of the Trinity. Here, as in the doctrine of the
divine essence and attributes, nominally orthodox writers strained under the
loss of much of the exegetical basis of the doctrine as they did under the
problem of the increasingly problematic character of traditional philosophical
and theological vocabulary.
Some nominally orthodox writers drew upon the new philosophies for the
sake of developing and defending traditional theism, while others turned away
from the traditional alliance of theology and philosophy and attempted to
develop theological systems and doctrinal statements without overt recourse
to any philosophical perspective. The result of their efforts was either the
maintenance of orthodox teaching without its traditional exegetical and
philosophical underpinnings or a development of doctrine away from
traditional norms. The former model is apparent in the so-called transitional
or latitudinarian theologies of J. A. Turretin, Osterwald, and Burnet in which
the “orthodoxy” of the writer is occasionally open to question and, in the mid-
eighteenth century, in the late orthodox works of writers like Venema,235 De
Moor, and Gill.236 The latter development is manifest in the mathematical
trinitarianism of Darjes and Wallis, the proof of the Trinity from the principle
of sufficient reason by the Wolffian Reinbeck; the quasi-Cartesian “tritheism”
of Sherlock, the seeming “Arianism” of Whiston, Clarke, and Newton; and
the apparent modalism of some of their opponents.237
Not to be underestimated here is the impact of patristic scholarship in the
seventeenth century. If the Reformation altered the balance of Scripture and
tradition by declaring that, although tradition stood as a subordinate norm
identifying probabilities, it still could err (as demonstrated by the experience
of the later Middle Ages), the antitrinitarian debate of the late seventeenth
century altered the balance once more. The antitrinitarians claimed a biblical
foundation that was radically anti-traditionary—to the point that writers like
Nye and Smalbroke argued the biblical rectitude of views expressed by early
heretics like the Ebionites and Nazarenes.
The last decades of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth
century saw such a vast alteration of the exegetical and philosophical
framework of explanation that the attempts at trinitarian discussion of a whole
generation of writers failed to produce a statement of doctrine that was at the
same time philosophically contemporary and theologically orthodox. In
addition, these English Socinians claimed to be truly Protestant and
fundamentally biblicistic, true heirs of the Reformation—noting that the
Reformation proclaimed the correct biblical standard but did not go far
enough in rooting out the problematic elements of the tradition (among which
the doctrine of the Trinity held a place of prominence).238
B. Trinitarian Debate in Britain
1. From Bull’s Defense (1685) to The Naked Gospel (1690). Coincident
with the debate over Bull’s work was the revival of Socinianism in England.
The heresy had not died with Biddle in his prison—it was too much a
characteristic of the rationalizing and ethicizing mind of the time to pass
easily out of existence. In 1687 Stephen Nye published the apologetic treatise
A Brief History of the Unitarians,239 announcing the beginning of the great
trinitarian controversy of the end of the seventeenth century. Shortly
thereafter, Nye began to issue a series of tracts, republishing several of
Biddle’s works and augmenting them with essays of his own. The link
between Nye and Biddle was the London merchant Thomas Firmin, who
financed the publication of Nye’s history. Firmin had befriended Biddle some
three decades earlier, prior to Biddle’s trial and exile, and had adopted
Unitarian views. Beginning in 1662, Firmin had undertaken a series of
charitable ventures, particularly with a view to helping refugees of religious
persecution in Poland.240 In a similar gesture, Firmin underwrote the
publication of antitrinitarian theology. Together with the Brief History, Firmin
also issued Brief Notes on the Athanasian Creed and shortly thereafter an
expanded version of the Brief Notes in an ironically entitled diatribe against
Athanasius, The Acts of the Great Athanasius.241
The Brief History provides a carefully argued antitrinitarian doctrinal
statement, gathers a mass of texts from Scripture (in canonical order), and
uses the writings of the early fathers to argue a scriptural and ante-Nicene
consensus concerning the subordination of the Son to the Father and the
absence of any positive identification of the Spirit as a “person.” Jesus could
properly be titled “Minister” or “Messenger” of God and called “Son of God”
insofar as he had been conceived by the divine power or “Spirit.” Clearly,
Jesus was a creature and not the equal of the Father. In addition to citing the
works of Petavius, Sandius, and Episcopius in favor of Unitarianism, other
great names were enlisted as antitrinitarian allies: Erasmus was praised as an
Arian, Grotius as a Socinian.242
One little-noted aspect of the English controversy is the difficulty caused
in the seventeenth century by the traditional trinitarian vocabulary,
particularly by the term “person.” As an examination of Nye’s writings
indicates, the traditional dogmatic understanding of “person” as hypostasis or
subsistentia was increasingly less understood, and the identification of
individual human beings as “persons” left the doctrine easy prey to those who
viewed it as tritheistic. He insisted that “Jesus Christ is in Holy Scripture
always spoken of, as a distinct and different Person from God; and described
to be the Son of God and the Image of God.”243 Scripture, however,
consistently “speaks of God as but one Person; and speaks of him and to him
by singular Pronouns, such as I, Thou, Me, Him, &c”—the existence of three
divine “persons” would necessarily indicate “three Gods.”244
The Brief Notes and Acts take the Athanasian Creed as the point of
departure for a polemic against all who would view right teaching rather than
right living as necessary to salvation: by way of arguing the Unitarian case, it
poses an attack on the very idea of an orthodoxy. The Athanasian Creed
identifies its own teaching with the “Catholic Faith” and arbitrarily
anathematizes any and all who depart from its norm. Yet its doctrine of the
double procession of the Spirit excludes the whole Greek Church in the
present and virtually all of the fathers up to and including those at the time of
Nicaea. Athanasius himself was hardly regarded as orthodox in his own time:
the majority of bishops, in accord with the ante-Nicene church, were Arian
and saw to the condemnation of Athanasius at the Councils of Milan and
Ariminum. The Athanasian Creed is contradicted by the Nicene view of the
Son as “God of God” and by the infallible testimony of Scripture to the
subordination of the Son. How then can the Athanasian Creed be identified as
catholic—and how can such a distorted “orthodoxy” be required of anyone as
a ground of salvation? The Unitarian position, according to the Brief Notes
and Acts, relied on Scripture and not on subsequent rationalization.
Theological debate was intensified early in 1690 by the anonymous
publication of The Naked Gospel by Arthur Bury.245 The work was not,
strictly speaking, either Socinian or directly supportive of the Socinian
doctrinal program, but it offered such a blistering attack on the Christian
tradition, whether of the later fathers or of the orthodoxy of the late
seventeenth century, that it was easily associated with some of the arguments
of the Socinians. Specifically, Bury argued that “scholastic” thinking,
particularly the use of logic and metaphysics, had created a grand and
confusing edifice of “new doctrines” not found in the gospel. It was the task
of his book to criticize the rational or “natural” religion of the church in his
time and propose a return to the original, simple, “naked” gospel of Christ and
the apostles.246 Bury attacks the ecumenical councils, particularly Nicaea,
blaming them for creating a false and highly rationalized christology instead
of more simply and directly the high “dignity” and “divinity” of Christ’s
person and his divine sonship in the office of mediator. As for the doctrine of
the Trinity, Bury indicates that it is ultimately confusing, inasmuch as the
identification of three divine “persons” in no way indicates three Gods and
the language of the traditional doctrine, therefore, has no good analogy to
typical usage.247 Bury was suspended from the university.
2. William Sherlock and the broadening debate. The subsequent British
debate is particularly significant in view of the philosophical diversity of its
participants.248 With the publication of William Sherlock’s A Vindication of
the Holy and Blessed Trinity (1690), the character of the debate changed.
Sherlock intended his treatise as a refutation of the Socinian teachings of
Biddle, Nye, and Firmin and as a clarification of the orthodox definition of
the Trinity for the sake of its better defense. Sherlock’s intention has been to
reassert orthodoxy specifically by offering explanations of the traditional
trinitarian vocabulary suitable to the philosophical assumptions of his time.
Given the variant views of substance and individuality we have seen from the
earlier debates, Sherlock’s approach did in fact address a major linguistic and
philosophical issue. In Sherlock’s estimation, the older formulations of one
God in three persons which had for so long been supported by an Aristotelian
definition of substance did not fare particularly well in a universe where all is
either thought or extension. He offered, therefore, a somewhat Cartesian
redefinition of the doctrine.249 He was almost immediately accused of
tritheism.
In accord with the Cartesian assumption that the starting point of certainty
and therefore of philosophical discourse is the individual self-consciousness
and that this self-consciousness is the fundamental identifier of the individual
existent, Sherlock put forth the rather novel theological point that the
fundamental, threefold existence of God was the existence of three individual
centers of divine self-consciousness. As centers of consciousness, the three
are numerically distinct, but as infinite and omniscient mind, each knowing
totally the other, they are essentially identical. He accordingly described the
divine unity as consisting in the divine persons’ unique knowledge of one
another’s thoughts, a knowledge impossible for finite spirits. There are, then,
three infinite minds, distinct from one another yet united in their mutual self-
understanding. The essential distinction between individual human “persons”
can be recognized in their inability to be totally and intimately conscious of
and in communion with the thoughts of one another: in the case of the persons
of the Trinity, this communion is complete, granting the identity of God as
simple or single act or, as Sherlock preferred (drawing on the theology of the
Cappadocian fathers), a single energy.250
Sherlock claimed not that he had fathomed the mystery of the Trinity in
this theory, but that he had shown the doctrine to be logically possible. In
matters of salvation, however, faith in the mystery, and not logical exposition,
was required: the doctrines of the Athanasian Creed represent the faith of the
church, the essential condition for adult baptism into the communion of the
saved. Since no one would claim that Jews or Turks could be saved by their
personal righteousness apart from Christian faith, none ought to assume that
heterodox Christians who refuse the faith of the church can be saved by
works. In essence, Sherlock’s answer to the Brief Notes was the declaration,
typical of the seventeenth-century orthodox, that orthodox doctrine was
necessary, as the proper object of faith, for salvation.
At least two prominent dissenters were convinced by Sherlock to abandon
their orthodoxy. William Manning adopted a fully Socinian view of God and
Christ while his friend Thomas Emlyn adopted an Arian subordination of the
Son to the Father rather than give up the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence.251
Emlyn’s An Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ (1702)
placed traditional trinitarian and christological dogmas under such withering
scrutiny that Emlyn earned two years in prison for his pains.252 As the
controversy continued, moreover, it became painfully obvious to churchly
defenders of orthodox trinitarianism that Sherlock’s teaching was more
dangerous than useful.
Sherlock’s attempt to use the language of self-consciousness as the
foundation of trinitarian formulae was attacked immediately by Robert South
and eventually condemned as heresy by the Heads of Colleges at Oxford.
South’s Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s book (1693) protested against
the “new notions and false explications” employed by Sherlock in defense of
orthodoxy.253 South was dissatisfied with what he felt was a reductionistic
definition of God as infinite Mind and by the identification of a Person as a
self-consciousness: Mind is not to be equated with substance—and for God to
exist he must be substantial. Furthermore, self-consciousness is a
characteristic of a person, not the entirety of a person and—again—not a
substance in and of itself. South obviously was unconvinced by the Cartesian
claim of two substances in the universe, thought and extension. South also
queried of Sherlock how this view of personal distinctions in God indicated
threeness—why was there a limit on the number of self-consciousnesses?
In response to these theories, South accused Sherlock of tritheism.254
South viewed the doctrine of the Trinity as a “mystery” which lay beyond the
powers of natural reason. Sherlock had argued against Socinianism in the
name of Scripture but had rested his primary doctrinal argument upon
philosophy. South pilloried Sherlock for his philosophizing and then himself
set out to refute Sherlock’s rather Cartesian language by opposing it with the
older Aristotelian scholastic language of essence, substance, existence, and
subsistence, the latter term indicating the mode of existence by which a thing
has its own individuality. South argued that the being and essence of God
were one and that, therefore, there was but one existent God. The three
persons are identical as God, having one being, essence, and existence—yet
they are three distinct subsistences. Loss of this language South viewed as the
path to heresy: when Sherlock spoke of God as infinite mind and three centers
of consciousness, he lost the idea of divine substance and with it the ability to
identify God as something rather than as nothing! South also insisted that
personal subsistence preceded the possibility of individual consciousness as
much as substantial existence preceded necessarily any mental function:
consciousness cannot be the ground for identifying personality. Sherlock’s
response to South accused the latter of Sabellianism.255
The Unitarian writers of the era, gathered together by Firmin in A Second
Collection of Tracts (1693), proceeded to have a field day with the
theorizations of Sherlock and South. Sherlock was nothing more than a
Cartesian tritheist. South simply revived Aristotelian scholasticism and with it
the dead theories of Peter Lombard, Innocent III, and the Fourth Lateran
Council. Other trinitarian authors were identified as Sabellians and modified
Arians. The entire attempt to argue a divine Trinity was proved absurd by its
proponents!256 A Third Collection of Tracts, issued in 1695, launched
refutations of all the leading trinitarians of the age—not only of philosophical
or scholastic thinkers like Sherlock and South but also of less-dogmatic
writers like Bishops Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Burnet, and offered an erudite
rebuttal of Bishop Bull’s interpretation of the doctrines of the Fathers.257
The outcome of the initial controversy, as generated in part by Bull and in
part by Nye, was summed up, from the Socinian or Unitarian side, by Nye:
“upon the whole, we may say, There is now no Socinian controversy,” given
that “the misunderstanding that was common to both parties, the Church and
the Unitarians, is annihilated.”258 In his own analysis of the debate, Nye had
distinguished the orthodox writers and their responses into two basic
categories, the “Real trinitarians” and the “Nominal trinitarians”—indicating
a differentiation between those writers who claimed a “real” distinction
between the persons of the Trinity (and, who, in Nye’s view, advocated
tritheism) and those who held a “nominal” or terminological distinction
between the persons of the Trinity (and whose views on the unity of the
Godhead could be accepted by the Unitarians). The origin of Nye’s approach
was probably the debate between Sherlock and South—with Sherlock being
identified in debate as a tritheist, from Nye’s perspective, a “real trinitarian”;
and South being identified as a Sabellian, from Nye’s perspective, a “nominal
trinitarian.”
As indicated by the title to the third collection of tracts, in which Nye’s
discussion of the “real” and “nominal” trinitarians appeared, the Unitarians
could argue against “the doctrine of three almighty, real, subsisting persons,
minds, or spirits,” which they took to be tritheism, and allow the validity of
“an account of the nominal Trinity, that is, three modes, subsistences, or
somewhats in God, called by schoolmen Persons.”259 Under the latter
language, both orthodox trinitarianism and various forms of trinitarian
subordinationism, including both Arianism and what, for lack of a better term,
has been called “semi-Arianism,” could gather. And with their position thus
defined as “nominal trinitarianism,” most English Unitarians were willing to
acknowledge the Thirty-nine Articles as confessing a Trinity of “mode of
appearance or manifestation.”260 The result of this partial resolution was, on
the one hand, the inclusion of a refined Unitarianism within the ranks of the
Church of England and, on the other, far from the end of debate, the
inauguration of a new phase of controversy, in which some of the attempts at
orthodox solution, notably those of Sherlock, South, and Clarke, themselves
came under attack alongside of the Socinian or Unitarian position.
The closing years of the century saw the bishops Stillingfleet and Burnet
defending in a nondogmatic and nonphilosophical language the doctrine of
the Trinity as the best use of the language of Scripture.261 In addition, the
nonhistorical approach of Bull to the defense of traditional trinitarianism
came under increasing attack,262 and—at the same time—became in the view
of others, the palladium of trinitarian orthodoxy.263 There was also a notable
rise in interest in the history of the doctrinal problem of the Trinity, both
recent and ancient. In the midst of the fray, Aretius’ History of Valentinus
Gentilis, the Tritheist appeared in print, with the rather pointed rebuke on its
title page that the translator intended it “for the use of Dr. Sherlock,” whose
doctrine was identified with that of a “noted Tritheist” of the preceding
century.264 So, too, was patristic doctrine a significant issue, even at the
relatively popular level of vernacular tracts on the ancient heresies.265 A
massive discourse by Pierre Allix on the potential Jewish backgrounds to the
Trinity, specifically with reference to language of distinction in the Godhead
found in Judaica, also appeared to strengthen the orthodox cause.266
At the same time, the argument between South’s old scholasticism and
Sherlock’s new Cartesian Trinity came to a head at the University of Oxford.
After a polemical university sermon delivered by South in November 1695,
the university declared Sherlock a heretic. Sherlock replied with a refutation
of the decree against him and preached a sermon vindicating himself and the
Scriptures (25 April 1697) at the London Guildhall, before the Lord Mayor.
The result of the controversy was more the diffusion of doctrinal dissension
than the victory of any party: South’s scholasticism alone received university
sanction, but there was no definitive condemnation of Sherlock by the church
and, in addition, no settlement of the question of the Trinity. Unitarianism was
not silenced, and Arianism—as a doctrinal possibility within the established
church—was about to rear its head.
If South objected, in the name of orthodoxy, to the potential tri- (or poly)
theism of Sherlock’s Cartesian trinitarianism without proposing a new
philosophical or linguistic solution, Wallis, a mathematician at Cambridge,
proposed an alternative view to Sherlock’s that looked in the other direction,
toward a modalistic solution to the trinitarian problem. Wallis proposed that
all language of mind and self-consciousness be set aside on the ground that
the term “person” as used in trinitarian language stood in no relation to the
term “person” as applied to human beings: the term, in its trinitarian usage,
indicated simply a distinction in the divine essence. (Of course, on this point,
Wallis was entirely correct and was simply registering both the age-old
problem of the Boethian definition of person and the increasing difficulty of
adapting that or similar definitions to the altered perception of human beings
as persons in the early modern era.) Wallis noted, not without echoes of the
Augustinian psychological metaphors of the Trinity, that the human soul is
and knows and acts—three distinct aspects of soul—but remains one soul;
just as a cube has length, height, and depth—three distinct dimensions—and
yet is one cube.267 A similar tendency toward modalism, albeit without
Wallis’ mathematical metaphors, can be detected in the nominally orthodoxy
theology of Thomas Ridgley, even as he protests against the overt
Sabellianism of some of his contemporaries.268 Throughout the period,
moreover, orthodox divines continued to wrestle with the difficulties of
person-language.
3. Renewed debate: Whiston and Clarke on the Trinity. In the second
decade of the eighteenth century, debate resumed in earnest when William
Whiston and Samuel Clarke revived the question of ante-Nicene orthodoxy
and precipitated a major controversy over Arianism in the Anglican and the
dissenting churches. Quite literally, the rise of a scholarly Arianism in the
English church at the beginning of the eighteenth century can be traced,
formally, to three substantial essays: William Whiston’s Primitive Christianity
Revised (1711–12), his Athanasius Convicted of Forgery (1712), and Samuel
Clarke’s Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712).269 The accusation of
Arianism was frequently made by the high church party of the Church of
England against latitudinarian bishops and clergy, but there was little solid
evidence to support the change until the publication of these works and the
controversy which developed around them. The works, moreover, are very
different. Whiston’s are historical essays by a highly scrupulous churchman
concerned to define his orthodoxy according to the earliest patristic witness.
Clarke’s work is a theological essay resting on Scripture and the fathers but
striving on the basis of reason to derive a valid doctrine of God.
Whiston was hardly a rationalist: he attempted to rest his doctrine on
patristic authority and called himself a “Eusebian” because he believed the
consensus of the early fathers to be contrary to Athanasian teaching, in
particular, contrary to the Athanasian Creed, which he (on good linguistic
grounds) pronounced to be a forgery. For all the historical flaws in Whiston’s
labors—like his contention that the long recension of Ignatius’ letters was
genuine and the shorter version a later epitome or his claim that the so-called
Apostolic Constitutions were truly apostolic270—his work does represent an
advance over the rather dogmatic reading of the ante-Nicene fathers by
Bishop Bull some four decades earlier. Whiston easily demonstrated that ante-
Nicene theology was not of a piece with Athanasian and Nicene “orthodoxy”
and that the Nicene theology itself was different from what could be elicited
from the so-called Athanasian Creed—where he is unconvincing is in his
declaration that something akin to Arianism represented the normative
theology of the New Testament and the early fathers.271
Clarke’s theology was the epitome of rational supernaturalism: he gathered
textual evidence but rested primarily on reason—and, what is more, denied
that he was an Arian on the ground that his doctrine was his own and quite
different from patristic formulations. Of the two writers, therefore, Clarke is
better representative of the theological tendencies of the time and of the effect
of rationalist philosophy upon doctrinal formulation. Clarke was, moreover,
quite accurate in denying that he was a historical Arian: he has been described
as occupying “a position of indecision between Origen and Arius.”272 In his
treatise, Clarke assessed texts from Scripture and the fathers, with his primary
emphasis upon the authority of Scripture. The fathers were far from infallible,
though it was clear to Clarke that the ante-Nicene fathers were distinctly less
metaphysical in their doctrines than the fathers after Nicea. In addition,
Clarke, like Whiston, argued that virtually all the ante-Nicene fathers were
Arian in their theology.
Clarke drew copious texts from the New Testament to demonstrate that the
doctrine of Scripture pronounced the Father only to be fully and absolutely
divine in himself and the bearer of all the attributes of duty. He cited,
comparatively, the texts “There is none good but One” (Mark 10:18) and “I
and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30), arguing that the masculine “one” of the
former text indicated the “person” of the Father as absolute God while the
neuter “one” of the latter denoted a oneness of power exercised alike by
Father and Son. This reading Clarke supported from Tertullian and buttressed
with the declaration of Origen that the Father is self-existent and the
fountainhead of the deity. Since Scripture does not explicitly deny that the
Son is self-existent substance or explicitly state that the substance of the Son
is derived from nothing, the Arian reading must be rejected as well as the
Nicene: Clarke rejects both the claim that there was a time when the Son was
not and the teaching that the Son is coeternal with the Father.
Of the Son, we can say that he was before the creation of the world and
that he existed before the beginning. The Son is the instrumental cause in the
Father’s work of creation and is the revealer of the Father’s will in the work
of salvation. This indicates not only the agreement of the Son with the Father
but also his subordination to the Father. Having made these points, Clarke
turned to texts which seemed to favor Nicene “orthodoxy,” in particular to
John 1:1, “the Word was God.” This passage, he noted, is in the past tense: it
does not say that the Word is God. The text is, therefore, consistent with the
views of Philo, Justin and Irenaeus, who view the Word as the revealer of the
Father. He “was God” insofar as he appeared in the form and with the
revelation of God. Since the text also declares that the Word was “with God”
rather than “in God,” the distinction of the Son, as person, from the Father is
guaranteed and the coeternity of the Son clearly denied.
Clarke hypothesized that the Son was begotten by an act of will and not by
necessity. As for the Spirit, it is nowhere given the divine name and is
subadviate not only to the Father but also to the Son—as both Scripture and
the fathers indicate. Clarke insisted that the idea of coequal and coeternal
persons was necessarily tritheistic. He also denied the idea of one indivisible
divine substance or essence: the essence was divisible and the three persons
all partook of it, the Son and Spirit being derived from the Father and
therefore subordinate to him. The view was not tritheism, since it allowed that
the Father alone was truly God. Clarke’s theism, like that of his close friend
and associate Isaac Newton, was highly influenced by new perceptions of the
implications of space and time, and—like Henry More and, indeed, like the
Cartesians, Spinozists, and Hobbsians against whom he wrote—had
considerable difficulty understanding the infinitude of divine being apart from
assumptions of extension.273 More importantly, Clarke’s trinitarianism was
grounded in the historical insights of Petavius and Cudworth, both of whom
had begun to question, from a perspective of relative orthodoxy, the
ahistorical assumption that all of the church fathers from Ignatius of Antioch
to Athanasius held trinitarian views commensurate with the Nicene formula.
Clarke clearly recognized that the fathers offered other options than the
Sabellian, Arian, and Athanasian—indeed, as Pfizenmaier has demonstrated,
Clarke’s trinitarianism echoes the conservative, post-Nicene thought of
Eusebius of Caesarea and Basil of Ancyra and can hardly be identified as
Arian.274
Clarke’s theology indicates that the issue of the relationship between fourth
century controversy and eighteenth-century debate may be quite subtle and
that the gradual perception of the diversity of patristic trinitarianism (contra
Bishop Bull) in fact belongs to the rising historical-critical consciousness and
to the latitudinarianism of the day (which themselves are related!). Of course,
few in that time were prepared to allow for the relative “orthodoxy” of the
Eusebian and homoiousian positions as non-Arian alternatives to Nicaea;
and, unfortunately for Clarke, the Socinians of the day appeared to reflect the
historical-critical conclusions, and the historical-critical conclusions, in turn,
looked all too much like an outgrowth of radical Reformation
antitrinitarianism, going all the way back to Servetus’ Restitutio. All the
same, the fact remains that, at the beginnings of Western historical
consciousness and historical-critical method (paralleling the work of Richard
Simon in the biblical field), some writers who were not Socinian or strictly
heretical did see the problem and saw it more clearly than either their own
“orthodox” contemporaries or nineteenth-century theologians and historians
like Newman.
Clarke was almost immediately charged with heresy in the Lower House
of the Convocation of the Church of England and attacked forcefully in
pamphlets. The case against Clarke in the Convocation of the Church of
England came to no result: the Lower House demanded a retraction from
Clarke and received only an explanation that Clarke’s beliefs were not at all
Arian—inasmuch as Clarke assumed that the Son was more than a creature
begotten in time. The case was further complicated when, after the Lower
House refused the explanation, the Upper House, where the bishops sat,
accepted it. Where the convocation failed to convict, the pamphleteers
succeeded, with the most important refutation and condemnation coming
from the pen of the eminent Daniel Waterland, A Vindication of Christ’s
Divinity (1719).275
Waterland insisted on a doctrine of the coeternity of the three persons in
order to assert the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit. He took his stand
firmly on the ground of Old Testament monotheism, which declared the
existence of one God and one God only. These declarations, according to
Waterland, completely refuted Clarke’s attempt to identify the Father as God
in an absolute sense and the Son and Spirit as God in a derivative sense.
Scripture allows no derivative gods! Waterland objected to Clarke’s language
of a personal God on the grounds that it claimed “a personal supreme Deity,
but … added two other deities, who were also persons.”276 Such a doctrine
would relegate Son and Spirit to the status of inferior deities—such as are
explicitly denied in Scripture and cannot properly be called “God.” Christ is
either fully God, Waterland could argue, or not God at all, but simply a
creature. Both Scripture and the fathers, however, assume that Christ is truly
divine and that the Word was begotten before the creation of the world. The
Arian doctrine, therefore, must be ruled out as heretical.
In reply to Waterland, Clarke argued on two fronts. First, he noted that
Scripture demands not that we subscribe to a metaphysical construction like
the doctrine of the Trinity, but that we simply acknowledge Father, Son, and
Spirit to be God. It ought to be clear, Clarke argued, that the prologue to John
uses the word “God” in two different senses, as does Paul when he writes
concerning the Father “of whom are all things” and of the Son “through
whom are all things”: two distinct personal beings, one subordinate to the
other are being termed “God,” yet only one, the Father, may be identified as
the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Second, Clarke noted that the use of the
word “person” advocated by Waterland was utterly inadequate. Since a person
is to be identified as an intelligent agent, quite obviously God, as intelligent
agent, could not be one God and three persons at the same time.
The debate between Samuel Clarke and his opponents, most notably
Thomas Bennet, manifested the increasing difficulty of maintaining
traditional trinitarian person-language in the early modern era. Clarke had
defined God as the “One Supreme Cause and Original of Things” and as the
“One simple, uncompounded, undivided, intelligent Agent, or Person; who
alone is the Author of all Being, and the Fountain of all Power.”277 Clarke
continued with his basic trinitarian definition by stating that “with this First
and Supreme Cause or Father of all things, there has existed from the
Beginning, a Second Divine Person, which is his WORD or Son.”278 The
problem in the definitions was obvious to Clarke’s objectors. Bennet replied
that the biblical usage of “Word” did not imply “a distinct Being from that
God with whom he existed from the Beginning.”279
The problem with Clarke’s language arose directly out of his interpretation
of the term “person” as an “intelligent Being”—an interpretation, we note,
that was resident in the Western doctrine of the Trinity from the moment that
it began to wrestle with the problematic of Boethius’ definiton—and his
subsequent identification of three divine intelligent Beings, one primary and
the other two subordinate. As Bennet wrote, with obvious irritation both at
Clarke’s arguments and at the limitations of his own usage, “The WORD is
… not a second Divine Person in my sense of the word Person.”280
A subcontroversy, typical of the eighteenth century, was the debate
between Clarke and his opponents over Arian subscription to the Thirty-nine
Articles. Clarke had contended in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity that
subscription was a matter of accepting the articles in the light of one’s reading
of Scripture and that, therefore, he could subscribe to the article on the
Trinity: the sense of the article was indeterminate, he noted, not clearly Arian,
Nicene or Sabellian! Waterland argued that the sense of the authors of the
Thirty-nine Articles was intrinsic to their correct interpretation, that the
authors were Nicene trinitarians, and that, therefore, no Arian or Sabellian
could in good conscience subscribe. Waterland was, unfortunately, Arminian
in his soteriology. It was quickly pointed out by Arthur Ashley Sykes that the
authors of the articles and the original intent were Calvinist. If Waterland’s
logic concerning Arianism and subscription were correct, then the same logic
would prevent Waterland, as an Arminian from subscribing to the articles!
This subcontroversy represents but one aspect of the gradual shift away from
serious dogmatic subscription to articles and creeds that was characteristic of
the eighteenth century in its tendency toward rational rather than traditional
doctrinal theology.
Fiddes’ Theologia speculativa (1718) appears to be almost oblivious to the
British trinitarian debates of the late seventeenth century while, at the same
time, quite sensitive to problems raised during the somewhat earlier debates
over Socinianism. Fiddes draws on the fathers in order to argue—as had
Forbes and Bull before him—a consistent patristic testimony, whether pre-
Nicene or Nicene, to “a co-essential and co-eternal Trinity,” granting that “the
titles and attributes ascrib’d to the Son expressly and frequently, (and
sometimes, tho’ not so often, to the Holy Ghost; but always understood and
implied) are demonstrative proofs that all three Persons are suppos’d to be
comprehended in the idea of the one God.”281 Fiddes’ stated adversaries are
Arius, Socinus, and Crellius, who exclude “the other two Persons from the
Godhead” by identifying the Father solely as God.282 Fiddes does, indeed,
recognize a difference in language between the ante- and post-Nicene fathers:
he notes that an eternal generation of the Word was taught by Ignatius,
Irenaeus, Origen, Constantine the Emperor, Eusebius, and others, while a
temporal and “improper” generation or efflux for the creation of the world
and another for the sake of the incarnation were taught by the Apologists,
Tertullian, Hippolytus, and, indeed, also Constantine—but he distances this
view from Arianism (and Socinianism) inasmuch as the second and third
concepts in no way negate the first “proper and eternal generation” by which
the Son is understood as fully divine in terms equivalent to those of
Nicaea.283
The movement from confessional orthodoxy toward deism or rational
supernaturalism, encouraged by the works of Locke, Toland, Clarke, and
Whiston and by the rather successful encounter of the new Socinianism with
orthodox opponents, was nowhere more clear than among the Presbyterians.
Watts notes the opinion of James Pierce, a Presbyterian clergyman of Exeter,
inspired by a reading of Clarke on the Trinity that he must “part with some
beloved opinions, or else quit my notion of the authority of the Holy
Scriptures.”284 In September of 1718, Pierce declared his new faith to his
brother clergy: he held for a subordinate deity of the Son and the Spirit. The
clergy of Exeter appealed for advice to the dissenting clergy of London.
In three meetings of Salters’ Hall in London (19 and 24 February and 3
March 1719), the dissenting clergy of London were unable to muster a
majority vote in favor of subscription to the older confessional standards with
their traditional trinitarianism. An anonymous pamphlet chronicling the
meetings, An Account of the Late Proceedings of the Dissenting Ministers at
Salters’ Hall (1719), records the resolution of the ministers to exclude
“human … interpretations” from articles on the Trinity. At the final meeting,
the minority subscribed to an orthodox statement of the doctrine of the
Trinity, those who refused to sign—the “Non-Subscribers”—protested their
orthodoxy, denied all charges of Arianism, and rested their non-subscription
upon the “Protestant principle” of Scripture as the sole norm of Christian
faith. Just as the antinomian controversy of the 1690s had divided
Presbyterians and Congregationalists, with the Congregationalists maintaining
a fairly traditional Calvinist orthodoxy, so did the Salters’ Hall meeting divide
them again, with the majority of Congregationalists and Particular Baptists
subscribing to traditional trinitarianism and the Presbyterians and General
Baptist tending toward non-subscription. The theological pattern of the
century was set: Presbyterianism in England would fall away from its
confessional standards toward Unitarianism or toward the refined semi-
Arianism of the day.
C. Patterns of Trinitarian Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century
1. Changing exegetical perspectives. It would be difficult to
underestimate the impact of changing patterns of exegesis on the
understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. By the early eighteenth century,
the trinitarian heresies had infiltrated both trajectories of English
Protestantism, whether Anglican or dissent—on the Anglican side a fair
number of churchmen and theologians tended toward various forma of Arian
and semi-Arian thought, while on the dissenting side, there were both
Socinian and Sabellian tendencies in addition to the Arianistic
development.285 In addition, not only did the results of textual criticism
appear to stand firmly on the side of the Socinians with regard to such texts as
1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 John 5:7, the new construal of the “literal sense” of
texts also had ruled out much of the traditionary trinitarian reading of the Old
Testament for which the Protestant orthodox had fought so hard—again,
against the Socinians.
The noted Anglican latitudinarian theologian and bishop Gilbert Burnet
identified the doctrine of the Trinity as a mystery of the faith inaccessible to
reason: it was a doctrine “that we should have had no cause to have thought of
… if the scriptures had not revealed it to us.” He then went on to note that the
doctrine had little foundation in the Old Testament: “take the Old Testament
in itself without the New, and it must be confessed that it will not be easy to
prove this article by it.”286 Having given up the Old Testament grounds of the
doctrine—a point very dear to the seventeenth-century orthodoxy—Burnet
proceeded to develop the doctrine on New Testament grounds alone, making
no reference to disputed texts such as 1 Timothy 3:16 or Titus 2:13 and
concluding with a dismissal of 1 John 5:7 as a “contested passage”
unnecessary for the proof of the doctrine of the Trinity.287 Clearly, the lines of
battle had shifted, and not in a direction favorable to the older orthodox
model.
Similarly, although offering a stronger form of the argument, the moderate
Anglican and professedly orthodox Thomas Stackhouse, vicar of Beenham,
Berkshire, and the author, by his own admission, of one of the rare English
systems of theology in his time, the Complete Body of Divinity (1729),
identified the doctrine of the Trinity as biblical, indeed, but also “purely
Christian,” resting entirely on the New Testament witness. Stackhouse, a
committed, creedal trinitarian, is quite convinced that “the Jews themselves
never had any express revelation of this matter” and that, specifically, the
plural Elohim conjoined to a singular verb “is a common idiom of the Hebrew
tongue, and cannot be supposed to import a plurality of persons in the divine
essence.” Similarly, phrases like “Let us make man” or “the man is become
like one of us” are plurals of majesty “as is customary for kings” and
therefore “do not imply the plurality of the speaker, nor any consultation
among the several persons of the Godhead.” The expression “Holy, holy,
holy” is merely an emphatic form “common to all languages” and hardly a
trinitarian text. Stackhouse does not, however, regard this exegetical result as
a major problem—merely as a demonstration that the doctrine of the Trinity is
“the Shibboleth of the christian church, and that wherein the professors of
christianity are distinguished from all other worshippers in the world.”288
Of course, it would be incorrect to conclude that the majority of Reformed
orthodox theologians gave up the Old Testament foundations of the doctrine
of the Trinity. Rather, the defense became more philological, focusing on the
irregularities of the usages and denying the applicability of a plural of majesty
as a suitable explanation—given, among other things, the lack of use of such
a plural in other instances of kingly decree in the Old Testament. In addition,
many of the orthodox were quite willing to press the point of a gradual
revelation, drawing on the extant sense of a movement from promise to
fulfillment and from shadow or type to reality and antitype: the trinitarian
understanding of Old Testament texts, they could argue, not only supplies a
partial doctrine of the Trinity, it also is an understanding that would not easily
result were it not for the continuation and fulfillment of the revelation in the
New Testament.289 Wyttenbach, for one, following out the Wolffian interest in
natural religion and in the elements of truth lodged in religions other than
Christianity, remarks that since the doctrine of the Trinity is necessary to
salvation, it was also necessary that it be revealed to the faithful under the Old
Testament. Not only can the doctrine berse found expressed in Ps. 33:6; Isa.
48:16 and 61:1, it was also the conclusion of the later Jewish doctors, writing
in the Cabbala and the Zohar, that there were three divine hypostases.290 The
doctrinal point of an ancient revelation of the Trinity did not disappear, but
the orthodox exegesis became increasingly distanced from what an increasing
number of critical exegetes viewed as an “assured result.”
2. Major doctrinal models. Perhaps the single most important point that
can be made concerning the major doctrinal statements of the transitional
thinkers and the late orthodox is that they offer a fundamentally stable
doctrine of the Trinity. This relative exegetical and dogmatic stability is
manifest in such diverse continental writers of the early to mid-eighteenth
century as Francken, Van der Kemp, van Til, Vitringa, Gürtler, Wyttenbach,
Stapfer, Comrie, Venema, De Moor, and Klinkenberg.291 Of the group,
Wyttenbach stands out as attempting to accommodate the orthodox model to a
more rationalist (in his case, Wolffian) philosophical approach. He assumes
that a foundation for theology needs to be developed rationally, with a natural
theology preceding his supernatural theology: in the former, he offers a
rationally argued doctrine of the divine essence and attributes built on
cosmological proofs; in the latter, following his doctrine of Scripture, he
produces a full statement on the divine essence and attributes, followed by a
doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of essence and attributes, he argues, is
more clearly and fully offered by revelation, but also utterly confirmed by its
rational foundation, whereas the doctrine of the Trinity is available through
revelation alone. Beyond this, the doctrine of the Trinity is necessary for
salvation inasmuch as it reveals the Son and the Spirit as the foundation of the
divine work of saving humanity from sin.292
 In the case of Klinkenberg, who was perhaps more exegete than
dogmatician, the trinitarian formulations of the theological system are directly
related to a cautious trinitarian and christological reading of Scripture,
continuing the precritical hermeneutic long into the eighteenth century. By
way of example: Klinkenberg makes no trinitarian comments either in
Genesis 1 or 18, as would have been typical of a more typological example of
the older exegesis, but he does understand Exodus 3:2, with its reference to
the Angel of the Lord, in a trinitarian sense, as also the threefold benediction
of Numbers 6:24–26.293 He also typically begins each book of the Bible with
a lengthy introduction, setting forth the history, addressing problems in the
text, and identifying the scope of the book, often addressing critical issues as
well as maintaining the broader interpretive patterns of the older exegesis.
Where he departs from the older orthodox model is in the apologetic and
rationalistic form of the theological instruction or system, where Trinity has
disappeared from the initial doctrine of God even as the discussion has
become a natural theology—only to appear in the course of the biblical
history and the discussion of salvation.
Paralleling the shifts in exegetical method and the loss of numerous
biblical texts, particularly from the Old Testament, that once served to argue
the doctrinal point, there was an increased interest in metaphors and logical
arguments for the doctrine—whether ancient or modern in origin. Metaphors
like the Augustinian model of divine loving and its objects or of one mind
endowed with memory, understanding, and will, or the medieval variant,
favored by the Thomist tradition, of a mind or spiritual being in its two
faculties of intellect and will, used seldom in the early and high orthodox eras,
became rather popular in the late orthodox era, together with newer
mathematical or geometrical metaphors, like the triangle or the three
dimensions of a cube. Throughout his career, Leibniz had insisted, against
various Socinian adversaries, that the Trinity could be defended, if not
demonstrated, logically.294 Among the British, John Edwards and Stackhouse
allowed logical arguments for the doctrine of the Trinity.295
This logical or philosophical interest was not, however, universal: its rise
was countered in the later orthodox era by a consistent disdain on the part of
other Reformed writers for the use of philosophical argumentation in defense
of the Trinity. Ridgley identifies the doctrine of the Trinity as “a subject of
pure revelation,” incapable of being “learnt from the light of nature,”296 and
explicitly opposes the tendency observable in the work of many of his
contemporaries to argue the doctrine rationally—to engage in “incautious”
use of “dark hints” in ancient philosophy and poetry. Similar reservations
must be put forth with regard to the standard similes and metaphors used to
explain the doctrine: those who use them are well intentioned, but they fail to
recognize that virtually all of the metaphors and similes are based on physical
analogies in which some object is divided into three parts—precisely what the
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity strives to avoid. “Who are these,” Ridgley
queries, “that, by pretending to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity by
similitudes, do that, which, though very foreign to their design, tends to
pervert it?”297 The lesson of these “similitudes” is that they are not
enlightening and ultimately undermine the doctrine! Ridgley also mentions,
with considerable disapprobation, the use of Plato in answer to the
antitrinitarian claim that the doctrine of a divine Trinity is “unintelligible”—
he notes the Roman Catholic Pierre Daniel Huet’s Concordia rationis et fidei
as a contemporary example and comments that “what they call an advantage
to the doctrine, has been certainly very detrimental to it; and, as a late learned
divine observes, has tended only to pervert the simplicity of the Christian
faith with mixtures of philosophy and vain deceit.” Against such use of
philosophy, Ridgley cites Colossians 2:8.298 In the next generations, neither
Boston, Gill, nor Brown refers to the logical arguments or the Augustinian
metaphors, and all three understand the doctrine of the Trinity as grounded on
revelation alone.299
In the increasingly rationalistic context of late orthodoxy, however, quite a
few Protestant thinkers followed a line of argument more akin to Huet’s than
Ridgley’s: they continued the emphasis, already found among various of the
seventeenth-century philosophers and theologians, on the presence of
trinitarian concepts of the Godhead in Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy.
Wyttenbach, for example, argued apologetically that not only did ancient
Israel know of the Trinity and witness to it in the Old Testament, so also did
the ancient gentiles know of the Trinity, as can be seen from the oracles of
Zoroaster and the teachings of Plato.300
Paralleling the shift in exegetical method (which was marked by the
beginnings of a more historical-critical approach to the text) there was also a
shift, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to a more historical and
contextual reading of the church fathers.301 As noted in the previous section
with reference to Petavius and Cudworth, this more historical reading of the
materials also fueled the fires of variant trinitarianism, particularly given the
ability of theologians, on historical grounds, to identify patterns in nominally
orthodox patristic trinitarianism that were either pre-Nicene or non-Nicene.
There are, for example, peculiarities, arising from the context of debate with
Arians and Socinians, in Ridgley’s trinitarian language. Although Ridgley
confesses the full divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit and argues pointedly the
Reformed doctrine of the deity of the Son and the Spirit, he hesitates to
identify the term “Son” as the ultimate and proper designation of the divine
second person. “Son,” according to Ridgley, even when used of the second
person of the Trinity in his eternity, properly indicates his mediatorial office,
in the fulfillment of which Christ is both fully divine and fully human. In
brief, the logic of his argument must be traced to his debate with the
Socinians, who assigned sonship entirely to the human Jesus: in response,
Ridgley argues that sonship properly indicates divinity and humanity together
in the person of the Mediator, while never setting aside the extended usage of
“Son” as rightful title of the second person of the Trinity.302
Among the British writers of the late orthodox era, the Particular Baptist
John Gill stands out as a defender of the doctrine of the Trinity as “a doctrine
of pure revelation” to the setting aside of all but biblical argumentation and
patristic usage. Gill argued and defended the doctrine both in his famous Body
of Divinity and in a separate, extended treatise on the subject.303 The treatise
(1731) preceded the theological system (1769–70) and appears to have been,
in large part, the basis of Gill’s exposition in the Body of Divinity. What is
characteristic of both works, although more evident in the treatise, are Gill’s
distance from any particular philosophical models of the era, his reliance on a
traditionary exegetical-topical exposition, and, within that exposition, his
impressive use of Judaica, particularly rabbinic exegesis, as a support of his
interpretation of the Old Testament, including its trinitarian implications. In
addition, Gill evidences a significant awareness and use of the theological
works of Reformed and, occasionally, Lutheran orthodox predecessors in the
seventeenth century.304 A generation past Gill, the outlines of the older
orthodoxy mingled (as previously noted of the Dutch exegete and theologian
Klinkenberg) with a somewhat more rationalist, apologetic model that moved
from natural to revealed theology the outlines of a fully orthodox
trinitarianism, alive to the problems of definition in the eighteenth century,
can be found in the theology of John Brown of Haddington.305

1 Louis Maimbourg, Histoire de l’Arianisme depuis sa naissance jusqu’à sa

sin: avec l’origine & le progrés de l’heresie des Sociniens (Paris: Sebastien
Mabre-Cramoisy, 1683); idem, The history of Arianism, by M. Maimbourg;
shewing its influence upon civil affairs: and the causes of the dissolution of
the Roman empire. To which are added, two introductory discourses. With an
appendix containing an account of the English writers in the Socinian and
Arian controversies, by William Webster (London, Printed by W. Roberts,
1728–1729); William Berriman, An Historical Account of the Controversies
that have been in the Church, concerning the Doctrine of the Holy and
Everblessed Trinity. In Eight Sermons preached at the Cathedral Church of
St. Paul, London, in the years 1723 and 1724 (London: T. Ward & C.
Rivington, 1725).
2 Johannes Hoornbeeck, Summa controversiarum religionis, cum infidelibus,
haereticis, schismaticis (Utrecht, 1653); Francis Cheynell, The Rise, Growth,
and Danger of Socinianisme together with a plaine discovery of a desperate
designe of corrupting the Protestant religion, whereby it appeares that the
religion which hath been so violently contended for (by the Archbishop of
Canterbury and his adherents) is not the true pure Protestant religion, but an
hotchpotch of Arminianisme, Socinianisme and popery (London: Samuel
Gellibrand, 1643); Thomas Edwards, The first and second part of Gangraena:
or A catalogue and discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies and
pernicious practices of the sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England
in these four last years. Also a particular narration of divers stories … an
extract of many letters, all concerning the present sects; together with some
observations (London: T. R. and E. M. for Ralph Smith, 1646).
3 Thomas Stackhouse, A Complete Body of Speculative and Practical
Divinity, 3 vols. (Dumfries, 1776), I, pp. 236–241; Georg Christian Knapp,
Lectures on Christian Theology, trans. Leonard Woods (New York: Tibbals,
1859), I.iv.2, pp. 144–162.
4 Jerome Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, aeterno Patre, Filio. Et Spiritu Sancto
(Frankfurt am Main: Georgius Corvinus, 1573), also in vol. 1 of the Operum
theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii, 8 vols. (Heidelberg: Stephanus
Gamonetus and Matthaeus Berjon, 1605) and Operum theologicorum D.
Hieronymi Zanchii, 10 vols. in 9 (Geneva: Samuel Crispin, 1617–1619);
Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf, Syntagma theologiae christianae, 2 pts.
(Hainau, 1609); ibid, in folio (Geneva, 1617); also idem, Partitiones
theologiae christianae, pars I–II (Basel, 1590–1596) and The Substance of the
Christian Religion (London, 1595), a translation of part I of the Partitiones.
5 See especially, Martin Luther, The Three Symbols or Creeds of the Christian
Faith (1538), trans. Robert Heitner, in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan
and Helmut Lehmann, 56 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia / Philadelphia: Fortress,
1955–86), hereinafter, LW, 34, pp. 197–229, where Luther notes as his topic
the Apostles’ and the Athanasian Creed, and the Te Deum, but adds, at the
end of the Treatise, the Nicene Creed. Cf. Fortman, Triune God, p. 239, who
does not note the Nicene Creed.
6 Luther, Three Symbols, in LW, 34, pp. 223, 226–227.
7Luther, WA, 39, 2.287–288; see the discussion of Luther’s doctrine in Julius
Köstlin, The Theology of Luther in its Historical Development and Inner
Harmony, trans. Charles E. Hay, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication
Society, 1897), II, pp. 310–318; also note Reiner Jansen, Studien zu Luther’s
Trinitätslehre (Bern and Frankfurt: Lang, 1976); Christine Helmer, The
Trinity and Martin Luther: A Study on the Relationship between Genre,
Language and the Trinity in Luther’s Works, 1523–1546 (Mainz: P. von
Zabern, 1999).
8 John Calvin, Institutio christianae religionis, in libros quatuor nunc primum
digesta, certisque distincta capitibus, ad aptissimam methodum: aucta etiam
tam magna accessione ut propemodum opus novum haberi possit (Geneva:
Robertus Stephanus, 1559), I.xiii.25; cf. the comments in François Wendel,
Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Thought, trans. Philip Mairet
(New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 167, n. 54. In citing the 1559 Institutes,
I have consulted both Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry
Beveridge, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1845; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994)
and Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford
Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), hereinafter
referenced as “Calvin, Institutes.” Calvin’s shorter tracts and treatises are
cited from Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, ed. Henry
Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, 7 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1983). I have cited Calvin’s commentaries from Commentaries of John
Calvin, 46 vols. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844–55; repr. Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979), hereinafter abbreviated as CTS, followed
by the biblical book and, when applicable, the volume number of the
commentary on that particular book. I have also consulted John Calvin,
Sermons of Maister Iohn Calvin, upon the Book of Iob, trans. Arthur Golding
(London: George Bishop, 1574; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1993);
Sermons of M. John Calvin, on the Epistles of S. Paule to Timothie and Titus,
trans. L. T. (London: G. Bishop, 1579; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,
1983); and The Sermons of M. Iohn Calvin upon the Fifth Booke of Moses
called Deuteronomie, trans. Arthur Golding (London: Henry Middleton,
1583; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987). Latin and French texts of
Calvin’s commentaries, sermons, and treatises, unless otherwise noted will be
cited from Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. G. Baum, E.
Cunitz, and E. Reuss (Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900), hereinafter,
CO.
9 Cf. Melanchthon, Loci communes (1521), in Opera quae supersunt omnia,
ed. C. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil, Corpus Reformatorum, vols. 1–28
(Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1834–1860), 21, col. 83–84 (hereinafter CR); cf.
Schwabach Articles, I, in Johan Michael Reu, The Augsburg Confession: A
Collection of Sources with an Historical Introduction (Chicago: Wartburg,
1930; repr. St. Louis: Concordia, 1983), pp. *40–*44; Augsburg Confession,
I.i, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical
Notes, 6th ed., 3 vols. (New York, 1931; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1983), III, pp. 7–8.
10 Bucer’s Critique of the Schwabach Articles, in Reu, Augsburg Confession,
p. *49.
11Bucer’s Critique of the Schwabach Articles, in Reu, Augsburg Confession,
pp. *49–*50.
12 Cf. Fortman, Triune God, pp. 191–192, 203–204, 208–209, and passim.
13Cf. Melanchthon, Loci communes (1521), in CR 21, col. 83–84, with idem,
Loci communes (1543), in CR 21, col. 607–637.
14 Calvin, Institutes (1536), II.7.
15 Calvin, Institutes (1536), II.8.
16 Calvin, Institutes (1536), II.8.
17 Farel did ultimately introduce the traditional terminology in the final
edition his Sommaire of 1552. See Guillaume Farel, Sommaire et briefve
declaration [1525] Fac-similé de l’edition originel, publié … par Arthur
Piaget (Paris: Droz, 1935); and idem, Sommaire: c’est une brieve declaration
d’aucuns lieux fort necessaires à un chacun Chrestien [1552], cap. I, III, in
Du Vray usage de la croix de Iesus-Christ par Guillaume Farel suivi de divers
écrits du même auteur (Geneva: J. G. Fick, 1865), p. 209: “nous confessons
… un seul Dieu en trois personnes … en unité d’Essence & de nature,
confessons la Trinité des personnes en vraye distinction personelle & parfaite
union d’Essence”; and p. 212: “Iesus Christ, vray fliz de Dieu … estant un
avec luy en essence, vray Dieu … & vray homme …” The statement in
Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, p. 16 that Farel made “not the slightest
reference to the Trinity or the dual nature of Christ” is misleading inasmuch
as Wilbur cites only the 1524 edition of the Sommaire and then reads the
problem in terms of the typical seventeenth-century Socinian argument that
the magisterial Reformers failed to take the Reformation to its logical
conclusion, namely, to the Socinian removal of all traditionary accretions,
including Trinity and incarnation.
18 Cf. Abraham Ruchat, Histoire de la Réformation de la Suisse (Noyon,
1836), V, pp. 27–29. Viret’s major theological essays are Pierre Viret,
Exposition familière de l’oraison de nostre Seigneur Jésus Christ (Geneva,
1548); Disputationes chrestiennes (Geneva: J. Gérard, 1552); Exposition de la
doctrine de la foy chrestienne, touchant la vraye cognoissance & le vraye
service de Dieu (Geneva, 1564); Instruction chrestienne en la doctrine de la
Loy et de lÉvangile, 2 parts (Geneva, 1564); and the Exposition familière sur
le Symbole des Apostres. Geneva, 1560), translated as A Verie familiare
Exposition of the Apostles Crede (London, n.d.).
19 See E. Bachler, “Petrus Caroli and Johann Calvin,” in Jahrbuch für
schweizerische Geschichte 29 (1904), pp. 41–169.
20 Calvin, Catechismus (1538), p. iv; cf. Stephen Reynolds, “Calvin’s View of
the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 23
(1960/61), pp. 33–57.
21 Cf. the comments of Willem Nijenhuis, “Calvin’s Attitude towards the
Symbols of the Early Church during the Conflict with Caroli,” in Ecclesia
Reformata: Studies on the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 1972), I, pp. 82, 85–86,
90–92.
22It is clearly an error to speak of a “latent antitrinitarianism among the early
Reformers” as in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 12–18.
23 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2.
24 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2
25 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.3.
26 Calvin, Commentaries on Genesis, (CTS Genesis, I, p. 93) and cf. the
similar remarks in Institutes, I.xv.4, on the Augustinian conception of the
imago Dei.
27 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.18.
28 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.18.
29 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14–15, on the divinity of the Spirit. As in the case
of his proofs of the divinity of the Son, here also Calvin offers no extended
exegesis, but rather a dogmatic disputatio: a full view of his doctrine of the
spirit, therefore, must look to his commentaries and treatises as well as to the
Institutes.
30 Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades of Henry Bullinger, trans. H.I., edited by
Thomas Harding, 4 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1849–52), IV.iii (III,
p. 154); also note, as sources of Bullinger’s more formal theological
definitions, Confessio et expositio simplex orthodoxae fidei (Zürich, 1566),
text in Schaff, Creeds, III, pp. 233–306; and idem, Compendium christianae
religionis (Zürich, 1556).
31 Wolfgang Musculus, Loci communes sacrae theologiae (Basel, 1560; third
edition, 1573); in translation, Commonplaces of Christian Religion (London,
1563; 1578). I have used the Basel, 1560 edition and the London, 1578
translation.
32 Andreas Hyperius, Methodus theologiae, sive praecipuorum christianae
religionis locorum communium, libri tres (Basel: Froschauer, 1568).
33 Peter Martyr Vermigli, P. M. Vermilii loci communes (London: Kyngston,
1576; editio secunda, London: Vautrollerius, 1583); in translation, The
Common Places of Peter Martyr, trans. Anthony Marten (London: H.
Denham, et al., 1583).
34 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 154).
35 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (pp. 154–156): e.g., Deut. 6:4–5 (cf. Mark.
12:29–30); Exod. 20:2–3; Deut. 32:39; Ps. 18:30–31; Is. 42:8; 44:6; 45:6–7; 1
Tim. 2:5; Eph. 4:5–6; 1 Cor. 8:4–6.
36 Bullinger, The Old Faith, an Evident Probacion out of the Holy Scripture,
that the Christen Fayth … hath Endured sens the Beginning of the Worlde
(1547), trans. Myles Coverdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1844), pp. 53, 57.
37 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (p. 156).
38 Hyperius, Methodus theologiae, I (pp. 109–111).
39 Musculus, Loci communes, i–iii (Commonplaces, pp. 1–18); cf. the
discussion in PRRD, III, 3.1 (A.2).
40Roger, Hutchinson, The Image of God, or Laie Mans Book, in whych the
Right Knowledge of God is Disclosed (London: John Day, 1550); also, in The
Works of Roger Hutchinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842),
pp. 1–208.
41 Hutchinson, Image of God, pp. 2–3.
42 Thomas F. Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 25/2 (November 1990), pp. 165–193; Philip W. Butin,
Revelation, Redemption, and Response: Calvin’s Trinitarian Understanding of
the Divine-Human Relationship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
43 Benjamin B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Calvin and
Augustine, ed. Samuel Craig (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed
Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 189–284; similarly, Shedd, History of
Christian Doctrine, I, p. 380. Also see Allan M. Harman, “Speech about the
Trinity, with Special Reference to Novatian, Hilary, and Calvin,” in Scottish
Journal of Theology, 26 (1973), pp. 385–400; B. Engelbrecht, “The Problem
of the Concept of the ‘Personality’ of the Holy Spirit According to Calvin,” in
Calvinus Reformator: His Contribution to Theology, Church and Society
(Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University, Institute for Reformational
Studies, 1982), pp. 201–216; and David J. Engelsma, “Calvin’s Doctrine of
the Trinity,” in Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, 23 (1989), pp. 19–
37.
44 Thus, Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin, trans. Geoffrey W.
Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 310–313, 326–328; Werner
Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), pp. 5–10; Courth, Trinität. Von der
Reformation bis zur Gegenwart, pp. 24, 28. The issue is taken up and the
scholarship surveyed in Hans Esser, “Hat Calvin eine ‘leise modalisierende
Trinitätslehre’?” in Calvinus theologus: Notes of the European Congress on
Calvin Research, ed. Wilhelm Neuser (Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag,
1974), pp. 113–129, with the conclusion that the contention lacks merit.
45 Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” pp. 165–193, especially p.
179, and idem, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Gregory of Nazianzen and
John Calvin,” in Calvin Studies V, ed. John H. Leith (Davidson, N.C.:
Davidson College, 1990), pp. 7–19; also printed in Sobornost, 12 (1990), pp.
7–24. Cf. the similar conclusion in Christoph Schwöbel, “The Triune God of
Grace: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Theology of the Reformers,” in The
Christian Understanding of God Today, ed. James M. Byrne (Dublin:
Columbia Press, 1993), p. 51. Torrance’s arguments ought to be regarded
more as an attempt to claim a particular theological heritage for twentieth-
century neoorthodoxy than as serious historical scholarship. Typical is his
claim that “It was well known during the Reformation that in his doctrine of
the Trinity Calvin took his cue from Gregory the Theologian—that is why
Melanchthon nicknamed Calvin ‘the Theologian’ after Gregory” (T. F.
Torrance, “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” in
Reformed Review, 54/1 (Autumn, 2000), p. 7; cf. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the
Trinity,” p. 179): these assertions amount to little more than wishful thinking
on Torrance’s part. The Melanchthonian reference to Calvin as “Theologian”
comes from Beza’s Life of Calvin, with reference to the Ratisbon Colloquy of
1541, and offers no reason for the title other than Melanchthon’s respect for
Calvin—there is no evidence that this was a reference to Gregory as there is
no evidence that anyone during the Reformation understood Calvin as resting
his trinitarian theology primarily on Gregory of Nazianzen.
46 See Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” p. 172.
47 Melanchthon, Loci communes (1543), in CR, 21, col. 613. On Calvin’s
method and on the impact of Melanchthon on Calvin, see Richard A. Muller,
The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Formation of a Theological
Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 99–158.
48 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.6.
49 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.19.
50Cf. the observations in Villanova, Histoire des théologie chréstiennes, II, p.
379.
51Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.25; cf. the comments in Shedd, History of Christian
Doctrine, I, p. 381; this is also the conclusion of Wendel, Calvin, p. 167, n.
54.
52 Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 12–18.
53 Antonio Rotondo, Calvin and the Italian Anti-trinitarians, trans. John and
Anne Tedeschi, vol 2 of Reformation Studies and Essays (St. Louis:
Foundation for Reformation Research, 1968), pp. 21–25; cf. the balanced
assessment in Aart de Groot, “L’antitrinitarisme socinien,” in Études
theologiques et religieuses, 61 (1986), pp. 55–56.
54 Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 49–75; 113–212; also, Jerome
Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case-Study in Total Heresy (Geneva: Droz,
1978); Francisco Sanchez-Blanco, Michael Servets Kritik an der
Trinitätslehre: philos. Implicationen u. histor. Auswirkungen (Frankfurt:
Lang, 1977); also, among the older literature, Émile Saisset, “Doctrine
philosophique et religieuse de Michel Servet,” in Revue des deux mondes,
21/4 (1848), pp. 586–618; idem, “Le procès et la mort de Michel Servet,” in
Revue des deux mondes, 21/5 (1848), pp. 818–848; L. Cologny,
L’antitrinitarisme à Genève au temps de Calvin: étude historique (Geneva:
Tappoiner & Studer, 1873); and Jean Geymonat, Michel Servet et ses idées
religieuses (Geneva: Carey, 1892).
55 Michael Servetus, Christianismi restitutio. Totius eccelsiae apostolicae est
ad sua limina vocatio, in integrum restituta cognitione Dei, fidei Christi …
(Vienne: s.n., 1553); also see The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity,
trans. E. M. Wilbur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932).
Servetus’ doctrine is summarized in R. Willis, Servetus and Calvin (London:
Henry King, 1877).
56 Michael Servetus, De Trinitatis erroribus, libri septem (N.p.: s.n., 1531).
57 Saisset, “Doctrine philosophique et religieuse de Michel Servet,” pp. 586–
618. On the history of reception of the Hermetic literature, see Brian P.
Copenhaver, Hermetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.
xlvii–li.
58 See Rotondo, Calvin and the Italian Anti-trinitarians, and Wilbur, History
of Unitarianism, I, pp. 211–38, where the impact of Servetus is minimized;
and note the critique in Jerome Friedman, “Servetus and Anti-trinitarianism: à
propos Antonio Rotondo,” in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35
(1973), pp. 543–545.
59 Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, p. 222.
60 Cited in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, p. 227.
61Jean Calvin, Responsionum ad quaestiones Georgii Blandratae (Geneva,
1558); and see Joseph Tylenda, “The Warning That Went Unheeded: John
Calvin on Giorgio Biandrata,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 12 (1977), pp.
24–62.
62 Gentile’s trials and teachings are summarized in Benedict Aretius, Valentini
Gentilis iusto capitis supplicio Bernae affecti brevis historia & contra
eiusdem blasphemias defensio articuli de sancta Trinitate (Geneva, 1567),
translated as A Short History of Valentinus Gentilis the Tritheist (London,
1696); see pp. 40–41.
63 Aretius, Short History, pp. 42–46.
64 Cf. Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, p. 286; also see Nancy Conradt,
“John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and the Reformation in Poland” (Ph.D. diss.:
University of Wisconsin, 1974).
65 Petrus Gonesius (Conedzius), Doctrina pura et clara (Kiszka, 1570),
summarized in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 291–292.
66 See Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 239–247 (Lelio); 387–395
(Fausto), 408–419 (Racovian Catechism).
67See the translation in Edward M. Hulme, “Lelio Sozzini’s Confession of
Faith,” in Persecution and Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr
(New York: Century, 1931), pp. 211–225.
68Cf. R. Friedmann, “The Encounter of Anabaptists and Mennonites with
Anti-trinitarians,” in Mennonite Quarterly Review, XXII (1948), pp. 139–162
and Rotondo, Calvin and the Italian Anti-trinitarians, pp. 5–10.
69 The Racovian catechisme: wherein you have the substance of the
confession of those churches, which in the kingdom of Poland and Great
Dukedome of Lithuania, and other provinces appertaining to that kingdom, do
affirm, that no other save the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that one God
of Israel, and that the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of the Virgin, and
no other besides, or before him, is the onely begotten Sonne of God
(Amsterdam: For Brooer Janz, 1652), qq. 21–23. Also note, The Racovian
Catechism, with notes and illustrations, trans. Thomas Rees (London:
Longman, Hurst, 1818). The Rees edition is useful inasmuch as it gathers into
its apparatus various seventeenth-century additions to the text from the
Socinian literature of the day.
70 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.17–18.
71 Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” p. 237.
72 CO, XI, 560: “Quantum ad locum illum ubi quasi ex tripode haereticos
pronunciat qui dicunt Christum, in quantum Deus est, a se ipso esse, facilis
est responsio. Primum mihi respondent annon verus et perfectus Deus sit
Christus? Nisi Dei essentiam partiri velit, totem in Christo fateri cogetur. Et
Pauli expressa sunt verba: quod in eo habet plenitudo divinitatis. Iterum rogo,
a se ipsane an aliunde sit illa divinitatis plenitudo? At obiicet, filium esse a
patre. Quis negat? Id ego quidem libenter non modo semper confessus sum
sed etiam praedicavi.”
73 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.17–18; cf. Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin,
trans. Harold Knight (London: Lutterworth, 1956; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1980) p. 59; also note T. H. L. Parker, Calvin: An Introduction
to His Thought (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995), pp. 31–32.
74 CO, XI, 560: “Verum hoc est in quo asini isti falluntur: quia non
considerant nomen filii dici de persona ideoque in praedicamento relationis
contineri, quae relatio locum non habet ubi de Christi divinitate simpliciter
agitur.” Cf. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” p. 238.
75 See John Calvin, Pro G. Farello et collegis eius adversus Petri Caroli
calumnias, in CO 8, col. 289–340.
76 Cited by J. Gaberel, Histoire de l’Église de Génève depuis le
commencement de la Reformation jusqu’a nos jours, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1858–
1862), II, p. 227. A survey of these controversies is available in Rotondo,
Calvin and the Italian Anti-trinitarians.
77 Gaberel, Histoire, II, p. 227.
78 Expositio impietatis Valen. Gentilis (1561), in CO, IX, 368: “Et certe non
aliud fuit patrum consilium, nisi manere originem quam ducit a patre filius,
personae respectu, nec obstare quominus eadem sit utriusque essentia et
deitas: atque ita quoad essentiam, sermonem esse Deum absque principio: in
persona autem filii habere principium a patre.”
79See Theodore Beza, Quaestionum et responsionum christianarum libellus,
in quo praecipua christianae religionis capita kat epitome proponunter
(Geneva, 1570; second part, Geneva, 1576), in translation, A Booke of
Christian Questions and Answers (London, 1572) and The Other Parte of
Christian Questions and answeres, which is Concerning the Sacraments
(London, 1580); also note Beza’s Confession de la foy chrestienne (Geneva,
1558), in Latin, Confessio christianae fidei, et eiusdem collatio cum Papisticis
Haeresibus … adjecta est altera brevis eiusdem Bezae fidei Confessio
(Geneva, 1560; London, 1575). A further index to Beza’s teaching can be
found in Propositions and Principles of Divinitie Propounded and Disputed
in the University of Geneva.under M. Theod. Beza and M. Anthonie Faius,
trans. John Penry (Edinburgh, 1595).
80Belgic Confession, VIII; cf. Gallican Confession, VI (in Schaff, Creeds, III,
pp. 389, 362–363).
81Second Helvetic Confession, III.iii; cf. Joachim Staedke, “Die Gotteslehre
der Confessio Helvetica posterior,” in Glauben und Bekennen: Vierhundert
Jahre Confessio Helvetica Posterior, Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte und
Theologie, edited by J. Staedke (Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1966), pp. 253–256.
82Belgic Confession, IX, X, and XI, respectively (in Schaff, Creeds, III, p.
390–395).
83 Belgic Confession, IX (in Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 390–391).
84 Second Helvetic Confession, III.4 (in Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 241)
85 William Ames, Medulla ss. theologiae (Amsterdam, 1623; London, 1630);
also note, idem, The Marrow of Theology, trans. with intro. by John Dykstra
Eusden (Boston: Pilgrim, 1966; repr. Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1984);
Gulielmus Bucanus, Institutiones theologicae seu locorum communium
christianae religionis (Geneva, 1602); in translation, Institutions of the
Christian Religion, framed out of God’s Word, trans. R. Hill (London: G.
Snowdon, 1606; London: Daniel Pakeman, 1659); Henry Ainsworth, The
Orthodox Foundation of Religion, long since collected by that judicious and
elegant man Mr. Henry Ainsworth, for the benefit of his private company: and
now divulged for the publike good of all that desire to know that Cornerstone
Christ Jesus Crucified, edited by Samuel White (London: R. C. for M.
Sparke, 1641); Johannes Wollebius, Compendium theologiae christianae
(Basel, 1626; Oxford, 1657); idem, The Abridgement of Christian Divinitie.
Trans., with annotations by Alexander Ross (London: T. Mab and A. Coles,
1650); Johann Heinrich Alsted, Methodus sacrosanctae theologiae octo libri
tradita (Hanau, 1614); idem, Theologia catechetica, exhibens sacratiaaimam
novitiolorum christianorum scholam, in qua summa fidei et operum …
exponitur (Hanau, 1622); and idem, Theologia didactica, exhibens locos
communes theologicos methodo scholastica (Hanau, 1618; second edition,
1627).
86 Most of Ursinus’ works are gathered in Opera theologica quibus
orthodoxae religionis capita perspicue & breviter explicantur, ed. Quirinius
Reuter, 3 vols. (Heidelberg, 1612). The major doctrinal works are Loci
theologici, in Opera, vol. 1; and the lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism.
These lectures were first published as Doctrinae christianae compendium
(Leiden: Iohannes Paetsius, 1584; also, Oxford, 1585), edited for inclusion in
the Opera as Explicationes catecheseos, in Opera, vol. 1; and in translation,
The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism.
Trans. G. W. Williard, intro. by John W. Nevin (Columbus, Ohio, 1852; repr.
Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1985),
hereinafter cited as Ursinus, Commentary.
87 Jerome Zanchi, De tribus Elohim; also found in volume I of Operum
theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii, 8 vols. (Heidelberg: Stephanus
Gamonetus and Matthaeus Berjon, 1605) and of Operum theologicorum D.
Hieronymi Zanchii, 10 vols. in 9 (Geneva: Samuel Crispin, 1617–1619): part,
book, and chapter citations apply to all three editions; pages are cited from the
Geneva edition.
88 E.g., Otto Gründler, Die Gotteslehre Girolami Zanchis und ihre Bedeutung
für seine Lehre von der Prädestination (Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag,
1965), a translation of Gründler’s “Thomism and Calvinism in the Theology
of Girolamo Zanchi (1516–1590)” (Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological
Seminary, 1961).
89 Polanus, Syntagma theologiae, II.ii.
90 Bartholomaus Keckermann, Systema sacrosanctae theologiae, tribus libris
adornatum (Heidelberg, 1602; Geneva, 1611) is also found in Keckermann’s
Opera omnia quae extant, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1614), appended to vol. II,
separate pagination. On Keckermann’s theology, see W. H. Zuylen,
Bartholomaus Keckermann: Sein Leben und Wirken (Leipzig: Robert Noske,
1934); also see Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development
of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.
122–136.
91 See further below 3.1 (C.3–4).
92 Thus, John Owen, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William
H. Goold, 17 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–53),
I, pp. 144–159.
93 On the Reformed orthodox use of patristic sources (with further
bibliography) see Muller, After Calvin, chap. 3.
94 Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.v (p. 206); Synopsis purioris theologiae,
disputationibus quinquaginta duabus comprehensa ac conscripta per
Johannem Polyandrum, Andream Rivetum, Antonium Walaeum, Antonium
Thysium (Leiden, 1625; editio sexta, curavit et praefatus est Dr. H. Bavinck,
Leiden: Donner, 1881), VIII.xvii; and see below 5.2 (B.2); 6.1 (B.2).
95 Franciscus Gomarus, Disputations theologicae, in Opera theologica omnia,
3 vols. (Amsterdam, 1644).
96 Edward Leigh, A Treatise of Divinity (London, 1646); idem, A Systeme or
Body of Divinity (London, 1662); Johannes Marckius, Christianae theologiae
medulla didactico elenctica (Amsterdam, 1690); idem, Compendium
theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum (Groningen, 1686); Leonardus
Rijssenius, Summa theologiae didactico-elencticae (Amsterdam, 1695;
Edinburgh, 1698; Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1731).
97 Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.v, vi.
98 Cf. Richard A. Muller, “The Christological Problem in the Thought of
Jacobus Arminius,”in Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, vol. 68
(1988), pp. 145–163; cf. below 6.3 (B).
99 Jacob Arminius, Apologia adversus articulos XXXI. in vulgos sparsos, xxi,
in Jacob Arminius, Opera theologica (Leiden, 1629), pp. 164–166.
100 Arminius, Declaratio sententiae, in Opera, pp. 100–102; cf. George P.
Fisher, History of Doctrine (New York, 1896), p. 341.
101 Calvin argued in his Expositio impietatis Valen. Gentilis that, considered
according to his essence, the Son is “absque principio” but considered
according to his person, he has his principium in the Father (in CO, 9, col.
368); Ursinus similarly states that the divine essence, as possessed by each of
the divine persons is from itself, whereas the persons of the Son and the Spirit
are from the Father: see Loci theologici, in Zacharias Ursinus, Opera
theologica quibus orthodoxae religionis capita perspicue & breviter
explicantur, 3 vols., ed. Quirinius Reuter (Heidelberg, 1612), I, col. 540.
Jerome Zanchi makes the point that the Son is “autotheos” according to
essence inasmuch as the divine essence is one and the same in all of the
persons: see De tribus Elohim, in Opera, I, col. 540; and cf. the similar
formulations in William Perkins, A Golden Chaine, in The Workes of … Mr.
William Perkins, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1612–1619), I, pp. 14–15; idem, An
Exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles, in Workes, I, pp. 176–
177, 282; and Polanus, Syntagma theologiae, III.v, as discussed in Richard A.
Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed
Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1986; repr.
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), pp. 30–31, 100–101, 113–114,
152–161. Also see Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” pp. 233–243.
102 On this issue, see Jean Daillé, De usu patrum (1636), translated as A
Treatise of the Right Use of the Fathers in the Decision of Controversies
Existing at this Day in Religion, trans. T. Smith, edited, with a preface by G.
Jekyll, 2 ed. (London: Henry Bohn, 1843).
103 Henry Ainsworth, Annotations upon the Five Books of Moses, the Book of
Psalms, and the Song of Songs, 7 vols. (London: Miles Flesher, 1626–27);
reissued in 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Blackie & Sons, 1843), hereinafter cited as
Annotations upon Genesis, Annotations upon Exodus, etc.
104 William Perkins, A Clowd of Faithfull Witnesses … a Commentarie Upon
the Eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews [and] A Commentarie Upon Part of the
Twelfth Chapter to the Hebrews, in Workes, vol. III; idem, An Exposition of
the Five first Chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians: With the Continuation
of the Commentary Upon the Sixth Chapter, in Workes, vol. II.
105 Franciscus Junius, Sacrorum parallelorum libri tres: id est comparatio
locorum Scripturae sacrae, qui ex testamento vetere in Novo adducuntur,
second edition (London: G. Bishop, n.d.); idem, The Apoclayps, or Revelation
of S. John with a Brief Exposition (Cambridge: John Legat, 1596).The major
dogmatic works are De vera theologia; idem, Theses theologicae quae in
inclyta academia Ludgunobatava ad exercitia publicarum disputationum
[Theses Leydenses]; and idem, Theses aliquot theologicae in Heidelbergensi
academia disputatae [Theses Heidelbergenses], in Opuscula theologica
selecta, ed. Abraham Kuyper (Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1882), pp. 39–101,
103–289, 289–327, respectively. More detail on the commentators and their
work can be found in PRRD, II, 7.1 (A.2).
106 See the discussion in PRRD, II, 7.4 (C.3–4); 7.5 (A–B).
107 See below 4.2 on the exegesis of various trinitarian texts.
108Peter Caroli, Brevis explicatio orthodoxae fidei de uno Deo et Spiritu
Sancto adversos blasphemos G. Blandratae et F. Davidis errores (Wittenberg,
1571).
109See the survey of the history in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, II, pp.
28–49; on the term “Unitarian,” see pp. 47–48, note 12.
110Francis Dávid, et. al., De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus
Sancti cognitione libri duo (1568), intro. Antal Pirnát, ed. Robert Dán
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988). Also see Mihály Balázs, Early
Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism (1566–1571): From Servet to Palaeologus
(Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1996).
111 Dávid, et. al., De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, II.iv.
112 Francis Dávid, Defensio Francisci Davidis; and, De dualitate tractatus
Francisci Davidis, Cracoviae, 1582, intro. by Mihály Balázs (Budapest:
Akadémiai Kiadó, 1983), p. 3; cf. Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, II, pp. 71–
4.
113Georg Maior, De uno Deo et tribus personis, adversus Franc. Davidis et
Georg. Blandratam (Witenberg, 1569), followed by Francis Dávid and
Giovanni Blandrata, Refutatio scripti Georgii Majoris (Kolosvár, 1569), and
Georg Maior, Commomefactio ad Ecclesiam Catholicam … contra
Blandratam (Wittenberg, 1569??).
114See the historical narrative in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 307–
355.
115George Schomann, Catechesis et confessio fidei, coetus per Poloniam
congregati, in nomine Jesu Christi (Crakow, 1574).
116 See Fausto Socinus, De Jesu Christi Invocatione Disputatio … cum
Francisco Davidis, in Opera, II, col. 709ff.; and Fausto Socinus, Disputatio
inter Faustum Socinum Senensen & Christianum Franken, de honore Christi,
in Opera, II, col. 767ff.
117 Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, I, pp. 394–395.
118Thus, William Berriman, An Historical Account of the Controversies that
have been in the Church, concerning the Doctrine of the Holy and
Everblessed Trinity. (London: T. Ward and C. Rivington, 1725), p. 411.
119 See the Consensus repetitus fidei vere Lutheranae (1666), art. I, §14.
120 Cf. Melanchthon, Loci communes (1543), locus 1, with Chemnitz, Loci
theologici, I, pars. 2, cap. ii.
121Cf. Francis Turretin, Institutio theologiae elencticae, 3 vols. (Geneva,
1679–85; a new edition, Edinburgh, 1847), III.xxvi.
122
Bibliotheca fratrum polonorum quos Unitarios vocant, 6 vols. (Irenopolis
[Amsterdam]: s.n., 1656).
123 George Bull, Defensio fidei nicaenae. Defence of the Nicene Creed, out of
the Extant Writings of the Catholick Doctors, who Flourished during the First
Three Centuries of the Christian Church [1685], a new translation, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Parker, 1851), vol. I, p. ix, with reference to Christophorus Chr.
Sandius, Nucleus historiae ecclesiasticae, exhibitus in historia Arianorum,
tribus libris comprehensa (Cologne, 1668; second edition, 1676); also idem,
Bibliotheca anti-trinitariorum, sive catalogus scriptorum, et succincta
narratio de vita eorum auctorum …, opus posthumum Christophori Chr.
Sandii; accedunt alia quaedam scripta, quorum seriem pagina post
praefationem dabit, quae omnia simul juncta compendium historiae
ecclesiasticae Unitariorum, qui Sociniani vulgo audiunt, exhibent (Freistad:
Johannam Aconium, 1684).
124 Daniel Zwicker, Irenicum irenicorum, seu, Reconciliatorus Christianorum
hodiernorum norma triplex: sanaomnium homnium ratio, scriptura sacra &
traditiones (London: n.p., 1658); also, idem, Irenicomastix iterato victus &
constrictus, imo obmutescens, seu Novum & memorabile exemplum
infelicissimae pungnae J.A. Comenii contra Irenici irenicorum auctorem. Id
ostendente Irenici irenicorum auctore (Amsterodami: n.p., 1662).
125Simon Episcopius, Institutiones theologicae, IV.xxxiv.2, in Episcopius,
Opera theologica, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1650), vol. I.
126Stephanus Curcellaeus, Quaternio dissertationm theologicarum adversus
Samuelem Maresium … opus posthumum (Amsterdam: Ioannes Henricus,
1659), I.118.
127 Cited in Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans, or Protestant
Nonconformists; from the Reformation in 1517, to the Revolution in 1688, 2
vols. (New York: Harper, 1844), I, p. 346; the entire text of the Constitutions
and Canons is found in ibid., pp. 345–347.
128See the detailed account in Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, II, pp. 193–
208.
129 See “A Short Account of the Life of John Bidle,” in John Biddle, The
Apostolical and True Opinion concerning the Holy Trinity (London: s.n.,
1691), pp. 4–5; not found in the original edition, The Apostolical and True
Opinion concerning the Holy Trinity (London: s.n., 1653). Biddle’s teaching
is also found in John Biddle, A Twofold Catechism: the one simply called A
Scripture-catechism; the other, A brief Scripture-catechism for children …
Composed for their sakes that would fain be meer Christians, and not of this
or that sect (London: J. Cottrel, for R. Moone, 1654); in Latin, Duae
catecheses: quarum prior simpliciter vocari potest catechesis scripturalis
posterior, brevis catechesis scripturalis pro parvulis … primum quidem a
Johanne Biddello; in Latinam linguam translatæ per Nathanaelem Stuckey
(London: s.n., 1664).
130 Biddle, Apostolical and True Opinion (1691), pp. 1, 6.
131 John Biddle, A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity, According
to the Scriptures (London: s.n., 1648), pp. 5–6.
132 Johannes Cloppenburg, Vindiciae pro deitate Spiritus Sancti adversus
Pneumatomachum Johannem Biddellum Anglum (Franecker, 1652); John
Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae; or, the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated and
Socinianism Examined (Oxford, 1655), also in Works, XII, pp. 74, 82, 334;
note the similar accusation in Berriman, Historical Account, p. 423.
133 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 334; cf. Stephen Nye, A
Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians (London: s.n., 1687), p.
33.
134See the accounts in Neal, History of the Puritans, II, p. 157, and the life of
Biddle in Apostolical and True Opinion.
135 John Biddle, XII arguments drawn out of the Scripture: wherein the
commonly-received opinion touching deity of the Holy Spirit is clearly and
fully refuted: to which is prefixed a letter tending to the same purpose, written
to a member of the Parliament (London: s.n., 1647); reprinted with
Apostolical and True Opinion (1691).
136 Gods glory vindicated and blasphemy confuted: being a brief and plain
answer to that blasphemous book intituled, Twelve arguments against the
deity of the Holy Ghost, written by Tho. Bidle, Master of Arts …: wherein the
arguments of the said book are set down together with proper answers
thereto, and twelve anti-arguments proving the deity of the Holy Ghost
(London: William Ley, 1647).
137 Matthew Poole, Blasphemoktonia: The Blasphemer Slain; or, a Plea for
the Godhood of the Holy Ghost, vindicated from the Cavils of J. Bidle
(London, 1648; 2nd ed., 1654); also note Nicolas Estwick, Pneumatologia: or,
A Treatise of the Holy Ghost, in which the Godhead of the third Person of the
Trinitie is … defended against the sophisticall subtleties of John Bidle
(London, 1648).
138 John Biddle, A Twofold Catechism: the one simply called A Scripture-
catechism; the other, A brief Scripture-catechism for children … Composed
for their sakes that would fain be meer Christians, and not of this or that sect
(London: J. Cottrel, for R. Moone, 1654).
139 Thus, Samuel Maresius, Hydra Socinianismi Expugnata (Groningen,
1654); also note Nicolaus Arnoldus, Atheismus Socinianvs â Johanne Bidello
Anglo, nuper sub specioso Scripturæ titulo orbi obtrusus. Jam assertâ ubique
Scripturarum Sacrarum veritate detectus atque refutatus (Franeker: Johannes
Wellens, 1659). Among the English responses are William Russell,
Blasphemoktonia: the Holy Ghost Vindicated (London, 1648); Francis
Cheynell, The Divine Triunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (London,
1650); and Edward Bagshawe, Dissertationes duae Antisocinianianae, in
quibus probatur Socinianos non debere dici Christianos (London, 1657).
140 See Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, II, pp. 201–202.
141 Thomas Lushington was the translator and editor of Johann Crell, The
Expiation of a Sinner in a Commentary upon the Epistle to the Hebrewes
(London, 1646).
142
See David Masson, The Life of John Milton, 7 vols. (1877–1896; reprint,
New York: Peter Smith, 1946), III, pp. 157–159.
143 John Goodwin, Theomachia, or, The grand imprudence of men running
the hazard of fighting against God in suppressing any way, doctrine or
practice concerning which they know not certainly whether it be from God or
no (London: Henry Overton, 1644); cf. John Hunt, Religious Thought in
England, from the Reformation to the End of Last Century, a Contribution to
the History of Theology, 3 vols. (London: Strahan & Co., 1870–1873), I, p.
261.
144 Edwards, Gangraena, III, p. 235.
145 Cf. J. H. Adamson, “Milton’s Arianism,” in Harvard Theological Review,
53 (1960), pp. 269–276; Michael E. Bauman, “Milton’s Arianism: ‘Following
the way which is called Heresy’ ” (Ph. D. diss., Fordham University, 1983);
idem, “Milton, Subordination, and the Two-Stage Logos,” in Westminster
Theological Journal, 48 (1986), pp. 173–182; and idem, “Milton’s
Theological Vocabulary and the Nicene Anathemas,” in Milton Studies, 21
(1985), pp. 71–92; W. B. Hunter, Jr. “Milton’s Arianism Reconsidered,” in
Harvard Theological Review, 52 (1959), pp. 9–35; idem, “Some Problems in
John Milton’s Theological Vocabulary,” in Harvard Theological Review, 57
(1964), pp. 353–365; and W. B. Hunter, Jr., C. A. Patrides, and J. H.
Adamson, Bright Essence (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971).
146John Milton, Complete Prose Works, ed. Don M. Wolfe, 7 vols. in 10, to
date (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953–), XIV, p. 202.
147 Cf. Biddle, A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity, pp. 5–6.
148 Milton, Works, XIV, p. 42ff.
149See the discussion in Baumann, “Milton’s Theological Vocabulary,” pp.
73–74 and John Peter Rumrich, “Milton’s Concept of Substance,” in English
Language Notes, XIX (1982), pp. 218–233; and note Hunter, “Milton’s
Arianism Reconsidered,” p. 12–13.
150 Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury,
ed. Sir William Molesworth, bart., 11 vols. (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen,
1962), IV, pp. 306–313. On Hobbes attribution of corporeality to God, see
Copleston, History of Philosophy, V, ch. 1.2 and Jean-Luc Marion, “The Idea
of God,” in Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. D.
Garber and M. Ayres (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), p. 289.
151
Johannes Crellius, The Two Books of John Crellius Francus, touching one
God the Father wherein many things also concerning the nature of the Son of
God and the Holy Spirit are discoursed of. Kosmoburg [London: s.n.], 1665.
152 Crellius, Two Books, p. 140; cf. Racovian Catechism, III.i (Rees, p. 33).
153 Gilbert Burnet, A Modest Survey of … the Naked Truth (London, 1676),
pp. 5–6; and see Ethyn W. Kirby, “ ‘The Naked Truth’: A Plan for Church
Unity,” in Church History, 7 (1935), pp. 45–61.
154 See the discussion in R. S. Woolhouse, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The
Concept of Substance in Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics (London and New
York: Routledge, 1993); cf. Farrer’s introduction to G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy:
Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil,
intro. by Austin Farrer, trans. E. M. Huggard (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1951; repr. Chicago: Open Court, 1985), pp. 13–21; and Copleston,
History of Philosophy, IV, passim.
155Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues
(London: Adam Islip, 1611), s.v., essence, substance, substanciel.
156 Thomas Wilson, The Rule of Reason, Conteinyng the Arte of Logique,
newely corrected, London: R. Grafton 1552), fol. C vi; Thomas Spencer, The
Art of Logick, Delivered in the Precepts of Aristotle and Ramus, (London:
John Dawson, 1628), p. 129.
157 Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, I.li–lii.
158 Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme, 2 ed. (London: J. Flesher,
1655), I.iv (pp. 16–17); cf. Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific
Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 23–24, 77. Further see, Lydia Gysi,
Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth (Bern:
Herbert Lang, 1962) and Amos Funkenstein, “The Body of God in 17
Century Theology and Science,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in
English Literature and Thought, 1650–1800, ed. R. Popkin (Leiden: Brill,
1988), pp. 149–175.
159 See: The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics,
Metaphysics, and Religion, ed. G. A. J. Rogers, J. M. Vienne, and Y. C. Zarka
(Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997); Geoffrey P. H.
Pawson, The Cambridge Platonists and their Place in Religious Thought,
foreword by Alexander Nairne (London: S. P. C. K., 1930); Mother Maria,
Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth (Bern: H.
Lang, 1962); Frederick James Powicke, The Cambridge Platonists, a Study
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926); James Deotis Roberts,
From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth-Century England (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1968).
160 Cf. Sarah Hutton, “The Neoplatonic Roots of Arianism: Ralph Cudworth
and Theophilus Gale,” in Socinianism and its Role in the culture of the XVIth
to XVIIth Centuries, ed. L. Szczucki, Z. Ogonowski, and J. Tazbir (Warsaw:
PWN, Polish Scientific Publisher, 1983), pp. 139–145. On the varied
relationship between the seventeenth-century platonists and the classical
Platonic tradition, see Copleston, History of Philosophy, V, pp. 54–66. Also
see Ernst Cassirer, The Platonic Renaissance in England, trans. James P.
Pettegrove (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1953).
161 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first
part; wherein, all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted; and its
impossibility demonstrated (London: Printed for Richard Royston, 1678),
following the later edition, 2 vols. (Andover, Mass., 1837–38), I, pp. 777–
778, 791–804; and cf. Anon., Defense of the Brief History of the Unitarians
(London: s.n., 1691), p. 5 and the anonymous treatise, attributed to Thomas
Smalbroke, The judgment of the fathers concerning the doctrine of the Trinity
opposed to Dr. G. Bull’s Defence of the Nicene faith: Part I. The doctrine of
the Catholick Church, during the first 150 years of Christianity, and the
explication of the unity of God (in a Trinity of Divine Persons) by some of the
following fathers, considered (London: s.n., 1695), p. 66; and see below 3.2
(A.3). Note also that patristic scholarship has tended away from Cudworth’s
conclusion and understood the Cappadocians as arguing a sole, indivisible
divine ousia: cf. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, pp. 268–269; Prestige, God
in Patristic Thought, pp. 242–245, 256–261. Although the Cappadocians do
not speak specifically of a “numerical unity of divine essence” they arguably
make the same point in different language, namely, in their consistent
affirmation of divine simplicity—given that simplicity means non-composite
and that a genus is, by definition, a composite: see further, in this volume, 3.2
(A.2–3).
162 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, xxxiv.
163 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, xxxiv.
164 Hobbes, Leviathan, II, xxxiv.
165Cf. C. A. J. Coady, “The Socinian Connection: Further Thoughts on the
Religion of Hobbes,” in Religious Studies, 22 (1986), pp. 277–280.
166 Dorothea Krook, John Sergeant and His Circle: A Study of Three
Seventeenth-Century English Aristotelians, ed., with an intro. by Beverley C.
Southgate (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), pp. 6, 36–37, 98–101.
167Declaratio Thoruniensis: Generalis declaratio, in H. A. Niemeyer, ed.,
Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum, 2 parts.
(Leipzig: J. Klinkhardt, 1840), pp. 669–670.
168 Declaratio Thoruniensis: Specialis declaratio, II.1, in Niemeyer, Collectio
confessionum, p. 671. For a discussion and analysis of the orthodox Lutheran
doctrine of the Trinity, see Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-
Reformation Lutheranism, I, pp. 112–163; and Schmid, Doctrinal Theology of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church, pp. 129–159.
169 Westminster Confession of Faith, II.iii.
170 Westminster Larger Catechism, qq. 8–11.
171 The British writers will be surveyed below, 2.2 (D.3).
172 Johannes Cocceius, Summa theologiae ex Scriptura repetita (Geneva,
1665; Amsterdam, 1669); also found in Cocceius, Opera omnia theologica,
exegetica, didactica, polemica, philologica, 12 vols. (Amsterdam, 1701–
1706), VII, pp. 131–403; also note Cocceius’s shorter theological compendia,
Aphorismi per universam theologiam breviores, in Opera, vol. 7, pp. 3–16;
and Aphorismi per universam theologiam prolixiores, in Opera, vol. 7, pp.
17–38.
173 Cf. Johannes Maccovius, Collegia theologica quae extant omnia
(Franecker, 1641); idem, Distinctiones et regulae theologicae et
philosophicae (Amsterdam, 1656); and idem, Loci communes theologici
(Amsterdam, 1658); Samuel Maresius, Collegium theologicum sive systema
breve universae theologiae comprehensum octodecim disputationibus
(Groningen, 1645; 1659); Gisbertus Voetius, Selectae disputationes
theologicae, 5 vols. (Utrecht, 1648–1669; idem, Syllabus problematum
theologicorum, quae pro re natâ proponi aut perstringi solent in privatis
publicisque disputationum, examinum, collationum, consultationum exercitiis
(Utrecht: Aegidius Romanus, 1643); and idem, Catechesatie over den
Heidelbergschen Catechismus, ed. Abraham Kuyper, from the 1662 edition of
Poudroyen, 2 vols. (Rotterdam: Huge, 1891).
174 Abraham Heidanus, Corpus theologiae christianae in quindecim locos
digestum, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1687); idem, Disputationes theologicae ordinariae
repetitiae, 2 parts (Leiden, 1654–1659.); and idem, Fasciculus disputationum
theologicarum de Socianismo (Leiden, 1659); Franz Burman, Synopsis
theologiae et speciatim oeconomiae foederum Dei, 2 parts (Geneva, 1678;
Den Haag, 1687).
175E.g., Albertus Van der Flier, Specimen historico-theologicum de Johanne
Cocceijo anti-scholastico. (Utrecht, 1859); Charles S. McCoy, “The Covenant
Theology of Johannes Cocceius” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1956); idem,
“Johannes Cocceius: Federal Theologian,” in Scottish Journal of Theology,
XVI (1963), pp. 352–370; and Heiner Faulenbach, “Johannes Cocceius,” in
Orthodoxie und Pietismus, ed. Martin Greschat (Stuttgart: W. Kolhammer,
1982), pp. 163–176; and idem, Weg und Ziel der erkenntnis Christi. Eine
Untersuchung zur Theologie des Johannes Cocceius (Neukirchen:
Neukirchner Verlag, 1973).
176Thus, Willem J. Van Asselt, The Covenant Theology of Johannes Cocceius
(1603–1669), trans. Raymond A. Blacketer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001); idem,
“The Doctrine of the Abrogations in the Federal Theology of Johannes
Cocceius,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 29/1 (1994), pp. 101–116; idem,
“Johannes Cocceius Anti-Scholasticus?” in Reformation and Scholasticism:
an Ecumenical Enterprise, ed. Willem J. Van Asselt and Eef Dekker (Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 2001), pp. 227–251; and idem, Johannes
Coccejus: Portret van een zeventiende-eeuws theoloog op oude en niewe
wegen (Heerenveen: Groen en Zoon, 1997).
177 Cocceius, Aphorismi breviores, VI.3–4.
178Cocceius, Aphorismi prolixiores, VII.1–4; cf. Van Asselt, Covenant
Theology, pp. 177–179.
179Cocceius, Summa theologiae, XII.3–18; and cf. Van Asselt, Covenant
Theology, pp. 180–184.
180 Cocceius, Summa theologiae, XII.7–14.
181 Moyse Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, deque vocibus ac Phrasibus
quibus tam Scriptura quam apud Patres explicatur, Dissertatio, septem
partibus absoluta (Saumur: Isaac Desbordes, 1661). Also note the Salmurian
theology synopsized in Moyse Amyraut, Louis Cappel, and Josue La Place,
Syntagma thesium theologicarum in Academia Salmuriensi variis temporibus
disputatarum, editio secunda, 4 parts (Saumur: Joannes Lesner, 1664; second
printing, 1665).
182 See the argument in PRRD, I, 1.3 (B.2–3)
183 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, pars I: De unitate essentiae Dei (pp. 3–
37); pars II: De infinitate Dei (pp. 38–108); pars III: De revelatione istius
Mysterii in Dispensatione Naturae (pp. 109–163). See the discussion of the
structure of the locus in PRRD, III, 3.1 (A–B).
184 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, pars IV: De primordiis revelationis illius
in Veteri Testamento (pp. 163–241); pars V: De revelatione mysterii illius in
Evangelio (pp. 242–323); pars VI: De vocibus & phrasibus quibus explicatur
in Scriptura sacra (pp. 324–407); pars VII: De vocibus & phrasibus quibus
explicatur apud Patres (pp. 408–546).
185 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, VII, pp. 541, 542–544.
186 Cf. Petavius, Dionysius, s.v. in RED and NCE.
187 Daillé, Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers, I.v (pp. 80–81).
188 Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.10, 11, 13; xxiv.1, 19.
189All in Johannes Cloppenburg, Opera Theologica, 2 vols. (Amsterdam,
1684).
190 Johannes Cloppenburg, Compendiolum Socinianismi (Franeker Idzardus
Balck, 1651); Anti-Smalcius, de divinitate Jesu Christi: Pars prior, De
munere Christi prophetico. Pars posterior, De munere Christi regio
(Franeker: Idzardus Balck, 1652); Kort begrijp van de opkomste ende leere
der Socinianen, kortelick vervat in 11 capittelen, by een gebracht ende
grontelick wederleyt in de Nederlantsche tale (Dordrecht: Vincent Caimax,
1652); Vindiciae pro deitate Spiritus Sancti adversus Pneumatomachum
Johannem Biddellum Anglum (Franecker, 1652).
191 Nicolaus Arnold, Religio Sociniana seu Catechesis Racoviana maior
publicis disputationibus (inserto ubique formali ipsius catecheseos contextu)
refutata (Franeker: Idzardus Albertus & Joannes Jansonus, 1654); and
Atheismus Socinianvs â Johanne Bidello Anglo, nuper sub specioso Scripturæ
titulo orbi obtrusus. Jam assertâ ubique Scripturarum Sacrarum veritate
detectus atque refutatus (Franeker: Johannes Wellens, 1659).
192 Johannes Hoornbeeck, Summa controversiarum religionis, cum
infidelibus, haereticis, schismaticis (Utrecht, 1653).
193Johannes Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, 3 vols. (Utrecht, 1650–
64).
194 Andreas Essenius, Christelike en een-voudige onderwyzing tegens de
Sociniaensche en zommige daer aen grenzende dwalingen, gesteld
(Amsterdam: Johannes van Waesberge, 1663) also note his Synopsis
controversiarum theologicarum, et index locorum totius s. scripturae, quibus
adversarii ad errores suos confirmandos, et veritatem impugnandum vel
declinandum, praecipue abuti solent: ubi tum adversarii, qui iis abutuntur,
tum singulae eorum collectiones brevi methodo proponuntur (Utrecht:
Meinardus a Dreunen, 1677).
195 Benedict Pictet, Theologia christiana ex puris ss. literarum fontibus
hausta (Geneva, 1696); the translation, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick
Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d.), is reasonably
accurate for what it offers, but it omits passages, rearranges text, and removes
all of the numbers identifying distinct propositions and paragraphs.
196 Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theologia, qua, per capita
theologica, pars dogmatica, elenchtica et practica, perpetua sumbibasei
conjugantur, praecedunt in usum operis, paraleipomena, seu sceleton de
optima concionandi methodo, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Henricus & Theodorus
Boom, 1682–1687); subsequent editions, in one vol. folio (Utrecht: van de
Water, Poolsum, Wagens & Paddenburg, 1714; editio nova, 1724), II.xxiv.1,
citing 2 Cor. 13:13, according to the Statenvertaling versification, 13:14 in the
KJV.
197 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol, II.xxvi.2.
198 Wilhelmus à Brakel, ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst in
welken de goddelijke Waarheden van het Genade-Verbond worden verklaard
… alsmede de Bedeeling des Verbonds in het O. en N.T. en de Ontmoeting der
Kerk in het N. T. vertoond in eene Verklaring van de Openbaringen aan
Johannes, 3 parts (Dordrecht, 1700; second printing, Leiden: D. Donner,
1893–94); in translation, The Christian’s Reasonable Service in which Divine
Truths concerning the Covenant of Grace are Expounded, Defended against
Opposing Parties, and their Practice Advocated, translated by Bartel Elshout,
with a biographical sketch by W. Fieret and an essay on the “Dutch Second
Reformation” by Joel Beeke, 4 vols. (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria
Publications, 1992–95).
199For a discussion and further bibliography on Voetius, see Muller, After
Calvin, pp. 110–116, 227–228.
200 Herman Witsius, Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum quod Apostolorum
dicitur. Et in Orationem dominicam (Amsterdam, 1697); in translation, Sacred
Dissertations on what is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, trans. D.
Fraser, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: A. Fullarton / Glasgow: Kull, Blackie & Co.,
1823) and Sacred Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, trans., with notes, by
William Pringle (Edinburgh: Thomas Clarke, 1839). There is also significant
trinitarian meditation in Witsius’ De oeconomia foederum Dei cum hominibus
libri quattuor (Leeuwarden, 1685; Utrecht, 1694), II.ii–iv, relative to the
pactum salutis.
201John Forbes, Instructiones historico-theologicae de doctrina christiana
(Amsterdam, 1645).
202 See further, in this volume, 3.2 (A.2).
203 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxi.1, citing Augustine, Enchiridion, 28.
204Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxi.1, citing Athanasius, Ad Serapionem;
Nyssa, Lib. de differentia essentiae & hypostaseos.
205 John Arrowsmith, Theanthropos, or, God-Man: being an Exposition upon
the First Eighteen Verses of the First Chapter of the Gospel according to St.
John, wherein is most accurately and divinely handled, the divinity and
humanity of Jesus Christ, proving him to be God and Man, coequall and
coeternall with the Father (London: Humphrey Moseley & William Wilson,
1660).
206Cf. McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 52–62, on Laud, Chillingworth, their use
of Acontius’ Stratagematum Satanae, and Cheynell’s critique.
207 John Flavel, An Exposition of the Assembly’s Catechism, with Practical
Inferences from Each Question, in The Works of John Flavel, 6 vols. (London:
Baynes and Son, 1820; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1968), VI, pp. 138–
317; Thomas Vincent, An explicatory catechism, or, An explanation of the
Assemblies Shorter catechism: wherein all the answers in the Assemblies
catechism are taken abroad in under questions and answers, the truths
explained, and proved by reason and scripture, several cases of conscience
resolved, some chief controversies in religion stated: with arguments against
divers errors, itself, for the more and clear and through understanding of
what is therein learned (London: George Calvert et al., 1673); Thomas
Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity (London, 1692).
208 Critici Sacri: sive doctissimorum virorum in SS. Biblia annotationes, &
tractatus, 9 vols. (London, 1660).
209 John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed by John, Lord Bishop of Chester
(London, 1659; third edition, with additions, 1669); I have followed An
Exposition of the Creed, with an analysis by Edward Walford, M.A. (London:
Bell and Sons, 1887); also John Pearson, Lectiones de Deo et attributis (ca.
1661), in The Minor Theological Works of John Pearson, D.D., now first
collected, with a memoir of the author … by Edward Churton, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844), I, pp. 1–267.
210I have consistently followed John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed.
William H. Goold, 17 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter,
1850–53), and idem, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. William
H. Goold, 7 vols. (London and Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1855). On
Owen’s theology, see Carl R. Trueman, The Claims of Truth; Sebastian
Rehnman, Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen
(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2002); and idem, “John Owen: A
Reformed Scholastic at Oxford,” in Reformation and Scholasticism, ed. Van
Asselt and Dekker, pp. 181–203.
211 John Owen, A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the
Trinity: as also of the Person and Satisfaction of Christ (1669), in Works, vol.
2, pp. 365–439.
212John Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ or, a Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit
(1674–1693) in Works, vols. 3–4.
213Thomas Goodwin, Of the Work of the Holy Ghost in our Salvation, in
Works, 5 vols. (London, 1681–1704), as vol. V; also Works, 12 vols.
(Edinburgh and London: Nichol & Nisbet, 1861–1866), as vol. VI.
214Thomas Goodwin, A Discourse of Christ the Mediator, in Works (1861–
1866), vol. V.
215Carl R. Trueman, “A Small Step Toward Rationalism: The Impact of the
Metaphysics of Tommaso Campanella on the Theology of Richard Baxter,” in
Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and
R. Scott Clark (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), pp. 181–195.
216Richard Baxter, Methodus theologiae christianae (London, 1681), I.ii (pp.
34–37); cf. Fisher, “Theology of Richard Baxter,” p. 155.
217 Matthew Poole, Annotations on the Holy Bible, 2 vols. (London, 1683–
85); reissued as A Commentary on the Holy Bible, 3 vols. (London: Banner of
Truth, 1962), III, p. 595, hereinafter cited as Poole, Commentary; cf. Hilary,
De trinitate, IX.51, 54–55; Augustine, De trinitate, I.vii.14; xi.22; II.i.3;
VI.ix.10.
218 Poole, Commentary, John 14:28, in loc. (III, p. 357). Other major
commentaries of the era offer the same conclusions: see JeanDiodati, Pious
and Learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible, plainly Expounding the Most
Difficult Places Thereof, third edition (London: James Flesher, 1651), in loc.;
John Trapp, Annotations upon the Old and New Testaments in Five Distinct
Volumes (London: Robert White, 1662), in loc., reissued as A Commentary on
the Old and New Testaments, 5 vols. (London: Richard Dickinson, 1856–
1868), V, p. 397; The Dutch Annotations upon the Whole Bible: Or, All the
holy canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament … as … appointed
by the Synod of Dort, 1618, and published by authority, 1637, 2 vols., trans.
Theodore Haak (London, 1657), in loc.; and Annotations upon all the Books
of the Old and New Testament, wherein the Text is Explained, Doubts
Resolved, Scriptures Parallelled, and Various Readings observed, by the
Joynt-Labour of certain Learned Divines (London, 1645; 2nd ed., 1651; 3rd
ed. 1657) in loc., hereinafter cited as Westminster Annotations, from the 1645
edition, unless otherwise noted.
219Cf. Poole, Commentary, 1 John 5:5 and 1 Tim. 3:16, in loc. with Matthew
Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament: wherein each chapter is
summed up in its contents: the sacred text inserted at large, in distinct
paragraphs; each paragraph reduced to its proper heads: the sense given,
and largely illustrated; with practical remarks and observations, New edition,
revised and corrected, 6 vols. (London: James Nisbet, n.d.), 1 John 5:5 and 1
Tim. 3:16 in loc. Note that this edition of Henry’s commentary is unpaginated
and must be cited by the book, chapter, and verse. On the debate over the
“Comma,” see below, 4.2 (C.3).
220 E.g., Paul Jasz-Berenyi, Examen doctrinæ ariano-socinianæ à quodam
anonymo sub hoc titulo evulgate, Doctrina de Deo, & Christo, & Spiritu
Sancto, ipsis scripturae verbis, ante paucos annos, à quodam divinæ veritatis
confessore, in sermone Germanico concinnata, nunc vero, in gratiam
exterorum, Latine edita (London: Samuel Brown, 1662); H. C. De Luzancy,
Remarks on several late writings publish’d in English by the Socinians
wherein is show’d the insufficiency and weakness of their answers to the texts
brought against them by the orthodox. London: Tho. Warren, 1696.
221John Bunyan, Of the Trinity and a Christian, in The Whole Works of John
Bunyan, Accurately Reprinted from the Author’s Own Editions, with editorial
prefaces, notes, and life of Bunyan by George Offor, esq., 3 vols. (1875;
reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), II, p. 387.
222 John Bunyan, A Confession of Faith, §4–5 in Works (Offor), II, p. 594.
223 Cf. Thomas Ridgley, A Body of Divinity: Wherein the Doctrines of the
Christian Religion are Explained and Defended, being the Substance of
Several Lectures on the Assembly’s Larger Catechism, 2 vols. (London, 1731–
33), p. 111, col. 1, citing (Pseudo) Plato, Second Epistle to Dionysius; note the
later edition, Commentary on the Larger Catechism; Previously Entitled A
Body of Divinity, revised, with notes by John M. Wilson (1855; reprint,
Edmonton: Still Waters Revival Books, 1993) also note Marckius,
Compendium, V.xxviii.
224 Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, I, pp. 759–791.
225Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparation for the Gospel, trans. Edwin Gifford, 2
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1981), XI.xvii–xxii; idem, The Proof of the Gospel, trans. W. J. Ferrar,
2 vols. (London: S.P.C.K., 1920; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1981), IV.i–v. On Eusebius’ theology, see Colm Luibhéid, Eusebius of
Caesarea and the Arian Crisis (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1981).
226 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 111, cols. 1–2.
227 John Turner, Discourse on the Messiah (London, 1685), pp. 17, 19.
228
Cf. Pfizenmaier, Trinitarian Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke, pp. 89–142.
Newman’s understanding of the Arian controversy can be found in John
Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, their Doctrine, temper,
and Conduct, chiefly as Exhibited in the Councils of the Church, between
A.D. 325, and A.D. 381 (London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1833; 2nd ed., 1878);
the return to a scholarly perception of varied parties in the debate is
magisterially surveyed in R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian
Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1988).
229George Bull, Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ trium primorum seculorum, de
necessitate credendi quod Dominus noster Jesus Christus sit verus Deus,
assertum contra M. Simonem Episcopium aliosque. (Oxford: George West,
1694); also The Opinion of the Catholic Church for the First Three Centuries,
on the Necessity of Believing that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, trans. T.
Rankin (London, 1825).
230 See Bernhard de Moor, Commentarius perpetuus in Joh. Marckii
compendium theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum, 7 vols. in 6
(Leiden, 1761–1771), I.v.7, citing Bull favorably as a source of materials.
231 Stackhouse, Complete Body of Divinity, vol. I, p. 240.
232Geroge Bull, The Consubstantiality and Coeternity of the Son of God with
God the Father, Asserted; or, some few Animadversions on a trretise of Mr.
Gilbert Clerke, entitled, AnteNicenismus, in The English Theological Works of
George Bull, D.D., sometime Bishop of St. David’s (Oxford: J. H. Parker,
1844), pp. 409–44; idem, The Doctrine of the Catholic Church for the First
Three Ages of Christianity, concerning the Blessed Trinity, considered, in
opposition to Sabellianism and Tritheism [1697], in English Theological
Works, pp. 371–82.
233 Bull, Doctrine of the Catholic Church, p. 371.
234 Bull, Doctrine of the Catholic Church, p. 373.
235Herman Venema, Exercitationes de vera Christi Divinitate, ex locis Act.
XX: 28, I Tim. III:16, I Joh. V: 20 et Col. I:16, 17: quibus de vera lectione et
genuio sensu eorum accuratius disseritur (Leovardiae: Gulielmus Coulon,
1755), and idem, Institutes of Theology, part I, trans. Alexander Brown
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1850).
236 John Gill, Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity: or A
System of Evangelical Truths Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, with A
Dissertation Concerning the Baptism of Jewish Proselytes, 2 vols. (1769–
1770; reissued, London: Tegg & Company, 1839; reprint, Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1978). Gill’s theology was rooted in his exegetical
efforts: An Exposition of the New Testament, 3 vols. (London, 1746–1748);
and An Exposition of the Old Testament, 6 vols. (London, 1748–1763);
hereinafter cited by book of the Bible, e.g., Exposition of Genesis, etc.
237 Note Thomas C. Pfizenmaier, “Was Isaac Newton an Arian?” in Journal
of the History of Ideas, 58 (1997), pp. 57–80, for a significant discussion of
Newton’s place in the seventeenth-century discussion of Nicaea and a cogent
argument for Newton as a non-Arian homoiousian; cf. the discussions in
Fortman, Triune God, p. 245; and Franks, Doctrine of the Trinity, pp. 149–
151.
238 Anon., Defense of the Brief History, p. 3.
239Stephen Nye, A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians
(London, 1687).
240 See Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, II, p. 217.
241 See The faith of one God, who is only the Father; and of one mediator
between God and men, who is only the man Christ Jesus; and of one Holy
Spirit, the gift (and sent) of God; asserted and defended, in several tracts
contained in this volume; the titles whereof the reader will find in the
following leaf. And after that a preface to the whole, or an exhortation to an
impartial and free enquiry into doctrines of religion (London: [s.n.], 1691).
This is the first in a series of five antitrinitarian anthologies published
between 1691 and 1703, the first three were sponsored by Firmin, beginning
with a republication of tracts by Biddle, superintended and augmented by
Nye: see the discussions of these collections and their contents in Hunt,
Religious Thought, II, pp. 273–278; III, 604–607; and in Herbert McLachlan,
“Seventeenth-Century Unitarian Tracts,” in The Story of a Non-Conformist
Library (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1925), pp. 53–87.
242Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, pp. 31–32 (Erasmus, Grotius, and
Petavius); 34–35 (Episcopius and Sandius).
243 Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, p. 11.
244 Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, pp. 19, 24.
245The Naked Gospel, discovering I. What was the gospel which our Lord
and his apostles preached, II. What additions and alterations latter ages have
made in it, III. What advantages and damages have thereupon ensued: Part I.
Of Faith, and therein, of the Holy Trinity, the incarnation of our Blessed
Saviour, and the resurrection of the body (London: s.n., 1690; London:
Nathanael Ranew, 1691).
246 Bury, Naked Gospel, fol. G2r.
247 Bury, Naked Gospel, fol. E1v–E2r.
248 See the accounts of the debate in Roland N. Stromberg, Religious
Liberalism in Eighteenth Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1954) and Martin Greig, “The Thought and Polemic of Gilbert Burnet, c.
1673–1704 (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1991) and idem,
“Reasonableness of Christianity? Gilbert Burnet and the trinitarian
Controversy of the 1690s,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44/4
(October, 1993), pp. 631–651.
249 William Sherlock, A vindication of the doctrine of the holy and ever
blessed Trinity and the incarnation of the son of God: occasioned by the brief
notes on the creed of St. Athanasius, and the brief history of the Unitarians,
or Socinians, and containing an answer to both (London: William Rogers,
1690).
250 Cf. Franks, Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 149.
251Cf. Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978), I, p. 372.
252Thomas Emlyn, An humble enquiry into the Scripture account of Jesus
Christ, or, A short argument concerning his deity and glory, according to the
gospel (London, 1702; reissued, Frankfort, Ky.: James M. Bradford, 1803).
253 Robert South, Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s book, entituled A
vindication of the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, &c,: together with a more
necessary vindication of that sacred and prime article of the Christian faith
from his new notions, and false explications of it humbly offered to his
admirers, and to himself the chief of them, by a divine of the Church of
England (London: Randal Taylor, 1693). South’s positive theological
formulations are found in Robert South, Sermons Preached upon Several
Occasions, 5 vols. (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1866–1871).
254 Robert South, Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock’s new notion of the
Trinity and the charge made good: in an answer to the defense of the said
notion against the Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s book, entituled, A
vindication of the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, &c. by a divine of the Church
of England (London: John Whitlock, 1695).
255William Sherlock, A defence of Dr. Sherlock’s notion of a Trinity in unity:
in answer to the animadversions upon his vindication of the doctrine of the
holy and ever Blessed Trinity: with a post-script relating to the calm
discourse of a Trinity in the Godhead: in a letter to a friend (London: William
Rogers, 1694).
256A Second Collection of tracts proving the God and father of our Lord
Jesus Christ the only true God, and Jesus Christ the son of God, him whom
the father sanctified and sent, raised from the dead and exalted, and
disproving the doctrine of three almighty and equal persons, spirits, modes,
subsistences, or somewhats in God, and of the incarnation (London?: s.n.,
1693?).
257 A Third Collection of tracts: proving the God and father of our Lord Jesus
Christ the only true God, and Jesus Christ the Son of God, him whom the
Father sanctified and sent, raised from the dead and exalted, and disproving
the doctrine of three almighty, real, subsisting persons, minds, or spirits:
giving also an account of the nominal Trinity, that is, three modes,
subsistences, or somewhats in God, called by schoolmen Persons, and of the
judgment of the Fathers and Catholick Church for the first 150 years
(London?: s.n., 1695).
258 Stephen Nye, An account of Mr. Firmin’s religion, and of the present state
of the Unitarian controversy (London: s.n., 1698), p. 48.
259 See Stephen Nye, A Discourse concerning the Nominal and Real
trinitarians, in A Third Collection (London?: s.n., 1695).
260 Berriman, Historical Account, p. 427.
261 Edward Stillingfleet, A discourse in vindication of the doctrine of the
Trinity with an answer to the late Socinian objections against it from
Scripture, antiquity and reason, and a preface concerning the different
explications of the Trinity, and the tendency of the present Socinian
controversie (London: Henry Mortlock, 1697); Gilbert Burnet, An Exposition
of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (London, 1699; revised
and corrected, with notes by James R. Page, New York: Appleton, 1852).
262 Gilbert Clerke, Tractatus tres: quorum qui prior ante-Nicenismus dicitur,
is exhibet testimonia patrum ante-Nicenorum, in quibus eluct sensus ecclesiæ
primævo-catholicæ, quoad articulum de Trinitate: in secondo, Brevis
responsio ordinatur ad D. G. Bulli defensionem synodi Nicenæ authore
Gilberto Clerke …; Argumentum postremi, vera & antiqua fides de divinitate
Christi, explicata & asserta, contra D. Bulli, judicium ecclesiæ catholicæ &c.
per anonymum (London?: s.n., 1695?); The judgment of the fathers
concerning the doctrine of the Trinity opposed to Dr. G. Bull’s Defence of the
Nicene faith: Part I. The doctrine of the Catholick Church, during the first
150 years of Christianity, and the explication of the unity of God (in a Trinity
of Divine Persons) by some of the following fathers, considered (London: s.n.,
1695).
263Thus, J. Deacon, The fathers vindicated, or, Animadversions on a late
Socinian book entitul’d The judgment of the Fathers touching the Trinity,
against Doctor Bull’s Defence of the Nicene faith by a presbyter of the Church
of England (London: R. Chiswell, 1697).
264Benedictus Aretius, A Short History of Valentinus Gentilis the Tritheist
(London, 1696); the original Latin edition was published in Bern, 1567.
265E.g., Anonymous, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΥΤΟ ΘΕΟΣ or an Historical Account of the
Heresie Denying the Godhead of Christ (London: Thomas Hodgkin, 1696).
266 Pierre Allix, The judgement of the ancient Jewish church, against the
Unitarians: in the controversy upon the holy Trinity, and the divinity of our
Blessed Saviour (London: R. Chiswell, 1699). Given Allix’s teaching in this
treatise and his position in the French Reformed church, it is difficult to
accept the usual attribution of A Defence of the Brief History of the
Unitarians, Against Dr. Sherlock’s Answer (London: s.n., 1691) to him.
267 John Wallis, The doctrine of the blessed Trinity, briefly explained in a
letter to a friend (London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1690); and A second letter
concerning the Holy Trinity: pursuant to the former from the same hand:
occasioned by a letter there inserted from one unknown (London: Tho.
Parkhurst, 1691).
268 Cf. Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 153–159.
269 William Whiston, Primitive Christianity reviv’d, 5 vols. (London: Printed
for the author, 1711–12); idem, Athanasius convicted of forgery: in a letter to
Mr. Thirlby of Jesus-College in Cambridge (London: A. Baldwin, 1712);
Samuel Clarke, The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, in The Works of Samuel
Clarke, 4 vols. (London, 1738; repr. New York: Garland, 1978), vol. IV. For a
discussion of the controversy and of Clarke’s doctrine, see E. Dorothy Asch,
“Samuel Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity and the Controversy it
Aroused” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1951) and Pfizenmaier,
Trinitarian Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke.
270 William Whiston, An essay upon the Epistles of Ignatius (London:
Benjamin Tooke, 1710); idem, St. Clement’s and St. Irenaeus’s vindication of
the apostolical constitutions, from several objections made against them. As
also an account of the two antient rules thereunto belonging, for the
celebration of Easter. With a postscript on occasion of Mr. Turner’s Discourse
of the apostolical constitutions (London: J. Roberts, 1715).
271 William, Whiston, Three essays, I. The council of Nice vindicated from the
Athanasian heresy. II. A collection of ancient monuments relating to the
Trinity and incarnation and to the history of the fourth century of the church.
III. The liturgy of the Church of England reduc’d nearer to the primitive
standard (London: Printed for the author, 1713).
272 Henry C. Sheldon, History of Christian Doctrine, 2 vols. (New York:
Harper, 1895), II, p. 99.
273Cf. Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Origins of Modern Science, revised
ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1951), pp. 135–150, 258–262, with
Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp. 77–97.
274See Pfizenmaier, trinitarian Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke, pp. 89–141,
217–220.
275 The pamphlet war is too elaborate to survey: Clarke was attacked by
Thomas Bennet, John Edwards, Francis Gastrell (bishop of Chester), James
Knight, Robert Nelson, John Potter (bishop of Oxford), Daniel Waterland,
Edward Welchman, and Edward Wells. Clarke was defended by John Jackson,
Arthur Ashley Sykes, Daniel Whitby, and several anonymous pamphleteers—
and, of course, in a series of treatises, by Clarke himself. A useful summary
from the time is available in Thomas Hearne, An Account of all the
Considerable Books and Pamphlets, that have been wrote on either side, in
the Controversy concerning the Trinity, since the year 1712 (London, 1720);
and see the excellent survey of the debate in Pfizenmaier, Trinitarian
Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke, pp. 179–196.
276 Hunt, Religious Thought in England, III, p. 25.
277 Clarke, Scripture Doctrine, proposition 1.
278 Clarke, Scripture Doctrine, proposition 2.
279 Thomas Bennet, A Discourse of the Everblessed Trinity in Unity, with an
Examination of Dr. Clarke’s Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1718),
p. 232.
280 Bennet, Discourse, p. 232.
281 Richard Fiddes, Theologia speculativa: or, The First Part of a Body of
Divinity … wherein are Explain’d the Principles of Natural and Revealed
Religion (London, 1718), IV.i.2 (p. 392).
282 Fiddes, Theol. spec., IV.i.2 (p. 385).
283 Fiddes, Theol. spec., IV.ii.2 (pp. 434–35).
284 Watts, Dissenters, I, p. 374.
285Cf. W. G. T. Shedd, A History of Christian Doctrine, 2 vols. (New York:
Scribners, 1889), pp. 385–386 with Sir Leslie Stephen, History of English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols., preface by Crane Brinton (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), I, pp. 356–359, 361–364.
286 Burnet, Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, pp. 42–43.
287 Burnet, Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, pp. 46–47.
288 Stackhouse, Complete Body of Divinity, I.vi (I, pp. 188–189).
289 Thus, De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v, §13–16; cf. Salomon Van
Til, Theologiae utriusque compendium cum naturalis tum revelatae (Leiden,
1704; 2nd ed., 1719), II.iii (pp. 43–44).
290 Daniel Wyttenbach, Theses theologicae praecipua christianae doctrinae
capita ex primis principiis deducta continentes … publicé defenderunt
Isaacus Sigfrid … & Daniel Wyttenbach (Frankfurt, 1747), xxxvi.
291 Aegidius Francken, Stellige god-geleertheyd: dat is, De waarheden van de
hervormde leer: eenvoudig ter nedergestelt, en met de oeffening der waare
Godsaligheyd aangedrongen, 3 vols. (Dordrecht: J. Van Braam, 1712); idem,
Kern der Christelijke leer: dat is de waarheden van de Hervormde
godsdienst, eenvoudig ter nedergesteld, en met de oefening der ware
Godzaligheid aangedrongen (Dordrecht: J. van Braam, 1713; Groningen:
O.L. Schildkamp, 1862); Johannes van der Kemp, De Christen geheel en al
het Eigendom van Christus. Rotterdam: R. van Doesburg, 1717); in
translation, The Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, in Life and Death,
Exhibited in Fifty-three Sermons on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. John M.
Harlingen, 2 vols. (New Brunswick: Abraham Blauvelt, 1810; repr. Grand
Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1997); Campegius Vitringa, Doctrina
christianae religionis, per aphorismos summatim descripta, 8 vols. (Arnheim,
1761–1786); idem, Korte stellingen: in welke vervat worden de grondstukken
van de christelyke leere (Amsterdam: Balthazar Lakeman, 1730); Nicholaus
Guertlerus, Institutiones theologicae ordine maxime naturali dispositae ac
variis accessionibus auctae (Marburg, 1732); idem, Synopsis theologiae
reformatae (Marburg: Müller, 1731); Johann Friedrich Stapfer, Institutiones
theologiae polemicae universae, ordine scientifico dispositae, fourth edition,
5 vols. (Zurich, 1756–57); Alexander Comrie, Stellige en praktikale
verklaring van den Heidelbergschen catechismus, volgens de leer en de
gronden der reformatie (Amsterdam and Leiden, 1753); Jacob van Nuys
Klinkenberg, Onderwys in den godsdienst, 11 vols. (Amsterdam: J. Allart,
1780–1794); and Jacob van Nuys Klinkenberg and Ger. Joh. Nahyus, De
Bijbel, door beknopte Uitbreidingen, en ophelderende Aenmerkingen,
verklaerd, 27 vols. (Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 1780–1790), after Exodus,
entirely the work of Klinkenberg, hereinafter cited as Klinkenberg, Bijbel
verklaerd.
292 Wyttenbach, Tentamen theol., I, locus iii, §336–337.
293 Klinkenberg, Bijbel verklaerd, Gen. 1:1, 27; 18:1–2; Exod. 3:2; Num.
6:24–26, in loc. It is possible that the absence of trinitarian referencing in
Genesis was due to the influence of Klinkenberg’s coauthor, Nahuys, who
died at the conclusion of the work on Exodus.
294Leibniz, Defensio trinitatis per nova reperta logica (1669), in Sämtliche
Schriften und Briefe, (Berlin: Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1923–), series 7, vol. 1; and see the discussion in Maria Rosa Antognazza and
Howard Hotson, Alsted and Leibniz on God, the Magistrate and Millennium
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), pp. 36–44.
295 John Edwards, Theologia Reformata: or, the Body and Substance of the
Christian Religion, comprised in distinct discourses or treatises upon the
Apostles Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, 2 vols.
(London: John Lawrence, et al., 1713); idem, Theologia reformata, or,
Discourses on those graces and duties which are purely evangelical: and not
contained in the moral law, and on the helps, motives, and advantages of
performing them, being an entire treatise in four parts, and if added to the
two former volumes, makes a compleat body of divinity (London: T. Cox,
1726); and see below, 3.1 (C.4).
296 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), pp. 135, 145.
297 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), p. 147.
298 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 111, col. 2-p. 112, col. 1 (1855, p. 146);
citing Huet, Concordia rationis et fidei, II.iii.
299 Cf. Thomas Boston, An illustration of the doctrines of the Christian
religion, with respect to faith and practice, upon the plan of the assembly’s
shorter catechism. Comprehending a complete body of divinity. Now first
published from the manuscripts of … Thomas Boston, 2 vols. (Edinburgh:
John Reid, 1773; reissued, 1853), hereinafter cited as Boston, Commentary on
the Shorter Catechism; Gill, Body of Divinity, I, pp. 187–245; John Brown, A
Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion. In seven books
(Glasgow: John Bryce for J. Matthews, 1782; 2nd ed. revised, Edinburgh:
Murray and Cochrane, 1796; reissued, Philadelphia: David Hogan, Griggs &
Co., 1819).
300 Wyttenbach, Theses theologicae, xxxvi.
301See D. W. Dockrill, “Authority of the Fathers in the Great trinitarian
Debates of the Sixteen-Nineties,” in Studia Patristica, 18/4 (1983), pp. 335–
347.
302 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 135–163.
303 John Gill, A Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1731).
304 For a discussion of Gill’s relationship to the Reformed tradition, see
Richard A. Muller, “John Gill and the Reformed Tradition: A Study in the
Reception of Protestant Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Life
and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation, ed.
Michael A. G. Haykin (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 51–68.
305 Cf. Brown, Compendious View, II.ii (pp. 128–146).
 Part 2
The Reformed Orthodox Doctrine of the Trinity
3
The Doctrine of the Trinity in Reformed Orthodoxy:
Basic Issues, Terms, and Definitions
3.1 The Trinity as a “Fundamental Article” of Faith
A. The Place, Order, and Importance of the Doctrine
1. Views of the Reformers. Whether positively in their creedal and
catechetical expositions and their various manuals or bodies of doctrine or in
their responses to the early antitrinitarians, the Reformers uniformly gave
testimony to the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in their theology
and to the necessity of respecting the mystery of the doctrine. The doctrine of
the Trinity, according to the Reformers and their successors, belonged to the
category of fundamental and necessary articles.1 Even Melanchthon’s early
exclusion of the doctrine from his set of treated loci (albeit not from his
listing of foundational topics) had more to do with issues related to
speculation than with the question of necessary beliefs for Christians. When
Melanchthon added an exposition of the doctrine to later editions of his Loci
communes, the trinitarian model became the central issue of his doctrine of
God, given far greater detail than the unity of essence and the attributes, for,
as Melanchthon testifies, although the mystery of the Trinity is beyond all
human comprehension, some attempt at expressing the doctrine must be made
in order to distinguish Christian worship from that of the pagans.2
In the confessions and theological systems of the Reformers the doctrine of
the Trinity is almost invariably placed in the creedal or catechetical order,
early on in the order of doctrines, preceded only by preliminary matters and
the discussion of Scripture, and followed immediately by creation and
providence. Insofar as many of these works do not have extended discussions
of the divine essence and attributes, the doctrine of the Trinity receives the
central place in the doctrine of God. Thus, Calvin’s Institutes offer a long
paragraph on issues relating to essence and attributes and then engage directly
and at length in the discussion of the Trinity. For Calvin, the doctrine of the
Trinity was “another special mark” beyond the revealed attributes by which
God makes his identity and intention known to us—and without the
knowledge of the three persons, we can “have only a bare and empty name of
God floating in our brains” and no “idea of the true God.”3 Calvin’s
placement and understanding of the doctrine, at least as far as the order and
arrangement of the Institutes are concerned, remained highly influencial by
the initial catechetical model of the Institutes and by the dispersal of the
creedal portion of the catechism into the four books of the 1559 edition: thus,
he comes to the doctrine of the Trinity after his initial discussion of the
knowledge of God and of human beings and his discussion of Scripture and
God’s revelation in it.4 The pattern, albeit far more discursive, is virtually
identical in implication to the dominant model of the later orthodox:
prolegomena, Scripture, and God. Calvin also assumes that the order proceeds
from discussion of the one God and his attributes to the discussion of the
Trinity.5 (Given that the arrangement of the Vermigli-Massoinius Loci
communes was patterned on Calvin’s Institutes, the same arrangement obtains
there and Vermigli’s theology had its impact in the Calvinian form.)
Bullinger identifies the Trinity as clearly taught in Scripture, together with
the unity of God, and he counsels that believers “simply rest therein, and not
curiously search or lust after any further knowledge in this life than what God
has revealed.”6 In the Decades, his approach to the Trinity occurs precisely
where one would expect, in his sermon on the first article of the Creed. As for
the arrangement of the doctrine of God itself, Bullinger’s Compendium and
Decades broach both topics together, given the creedal model of both
documents at this point, and in the Compendium, the recounting of the
attributes follows the definition of the Trinity.7
Perhaps the clearest statement of the place of the doctrine found among the
second generation of the Reformed comes from Hyperius, who identified
Deus as the first locus to be treated in the order of six basic loci (following an
introductory discussion of Scripture as the basis of doctrine): God, Creatures
and Human Beings, the Church, the Doctrine of the Law and the Gospel, the
signs or Sacraments, and the Consummation. Within the doctrine of God
itself, Hyperius assumes that the proper order is to move from the divine
oneness to the divine threeness.8
Musculus’ model has much in common with these other second-generation
efforts, but it also has some rather distinctive features. We have already noted
his extensive presentation of the divine attributes.9 In his order and
arrangement of the loci, Musculus places first a set of preliminary remarks
concerning the existence and nature of God and then, prior to his discussion
of the Creation, Fall, and work of redemption, addresses the doctrine of the
Trinity and the works or operations of God. He is then able to offer, when he
returns, some thirty-eight chapters later, to the nature and attributes of God, to
offer a trinitarian and often highly soteriological understanding of the
attributes at various crucial places in his lengthy discussions of each attribute.
This arrangement, by the way, can be missed in a perusal of the contents of
the sixteenth-century English translation of the Loci communes, in which “Of
God” appears as the first locus and “Of the Works of God” as the second: in
the Latin editions, the loci stand as (I) De Deo, (II) De divinitate Christi, (III)
De divinitate Spiritus sancti, and (IV) De operibus Dei. The material is not
missing from the English translation, but only gathered into a three-part
chapter under one heading.
2. The Reformed orthodox approach to the doctrine of the Trinity. The
doctrine of the Trinity occupies a crucial position both in the scholastic
Protestant system and in the exegesis and piety of the era of orthodoxy as
well.10 Beginning with Zanchi, who registered Ochino’s suggestion that the
Trinity be viewed as a doctrine not necessary to salvation, the Reformed
consistently state the contrary: the Protestant orthodox place the doctrine of
the Trinity among the “fundamental” or “necessary articles” and, against both
Socinian denial of the doctrine and Remonstrant denial of its fundamental
character, argue its necessity to the salvation of believers. The doctrine is
taught in Scripture and, therefore, ought to be understood as pertinent to
salvation! Moreover, the doctrine is necessary, given the consistent reference
of Scripture to the Son and the Spirit of God, to the right confession of the
one God, which is clearly necessary to salvation.11 One of the great errors of
modern writers has been their claim that the Reformers did not emphasize the
doctrine of the Trinity sufficiently and that the Protestant scholastics devalued
the doctrine of the Trinity because of an emphasis on the essence and
attributes of God.12 This error arises out of two misapprehensions concerning
the form and method of scholastic system. On the one hand, it assumes that
the comparatively greater space allotted to the doctrine of the essence and
attributes of God is a sign of its greater importance to the system. Quite to the
contrary, extent of exposition is not a sign of importance or lack thereof—
instead, the extent of any discussion in a scholastic system is primarily a
function of the number of parts or divisions of a topic and of the ease or
difficulty of the argument. The doctrine of the essence and attributes of God,
which is to say, the doctrine of the divine oneness or unity, is neither more nor
less important than the doctrine of the Trinity: it simply contains more topics
for discussion and definition.
The comparative brevity of the positive, systematic presentations of the
doctrine can be explained, moreover, by the assumption of the Reformed
orthodox that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a proper place for extensive
rational demonstration and argumentation. Owen refers to the reverence with
which “these awful mysteries” ought to be presented.13 Turretin begins his
discussion with the assertion that the “sacred mystery of the Trinity” can
“neither be grasped by reason nor demonstrated by example” but can be
discussed “only on the authority of revelation as received by faith, and
respected by piety”14—while Marckius, Pictet, and Rijssen warn against the
temptation to follow the medieval scholastics into speculation concerning the
opera ad intra.15
On the other hand, it is sometimes argued in modern discussions of the
subject—perhaps on the basis of one of Luther’s early complaints against late
medieval commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences—that the treatment of the
Trinity following the doctrine of the essence and attributes indicates a
subordination of the doctrines concerning the personal God of the Bible to
metaphysical concerns. Here, too, we must dissent and for a variety of
reasons. Not only is the primary testimony of Scripture to the oneness of God,
it is also the case that nearly all of the modern reflection on the biblical God
as personal refers to the will and affections of the one God—namely, to the
attributes of that God—in his relation to his creation, and not specifically to
the Trinity or to the divine subsistences traditionally denominated “persons.”
In addition, the placement of the doctrine of the Trinity second in order arises,
in the first place, out of the need to set the doctrine against the background of
divine oneness and to argue the predication of all the divine attributes equally
of each of the persons on the grounds of the full possession of the divine
essence by each of the persons. The logic of the discussion demands prior
definition of oneness, essence, and attributes. In the second place, it is the
discussion of the work of the three persons, first in their relationships ad intra
and then in their common work ad extra, that provides the point of transition
from the doctrine of God to the rest of the system—that is, to the doctrines of
the works of God. Thus, again, the logic of discussion provides the reason for
the order of the doctrine: first the doctrine of God, then the doctrine of God’s
works. The issue is one of the flow of theological system, not of greater or
lesser importance of doctrinal loci.
The intimate relation between the loci is apparent, moreover, in the
occasional variations of order and arrangement that occur in the Reformed
orthodox doctrine of God. Thus, Wendelin makes the classic division between
the doctrine of the essence and attributes and the doctrine of the trinity, but he
reserves his discussion of the divine unity for the locus on the Trinity, thereby
establishing the intimate relationship of the topics and emphasizing both the
monotheistic context of Christian trinitarianism and the connection between
trinitarian statements and the assumption of divine simplicity, infinity,
perfection, omnipotence, and sufficiency—all of which can be understood
only in the context of divine oneness. His basic thesis on the Trinity, that
“there are, in the one and simple nature of God, distinct persons who possess
[it] in common,” leads him to place all discussion of divine threeness into the
context of divine oneness. God, therefore, is one with respect to nature, plural
with respect to person—and we are bound to recognize, Wendelin continues,
that the word “God” is used in two ways in Scripture, essentially, with
reference to oneness, and personally, with reference to the plurality pf
persons. We see, therefore, a distinction of topics for the sake of exposition,
not a radical separation of issues.16
Finally, the assumption of a lessening of interest in the doctrine of the
Trinity in comparison with the doctrine of the divine attributes is clearly
refuted by examination of the polemical treatises, independent theological
essays, and sermons of the orthodox, as distinct from their systems of
theology. A vast amount of energy was expended throughout the seventeenth
century in the defense of the Trinity against both Socinian and Arminian
views—while the arrival of modern forms of Sabellianism and Arianism in
the latter half of the seventeenth century elicited a significant historical and
dogmatic literature from orthodox Protestants.17 A more churchly and
practical concern for the doctrine of the Trinity is manifest, moreover, in the
numerous sermons and positive treatises on the subject, in which the orthodox
demonstrate their belief that the doctrine was a primary foundation of faith
and life with strong soteriological implications.18
The importance of the doctrine to Reformed orthodoxy is perhaps nowhere
more forcefully and eloquently stated than in Owen’s treatise on The Divine
Original of Scripture, in which Owen offers as an argument for the divine
purpose in Scripture that it presents “some revelations … so sublimely
glorious, of so profound and mysterious an excellency” that they are beyond
reason to the point of confounding it at first glance, and yet, when rightly
contemplated, reason itself must recognize “that unless they are accepted and
submitted unto, although unsearchable, not only all that hath been received
must be rejected, but also the whole dependence of the creature on God be
dissolved, or rendered only dreadful, terrible, and destructive to nature
itself.”19 The doctrine of the Trinity, Owen continues, is just such a doctrine:
“take away … the doctrine of the Trinity, and … there can be no purpose of
grace by the Father in the Son—no covenant for the putting of that purpose in
execution: and so the foundation of all fruits of love and goodness is lost to
the soul.”20
3. The order and arrangement of the locus. As is to be expected, the
order and arrangement of the locus de Deo varies in its presentation of the
Trinity, albeit not as much as in its presentation of the attributes. Among the
theologies of the second-generation Reformers, Calvin’s Institutes stands out
as more detailed and precise in its outline, particularly in the form understood
by the sixteenth-century editors, who offered the following description of the
arrangement of the chapter:
This chapter consists of two parts. The former delivers the orthodox
doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity. This occupies from sec. 1–21, and
may be divided into four heads; the first, treating of the meaning of
Person, including both the term and the thing meant by it, sec. 2–6; the
second, proving the deity of the Son, sec. 7–13; the third, the deity of
the Holy Spirit, sec. 14 and 15; and the fourth, explaining what is to be
held concerning the Holy Trinity. The second part of the chapter refutes
certain heresies which have arisen, particularly in our age, in opposition
to this orthodox doctrine. This occupies from sec. 21 to the end.21
Calvin thus introduces the topic, defines “person” and other traditional
trinitarian terms, discusses the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, and
concludes his positive exposition with a statement of the full doctrine of the
Trinity, framing it as a result of the more or less exegetical exercise of proving
the deity and persons of the Son and the Spirit. Only after fully defining the
doctrine does he address the heresies. Notably absent here is a distinct
discussion of God as Father in the trinitarian sense.
In the early orthodox era, Polanus offered a well-designed ordering of the
locus that stood in basic continuity with Calvin’s model, but added a separate
discussion of the Father. The chapter heads are “I. Concerning the term
person, whether it may be used with reference to God, and how it is
distinguished from other related terms; II. What is a divine person; III. On the
number of divine persons; IV. On God the Father; V. On the Son of God; VI.
On the Holy Spirit; VII. Concerning the Holy Trinity; VIII. Axioms
concerning the Holy Trinity, or concerning the three persons in the unity of
the Godhead; IX. Refutation of objections against the homoousion of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; X–XI. Refutation of objections against
the distinction of persons.”22 The patterning is very much like Calvin’s—an
introduction to the terms, particularly “person,” followed by the identification
of the persons, demonstrating their distinction and divinity, concluding with
the definition of the Trinity, and then passing on to objections. Similarly, from
the same era, Alsted’s Theologia didactica discusses the doctrine under the
following heads: “Concerning the persons of the Trinity in their relation to
one another; Concerning the persons of the Trinity in their distinction; Of God
the Father; Of the Son of God; Of the Holy Spirit.”23 The absence of chapters
refuting heresies stems from the “didactic,” as distinct from “scholastic” or
“polemical,” model of the treatise.
Among the high orthodox theologians, similar models and orders appear,
albeit with some minor alterations of argument, largely for the sake of
clarification of issues and definitions. Thus, Maresius begins the locus de
Sacro-sancta Trinitate of his Collegium theologicum with a declaration of the
“excellency” of the doctrine and a brief definition (i–ii); he then proceeds to
an extended set of definitions of terms (iii–x), a discussion of the threeness of
person and unity of essence (xi–xiii), an analysis of the distinction of the
persons (xiv–xx), a discussion of the personal properties (xxi–xxiii), a
statement of the opera trinitatis ad intra emphasizing the primacy of the
Father (xxiv–xxv), the generation of the Son from the Father (xxvi), and
procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son (xxvii), the distinctions
between generation and procession, their order, and the modes of operation ad
intra and ad extra (xxviii–xxxiv). All this leads to an extended definition of
the Trinity and unity of God (xxxv–xl), the identification of the Trinity as a
necessary doctrine beyond but not contrary to reason (xli–xliii). Maresius then
comes to the demonstration of the doctrine from the Old (xliv–xlv) and New
(xlvi–xlviii) Testaments, followed by specific biblical arguments for the
divinity and person of the Son and the divinity and person of the Spirit (xlix)
from their names (l–li), their attributes (lii), their works (liii), and the honors
accorded them (liv–lvi). Finally, against various heresies ancient and modern,
Maresius stresses the divinity and distinct personality of the Spirit (lvii–lix),
and concludes with a comment on the practical use of the doctrine (lx).24 Like
Calvin, Maresius offers no separate discussion of God the Father—and in
accord with nearly all the theologies examined, he moves from introductory
comment to definitions of terms, full definition, arguments from Scripture for
the deity and persons of the Son and Spirit, and a conclusion. Unlike the early
orthodox, but quite like other high orthodox theologies, Maresius lines out the
topics according to which the divinity of the Son and Spirit are demonstrated
—divine names, divine attributes, divine works, and divine honor. This latter
elaboration is simply that, a more detailed topical division of material already
found in the order and arrangement of Reformed theologies looking back to
Calvin’s Institutes.
In Turretin’s Institutio, the arrangement is somewhat different, given the
fundamentally polemical approach of the treatise. He begins with a series of
definitions of the terms—essence, substance, subsistence, person, Trinity,
homoousios—and then discusses the doctrine as a mystery and a
fundamental article, against the Socinians and the Remonstrants.25 Turretin
next defines the doctrine, against the Socinians, as referring to one divine
essence in three persons, and then, also against the Socinians, argues that the
doctrine can be demonstrated from the Old Testament.26 Then follows a
discussion of the distinction of the persons, the deity and eternal generation of
the Son, and the deity and procession of the Spirit.27 Again, the model moves
from definition of terms to the demonstrations of the divinity of the Son and
Spirit, given that these are the controverted topics—with the omission of
separate discussion of the Father, as Van Til would later comment, the
personality of the Father is evident and the deity of the Father beyond
controversy.28
A noteworthy, largely non-polemical doctrinal model is found in Brakel’s
Redelijke Godsdienst, where the doctrine of God is discussed in two extended
chapters, Van God and Van de Goddelijke Personen. Here the statement of the
mystery is presented first and foremost, against the various heretical
objections, as a biblical doctrine available only through revelation (i–ii). Next
there is a juxtaposition of the unity of the divine essence with the threeness of
the persons (iii–iv). There follows an extended discussion of the plurality of
divine persons in the biblical revelation (v–viii), a discussion of the eternal
generation of the Son (ix–xxv), of the person of the Holy Spirit as “spirit,” as
“holy,” as a “person,” and as divine (xxvi–xxxiii), of the “practical” use of the
doctrine, with significant emphasis on the work of the Spirit (xxxiv–xlix).29
Nearly all of the major systematic works from the era of orthodoxy discuss,
somewhere in the locus, the mystery of the Trinity and define the doctrine as
resting on revelation alone, having a status beyond reason, although not
unreasonable. This set of assumptions yields a doctrine that is grounded
primarily on the biblical text and, in its use of exegetical materials, follows
out the typical hermeneutical pattern of the Reformed orthodoxy, namely, the
use of explicit statements of Scripture, the use of conclusions drawn from
individual texts or collations of texts, and the assumption of an overarching
scope of Scripture that permits broad-ranging conclusions resting on the
entirety of the revelation.
B. The Trinity of God as a Mystery beyond Reason
1. Views of the Reformers. The Reformers tended not only to defend the
traditional doctrine of the Trinity as biblical but also to deemphasize the
authority of the traditional trinitarian terminology—particularly the more
speculative language of the medieval scholastics concerning the character of
the trinitarian emanations in the Godhead. The patristic metaphors and
various references to vestigia trinitatis, whether in the human frame or in the
world at large, never became major elements in the doctrinal expositions of
the Reformers.
In the first edition of his Loci communes, Melanchthon chose to note the
doctrine of the Trinity among the standard topics belonging to theology—and
then chose not to discuss it in his largely Pauline survey of the basic
theological loci, commenting that, together with such topics as “the mystery
of creation” and the “manner of incarnation,” it was better left undiscussed
than speculated on: “we do better to adore the mysteries of the Deity than to
investigate them.” “What is more,” he added, “these matters cannot be probed
without great danger.”30 As the shape and content of his Loci communes
developed, Melanchthon added a lengthy discussion of the doctrine of God,
focused largely on the doctrine of the Trinity and its biblical foundations, but
he did so in the recognition that the doctrine remained a mystery, albeit one
that needed statement and even doctrinal elaboration in the church:
although all the minds of men and of angels stand in wonderment in
admiration of this mystery, that God has begotten a Son and that the
Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet we
must concur in this, because, as has already been said so many times,
we must believe concerning God as He has revealed Himself …
Although we cannot probe this mystery to the depths, yet in this life
God has willed that there be at least a beginning of knowledge of this
subject.31
Calvin indicates the vast difference between Christian views of God and
those based solely on human “imaginations” and identifies the “unity …
existing in three persons” as a most “intimate knowledge” of God’s nature
belonging only to the Christian revelation.32 Calvin also went to great pains to
identify the proper use of the traditional trinitarian language and its limits: the
terms essence, person, subsistence, and so forth, are useful as guides or
boundaries to expression, keeping the church from heresy, but they are no
more than a set of “clearer terms” by which we explain the “dark and
intricate” places of Scripture that lie beyond the human capacity to penetrate.
Such terms must be “kept in reverent and faithful subordination to Scripture
truth, used sparingly and modestly.”33 In keeping with this limitation of the
use of churchly language concerning the Trinity, Calvin avoided all but the
basic patristic terms and spoke quite negatively of the more speculative
Augustinian metaphors drawn from human nature.34 Viret, by way of
contrast, perhaps because of the more popular nature of his writings, did use
metaphors—notably the patristic metaphor of the sun, its rays, and the heat;
the Augustinian metaphor of understanding, memory, and will; and a
metaphor of the three persons of Adam, Eve, and Seth, drawn out of Justin
Martyr. Of the latter, Viret appreciated the fact that Eve came forth from
Adam and that both together begat Seth (indicating double procession!), but
he also noted the problem of using human persons in a metaphor, given the
tritheistic implication of identifying the divine essence as secondary essence
or genus. Viret, departing considerably from Calvin, evidenced a particular
fondness for the Augustinian metaphor.35
Bullinger offered an assessment of metaphors and similes applied to the
Trinity similar to Calvin’s. Some would attempt to explain the mystery of the
Trinity by “similitudes,” he writes, “but in all the things that God hath made
… there is nothing which can properly be likened to the nature of God:
neither are there any words in the mouth of men that can properly be spoken
of it: neither are there any similitudes of man’s invention that can rightly and
squarely agree with the divine Essence.” Therefore, “injury is done to the
majesty of God, if it be compared with mortal things.”36 Nevertheless, since
Scripture itself speaks in such a way as to accommodate its truth “to our
infirmity,” a few parables or similitudes, if taken with caution, are not out of
place in a reverent discussion of the Trinity.
As the sun is the headspring of the light and the heat, so is the Father
the headspring of the Son, who is light of light: and as of the sun and
the beams together the heat doth come, so of the Father and the Son
together the Holy Ghost proceedeth. But now put case or imagine that
the sun were such as never had beginning, nor ever shall have ending;
and should not then, I pray you, the beams of this everlasting sun be
everlasting too? And should not the heat, which proceedeth of them
both, be everlasting, as well as they? Finally, should not the sun be one
still in essence or substance, and three by reason of the three
subsistences or persons?37
Finally, writes Bullinger, one must pass from such parables and similies to the
recognition that, insofar as this mystery lies beyond human comprehension, it
is a matter for faith alone.38
2. Approaches of the Reformed orthodox. Echoing the Reformers, the
Reformed orthodox almost invariably comment that the doctrine of the Trinity
is the sublime and sacred mystery of the Christian faith “which can neither be
grasped by reason nor demonstrated by example, but is offered by divine
Revelation alone to be received by faith and contemplated with reverence.”39
Brakel begins his discussion of the Trinity with the remark that, “having
spoken of the name, the being and the personal properties of God, we turn to
the profoundest mystery of the holy Triunity (de allerdiepste geheimenis van
de heilige Drieëenheid).”40 Indeed, so far does the mystery of the Trinity
“transcend reason” that it can be “demonstrated from the revealed word
alone.”41 Zanchi can be said, perhaps, to have set the tone for the Protestant
scholastic discussion by stating categorically that “we can neither know nor
speak anything of this mystery, except to the extent that it is supported by
Scripture.” Second, he comments, the only way to develop the doctrine is by
close examination of Scripture, specifically interpreting the text by “the
analogy of faith.”42
The British divines express nearly identical sentiments: Owen denominates
the doctrine of the Trinity “unsearchable” to the point that “at the first
proposal” of such a teaching, the unassisted rational faculty “startles, shrinks,
and is taken with horror, meeting that which is above it, too great and too
excellent for it.” This is a doctrine, Owen concludes, that is “above and
beyond the reach of reason.”43 Citing Exodus 33:18–23, Owen comments that
we are able to know “external representations of God” and “created
appearances of his glory” akin to the “back parts” of a man who passes us by,
“but as to the being of God and his subsistence in the Trinity of persons, we
have no direct intuition into them, much less comprehension of them.”44
Similarly, Manton indicates that the doctrine of the Trinity “is a mystery
proper to the scriptures.” “Other truths,” he continues, “are revealed in nature,
but this is a treasure peculiar to the church.”45
The orthodox, thus, feel that dogmatic discussion of the Trinity is
mandated by revelation even though the doctrine be an impenetrable mystery
—and that, further, the revelation, insofar as it can be understood, must be
illustrated or explicated with the tools of reason. The illustrations, however,
cannot be considered any more than very limited aids to understanding: here
the epistemological side of the Reformed non capax comes to the fore. Why,
then, the discussion, if it must necessarily be imperfect—why the attempt at
rational, doctrinal statement if reason must fail before the mystery? The
answer for the seventeenth-century Protestant mind was simple:
The mystery of the Trinity is necessary to be known and believed of all
that shall be saved; it was not so plainly revealed to the Jews of old, as
it is to us in the new Testament. A perfect and full knowledge of this
mystery is not attainable in this life.46
This is a wonderful mystery rather to be adored and admired than
inquired into; and yet every one is bound to know it with an
apprehensive knowledge, though not with a comprehensive. No man
can be saved without the knowledge of the Father; he hath not the
Father who denieth the Son; and he receives not the Holy Ghost who
knows him not, John 14:17 (cf. 1 John 2:23).47
This characterization of the doctrine of the Trinity was, of course, a matter of
controversy: the Socinians and the Remonstrants both denied that the Trinity
could be a fundamental article of the faith—a claim that the orthodox were
quick to point out was, in itself, a fundamental error. In Hoornbeeck’s view,
the biblical basis for the Reformed position was offered by 1 John 2:23, “he
who denies the Son, has denied the Father,” as well as by the baptismal
formula of Matthew 28:19. What is more, Hoornbeeck could argue, the
Socinians themselves confirm the point, as seen in Schlichting’s attack on
Meisner: in attempting to undermine the Lutheran Meisner’s arguments
concerning fundamental articles, Schlichting had stated that if the doctrine of
the Trinity were true, it would be fundamental and had then concluded that,
given its falsity, it could not be. Hoornbeeck concludes that even the
adversaries admit the fundamental nature of the doctrine, and given its truth,
it therefore must be understood as necessary to salvation.48
3. The practical use of the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus the orthodox not
only state the doctrine of the Trinity as the ground of all other Christian
doctrine—they also state it as an eminently practical doctrine, as illustrated by
the practical sections of Mastricht’s analysis and by Owen’s trinitarian
treatise, Of Communion with God … or, the Saints’ Fellowship with the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Unfolded (1657).49 The Reformed orthodox
theologians’ profound sense of the ultimate and foundational nature of the
doctrine of the Trinity for faith and worship and for the architecture and
content of theological system frequently leads them to discuss at length the
“practical use” of the doctrine in the church. For the late orthodox, even this
point has become a matter of debate, given the tendency of the Remonstrant
theologians to argue both a more subordinationistic view of the Trinity and
the inadvisability of focusing too much attention on the difficult nuances of
the topic. Thus, Brakel comments that
the Remonstrants, who make no effort to deny the Trinity, still attempt
to demean it by indicating that it is unprofitable. But the Word testifies
to the contrary.50
Witsius commented, still more pointedly, that “nothing is more false than that
calumny of the Remonstrants, by which they deny that the article of the holy
Trinity has any practical use.” Inasmuch as the Trinity is a “fundamental”
article of the faith, the general character of Christian truth that it “is according
to godliness” (Titus 1:1) all the more belongs to the doctrine of the Trinity:
this doctrine, continues Witsius, is “the source of all genuine faith” and “of all
true religion” since “he cannot have Christian faith, who does not believe that
a person in the Godhead could have been given … to be a successful
Mediator with God; but this would have been impossible, if the Godhead had
subsisted only in one person.”51 Indeed, the Reformed orthodox are
unanimous in declaring that the doctrine of the Trinity is necessary to
salvation and, therefore, an integral part of the faith and piety of the church:
as Calvin commented, “unless we grasp” the revelation of God as three
persons, “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to
the exclusion of the true God.”52 Witsius echoes Calvin precisely: “He who
does not adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as equal in divine
majesty, worships not the true God, but a creature of his own imagination.”53
There is, of course, variety of formulation in the Reformed orthodox
discussion of the practical use of the doctrine of the Trinity: Turretin states
quite simply and briefly that
 the article of the Trinity is not only theoretical, but also practical, since
it conduces to gratitude and worship of God—to the end that we may
devote our faith and service to the Triune God who has revealed himself
to us. And [it conduces] to consolation inasmuch as [by it] we may
know that Christ has truly redeemed us and that our salvation has been
made secure.54
Witsius offers three basic uses, adding admonition to the instruction and
consolation indicated by Turretin.55 More elaborately, Mastricht divides the
topic into seven practical uses ranging from the reproof of “atheistical
antitrinitarians,” to the support of worship and to the communion of saints.
Ridgley, too, offers seven, the majority of which focus on redemption and the
prayerful contemplation of God.56 For Owen, the great practical use of the
doctrine of the Trinity—to which he devoted some three hundred pages of
exposition—is that “the saints have distinct communion with the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Spirit” in the order of “the dispensation of grace”:
every gift and beneift of God “groweth originally from the Father, and cometh
not to us but by the Son, nor by the Son, to any of us in particular, but through
the Spirit.”57
Heppe, unfortunately, virtually omitted this aspect of the doctrine and
thereby obscured perhaps the most fundamental intersection of the
“speculative” or “contemplative” side of orthodox or scholastic theology with
the practical dimension.58 These various “uses” of the doctrine of the Trinity
bear detailed examination, given their significance to the Reformed
exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity and, in addition, given the light that
they shed on the fundamentally trinitarian character of orthodox Reformed
theology as a whole: if there is a single central dogma in the Reformed
system, not in the sense of a deductive principle, but in the sense of a
foundational premise for the right understanding of all other doctrine, the
Trinity is most surely that central dogma. This centrality, moreover, can be
seen in the breadth and scope of the uses, which extend from preliminary
discussions of revelation, to Christology, to the order of salvation, to the
church, and to the last things.
For Ridgley, the first (albeit not the primary) use of the doctrine of the
Trinity concerns the distinction between natural and revealed religion. Natural
religion
respects the knowledge of God, so far as it may be attained without help
of divine revelation, and the worship which the heathen, who have
nothing else to guide them but the light of nature, are obliged to give to
the divine Being. [Revealed religion,] which is founded on scripture,
contains a personal display of the glory of the Father, the Son, and the
 Holy Ghost. This is necessary to be known and believed; as it is the
foundation of all revealed religion. The sum of Christianity consists in
our subjection to, and adoring the Godhead, as subsisting in the Father,
the Son, Holy Spirit.59
Significantly, Ridgley points directly to the uniqueness of the biblical
revelation of God as “personal”—Father, Son, and Spirit—in contrast to the
revelation of God as Being that is available in nature. We remember that
Scotus, long before, had distinguished between metaphysics and theology on
the ground that the former understands its object as Deus qua Ens, while the
latter understands it object as Deus qua Deus. The doctrine of the Trinity,
then, is the fundamental article of the faith inasmuch as it provides the
fundamental distinction between Christianity and other religion and inasmuch
as it presents the primary and central focus both of subjection and adoration—
obedience and faith. This latter point must certainly be understood in terms of
the traditional definition of religion as consisting in the worship and
knowledge of God and its reflection in the architectonic description of all
theology, introduced into Reformed orthodoxy primarily by Ramists like
Polanus, Wollebius, and Ames, as consisting in articles concerning the faith
and articles concerning our obedience.60
C. Rational Argumentation for the Doctrine of the Trinity
1. The vestigia trinitatis: Reformed approaches. As implied in the
discussion of the mystery of the Trinity, many of the Reformed orthodox, like
the Reformers themselves, distanced themselves from all forms of rational
argumentation toward the doctrine of the Trinity and allowed only limited use
of traditional metaphors and similes in their expositions. Others, however,
broached the question of the traditionary rational argumentation more
positively. As with other doctrinal topics, one is impressed by the variety of
formulation within confessional limits—belying the understanding, typical of
the older scholarship, of Reformed orthodoxy as “rigid” and monolithic.
The concept of vestigia trinitatis, “vestiges” or “marks of the Trinity”
stamped on the created order and, specifically, on human nature, was,
therefore, noted by the orthodox with widely varying degrees of receptivity.
The assumption of vestigia stands in direct relationship to the doctrine of the
works of the triune God ad extra and rests on the same logic as attends the
concept of a natural revelation: the impress of the maker remains on that
which is made.61 Furthermore, the creation not only contains within it various
signs of the identity and attributes of the creator, it also bears a closer
resemblance to the Creator in the higher levels of the hierarchy of being,
granting that the higher the order of creature, the closer it stands to the divine
being. Patristic and medieval exegesis had found significant ground for the
doctrine, moreover, in the opening chapter of Genesis, where the entire
Trinity was revealed in the texts concerning the God whose Spirit “moved
upon the face of the waters,” whose Word was spoken in the work of creation,
and who, in the creation of human beings at the apex of the temporal order
could declare in the plural, “Let us make man in our image.”62 Medieval
writers, moreover, who had followed out the Augustinian line of a trinitarian
imago Dei, could argue that there was a vague and imperfect capacity within
the natural knowledge of God for a trinitarian apperception of the divine.63
This older pattern of interpretation carried over with mixed reception into
the Protestant exegetical tradition, given the tendency of Protestant exegesis
toward a denial of allegory. Calvin had tended to deemphasize this
traditionary approach to the impress of the Trinity on human nature,
remarking in his commentary on Genesis that “Augustine, beyond all others,
speculates with excessive refinement, for the purpose of fabricating a Trinity
in man,” and commenting only that “I acknowledge, indeed, that there is
something in man which refers to the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit,”64
but not specifying what. Several of Calvin’s contemporaries, however, as well
as many later Reformed theologians, offered broader discussion of the subject
or, at least, an acknowledgment of the Augustinian view without, however,
major elaboration of Augustine’s more speculative metaphors. Viret, by way
of contrast, developed patristic metaphors at some length, with a particular
affection for Augustine’s language of understanding, memory, and will and
for the medieval language of emanations of intellect and will.65 The early
orthodox similarly employed patristic language concerning the begetting or
emanation of the Word ad intra and ad extra, and the standard metaphors of a
fountain and stream, the sun and its rays, water and rising vapor, tree and
branches, the mind and its inward word—usually expressing the need for
caution with such forms of discourse.66
Amyraut and Leigh also note “adumbrations” or “resemblances” by which
the concept of triunity may be understood from the natural order, specifically
from the cosmos itself, the sun, and the human soul, from which the ancient
pagans perhaps gathered some sense of the tridaic nature of God.67 These
analogies do not serve as proofs, given the inability of the finite creature to
rise by analogy from the finite to the infinite:
Two resemblances are much used in Scripture, the Light and the word.
The Light which was three days before the Sun, Gen. 1. and then
condensed into that glorious body, and ever since diffused throughout
the world, is all one and the same light. So the Father of lights which
inhabiteth light which none can approach, Jas. 1:17. and the Sun of
righteousness, Mal. 4:2. in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth
 bodily [Eph. 1:17,18], and the holy Ghost the Spirit of illumination are
all one and the same God.68
Amyraut also notes the metaphor of the triangle, which became quite popular
among late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers.69 So also, without
mentioning their source in Augustine, Leigh and Amyraut offer the spiritual
or mental analogies for the Trinity:
Again it is the same thing that the mind thinketh, and the word
signifieth, and the voice uttereth: so is the Father as the mind
conceiving, the Son as the word conceived or begotten, the holy Ghost
as the voice or speech uttered and imparted to all hearers; and all one
and the same God.70
Ainsworth (also following Augustine) drew out the metaphor biblically,
commenting that the “image” of Genesis 1:26 indicates the “image of the holy
Trinity; whereby man in nature, knowledge, righteousness, holiness, glory,
&c. resembled God his maker.”71
2. Seventeenth-century scholastics and the ancients: partial trinitarian
conceptions granted to reason in classical philosophy. Equally significant
to the question of legitimacy of rational arguments for the Trinity of God are
the Reformed orthodox discussions of vestigial or partial trinitarian
conceptions found in ancient philosophy. Given the extensive knowledge both
of the classical and of the patristic heritage characteristic both of the
Reformers and of the Protestant orthodox, these discussions are relatively
frequent in the older dogmatics, and they consistently raise the question of the
uniqueness of the Christian revelation. In addition, when paired with the issue
of partial or incomplete revelations of the Trinity in the Old Testament, these
reports of ancient philosophical trinitarianism allowed some of the orthodox
dogmaticians cautiously to argue a progressive character to revelation, with
the fullness of God’s truth being manifest in the New Testament only.72 The
Platonic “triad” in Plato himself, Plotinus, and Proclus, the Parmenidean
“trinity,” and the emanation of Mind and Word from the ultimate deity in the
Hermetica were noted by the Reformed as primary examples of the vague
notions of the Trinity found among the ancient pagan philosophers.73 These
trinitarian or triadic elements of ancient philosophy were, moreover, debated
by various writers in the seventeenth century, as they had been by the church
Fathers, as the source of altered, often heretical, views of the doctrine of the
Trinity—notably by Amyraut and Cudworth.74
Among the Puritans, Manton noted that Plato spoke of the divine as nous,
logos, and pneuma, while Trismegistus used prota, theos, and other terms
for the deity. Such adumbrations of the Trinity were most probably “general
notions” gathered by the ancient philosophers through contact with the Jews,
or perhaps the passages in which these concepts are found are additions to the
text made at a later date by well-meaning Christians “who counted it a piece
of their zeal to lie for God.”75 Edwards and Ridgley, similarly, comment on
the adumbrations of the doctrine of the Trinity found in Plato and later
Platonists: Plato speaks of three principles, namely, goodness or being, the
word or reason of the supreme being, and the spirit “which diffuses its
influence throughout the whole system of beings … the soul of the world”—
while Plato’s followers speak of these ultimate principles as “three
hypostases.”76 These views, Ridgley argues, do not derive from “the light of
nature”—rather their ultimate source was the Bible. Like Manton and,
moreover, like the fathers, Ridgley assumes that this ancient philosophical
trinitarianism were the result of Plato’s contact with Jews during his travels in
Egypt. Later Platonists, like Plotinus, Proclus, and Porphyry, borrowed their
trinitarian metaphysics from their Christian adversaries.77
The possible Judaeo-Christian origins of Platonic trinitarianism did not,
however, give easy credence to the use of Platonic argumentation in the
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in the seventeenth century. Samuel Parker
questioned the entire project, doubting that Plato’s thought evidenced any
knowledge at all of ancient Hebrew wisdom and specifically arguing against
any genuine resemblance between the “Platonick Triad” and the Christian
Trinity. The first and second persons of the Christian Trinity, he noted, are
Father and Son, of the Platonic, monas and nous: there is not even a
superficial resemblance! Beyond this, the Platonic Triad continues in the
emanation of the human soul, so that it represents a descending order or
ranking of “Intellectual Beings,” not a Trinity of three coessential and coequal
persons.78 Gale, writing a decade later from the perspective of his own
attempt to create a theologically acceptable “Reformed” Platonism,
acknowledged the problem, noting the “dark notices of the Trinitie” in
Platonic philosophy, particularly among the later Platonists. Like Parker, he
noted the emanationistic assumptions of Platonism and argued that the triadic
model of the ultimate Monad, the eternal intellect, or Nous, and the World-
soul indicated three essentially distinct hypostases, not to be assimilated to the
Christian Trinity. To the argument, Gale added the arguments of Cyril of
Alexandria to the effect that the Platonic model was the seed of Arianism.
Gale also concluded, with specific reference to Cudworth’s massive analysis
of the problem, that any attempt to reconcile the Platonic with the Christian
Trinity would “be of most dangerous consequence.”79
Ridgley mentions, with considerable disapprobation, the use of Plato in
answer to the antitrinitarian claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is
unintelligible. He goes on to cite Pierre Huet’s concordia rationis et fidei as a
contemporary example of this technique, commenting that “what they call an
advantage to the doctrine, has been certainly very detrimental to it; and … has
tended only to pervert the simplicity of the Christian faith with mixtures of
philosophy and vain deceit.”80 At very best, comments Ridgley, these
“similitudes” only illustrate: they cannot prove the doctrine. At worst they
subvert the doctrine and give it into the hands of heretics.81 For example, the
use of divine power, goodness, and wisdom to illustrate the creative,
conserving, and governing work of God supports Sabellianism and also fails
to limit the number of persons to three—there might be as many persons as
there are divine perfections! Analogies from the human soul, from “efficient,
constitutive, and final causes,” from the light, heat, and motion of the sun,
from a fountain as source, water, and stream are also defective:
These, and many other similitudes of like nature, we find in the writings
of some, who consider not what a handle they give to the common
enemy. There are, indeed, in most of them, three things, which are said,
in different respects, to be one … all these similitudes … lead us to
think of the whole divided into those parts, of which they consist … or
they speak of three properties of the same thing.82
The use of reason in arguing the doctrine of the Trinity should therefore be
restricted to a close examination of Scripture.83
Reason does show that Scripture admits of only one God and that the
meaning of the word “God” in Scripture is sufficiently clear. Nor does
Scripture allow one being to be the supreme God by nature and another,
lesser, being to be God according to his office. Similarly, examination of
Scripture does not yield
any notion of a middle being between God and the creature, or one that
is not properly God, so as the Father is, and yet more than a creature, as
though there were a medium between finite and infinite; neither are we
led, by scripture, to conceive of any being, that has an eternal duration,
whose eternity is supposed to be before time, and yet not the same with
the eternal duration of the Father.84
What cannot be found, before the era of Rationalism in the late
seventeenth and eighteenth century, is the assumption that the doctrine of the
Trinity can be rationally demonstrated without recourse to the materials of
revelation. Noteworthy here, particularly as an index to the initial impact of
Cartesian thought on seventeenth-century Protestantism, is the argument of
the mystical Cartesian theosopher Poiret that the doctrine of the Trinity can be
illustrated rationally.85 (Of course, Poiret stands outside of the boundaries of
Reformed orthodoxy, not only on the ground of his Cartesianism, but also on
the grounds of his radical—and rationalistically deductive—soteriological
universalism.)86
 3. Keckermann, Ainsworth, and Burman on the logic of the divine
emanations. Some of the Reformed did identify rational arguments or a
posteriori confirmations for the trinitarian nature of God and employ elements
of the medieval vocabulary concerning the inward emanations of the
Godhead,87 and others, while excluding rational or natural demonstration,
indicate that reason can confirm the biblical arguments by way of showing the
doctrine to be in agreement with what is known of God’s essence and
attributes.88 Ames and the theses presented at Saumur offered a short
statement of the logic of the Trinity that reflected the medieval language of
the Son and Spirit as processions of intellect and of will or love,
respectively.89 Voetius notes these more speculative points—whether the
Word proceeds as a divine cognition or an intellective generation, whether the
Spirit is produced per modum amoris, and whether Amor is the proper name
of the Holy Spirit—identifying the questions as “doctè ignoratur,” a matter of
beyond knowing, or “quaestio curiosa,” an excessively inquisitive question.90
Baxter, on the other hand, expressed appreciation for such discussion of the
logic of the trinitarian emanations.91 Ridgley, in turn, noted the danger of
using the metaphors and unintentionally fostering error.92
By way of contrast, Keckermann, Ainsworth, and Burman went so far as to
offer discussions of the logic of the divine emanations that could stand as a
kind of proof in its own right—and then, of course, there is the extended
Cartesian argumentation offered late in the seventeenth century by
Sherlock.93 Still, none, to my knowledge, attempted to revive the kind of
rational argumentation that medieval authors like Richard of St. Victor
developed on the basis of the Augustinian metaphor of the lover, the beloved,
and the bond of love uniting the two.
Keckermann and Ainsworth argued at length for the logic of divine triunity
on grounds drawn perhaps out of the Thomistic tradition, given its parallel
emanations of intellect and will—or perhaps evidencing a Scotist accent in its
double procession language of the conjunction of intellect and will in the
Son’s spirating of the Holy Spirit. He was attracted to this particular model
because of his strong advocacy of the identification of divine persons as
“modes of existing” or subsisting.94 Given his understanding of a mode of
existing as capable of being predicated of a thing in order to identify
distinctions in the thing that were neither substantial nor essential and did not
result in rendering the thing composite, Keckermann took the notions of an
intellective generation and mode of the divine existence and a volitional
procession or mode of divine existence as an ideal way of arguing the unity of
essence and distinction of persons against the various antitrintarians of this
time.95
 It cannot be denied, Keckermann continues, that God has understanding or
intellect and that this intellect is the actuality of the divine essence itself and
is, therefore, both infinite and eternal. Moreover, given its actuality, the
eternal divine intellect must eternally have an object that it knows or
understands. Since the divine intellect is most perfect, so also must its eternal
object be most perfect—and since there can be nothing more perfect than
God, the object of the divine intellect can be none other than God himself.
Thus, the divine intellect eternally reflects upon itself, indeed, has for its
eternal object the “most perfect image of itself.”96
Such an image is “rightly called” a “production, conception, and
generation” in the divine essence—indeed, most properly called
a”generation.” Generation “is nothing other than the act of a substance, by
which it produced from itself a like substance; when therefore God by
conceiving of himself produces a substantial image of himself, this is rightly
called the generation of that self-same image.” There is an analogy,
Keckermann continues, between this divine generation and the thinking or
conceiving of an image in the human mind—even as learned persons view
their mental images as “conceptions” and then, when they publish books,
think of the ideas as having been given birth or generated. Of course, beings
that have entirely different natures will be characterized by differing modes of
generation, and the most perfect being will have the most perfect mode of
generation. Moreover, inasmuch as “the generations and conceptions of the
intellectual or rational life are interior,” the generation or conception that
takes place in the most perfect life of God, “whose entire life is intellect,” will
necessarily be “the most conjoined and utterly intimate conception.” Given its
perfection, this perfectly generated inward image of God’s self is set forth as a
divine “mode of existing, or second person, rightly called either the image of
the son of God,” as the apostle teaches, Hebrews 1:3, calling the Son the
“image of the father’s subsistence.” Since, moreover, “in God, understanding
and being are the same (intelligi & esse idem sint),” it is necessary that God
and the Son of God be the same in essence and existence.97
To this argument, at comparable length, Keckermann conjoins a rational
argument for the Holy Spirit as the perfectly proceeded volitional object of
the love of the Father and the Son. Keckermann argued that where there is
intellect, there is also will—where a most perfect intellect, a most perfect will.
There is also a necessary order of the faculties that will yield the Spirit as
third of the divine persons, given that God does not will anything except
insofar as he knows it. And just as the divine intellect takes as its object the
ultimate truth, so the will takes as its object the highest good. Accordingly,
the divine will is necessarily reflexive in its ultimate willing, taking the divine
essence itself, the ultimate knowable good, as its object.98 Since, moreover,
the Father eternally both conceives the Son, his image, and wills to love the
Son perfectly, the love of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father
results in the procession of “third mode of existing” as an image proceeding
from its archetype, by the conjunction of intellect and will.99
Burman similarly noted—at far less length—that the Trinity might be
argued from the intellectual nature of God: for all intelligent beings have in
their mind certain ideas (i.e., as objects of comprehension) but the wisdom in
the mind of God must be a perfect wisdom representing all things, in short,
the Word or Son of God. The infinite intellect also expresses itself as will or
(in the case of an eternal being that has himself as object) the inclination
toward itself as the sole good: this inclination is understood to be the Holy
Spirit.100 But since these three modes of subsisting do not differ as to essence,
they are to be understood as Trinity in unity. Similarly, God can be conceived
as three in one according to his power; for in eternity God is not unoccupied
(otiosum) but producing and self-productive and thus again in himself
threefold but coeternal and coequal.101
These arguments, although not widely used among the Reformed, were not
utterly excised from Reformed dogmatics by objections from various of the
high orthodox theologians. They appear, as noted, in Baxter, and they recur in
the early eighteenth-century English theologies of John Edwards and Thomas
Stackhouse, the former a Reformed member of the conforming clergy, the
latter a moderate Anglican. Edwards, after defining the doctrine and showing
its biblical and historical foundations, offers comments on the ability of
reason to discuss the mystery. At this point, he summarized some of the
arguments of the “schoolmen,” commenting that readers may accept or reject
them as they choose—namely, the argument that “God the Father is Original
Wisdom; his Reflex Act of Knowledge is his Son, his Loving himself, and the
Son, is the Holy Ghost.” He also cites the Augustinian metaphor of
“understanding will, and memory.”102 Stackhouse, quite carefully, states that
the metaphor of “infinite rational Mind” that contemplates itself in the
“perfection of understanding” and takes pleasure in the contemplation in an
“act of love and volition” is a “distant resemblance” of the Godhead:
To help our apprehensions a little farther in the conception of this great
mystery, let us (with the schoolmen) see whether, upon the grounds and
notions of reason, we can frame to ourselves any thing that may carry in
it some shadow and resemblance of one single undivided nature’s
casting itself into three subsistences without receding from its own
unity.103
Stackhouse and Edwards also favor the patristic metaphor of the sun and its
rays—and, in addition, the more modern metaphor of “a triangle, consisting
of equal sides, whose substance or matter is the same.”104
4. Trinitarian logic, Cartesianism, and reaction in the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. A more cautious approach became a model
for later writers, most of whom, like Leigh, noted the limitation of rational
and philosophical tools in discussion of the mystery of the Trinity:
We cannot by the light of nature know the mystery of the Trinity, nor
the incarnation of Jesus Christ. But when by faith we receive this
doctrine we may illustrate it by reason. The similes which the
Schoolmen and other Divines bring, drawn from the creature, are
unequal and unsatisfactory, since there can be no proportion between
things Finite and Infinite.105
Moreover, given the state of the controversies of the day, some demonstrative
discussion was viewed as useful by several of the seventeenth-century writers.
Thus, after setting forth the basic concept of the Trinity of God as positive
doctrine, Burman states that knowledge of this doctrine and the faithful
confession of its sublime and sacred mystery are necessary to salvation—and
he proceeds to pronounce anathema upon the Remonstrants, Socinians, and
other antitrinitarians.106 The existence of controversy leads him to devote an
entire chapter to the “demonstration” of the doctrine of the Trinity. Like
Turretin and Pictet, he declares all proffered rational proofs of the doctrine to
be insufficient confirmation—and he will devote most of the chapter to proofs
drawn from Scripture. Nevertheless, Burman does state three arguments
drawn from reason. The first of these follows upon the attribution of goodness
to God: of its very nature goodness is self-communicative, and God could,
therefore, be considered perfectly good in his eternity only if his essential
goodness were eternally communicated. Thus, from eternity, God must be
considered as persons, equal and associated with one another (personas
aequales & socìas) in this essential self-communication.107
Nonetheless, some of the orthodox writers were willing to develop some
rational argumentation concerning the internal logic and meaning of the
doctrine of the Trinity—not to prove the doctrine from reason, but to show in
almost Thomistic fashion that the doctrine, once held, was not unreasonable.
Ridgley devotes some space in his exposition of the Trinity to an excursus on
“the use of reason in proving or defending the doctrine of the Trinity, or any
other doctrines of pure revelation.”108 This doctrine and those like it could not
have been “at first discovered by reason,” nor, once revealed, can they be
totally comprehended. Nevertheless, reason does not become totally useless
but stands as a servant to faith. Revelation provides knowledge of necessary
doctrines and “reason offers a convincing proof” of the truth of doctrine:
in order to reason’s judging of the truth of things, it first considers the
 sense of words; what Ideas are designed to be conveyed thereby, and
whether they are contrary to the common sense of mankind; and if it
appears that they are not, it proceeds to enquire into those evidences
that may give conviction, and enforce our belief thereof; and leads us
into the nature of the truths revealed, receives them as instamped with
the authority of God, and considers them as agreeable to his perfections,
and farther leads us into his design of revealing them … Now this may
be applied particularly to the doctrine of the Trinity; for it contains no
absurdity contradictory to reason … and the evidences on which our
faith herein is founded, will be farther considered, when we prove it to
be a scripture doctrine, by the express words thereof, agreeable to the
mind of the Holy Ghost, or by just consequences deduced from it; by
which it will farther appear, that it is necessary for us to use our reason
in stating those doctrines, which are neither founded on, nor can be
comprehended by it.109
Reason enters here as a tool to be employed in exegesis—not as a basis of the
doctrine itself. Even so, the doctrine of the Trinity “cannot be learned from
the light of nature”: it cannot be known from the creation and providence of
God. That God “made all things by his essential word” belongs to the truths
of revelation, as does the place of the Spirit in the work of creation:
The light of nature could discover to us, indeed, that God, who is a
Spirit, or incorporeal Being, has produced many effects worthy of
himself; but we could not have known hereby, that the word Spirit
signifies a distinct person.110
Similarly, “the work of our redemption” is known only through revelation.
The rejection by many of the Reformed orthodox of rational and
philosophical proofs of the Trinity extends even to those arguments set forth
by Augustine in his De Trinitate: the Reformed respect for Augustine cannot
dissuade them on this point. Augustine, they were convinced, had pressed
rational investigation beyond its proper bounds. Marckius even cites
Augustine specifically—arguments from the intellect, will, power, goodness,
and blessedness of God, the simile of a triangle, or the threefold form of the
soul, light, the rainbow, trees, and so forth fall short in many ways, since they
either presuppose knowledge of revelation, or can be frustrated by numerous
exceptions, or inasmuch as similes that illustrate but do not prove a point
often obscure it by dissimilarity, or finally because they do not remove all
doubt—all of which, Marckius indicates, are true even of those similes
offered by Augustine.111
This rejection of rational argumentation concerning the Trinity—and the
general failure of Reformed theologians to duplicate Keckermann’s arguments
or Augustine’s—demonstrate the effects of the epistemology outlined in the
loci de theologia and of the duplex cognitio dei theme in particular.112 Natural
knowledge of God is not rejected, and in those places where the soteriological
connection of a doctrine is not particularly stressed, reason may take on a
powerful function coordinate at times with revelation; but into the mysteries
of the faith, particularly those which relate to the work of Christ, reason and
rationalism dare not intrude. The exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity is,
in most of the orthodox systems, exceedingly brief in comparison to the
exposition of the unity, essence, and attributes of God.
3.2 The Terms of Trinitarian Orthodoxy
A. Reformed Definition in the Scholastic Era
1. Reformed orthodox reception of traditional trinitarian terminology.
The Reformed orthodox were consistently aware of the difficulties of
traditional trinitarian language—given the ultimately unfathomable mystery
of the Godhead; the relative complexity of post-Nicene explanation,
particularly with reference to the meaning of “essence” or “substance” and
“hypostasis,” “subsistence,” or “person”; the post-biblical provenance of the
dogmatic terms in the context of the assumption of an ultimate biblical
norm;113 the enormous exegetical pressure of the heresies, both ancient and
modern; and the increasingly historical sensibility (on the part of orthodox
and antitrinitarian alike) of difference or at least distinction between the
language of Scripture, the language of the earliest fathers, the post-Nicene
formulae, and the medieval terminology. The era of orthodoxy was, after all,
an era of rising patristic scholarship. In the second half of the seventeenth
century the diversity of patristic trinitarianisms had become particularly
apparent, with the result that theologians were pressed to identify which
trajectory of meaning among the nominally orthodox church fathers led to the
proper result—namely, to a trinitarian monotheism as distinct from either a
refined form of monism or an implied tritheism.
Explanation of the doctrinal terms, their precise meaning, and their
limitation was therefore a significant element of the locus de Deo uno et trino
in the dogmatic theology of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century.
Precedent can be found in Calvin’s Institutes and also in Zanchi’s De tribus
Elohim.114 The Reformed and the Lutherans were in nearly complete
agreement on this issue: Witsius could cite both Gomarus and Johann Gerhard
as sources for the best definitions of trinitarian vocabulary—with Gerhard
offering the “more copious” discussion.115 The question de personarum
divinarum trinitate was stated concisely in both its polemical and positive
aspect by Gomarus in a preface to the theses of his sixth disputatio:
Whereas “it is the catholic faith” (as solemnly and gravely indicated by
 Athanasius), “that we ought to honor a Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in
Unity”: it will be suitable for us to adjudge, before we proceed from the
topic just now concluded to the next issue, whether this doctrine can be
illustrated from the divine words of Scripture and protected against the
poisonous machinations of the heretics. “For there is nowhere more
dangerous to err, nowhere more toilsome to seek, nothing more fruitful
to attain.”116
Gomarus’ references indicate that the two quotations derive, respectively,
from the Athanasian Creed and Augustine’s De Trinitate (I.iii); a third
reference points the reader toward John of Damascus’ On the Two Natures of
Christ. The citation from Augustine not only evidences Gomarus’
considerable interest in the patristic roots of doctrine, but also his reverence,
shared by the orthodox of his day, for the doctrine itself. Gomarus notes also
the “manifold ambiguities of the words hypostasis, prosopon, and persona,
caused by abuse” both by “the inexperienced who are overwhelmed” by the
difficulties of the problem and by “the experienced who are wearied” by the
continued debate over the terms.117
Ridgley notes that the Socinian and Remonstrant objections to traditional
trinitarian language are not altogether groundless: the doctrine is a difficult
one, and the basic terms, “person” and “hypostasis” are to some degree
problematic. The Socinian and Remonstrant remedies are, however, “worse
than the disease.” Citing the Institutes, Ridgley praises Calvin’s ability to cut
through the problems of terminology to the idea of “the Father, Son, and
Spirit, being the one God, but distinguished by their personal properties.”
Nevertheless, “person” needs to be carefully defined in order to formulate the
threeness as over against the oneness of God.118
This need for precise definition becomes even more obvious when one
recognizes that the words “person” and “nature,” or “essence,” are applied
differently to God than to human beings: for individual human beings also
have individual and separate natures,
but when we speak of the Persons in the Godhead, as having the divine
nature and perfections, we say that this nature is the same individual
nature in all of them, though the Persons are distinct, otherwise the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, could not be said to be truly and properly
God, and to have the same understanding, will, and other perfections of
the divine nature.119
The three persons thus are “the same in substance, … the one only living and
true God.”120 This language of essence, existence, subsistence, suppositum,
person, personhood (personalitatis), and the use of this language in presenting
the mystery of the Trinity must be carefully defined.121
 2. Trinitas. In the title and first sentence of his locus, de S.S. Trinitate,
Marckius speaks both de Personarum Trinitate and de Trinitate Personarum,
which is to say, of the persons of the Trinity and of the trinity of persons.
These phrases, he argues, make clear from the outset that the term Trinitas is
equivalent to Trium Unitas: the subject itself, in its primary definition, denies
composition in the Godhead and speaks of a divine Trinity in simplicibus suis.
The point is of utmost importance, given the fact that a definition of Trinity
that respected the full divinity of the persons in their distinction and then
“severed or divided” them, not indicating the numerical unity of divine
substance would be tritheism.122 The Greek patristic writers, notes Marckius,
made this very clear in associating with the term triada such declarative and
restrictive epithets as hagias, theias, proskunetes, and homoousiou, and
by speaking in such carefully defined phrases as triauges tes mias
theotetos.123 In Latin the term trinitas indicates a threefold or ternary
distributive number (usurpata pro numero distributivo ternario) and in its
theological usage is applied “ad pluralitatem personarum in unitate
Essentiae.”124 Rijssen notes that the word “Trinity”—which the papists would
lock within the tradition—derives not in the abstract but in the concrete from
Scripture. Rijssen here refers to the disputed text, 1 John 5:7; others among
the early orthodox would simply refer to the threefold designation of God as
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the New Testament and argue, as Bucanus did,
that “Trinity” is found in Scripture not “according to the letter” but
“according to the sense” of the text and that, in the case of 1 John 5:7, where
the “three” are “one,” the terms “trinity” and “unity” are rightly inferred from
the sense of the passage.125
Forbes attempted to define the doctrine more precisely by arguing that “in
the trinity of God there is both unity and distinction, not however by
composition, or division, or diversity, or differentia properly so called, or
discrepancy, or dissimilarity; neither triplicity, nor singularity, neither solitude
nor confusion.” God is “not unitary (unicum) but one (unum), not triple
(triplex) but trinitary (trinum)”: thus Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of “unity in
Trinity, and Trinity in unity.”126 Thus, the essential simplicity of God is
retained, and theology recognizes that there is nothing either prior or posterior
to God, who is actus purus,127 while nonetheless understanding a modal
distinction between the essence and the persons of the Trinity and a real
distinction between the persons, albeit not in an essential or absolute, but in a
personal and relative sense.128 There is, therefore, no distinctio realis
absoluta in God, nor is there a distinctio formalis as if between gradations of
the divine essence—granting that the divine essence is single, simple, perfect,
and subject to no gradations. Forbes adds, by way of qualification, that the
Scotist formal distinction between the persons, which argues the nonidentity
of the persons in a formal sense, falls outside of stricture and should be
understood as a virtual or modal distinction.129
First, the names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, indicate the mutual relations
in God—not as if the Godhead were “collected together from several parts,”
but rather distinguished into the three. Second, the order of the persons (first,
Father; second, Son; third, Holy Spirit) indicates the manner in which the
divine essence is distributed; while the third distinction, between modes of
operation, follows directly from the order of persons—so that the Father’s
operation is à se, from the Father himself, but through the Son and the Spirit.
Similarly, fourth, the opera ad extra are understood as the indivisible work of
the entire Trinity, working as one God, but “according to the order of the
persons” and according to the special economy or arrangement of the divine
work as it terminates upon an individual divine person: thus “there is but one
God, the Father, of whom are all things … and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom
are all things” (1 Cor. 8:6) or again, “ye are justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus, and by the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 6:11). Fifth, the persons are
distinguished by the “properties” or “personal operations” that are also
sometimes called “characteristic, diacritic, or gnoristic”: these “pertain neither
to the essence nor to the persons considered in the abstract, but to the persons
considered in the concrete.” Further, these personal operations are not
absolute but relative perfections—which is to say they are different from the
absolute perfections or attributes that belong to the divine essence: they are
perfections that are really distinct and that are predicated of the persons
individually, in the passive voice: thus the Father is unbegotten, the Son is
begotten, and the Spirit is sent or proceeded.130
3. Substantia, essentia, ousia, and related issues. The theological
language of substance and essence, which had proved from its beginnings
prior to the time of the council of Nicaea to be both a necessity and a
fundamentally problematic aspect of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,
continued to be a source of orthodox formulation and of profound debate in
the seventeenth century. On the one hand, Reformed orthodoxy inherited the
traditional language of divine essence and attributes, of one divine essence or
substance and three divine subsistences or persons, and sought to maintain
and defend it as the basic language of orthodoxy.131 On the other hand,
Reformed orthodoxy both inherited and encountered a series of problems with
the traditional language that, by the end of the era of orthodoxy, rendered the
maintenance of the tradition difficult at best. First, the Reformed orthodox
inherited a variety of ancient, patristic, and medieval qualifications
concerning the use of essence and substance that were particularly relevant to
the notion of divine persons—and they inherited the further qualifications of
the Reformers concerning the normative use of traditionary, but non-biblical
terms in the doctrine of the Trinity. Second, the orthodox encountered a series
of objections unique to their own time, arising out of antitrinitarian heresies
and out of variant forms of the new rationalism. On the one hand, the
antitrinitarians tended to argue a radical identity of substance or essence with
person, while on the other, the rationalists offered definitions of substance that
proved incompatible with the definitions of traditional Christian theism.
Already in antiquity, the term ousia, despite its original Aristotelian
distinction into πρώτη οὐσία (primary substance) and δευτερα οὐσία
(secondary substance), had developed a series of related but rather distinct
meanings: Stead suggests seven—existence, category or status, substance,
stuff or material, form, definition, and truth.132 This variety of usage
immediately renders the discussion of divine ousia somewhat problematic, as
did the Platonic assumption that God is beyond essence or substance.
Nonetheless, as Stead points out, none of the other categorical terms
(quantity, quality, relation, etc.) is helpful. and when one asks the question of
what God is like or what God has in the sense of properties, attributes, or
qualities, ousia is the rather natural term, given that it refers, in its primary
sense of an individual, to that in which properties inhere.133
The basic Aristotelian understanding of essence and substance was
reflected in the philosophical language of the seventeenth century: Spencer’s
logic defines substance as indicating either a “singular & individuall being” or
a “genus and species” of being—the initial sense, the individual being, is the
proper one, often identified as “first” or “primary substance”; the second, the
genus or species, the improper or figurative sense of the term, often identified
as “second” or “secondary substance.”134 Not only is the individual primary
and the genus secondary in an ontic sense, this is also the case in logic: the
individual or primary substance is the subject of a sentence and the primary
“seat of argument”—the secondary substance or genus and species of a thing
can function as either predicate or subject and, of course, will be the predicate
of the primary substance (one can state, e.g., that “Simon is a man”; one
would not say that “Man is a Simon”).135
So also, however, were several of the ancient limitations and variations of
the language of essence and substance reflected in the seventeenth-century
usage. Keckermann defines substance as “Being subsisting through [or by]
itself” (Substantia est Ens per se subsistens), namely, individual being not
inhering or subsisting in another—a definition having both some possible
application to God but also posing some difficulty for trinitarian
application.136 Keckermann immediately notes the question whether
“substance” is a term common to God and creatures, but is best illustrated by
examples drawn from the creatures—yielding the further definition
“substance (substantia) is a being (ens) that has its own existence (proprium
esse), and supports incidental properties.” Substance, then, divides into a
series of categories and subcategories: first, it is either infinite or finite,
referring either to God or to creatures; next, finite substance is either spiritual
or corporeal—the spiritual either good or evil, the corporeal either simple or
mixed; finally, the simple refers either to the heaven itself or to the various
irreducible elements, the mixed to individuals compounded of the
elements.137
In his metaphysics, however, in order to safeguard the doctrine of God
from speculative reason or at least to reject the Suárezian notion of the
univocity of being, Keckermann follows the Platonic tradition and argues that
God is not properly spoken of in terms of substance and accident, given that
God is supra Ens, “beyond Being” in the normal sense of the word, “beyond
all Substance and Accident.” He therefore understands substance primarily as
finite substance, the individual, composed of form and matter. In this context,
he defines essence as form independent of individual existence: “Essence is
the primary internal principle of Substance, by which a thing can exist in a
certain place and time, although it may not yet exist … For when God first
willed that something exist, it at once had essence, even thought it did not yet
have existence.”138 “Essence,” then, strictly speaking, is the whatness or
quiddity, whereas “substance” identifies the existent individual—and, by
definition, in the finite order, essence and existence are separable, with
essence standing prior to existence. Essence, therefore, with reference to finite
things, in the most strict usage of the era, refers to what Aristotle would have
called the secondary ousia, whereas substance indicates, strictly, the primary
ousia.
Given the doctrine of divine simplicity and its implicates, the
inseparability of essence and existence in God and the essential identity of the
divine attributes, the seventeenth-century orthodox were pressed to define
substance and essence with great care in their theology—apart from any
problems caused by the new rationalism and its variant understandings of
substance. Since God is one, sole, and absolute, and since there is but a single,
undivided divine essence or substance, there can be no genus “god.” There is
no divine “essence” apart from the one, individual divine “substance.” The
distinction between primary and secondary ousia does not apply:
understanding “god” as indicating a secondary essence is characteristic of
polytheism, where an essence is shared by various divine beings. Therefore,
the terms “substance” and “essence” are roughly equivalent in their
application to God: the individual being (substance) of God is inseparable
from the identity or whatness (essence) that God is. Also used in an
equivalent sense are the terms “nature” and, in the case of British divines,
“Godhead,” both of which can also be used to indicate what God is in the
concrete: “by the Godhead,” Boston comments, “is meant the nature or
essence of God.”139
The terms, therefore, were in need of precise definition. According to
Aretius, ousia derives from the Greek word for Being, ὁ ὤν, just as Jehovah
derives from Ejeh and Deus is etymologically related to deitas. Given that
God is referred to by Scripture as ὁ ὤν (Rev. 1:7), ousia is a term legitimately
used to refer to God. There was, however, in the course of the trinitarian
tradition, debate over the meaning and rendering of the term ousia: Aretius
notes that the term was rendered essentia or substantia, with essentia as the
generally preferred translation—particularly given that its etymological
rootage in esse parallels that of ousia. The underlying problem of
determining the language arises from the fact that God is ultimately
incomprehensible and, therefore, incapable of being described—as Evagrius
Ponticus said, the ineffable mystery of the Godhead is to be adored in silence
rather than dogmatically explained—but the word substantia, as used in
philosophy, indicated precisely something “capable of being defined,” indeed,
of being distinguished from an accident or incidental property.140 From the
same era, Zanchi notes the patristic debate over ousia and hypostasis: given
that the former denoted essentia and the latter substantia, creating a near
contradiction if both terms were used, the former to indicate the oneness of
God, the latter the threeness. However, the use of hypostasis to indicate the
individual divine persons or subsistences points toward resolution of the
debate.141
Witsius indicates, citing John of Damascus, the terms “essence, nature, and
form” are synonymous in the trinitarian vocabulary.142 The word ousia,
rendered in Latin as substantia or essentia, correctly reflects the scriptural
ascription to God of such terms as theotes (Col. 2:9), physis (Gal. 4:8), and
theia physis (2 Peter 1:4).143 Indeed, whether one uses essentia or substantia
as the proper rendering of ousia, both terms denote “something Absolute, not
Relative.144 Turretin identifies ousia as indicating, in Latin, either essentia or
natura, with both Latin terms quite specifically indicating the “whatness” or
“quiddity” of God. This usage is, moreover, applied to God both in the
concrete and in the abstract—namely, both with reference to the being of God
and also to the deity or divinity of God’s nature. Thus, in the concrete, God is
called ὁ ὤν in Exodus 3:14 and Revelation 1:4, 7—while in the abstract, both
“deity,” theotes (Col. 2:9), and “divine nature,” theia physis (2 Pet. 1:4), are
ascribed to God.145
Turretin also notes differences among the church fathers over the use of the
term substantia. The more typical patristic usage of substantia, comments
Turretin, does not relate to the sense of the word as that which “stands under”
the accidents or incidental properties of a being, given that the concept of
divine attributes does not identify the attributes as incidental properties and
does not imply a separability of attributes from the divine essence. Rather this
typical patristic usage points toward the divine self-existence or subsistence
—substantia, in this sense, translates hypostasis and not ousia. Hilary,
accordingly, identified substantia as the translation of hypostasis, and spoke
of three “substances” in the Godhead.146 Others, notably Tertullian and
Augustine, used substantia as a synonym for essentia or natura and indicated
a single divine substance. Turretin appears to recognize the fairly pointed
patristic debate over the term and to recognize as well that the use of the new
term, subsistentia, as the translation of hypostasis was the result of the
debate.147
The difficulty in using substantia in discussions of the Trinity was
exacerbated by the Boethian definition of “person” as an “individual
substance of a rational nature.” In this form, substantia either is taken to mean
subsistentia or the definition leads to a form of tritheism: there cannot be
three rational essences or natures in the Godhead. Such language—which
understands substance as the equivalent of person in the sense of the
Aristotelian “primary substance”—would reduce the unity of the Godhead to
a generic unity, with the term “God” indicating a genus or class of beings
rather than a single or sole divine Being. Specifically, ousia or theotes refers
to the unity of the Godhead in a manner different than the reference of the
common essence of humanity to individual human beings—whereas divinity,
as Father, Son, and Spirit, is numerically one God, human beings, one in
essence, are numerically many. The difference is illuminated in part by the
infinitude and immensity of the divine essence, which is incapable of division
(impartibilis). Zanchi dwells on the issue at length—the divine oneness is
such that, as is also indicated in many passages of Scripture, there cannot be
“a plural number of Gods.” By implication, an infinite essence or being can
only be one—a denial of numerical oneness would result in the attribution of
infinite essence to each one of three separate individuals, clearly an
impossibility.148 This last point, of course, echoes the Athanasian Creed:
Immensus Pater: immensus Filius: immensus Spiritus Sancti … sicut non …
tres immensi.”149
4. Homoousios. The Nicene term homoousios also received
considerable attention from the Reformers and the Reformed orthodox given,
on the one hand, its dogmatic significance and, on the other, its absence from
the text of Scripture. The term was used by the Nicene fathers against the
Arian heresy, the orthodox writers note, to prevent an erroneous interpretation
of the person of Christ.150 The fathers, Vermigli notes,
 of set purpose disputed against those who denied the Godhead of the
holy Ghost and equality of the three divine persons: as we see by the
strife over the word Homoousion, of like substance, from which many
of the Catholics at the beginning did restrain themselves, because it
seemed to be but new, and that it was not had in the holy Scriptures: and
yet they nevertheless did embrace and most willingly admit the thing
signified. Howbeit we strive not about these things, but grant first and
chiefly whatsoever is in the holy Scriptures: and then whatsoever is
necessarily and manifestly derived out of them.151
The orthodox typically recognized homoousios as the most suitable term
for indicating the identity of essence and the distinction of divine persons.
The term is certainly preferable to possible alternatives such as monousios or
tautousios. These alternatives are ambiguous in their implications, and, in
addition, they are not applicable to the case of the three persons in the one
divine essence. Tautousios, Turretin comments, can be used to designate one
who has his essence from himself alone—and therefore, “with respect to
person,” applies to the Father alone. The term does not well designate several
persons partaking of one essence.152 Monousios is even more problematic,
inasmuch as it could be used to identify the Sabellian notion of a single divine
hypostasis: the term indicates a being that is unitary or singular in essence.
The sun, comments Turretin, is monousios, given that it is a unitary thing
alone in its species: God also can be rightly called monousios, without
reference to the divine persons, given the unity of the divine essence, but the
persons cannot be called monousioi, “because they are three persons, not one
only.”153 We know from Scripture that the number of persons in God is three
(Matt. 28:19) and that we also assume that God is one—so that the language
of orthodoxy rightly expresses the truth that “as they are persons, truly
distinct, as one and another; all however homoousioi, having the same
essence.”154 Positively, the declaration that the divine persons are
homoousios indicates that they are coessentiales or consubstantiales,
meaning that they together have “a sole (unicus) and utterly the same (eius
demque plané) essence or nature,” against those who would claim that the
divine persons are homoiousios, of a like nature or essence only.155
Controversy was intensified by the claims of antitrinitarians from Servetus
and Socinus onward that the terms themselves were problematic and not
representative of the earliest witness. In the late seventeenth-century
controversy, antitrinitarians pointed out that even the purportedly orthodox
terms militated against the doctrine, inasmuch as the ancient definitions of
ousia and homoousios offered by orthodox writers of the era, like Bishop
Bull, indicated generic unity (with ousia understood as secondary substance),
not the numerical unity (with ousia understood as primary substance) of God.
“Dr. Bull hath incontestably proved,” one opponent argued,
by a great Number of Quotations, and might have proved by a great
many more; that by consubstantial, or of the same Substance, the
Fathers meant not the same substance in Number, but the same in
Properties. As Stars are consubstantial to Stars, and the Bodies of Men
to the Bodies of Beasts; because they are Substances of the same kind
(that is, corporeal) and of the same Properties.156
If this is all that homoousios means, however, the three Persons would be
three Gods.157
This issue, with specific reference to the understanding of ousia in its
primary or secondary sense, was raised by various seventeenth-century
writers with reference to the teaching of the Cappadocian fathers and
Athanasius. Cudworth argued quite pointedly that the Cappadocian fathers’
analogy of three human beings, coupled with a restrictive definition of ousia
as secondary essence, would yield a definition of the three divine hypostases
as essentially one in the generic, but not the numerical, sense. If this were the
direction of the Cappadocian argument, Cudworth argued, we would be left
with tritheism. He saw the way to a solution, however, in the thought of
Athanasius: for although, as far as Cudworth could see, Athanasius
understood ousia in the generic sense, Athanasius also insisted that God was
“one thing” and not a group of things or hypostases.158 Amyraut, similarly,
citing Athanasius against the subordinationistic tendencies of Arminius and
Curcellaeus, argues that in the Godhead, as distinct from the case of Peter and
James, there is not merely a generic but, necessarily, a numerical unity of
substance. The Son could not be equal to the Father in all things were not the
substance “absolutely one.” Indeed, the relationship between “the Father
generating (generantem) and the Son generated (genitum)” cannot be
understood in a “human manner,” inasmuch as “in their consubstantiality no
partitions or divisions of divinity are to be conceived”—with the result that
homoousios must be understood as indicating a “numerical identity” of
essence.159 This, moreover, was the conclusion of the medieval councils—
namely, that God was one res, numerically a single deity—and that discussion
of the relationship between divine “essence” language and the philosophical
issue of primary and secondary essences must respect the singularity of God
and not understand “God” as the name of a genus of beings. This linguistic
problem and its monotheistic solution were inherited by the Reformed
orthodox.
5. Persona. The problem entailed on “person” language, as noted in the
introductory chapter, was recognized by the medieval scholastics, who
attempted to offer a series of variations on and modifications of the traditional
Boethian definition.160 The Reformers and Protestant orthodox were not
unaware of this older problem, nor were they unaware of the increasing
difficulty in the use of the term in the seventeenth century—as registered in
the writings of various antitrinitarians. As a result, the orthodox offered their
own variations and modifications of the definition, frequently with some
relationship to the struggles of the medieval scholastics. A useful and fairly
standard set of definitions related to the issue of divine persons in the unity of
the essence appears in the early orthodox works of Perkins and Polanus.161 In
Polanus’ words, “a person of the Deitie is a subsistence in the Deitie, having
such properties as cannot be communicated from one to another.”162
The word “persona,” comments Marckius, is susceptible of various
derivations. It might come form the Chaldaic roots prm, “a garment,” or prs,
“to divide or make distinct”; or from the Greek perizonnuo, or prosopon, or
peri soma; or it might simply be a Latin term formed from the phrases per se
una or per se sonas or even more simply from personando. The theological
use of the term, notes Marckius, begins with Tertullian, who is generally
credited with the introduction of the word into trinitarian debate.163 A
distinction needs to be made between the Greek hypostasin, which relates to
essentia, and prosopon, which indicates substantia or persona: here the
orthodox have recourse directly to Tertullian’s determination of the issue—a
persona is identified as one who has substantia.164 Turretin specifically
denies that the term is to be understood as being taken from the context of
drama, where actors are personati, or “impersonators,” and the term persona
can indicate the mask worn to portray a character. Nor, indeed, does the
theological usage of the term indicate “some quality or external appearance
which adds nothing to the importance of a cause” or merely an “office or
function.”165 The definition of “person” and particularly of “person” in
relation to “essence” became, in fact, a focal point of the debate with the
Socinians, who consistently offered a different understanding of the terms,
according to which “essence” and “person” were united rather than
distinguished in meaning. Thus, the Racovian Catechism:
The essence of God is one, not in kind but in number. Wherefore it
cannot, in any way, contain a plurality of persons, since a person is
nothing else than an individual intelligent essence. Wherever, then,
there exist three numerical persons, there must necessarily, in like
manner, be reckoned three individual essences; for in the same sense in
which it is affirmed that there is one numerical essence, it must be held
that there is also one numerical person.166
In the Socinian understanding, “person” is identified with primary essence—
yielding a numerical threeness of essence with reference to Father, Son, and
Spirit, and, as a result, excluding the Son and the Spirit from the category of
God.
By contrast, a “person” in the language of orthodoxy indicates an
individual or independent subsistence; it in no way implies a different
essence:
in order for something to be called a “person” the following criteria
must be met: 1. that it be a substance. 2. that it be intelligent. 3. that it is
not part of another. 4. that it is not sustained [in its existence] by
another; “persona,” therefore, indicates the undiminished condition
(statum completum) of an intelligent substance.167
What is significant here is that the Reformed orthodox writers, without
overtly citing the medievals, clearly reflect the medieval wrestling with the
difficulties of inherited definitions of person, notably the Boethian definition,
“an independent substance of a rational nature,” and, like many of the
medieval thinkers, move past Boethius while at the same time retaining key
terms of the definition. Wendelin, similarly, attempted to avoid entirely the
toils of the Boethian definition by adapting one of the alternative definitions,
namely, the one we have encountered already in Aquinas and in Calvin: “A
divine person is usually described as an incommunicable subsistence of the
divine essence.”168 He then went on to note that “in general persona is
usually defined” as “an individual subsistence, living, intelligent,
incommunicable, not sustained by another, not part of another.”169 Turretin
also avoids the identification of “person” as an individual substance and
speaks of an individual “intellectual suppositum.”170 This, of course, again
raises the problem of the meaning of the term “substance”—which Rijssen
assumes here to have the sense of a suppositum, given the numerical unity of
the divine essence. Thus, says Rijssen, “a divine Person signifies not only
Essence, nor only a mode of subsisting, but such a mode as belongs to the
Essence itself.”622The words God, Father, and Spirit are used in Scripture
both essentially (cf. John 3:16: “for God so loved the world”) and personally
(cf. Acts. 20:28: “God redeemed the Church with his blood”).172
As defined by Leigh, “a person is one entire, distinct subsistence, having
life, understanding, will and power, by which he is in continual operation.”173
Turretin indicates that a “person,” or hypostasis, in the proper and most strict
sense of the term, is an “intellectual suppositum,” a usage that is found in fact
in Scripture, in 2 Corinthians 1:11.174 Yet, the understanding of the Son and
the Spirit as “person” does not indicate a separate intelligence or an intelligent
being separate from the Father—so that “the three Persons of the Godhead are
not three Persons in the same sense in which three Men are three Persons.”175
As for the Socinian objection that a single essence implies a single person,
Owen responds, “that in one essence there can be but one person may be true
where the substance is finite and limited, but hath no place in that which is
infinite.”176 This latter point is significant to the Socinian definition,
inasmuch as the Socinian doctrine of God assumed a limited God and,
certainly in the case of Biddle’s teaching, an essentially finite deity as well.177
As the Reformed orthodox recognized, the divine persons—however one
defines the distinctions made among them—are distinct within the one
primary essence that is God. To argue otherwise, specifically, to identify a
person as the primary essence, is to claim real or substantial distinctions
between the persons, to reduce the unity of the persons to a generic unity of
secondary essence, and to produce either a form of tritheism or a radical
subordinationism, akin to the homoiousian or homoian theologies of the
fourth century.178
With specific reference to the text of Hebrews 1:3, Gouge could pose the
definition, presumably against early Socinian exegesis of the text, that
Essence or nature, importeth a common being: as Deity or God-head,
which is common to the Father, Sonne, holy Ghost. For the Father is
God, the Sonne is God, and the holy Ghost is God. But subsistence or
person implieth a different, distinct, individual, incommunicable,
property; such are these three, Father, Sonne, holy Ghost. For the
Father is different from the Sonne and holy Ghost: so the Sonne from
the Father and the holy Ghost: and so the holy Ghost from the Father
and the Son: and every of those distinct in himself, and so
incommunicable, as neither of these persons is, or can be, the other.179
Pictet, in a similar argument, concludes his discussion with a justification of
the traditionary language reminiscent of Calvin: the word “person” as applied
“by theologians” to each of these “three in whom the divine essence subsists
… is not so apposite, but in the absence of other terms, we accept it, together
with the entire Christian church.”180 As will appear below, in the discussion
of subsistentia, the orthodox insist that “person” is not applied to God in the
way it is applied to human beings—given that, although human beings are
also independent subsistences, their individuality is not understood as a real
relation or a relation of opposition within a single being.
These definitions, Wendelin and Leigh argue, meet the several
requirements for the consideration of an individual as “person”—that is, since
not all individual things are persons. By individual, Wendelin comments, is
meant a singular thing, res singularis, inasmuch as universals, such as
indicate genus and species, cannot be persons. The term “subsistence”
indicates, moreover, an independent individuum, inasmuch as it is distinct
from an “accident,” which has no independent subsistence, but inheres in
something else. In short, a person must be an individual “substance” or
“subsistence” insofar as “accidents are not persons” but “inhere in another
thing: … a person must subsist.” Even so, “living” must be added to the
definition, inasmuch as an “inanimate individual,” like a stone or a statue, is
not a person—similarly, “intelligent,” since brute creatures are not
persons.181
This “lively and intelligent substance endued with reason and will,” must
also be “determinate and singular, for mankind is not a person, but John and
Peter.” The attribute of incommunicability, thus, indicates that “a person is
not an essence, which is capable of being communicated to many
individuals,” while the qualifier that a person is not part of another being sets
persons apart from entities such as souls, which are part of a human being.182
Human nature, thus, is not a person insofar as it is “communicable to every
particular man,” while the individual or particular recipient of that nature is a
person, incapable of communicating his nature as he has it in its particularized
form to any other. A person is not directly or immediately sustained by
another but is an independent subsistence—in scholastic terms, a suppositum:
“The human nature of Christ is not a person, because it is sustained by his
deity”; nor is the soul in man a person, because it is a part of the whole.183
Whereas finite human nature is one in species (or genus) and plural in persons
or individuals, the infinite divine nature is one without qualification, there
being no genus or species “god,” the plurality of persons in no way removing
the numerical unity of essence.184 Or, to make the point somewhat differently,
Peter, James, and John “were three persons” and, as such “were separated one
from the other,” but in the Godhead, the divine persons, “however
distinguished by their characters and properties, are never separated, as
having the same divine essence or nature.”185
It might also be argued, logically (if one followed the famous Boethian
definition to the letter), that Omnis persona est substantia intelligens, ubi ergo
tres personae, ibi tres substantiae. Rijssen denies this, arguing that the
definition of person as substantia intelligens does not carry with it the
conclusion that the three persons in God are different in essence.186 This
problem arises linguistically from the two rather different uses of the word
substantia in the writings of the Latin fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries
—as the translation of ousia, roughly synonymous with essentia, and as a
translation of hypostasis: as Turretin comments,
the ancients sometimes … take substance for subistence, like Hilary,
who acknowledges three substances of the Godhead in [his] De synodis.
Others, apparently understanding substantia as nature and essence,
recognize only one [substantia] and deny that there are three, such as
 Augustine in De trinitate and Tertullian in Adversus Praxean.187
A final objection takes much the same point of departure as the previous—the
problem of identity and plurality: “The one God is three in persons: the Father
is the one God; Ergo, the Father is three in person.” Here, too, the logic of the
argument misunderstands the logic of trinitarian language, for “the word God
in the major is taken essentially, in the minor, personally.” “The Father,” notes
Rijssen, “is not the one God, when the word God is understood as the essence
common to the three persons.”188
Marckius qualifies carefully the meaning of the traditional philosophical
terms used to define the Trinity, with particular attention to the term “person.”
It is not the case, he writes,
that “personality” (personalitas) indicates a genuine something or a
distinct Being (verum aliquod & reale Ens), having its own essence; nor
is it to be inferred that there is in God a fourfold essence, one divine
plus a threefoldness of person.189
Nor is personalitas merely a negation of actual or real communication of
characteristic properties on the part of an essence, in order that it might be
distinct from other essences: for it is the person of the Logos, and not the
divine essence, that is incarnate. The correct understanding of “person” in this
specifically trinitarian sense takes a middle course between these extremes,
where “person” is understood as an incommunicable “mode” of subsistence
that limits and completes a substantial nature.190
A divine person, then, can be identified as “an incommunicable subsistence
of the divine essence,” granting that the divine essence is possessed in
common by the three persons, while the persons represent incommunicable
characteristics: Father, Son, and Spirit are God, but the Father is not the Son,
the Son not the Spirit, and so forth. The essence is one, the persons several:
thus,
essence is absolute, person relative: the persons of the Son and Spirit
have an origin, the essence does not. Person generates and is generated:
essence neither generates nor is generated.191
The persons, therefore are identified according to what they have in common
and how they are distinct: they have in common the numerically singular and
indivisible divine essence, the essential properties, the works, dignity, and
honor of God. They are distinct, however, in origin, in order, and in manner of
operation, inasmuch as the Father is from himself (a se), the Son from the
Father, and the Spirit from the Father and the Son; the Father is first, the Son
second, and the Spirit third in order; and in internal operation, the Father acts
a se, the Son from the Father, and the Spirit from the Son and the Father.192
 6. Hypostasis, subsistentia, and modus subsistendi. As already indicated
in the discussion of trinitarian texts in the exegetical tradition, the term
hypostasis is distinguished from the other trinitarian terms by its presence in
the text of the New Testament. Noting the identification of the Son as “the
brightness of [the Father’s] his glory,” Calvin continues,
The fair inference from the Apostle’s words is, that there is a proper
subsistence (hypostasis) of the Father, which shines refulgent in the
Son. From this, again it is easy to infer that there is a subsistence
(hypostasis) of the Son which distinguishes him from the Father. The
same holds in the case of the Holy Spirit; for we will immediately prove
both that he is God, and that he has a separate subsistence from the
Father. This, moreover, is not a distinction of essence, which it were
impious to multiply. If credit, then, is given to the Apostle’s testimony,
it follows that there are three persons (hypostases) in God. The Latins
having used the word Persona to express the same thing as the Greek
hypostasis, it betrays excessive fastidiousness and even perverseness to
quarrel with the term.”193
Reflecting the heated debates with Socinus and other antitrinitarians over
the term, Gomarus begins his thesis on the Trinity with a lengthy clarification
of the term “hypostasis,” which he understands not in its early signification as
similar to “ousia,” but in the later signification as determined by the
Cappadocian fathers: hypostasis is derived from hyphestanai, subsistere and
therefore “significat autem (ut loquuntur) subsistentiam: & quidem abstracte,
vel concrete”—whether taken abstractly or concretely, hypostasis refers to
subsistence.194 Thus, in the key biblical locus, Hebrews 1:3, hypostasis is
rightly rendered “subsistence” or “person” and not “essence,” given that here
the Son is distinguished from the Father as type from archetype, produced
from producer, while at the same time the essential identity of the Father and
the Son is clearly indicated.195
Rijssen similarly appeals to the theological (and philosophical) use of the
term hypostasis to indicate subsistentia, which he defines as an “entity,” the
“ultimate terminus and completion of a substantial nature” which is by nature
“singular, … complete, and incommunicable.”196 Taken abstractly, hypostasis
can indicate the action or actuality of subsisting (actus subsistendi) and, by
synechdoche, something that stands, remains, or occupies a place. In a less
strict manner of speaking, taken actively, hypostasis indicates the
“constitution” of something, as, for example, the constitution of a human
being (hominis constitutio), or, taken passively, the “existence” or “substance”
of a living thing and even the manner in which it, as a subject, subsists, in
short, its modi existendi.197 Concretely, the word hypostasis means a
subsistent thing (rem subsistentem).198 After a lengthy etymological analysis,
Gomarus turns to the scriptural usage and to his final theological
determination of hypostasis.199 He notes that in Job 22:20, “Whereas our
substance is not cut down, but the remnant of them the fire consumeth,” the
Hebrew word kim, from the verb meaning “to stand or stand up,” indicates
substantiam or subsistentiam and has been rendered as hypostasis by the
Septuagint and as persona by Kimchi—not, of course, that the text of Job can
be used to justify trinitarian language, but that the term hypostasis is clarified
in its churchly significance by its use in the passage.200
Many of the orthodox attempt further to describe this plurality in the
Godhead as distinct modes of subsisting or existing. A “mode of subsistence”
or “mode of existence”—modus subsistendi, or τρόπος ὐπάρξεως—in the
Godhead “is a relation inhering in the existence of God,” that is usually
identified with the term “person,” given that the modes of subsisting in the
Godhead are identified not by essential but by “personal properties.” This
truth, comments Keckermann, is a mystery such that the contemplation of it
by the intellect is comparable only to the eye of a bat smitten by the sun!201
Still, some definition is necessary, if only for the sake of stating the doctrine
without error. A subsistence, strictly speaking, is “a Mode of Being, by which
a thing exists by itself, without existing in another, either as a part in a whole,
or an Adjunct in the Subject.”202 Subsistence, therefore, indicates something
very different from “essence” and “existence”—subsistence is what
distinguishes the divine persons one from another, whereas essence and
existence refer to their unity as God. The orthodox follow the traditional
definition of “subsistences” in the Godhead as real relations or relative
properties, modes of the divine being—which, in the Godhead can be called
persons, as distinct from usages applicable in the creaturely order, where
relative properties or real relations in a being cannot be understood as
“persons.”203
Among the early orthodox, Keckermann and Ames in particular preferred
the term modus or modus subsistendi as a precise description of the way the
persons related to the essence of God—and despite the problem caused by
Sabellianism for this type of theological language, the terminology remained
with the orthodox, especially with those who had a strong interest in
philosophical usage.204 The definition of the terms of trinitarian language thus
indicates the utter unity of the divine being while at the same time
safeguarding with precision the way in which the one essence is also three—
leading many of the orthodox to adopt the Augustinian distinction between
the oneness of essence and the threenesss of its “modes of subsistence”:
Although Trinity in its native signification signifies the number of any
 three things, yet by Ecclesiastical custom it is limited to signify the
three Persons in the Trinity. This is not meant as if the Essence did
consist of three Persons as so many parts; and therefore there is a great
difference between Trinity and Triplicity. Trinity is when the same
Essence hath divers ways of subsisting; and Triplicity is when one thing
is compounded of three as parts. They are three not in respect of
Essence or Divine attributes, as three Eternals, but three in respect of
personal properties, as the Father is of none, the Son of the Father, and
the Holy Ghost of both; three Persons but one God, as to be, to be true,
to be good, are all one, because Transcendents.205
From the basic understanding that the one, undivided divine essence is
“common to the three subsistences,” the Reformed orthodox draw a set of
interrelated conclusions: since the three subsistences have the essence in
common, each is properly said to exist of itself, as far as its essence is
concerned.206 This follows from the fact that all attributes or properties
belonging to the divine essence must also belong to each of its modes of
subsisting. Nonetheless, the distinct or personal properties that identify each
subsistence individually cannot be predicated of the essence as such.207
As late as Gill, who had to contend with the revival of Arianism in
England, we find the language of “mode” employed and the attempt made to
define the term and its use very precisely:
nor is the distinction merely modal; rather real modal; for though there
are three modes of subsisting in the Deity, and each Person has a
distinct mode, yet the phrase seems not strong enough; for the
distinction is real and personal; the three in the Godhead are not barely
three modes, but three distinct Persons in a different mode of subsisting,
who are really distinct from one another.208
This use of modus subsistendi, or “way of subsisting,” stands in contrast to
the pattern of definition typically adopted by Lutheran orthodoxy. It was
typical of the Reformed to use the term modus subsistendi when discussing
the persons of the Godhead essentially and to argue that the “persons are
distinguished from the essence, not sola ratione nor by a real distinction, nor
even formally, as the Thomists claim, but modally or by a modal distinction,
which is between the ens and the order or mode of the ens.”209 Turretin
comments that, although no human language can do justice to the mystery of
the Trinity, the notion of a modal distinction between the persons in the
essence best serves the needs of the doctrine.210
7. Circumincessio, perichoresis, emperichoresis. Supplementing the
term homoousios, but more firmly grounded in Scripture, is the term
perichoresis or emperichoresis, usually rendered into Latin as
circumincessio. The term is also rendered mutua circumplexio, indicating the
ultimate, mutual interrelation of the persons, as appears from John 10:38 and
14:10–13 where the Son states that he is in the Father and the Father in
him.211 The persons also conjoin with one another in “their equal
participation in the dignity and honor that flow forth from the one supreme
nature”—although not in such a way as to render impossible the superiority of
the Father as evidenced in the economy of redemption, where the Son is
subordinate by reason of his office. Even so, their conjunction ad intra is
understood as an emperichoresis or mutua inexistentia flowing from the
unity of essence, as indicated by John 10:38, “the Father is in me and I in
him.”212
Granting this essential conjunction and “mutual inexistence,” the persons
must also be carefully distinguished. Here the Reformed orthodox offer
different approaches. Marckius comments that the standard metaphysical
terms used to indicate distinctions between beings, “real, modal, rational,
personal and so forth”—the distinctions typically argued by the medieval
scholastics—only cause confusion and debate, so that it is better to
distinguish the persons in name, order, mode of operation, works ad extra,
and personal operations.213
8. Proprietates, relationes, and notiones. The relationships drawn between
the Father and the Son, together with the idea of a divine Trinity, demand a
further set of descriptive terms that allow identification of proprietates,
relationes, and notiones. The orthodox discussion of the Trinity offers a direct
analogue to the discussion of the divine attributes in the differentiation
between proprietates essentiales and proprietates personales, the former
category of “property” referring to the divine attributes that the persons of the
Trinity hold in common and that identify them each as fully and equally
divine, the latter category referring to the distinctive characteristics of the
persons individually that serve to identify them as persons within the
Godhead.
The personal property of the Father is to beget, that is, not to multiply
his substance by production, but to communicate his substance to the
same. The Son is said to be begotten, that is, to have the whole
substance from the Father by communication. The Holy Ghost is said to
proceed, or to be breathed forth, to receive his substance by proceeding
from the Father and the Son jointly; in regard of which he is called the
Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son both, Gal. 4:6. The Father
only begetteth, the Son only is begotten, and the Holy Ghost only
proceedeth. Both procession and generation are ineffable. In the manner
of working they differ, for the Father worketh of himself, by the Son,
 and through the Holy Ghost; the Son worketh from the Father by the
Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost worketh from the Father and the Son by
himself. There is so one God, as that there are three persons or divers
manners of being in that one Godhead, the Father, Son, and the Holy
Ghost.214
Here we see the return of the medieval scholastic terminology (although not
of the extended speculative use of Augustinian metaphor characteristic of
much medieval trinitarianism). This terminology, as noted above, was not
seen as useful by the Reformers and had been rejected as unnecessary by
some.215 Reformed orthodox reappropriation of the language was, arguably,
for the purpose of providing a full Latin trinitarian vocabulary that could do
justice to the complexity of the patristic development, particularly given the
context of new and sophisticated debate over the doctrine of the Trinity.
The sequence of terms defines the intratrinitarian unity and distinction.
Proprietas indicates a distinguishing characteristic of a subsistence not shared
with other subsistences: in the trinitarian vocabulary, it indicates, in other
words, the “peculiar mode of subsisting” belonging so a person, according to
which the person “is constituted in his personal being and is distinguished
from others.”216 Thus, in God there are three proprietates—paternitas,
filiatio, and spiratio. Relatio also refers to personal properties but in the very
specific sense of the way in which the distinct subsistences (and their
proprietates) relate to one another: in God there are four relationes
—paternitas, filiatio, and spiratio, both activa and passiva. Notio designates
the way in which the three persons are distinct from one another: and there
are five notiones—agenesia, paternitas, filiatio, spiratio, and processio
—which identify all of the trinitarian concepts, whether active or passive.
From this latter category comes the distinction between actus notionales,
which flow from the essential properties of God and have their terminus ad
extra, namely, in the common work of the three persons, and the actus
essentiales, which flow from the personal proprietates of God and have their
terminus ad intra—generation and filiation.217 In the series, “property,”
“relation,” and “notion,” there is an increasingly “wider extension” of
meaning, so that there are three properties, but four relations, and five notions
or concepts.218
All these terms, Turretin and Rijssen conclude, are justified by their utility
in discourse and their necessity in the fight against heresy.219 The heretics of
the seventeenth century, Socinians and Arminians, like the heretics of old,
either deny the usefulness of the terms outright or make an appeal for “return
to the simplicity of the sacred writings.” The Arminians specifically argue
that no one ought to be compelled to prove their orthodoxy by subscription to
“words invented by human beings.”220 The problem, in Turretin’s view, is that
the new heretics, like the ancient ones, condemn the words in order to deny
the truths indicated by them—which is, of course, the reason not only for
retaining the terms but also for defining them precisely.221
The “proprietates” of the persons of the Trinity are the “characteristica
idiomata,” or “limiting Attributes, which coming from the persons, are not
only limited in the persons, but also do limit the persons, both in themselves
and among themselves.”222 The essential proprietates, however, apply to the
entire Godhead as one and may be defined as
attributes of God, essential to God, whereby both the verity of the
Essence clearly appears in itself, and is distinguished from others; yet
so, that they really differ neither from the Essence, nor among
themselves: not from the Essence, because they are so in one Essence as
that they are the very essence: for God is a simple working power; not
among themselves: for that which is in God is one, and from this
primary unity, every difference and every number ought to be far
removed.223
This is the case since God cannot be characterized as having “composition of
matter or form.” God is
good, true, just, & c. without quality or bound, exceeding great and
incomprehensible, without motion or action, without passion, …
without time … habit, or addition; the Lord of all things: for all the
properties are affirmed of God Essentially, and that both formally and in
the abstract, because of the individual perfection of the Essence, as also
subjectively, and in the concrete, because of the verity of God
existing.224
The distinction between the persons of the Trinity is a distinction in
number, insofar as the three subsist “truly, distinctly, and per se” and are
distinguished by their relations and personal properties, which are
incommunicable, internal works of the Godhead proper to the persons.225 In
addition,
there follows an external distinction in respect of effects and operations
which the persons exercise concerning external objects, namely the
creatures; for though the outward works are undivided in respect of the
Essence, yet in respect of the manner and determination, all the persons
in their manner and order concur to such works. As the manner is of
existing, so of working in the persons.
The Father is the original and principle of action, works from
himself by the Son, as by his Image and wisdom, and by the Holy
 Ghost. But he is said to work by his Son, not as an instrumental but as a
principal cause distinguished in a certain manner from himself, as the
Artificer works by an Image of his work framed in his mind, which
Image or Idea is not in the instrumental cause of the work … [1 Cor.
8:6; Rom. 11:36; Heb. 1:2, 3].226
Thus, the personal works of the Trinity testify to the unity and the trinitarian
interrelationship of circumincession of the persons:
To the Son is given the dispensation and administration of the action
from the Father by the Holy Ghost, 1 Cor. 8:6; John 1:3 & 5:19.
To the Holy Ghost is given the consummation of the action which he
effects from the Father and the Son, Job 26:13; 1 Cor 12:11.
The effects or works which are distinctly given to the Persons, are,
Creation ascribed to the Father, Redemption to the Son, Sanctification
to the Holy Ghost; all which things are done by the Persons equally and
inseparably in respect of the effect itself, but distinctly in respect of the
manner of working.227
B. Trinitarian Distinctions in the Godhead: Between Essence and
Persons—Among the Persons
1. The distinction between essence and person—rational or modal?
The basic definitions of the Trinity and of the divine persons return us to the
question of the nature of the distinctions in the Godhead, given the unity of
the divine essence. As Turretin comments, “the persons are manifestly distinct
from the essence because the essence is one and while the persons are
three.”228 The very establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity demands some
further clarification of the manner in which the persons may be said to be
distinct: after all, the persons are surely distinct from the essence, inasmuch as
the persons are three and the essence is one—and the persons are also surely
distinct inasmuch as they are differently named and inasmuch as their names
indicate something of the relationships that identify them as individuals.
Thus, with regard to “essence” and “person,” Turretin notes, “The former is
the common principle of external operations, which are undivided and
common to the three persons; the latter are the principle of internal
operations, which belong to the single persons mutually related to each
other.”229
In drawing together the themes of oneness of essence and threeness of
person, we observe that the divine nature common to the three persons alone
is God even as the three persons alone are God and that the unity and equality
of the persons does not stand in contradiction to their distinct personal
properties or to their order of operation in the work of the Godhead. Thus,
 a person is such a subsistence in the Divine nature, as is distinguished
from every other by some special or personal property, or else it is the
God-head restrained with his personal property. Or it is a different
manner of subsisting in the Godhead, as the nature of man doth
diversely subsist in Peter, James, John, but these are all not one. It
differs from the essence as the manner of the thing from the thing itself,
and not as one thing from another; one person is distinguished from
another by its personal property, and by its manner of working.230
The essence of God produces neither another divine essence nor the divine
persons; nor does a person produce the essence; rather both the one producing
and the one produced are persons.231 Thus, as implied by the definition of
person as one not sustained by another, the divine persons have their essence
and existence from themselves, at least in the sense that the divine essence is
neither multiplied not divided, but rather possessed entire and without
division by each of the persons: it is not the essence that is generated or
spirated, but the persons themselves.232 They differ from the divine Essence
not realiter—that is to say, not essentialiter, ut res & res—but modaliter, ut
modus à re: “the personal properties by which the persons are distinguished
from the Essence, are modes of a sort, by which they are characterized, not
formally and properly as in creatures who are affected in certain ways by their
properties, but eminently and analogically, rising beyond all
imperfection.”233
Having defined the distinctions between the persons of the Trinity in terms
of incommunicable properties which belong to the persons individually and
which thus show why one person is not to be confused with the others, the
orthodox take considerable pains to argue that the distinction between the
persons is not “merely by negation.”234 The incommunicable properties are
founded upon a positive distinction between persons and a positive and
formal constitution of each person: if this were not so the several modus
subsistendi in divinis would merely be categories superadded to the unity of
the divine essence. In order truly to speak of persons in the Godhead, we must
recognize positive distinction.235 This leads to the controversy with the
antitrinitarians and to various arguments in favor of a positive distinction of
persons in the divine essence.
Rijssen notes that the problem of distinguishing between the persons of the
Trinity has bred two extremes of doctrine. The first of these is Sabellianism,
named for Sabellius Pentapolitanus, who was born in Egypt and introduced
his ideas ca. 200 A.D. He was followed in his heresy by “Praxeas Asiaticus
and Hermogenes Afer, and in more recent times M. Servetus, who have stated
the distinction between persons as a purely rational distinction, as if there
were only one person, which according to its various effects is said to be in
the manner of the Father, or the manner of Son, or the manner of Spirit.”236
The second extreme of trinitarian heresy is tritheism, put forth by
Philoponus and Valentinus Gentilis, “who from the three persons devise three
eternal and unequal spirits, essentially distinct from one another.”237 The
orthodox stand between these two extremes, acknowledging a modal
distinction between the persons insofar as the persons are constituted by
personal properties which are to be conceived as incommunicable modes of
subsisting. This distinction is “less than real” but nonetheless not merely
rational: “the orthodox take a middle position, and confess a modal distinction
between the persons, inasmuch as the personal properties of the persons [of
the Godhead] are established as incommunicable modes of subsistence, by
which the persons are distinguished.”238 Since the “persons” are understood
as “modes of subsistence,” the distinctions between them are “modal.” The
following personal distinctions, therefore, are observed: “1. In order, since the
Father is the first, the Son the second, and the Holy Spirit the third person; 2.
of properties, inasmuch as agennesia is attributed to the Father, gennesia to
the Son, and ekporeusis to the Spirit; 3. in mode of operation, since the
Father operates a se, the Son from the Father, and the Spirit from both [the
Father and the Son].”239
These basic patterns of argumentation became a matter of controversy with
the antitrinitarians of the seventeenth century who argued pointedly against
the identification of the divine persons as modes of subsistence and held that,
given the real, personal distinctions between the Father and the Son, or among
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the only way to salvage monotheism was the
radical subordination of the Son and the Spirit. “If the Fathers had held,” one
antitrinitarian of the era argued,
that the three Persons are but one only (numerical) Substance, one
infinite Spirit, one omniscient Mind and energy; and that they are called
Persons, only because the one (numerical) substance subsists in three
Modes, that is, after three several manners: I say, if this had been the
Opinion of the Fathers, the Question would not have been, how three
Persons can be but one God, but how they be called Hypostases or
Persons? As at this day, no Man is so foolish as to charge the Nominal
trinitarians with Tritheism … in calling Modes (or a Substance
subsisting in three manners) Persons, when it is so obvious that Modes
are not Persons, but certain Affections and accidental Denominations
belonging to Persons.240
The distinction of the persons must be considered in two ways—first, the
way in which the divine persons are distinct from the divine essence and,
second, the way in which they are distinct form one another. The distinction
between the persons and the essence is not a distinction between genus and
species, since there is no genus “god”: “god” does not indicate a class of
beings, of which there are three instances. There is, moreover, no real
distinction between the three persons and the divine essence, as if the essence
were one thing (res) and the three persons each another thing, for God is a
simple or noncomposite being. Rather the persons are rationally or
conceptually (ratione) distinct, not merely in the mind of the finite knower
but in ipsa re, that is, in the Godhead or divine essence itself.241 Or to make
the point in another form, “we do not have [in the Godhead] a thing and
another thing, but a thing and the modes of a thing by which it is not
compounded but distinguished.”242
2. The distinctions between the persons—modal or real? It was,
moreover, entirely to be expected that the Reformed would use language of
modal distinctions in their discussions of the Trinity, given their tendency to
follow the Western, Augustinian concept of the persons as modes of
subsistence in the Godhead. As Keckermann noted at the beginning of his
discussion of the Trinity, the identity of essence and existence in God can be
stated as an identity of modus or manner: the divine “mode of essence and of
existence in no way differ: but what this modus is, is very difficult for the
intellect to conceive.”243 Still, in finite things, we can distinguish aspects or
degrees, such as degrees of heat, that do not imply the addition of a new thing
or part to the thing originally under consideration and that are not the thing
itself, but modes of the thing. By the same token, when we wish to discuss
something in God that is not a thing or substance (res) separate from God and
is also neither another God nor a divine essence, we speak of a mode of
divine existence—as was proposed by John of Damascus, who drew on Justin
Martyr’s language and spoke of the divine persons as “τρόπος ὑπάρξεως,
modos existentiae in Deo,” a definition, Keckermann notes, that was approved
by Ursinus in his catechetical lectures and used also by Zanchi. The notion of
“modal distinction,” Keckermann concludes, is therefore to be used to
distinguish the person from the divine essence and to distinguish among the
persons.244
This seemingly simple solution, however, was not universally adopted
among the Reformed, partly because of the strong traditionary attraction of
another usage, namely, the real distinction, partly because of the difficulties
attendant on the use of modal terminology in the context of the various
dogmatic and philosophical battles of the seventeenth- and early eighteenth
centuries. Zanchi, it should be remembered, had echoed the main line of the
via antiqua and argued pointedly for the real distinction of relations in the
Godhead.245 This model was argued early on and quite forcefully by Zanchi,
who defined the persons as “distinct truly and really (verè & realiter)” but not
“essentialiter” given that they are subsistents in the one divine essence: the
persons are distinct but not divided (distincti … non autem divisi).246
A summary of the argument, noting the views of Arnold, Mastricht,
Maresius, Lampe, and Spanheim, with some attempt at resolution, is found as
late as De Moor’s Commentarius perpetuus. It provides a useful set
definitions prefatory to discussion of the high orthodox resolution of the
question of the interpersonal distinctions in the Godhead. De Moor notes five
possible ways of arguing the distinction: First, ratio ratiocinatae, by reason of
rational analysis, defined specifically as having a foundation in the thing (res)
that is the object of the reasoning. Second, formaliter, in the sense that “the
essence is formally constituted in personal existence” by the distinctions
between the persons. Third, modaliter, in the sense that a mode or manner of
a thing’s subsistence can distinguished from the thing itself—reflecting the
identification of the persons as “modes of subsistence.” In this sense, “the
persons are distinguished from the divine essence and among themselves not
realiter or essentialiter, as a thing from a thing, but modally as a mode from a
thing and modes of a thing from one another.” Fourth, realiter, which, De
Moor notes, is the distinction favored by the “Auctor,” Marckius, in an
attempt to state a distinction that is neither merely rational nor essential. Such
a real distinction, De Moor adds, is not what the scholastics call distinctio
realis maior, such as can be made between a thing and a thing (inter res &
res), as if there were in the Trinity distinctions between one and another thing
(aliud & aliud) or between one and another essence—this would violate the
unity of God. Rather it is a distinctio realis minor, such as can be made
between “a thing and the modes of a thing, or between the modes
themselves,” in short, a restatement of the modal distinction. (Arguably, this
distinctio realis minor is precisely what Aquinas indicated by a real
distinction of relational opposition.)247 Fifth, drawing on Maresius, De Moor
notes that one can also speak of a distinctio personalis, given the grounding
of the distinction in the personal properties of the Father, Son, and Spirit—but
here, again, De Moor understands the point to be identical with the modal
distinction or the distinctio realis minor.248
Discussion of the proper use of these distinctions relative to the Trinity
was offered, among the high orthodox, by Mastricht, Turretin, and Marckius.
This distinction between the persons, comments Mastricht, is a difficult
matter that has been typically framed either against the Sabellians or against
various tritheists. On the one hand, the Sabellians admit no difference
between the persons other than a purely rational or nominal distinction; on the
other hand, a tritheist like Valentin Gentile would claim three beings or
essences, one primary, the essentiator, the other two secondary or essentiati.
Against the Sabellians, some have argued that the persona are distinct realiter,
as res & res—really, as one thing from another thing—but this view verges on
tritheism.249 Here, we must place many of Reformed who adopted the
traditional language that began at least as early as Alexander of Hales: that the
persons are really distinct from one another as res and res, although not in
such a way as to render them separate essences—indeed, the persons are
understood as distinct only rationally from the essence.250
Others, Mastricht indicates, primarily against the tritheists, have argued
that the persons are distinct modally (modaliter), as one manner of subsisting
from another. This language consciously echoes Augustine. Turretin is
perhaps the most eminent example of its use.251 (It is important to note, over
against a particular twentieth-century confusion of terms typical of “social
trinitarians,” that this use of the language of “modal distinction” or of divine
“modes of subsistence” does not amount to the heresy of Sabellianism or
“modalism”: the reference here is to ad intra “modal” distinctions, not, as in
the heresy, to ad extra roles or modes of self-presentation.) As the Reformed
orthodox note, the Sabellians did not argue a modal distinction between the
persons in the Godhead but rather a purely rational distinction of persons in
their outward manifestation or role coupled with an insistence that the persons
were not distinct ad intra.252
If the divine persons can be said to be distinct from the divine essence
modaliter, a somewhat different language must be used to indicate their
distinction from one another—given, as Turretin remarks, that the essence can
be predicated of the persons and that there is no “opposition” between essence
and person in concreto, but that the persons are opposed to one another and
“cannot be mutually predicated of each other.”253 This difference raises a
problem in the language of distinction, given that the distinction between the
persons is greater than what some have called modal, but still not as great as
what is usually indicated by a “real distinction.” Thus, some of the Reformed
prefer simply to state that the persons are distinct modally, whereas others
indicate that the persons are distinct realiter—although, as Turretin indicates,
this real distinction must be understood as a “minor real distinction” such as
exists not between things and other things but such as exists between a thing
and its modes or between the modes of a thing. And, in fact, such a definition
is found in Owen:
this God is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; which are not diverse
names of the same person, nor distinct attributes or properties of the
same nature or being, but one, another, and a third, all equally that one
God, yet really distinguished between themselves by such
incommunicable properties as constitute the one to be that one, and the
 other to be that other, and the third to be that third. Thus the Trinity is
not the union or unity of three, but it is a trinity in unity, or the ternary
number of persons in the same essence.254
It is also found in the theses published at Saumur, where the persons are said
to be distinguished realiter “as a mode of a thing from another mode.”255 This
kind of definition, Turretin comments, corresponds with the modal distinction
made by the other Reformed, so there is no great difference in substance
between the variant definitions.256 Mastricht notes that he prefers to indicate a
“really modal” (realiter modaliter) distinction to press the point that the
modal distinction is not merely rational but is made “in truth” (revera) and
bears therefore a truth value or genuineness akin to the real distinction. To
avoid all problems of language, one may simply state that the persons are
distinct not realiter but personally (personaliter) and that in a supernatural,
not a natural sense.257
At somewhat greater length and with perhaps greater use of technical
language, Marckius thus summarizes the problem under four heads: first,
there is in God one single, most simple, and most singular essence—a point
that must be made strongly against all “three-formists” (Triformianos) and
tritheists (Tritheistas), both ancient and modern. Second, there are three
genuine persons (tres personas veras) which, considered “abstractly,” are
understood as “incommunicable modes of existence of the divine essence.”258
The relationship of the persons to one another and to the essence are
explained usually in metaphysical terms concerning distinctions—rationis
ratiocinatae, formalis, modalis, and realis—all of which, Marckius notes, are
suited to the consideration of finite and imperfect things and must be used
carefully. The terms are necessary, however, in order to maintain right
doctrine against such heretics as “Servetus, Sabellius, Noetus, Praxeas, the
Patripassians, and the Simonians” who understand the persons as merely
names of the one divine essence.259 Third, “the persons agree or conjoin with
one another (convenire inter se) in one essence, which was well expressed at
Nicaea with the term homoousion as opposed to such terms as
homoiousion, heterousion, synousion, tautoousion, monoousion, and
henousion”: for the essence is one in number, without division or
multiplication, and threeness is “predicated of it not in terms of genus or
species, but analogically.” Thus it is not incorrect to say both that “persons”
are “in the divine nature” and that “the nature is in the persons.”260 In sum,
the distinction of persons must be identified either as a modal or formal
distinction or as a distinctio realis minor in order that the individual persons
not be identified as, individually, the primary essence of the Godhead and the
unity of divine being reduced to a generic unity of secondary essence. There
is a fundamental coherence between the arguments leading to a refined sense
of the distinction of persons—neither a distinctio realis maior such as stands
between distinct things, distinct substances, or distinct realities; nor a
distinction of reason or of concept such as stands between the essentially and
subsistentially identical inseparable attributes of a thing—and the insistence,
along the traditional patristic lines of argument, that the persons do not divide
the divine primary essence or substance but are instead distinct modes of
subsistence within that essence.

1 On fundamental articles, see PRRD, I, 9.1 (A–B).

2 Melanchthon, Loci communes theologici (1543), locus 1.
3 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2.
4 On the order and arrangement of the Institutes, see Muller,
Unaccommodated Calvin, pp. 118–139.
5 Cf. Calvin, Institutes, I.x.1–3; xiii.1, where the oneness of God and the
attributes are discussed, albeit briefly. Also note the comments in PRRD, III,
3.1 (A.2); 3.3 (B.1).
6 Bullinger, Compendium, II.ii.
7Cf. Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2.; Bullinger, Compendium, II.ii; Bullinger,
Decades, I.vii (I, pp. 124–126).
8 Hyperius, Methodus theologiae, pp. 12, 91–92.
9 See PRRD, III, 2.1 (B.2); 3.3 (B.1–2), et passim.
10Cf. the comments in Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 35, 37–38, 113–
115, 136–138, 143–145, 149–152, 156–159, 164–167, 181.
11 Cf. Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.ix (cols. 561–564); Voetius,
Selectarum disputationum theologicarum, I, xxviii; with Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxiv; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.20; Ridgley,
Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 136–137; Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the
Property of Christ, I, p. 183; Boston, Commentary on the Shorter Catechism,
I, p. 143; Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 105; and with the Lutheran
dogmaticians in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church, pp. 137–138
12 Most pointedly, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T.
F. Torrance, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1975), I/1, pp. 300–304,
II/1, pp. 261, 287–288, where the density of the contrary evidence forces
Barth to comment on the scholastic Protestant understanding of the Trinity as
the deep mystery of the faith as an instance that makes one question “whether
or not they knew what they were saying” (I/1, p. 303). Also note Otto Weber,
Foundations of Dogmatics, Foundations of Dogmatics, trans. Darrell Guder, 2
vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–82), I, pp. 349–352, 397–398 and the
comments of Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God; Dogmatics:
Volume I, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950), pp. 205–206,
242–243; and see the discussion of this problem in PRRD, III, 3.1 (A–B).
13 Owen, Brief … Doctrine of the Trinity, in Works, II, pp. 367.
14 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.1.
15 Marckius, Compendium, V.xii; Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xii (pp. 111–112);
Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiii–xiv.
16 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.1 (1–2).
17 E.g., Owen, Brief … Doctrine of the Trinity; Bull, Defensio fidei Nicaenae;
William Berriman, An Historical Account of the Controversies that have been
in the Church, concerning the Doctrine of the Holy and Everblessed Trinity.
In Eight Sermons preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, London, in
the years 1723 and 1724 (London: T. Ward and C. Rivington, 1725).
18E.g., John Owen, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ: or, a Declaration of the Glorious Mystery
of the Person of Christ (1679), in Works, vol. 1, pp. 2–272; idem,
ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ or, a Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit (1674–1693) in
Works, vols. 3–4.
19John Owen, Of the Divine Original, Authority, Self-evidencing Light, and
Power of the Scriptures, in Works, XVI, pp. 339–40.
20 Owen, Divine Original, p. 341.
21 As given in Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii (Beveridge).
22 Polanus, Syntagma theol, Index capitum, lib. III.
23 Alsted, Theologia didactica, I.xxx–xxxiv.
24 Cf. Maresius, Collegium theologicum, III (pp. 44–66)
25 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii–xxiv.
26 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxv–xxvi.
27 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii–xxxi.
28 Salomon Van Til, Theol. revelata compendium, III (p. 45).
29 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.1–49.
30 Melanchthon, Loci communes (1521), p. 21.
31 Melanchthon, Loci communes (1543), p. 21.
32 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.1–2.
33 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.3.
34Calvin, Institutes, I.xv.4; cf, similarly, Calvin, Commentary on Genesis,
Gen. 1:26 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 93).
35 See Georges Bavaud, Le Réformateur Pierre Viret (1511–1564); Sa
théologie (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1986), pp. 60–66.
36 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (p. 165).
37 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (p. 166).
38 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (p. 167).
39 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.1; Amyraut et al., Syntagma
thesium theologicarum, I.xv.1–2; cf. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 105–
110.
40 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.1; cf. Beza et al., Propositions and
Principles, II.i–ii.
41 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxv.4; cf. Maresius, Collegium
theologicum, iii.41; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.21, and note
the statement found in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 105–10.
42 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.i.2 (col. 3).
43 Owen, Divine Original, pp. 339–340.
44 Owen, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, p. 67.
45 Thomas Manton, Sermons upon John XVII, in The Complete Works of
Thomas Manton, 22 vols. (London: J. Nisbet, 1870–1875), X, p. 158; cf.
Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 138–143.
46 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 127): insistence upon the fundamental character
of the doctrine and of its inclusion in doctrines necessary to salvation is
characteristic of orthodoxy, both Reformed and Lutheran; cf. Schmid,
Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, pp. 137–138, citing
König, Theologia positiva acroamatica: “Whoever is ignorant of the mystery
of the Trinity does not acknowledge God as He has revealed Himself in His
Word, and is ignorant of the definition of God given in the Scriptures. The
mystery of the Trinity being either ignored or denied, the entire economy of
salvation is ignored or denied.”
47 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 140).
48 Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, I.ix (pp. 218–219).
49 John Owen, Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
each person distinctly, in Love, Grace, and Consolation; or, the Saints’
Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Unfolded (1657), in Works,
II, pp. 1–274.
50 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I,.iv.35; cf. Limborch, Theologia Christiana,
II.xii.2, 27, 29.
51 Witsius, Exercitationes, VI.xxiv.
52 Cf. Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2, with Ursinus, Commentary, p. 138; Turretin,
Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiv.11–14; Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.34;
Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 135–37.
53 Witsius, Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum, VI.xxiv.
54 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiv.17.
55 Witsius, Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum, VI.xxv–xxvii.
56 Cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xiv.22–28, with Ridgley, Body
of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 239–241.
57 Cf. Owen, Of Communion with God, in Works, II, p. 9; Owen, Vindication
of … Communion with God, in Works, II, p. 281.
58 Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 105.
59 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 240.
60 Polanus, Syntagma theol., II.1; idem, Substance of the Christian Religion,
p. 1; Wollebius, Christianae theol. comp., praecognita, §2; Ames, Medulla
theologica, I.ii.1–2; cf. PRRD, I, 3.4 (B.1–2).
61See Dennis R. Klinck, “Vestigia Trinitatis in Man and His Works in the
English Renaissance,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (1981), pp. 13–
27.
62 Cf. Genesis 1:2, 3, 26 with Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis,
trans. John Hammond Taylor, 2 vols. (New York: Newman Press, 1982),
I.v.11-vii.13; II.vi.10–14; III.xix.29; and with Nicolaus of Lyra, Biblia sacra
cum Glossa interlineari, ordinaria, et Nicolai Lyrani Postilla, 7 vols. (Venice,
1588), in loc.; and note Cornelius à Lapide, Commentaria in Scripturam
Sacram R. P. Cornelii a Lapide, e Societate Jesu … accurate recognovit,
editio nova, 27 vols. (Paris: Vives, 1866), in loc., for a synoptic view of the
patristic and medieval exegesis used in the sixteenth century.
63 Cf. Dourley, “Relationship between Knowledge of God and Knowledge of
the Trinity in Bonaventure’s De mysterio trinitatis,” pp. 44–45.
64 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, Gen. 1:26 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 93).
65Pierre Viret, Exposition familière de l’oraison de nostre Seigneur Jésus
Christ (Geneva, 1548), p. 165; idem, Exposition familière sur le symbole, pp.
63–64, 73–74, 297; Bavaud, Pierre Viret, pp. 60–64.
66 E.g., Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, III.iv; Synopsis purioris
theol., VIII.xvi–xvii.
67 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, III, pp. 132, 135–149.
68 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 126).
69 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, III, p. 157.
70Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 126); cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis., III, pp.
146–149.
71 Ainsworth, Annotations upon Genesis, Gen. 1:26 in loc.
72 Cf. Synopsis purioris theol., VII.xxxvi–xxxvii; Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, pars III, passim and VII (p. 531).
73 Among the Reformers, note Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces,
p. 13, col. 1); cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, III, pp. 117–122; Cudworth,
True Intellectual System, I, pp. 728–798.
74 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, III, pp. 127–128; Cudworth, True
Intellectual System, I, pp. 756–757, 778–780, with Cudworth denying the
Platonic origins of Arianism.
75 Manton, Sermons upon John XVIII, in Works, X, p. 158.
76 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 111, col. 1, citing Plato, Second Epistle to
Dionysius; cf. Edwards, Theologia Reformata, I, p. 324; also Marckius,
Compendium, V.xxviii. N.B.: the authenticity of the letter is disputed; see W.
K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1962–19), IV, pp. 65–66; V, pp. 399–401.
77 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 111, cols. 1–2.
78Samuel Parker, A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie
(Oxford: W. Hall, 1666), pp. 108–115.
79 Theophilus Gale, The Court of the Gentiles. Part IV. Of Reformed
Philosophie. Wherein Plato’s Moral and Metaphysic or Prime Philosophie is
reduced to an useful Forme and Method (London: J. Macock, 1677), II.vi.3
(p. 382); cf. Hutton, “Neoplatonic Roots of Arianism,” pp. 143–145. Note that
Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, IV/1–3, was published a year before Cudworth’s
True Intellectual System, to which Gale here refers. Cudworth’s work had,
however, already passed the censor, Samuel Parker, in 1671—and,
presumably, Gale had access to the text of the work.
80 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 112, col. 1, citing Col. 2:8.
81 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 112, cols. 1–2.
82 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 112, cols. 1–2.
83 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 112–113.
84 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 113, col. 1.
85Cf. Pierre Poiret, Cogitationum rationalium de Deo, anima et Malo
(Amsterdam, 1677) and idem, L’oeconomie divine, 7 vols. (Amsterdam,
1687).
86 See Richard A. Muller, “Found (No Thanks to Theodore Beza): One
‘Decretal’ Theology,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 32/1 (April 1997), pp.
145–51.
87 Cf. Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.4; Ames, Medulla, I.v.16; Leigh, Treatise,
II.xvi (p. 126).
88 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.9; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxv.4, 14ff.
89 Ames, Medulla, I.v.16; Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum,
I.xvii.22.
90 Voetius, Syllabus problematum, II.iv (fol. I1v, I2v).
91 Cf. Baxter, Catholike Theologie, I.iii. 25–27; idem, Methodus theologiae,
I.ii, q. 5–6 (pp. 82–87); with Trueman, “A Small Step Towards Rationalism,”
pp. 186–187.
92 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 147.
93 Keckermann, Systema ss. theologiae, I.iii. (pp. 10–33); Burman, Synopsis
theologiae, I.xxxii.48; Sherlock, Vindication of the doctrine of the holy and
ever blessed Trinity, pp. 48–69.
94 On this terminology, see below 3.2 (A.6).
95Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (p. 20); cf. Ainsworth, Orthodox
Foundation, pp. 11–13.
96 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (pp. 20–22).
97 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (pp. 22–26); cf. Ainsworth,
Orthodox Foundation, pp. 11–12. Note George Bull, The Doctrine of the
Catholic Church for the First Three Ages of Christianity, concerning the
Blessed Trinity, considered, in opposition to Sabellianism and Tritheism
[1697], in English Theological Works, p. 374, who insists that this
argumentation is “no novel subtlety of the schools, but a notion that runs
through all the Fathers.”
98 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (pp. 28–29); cf. Ainsworth,
Orthodox Foundation, pp. 12–13.
99 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (p. 30).
100 Burman, Synopsis theologiae, I.xxxiii.1: the language of intellect and will
follows the Thomist pattern, as distinct from the Franciscan language of
nature and will; see above, 1.3 (A.2–3).
101 Burman, Synopsis theolologiae, I.xxxiii.1.
102 Edwards, Theologia Reformata, I, pp. 322–323.
103 Stackhouse, Complete Body of Divinity, I.vi (I, pp. 214–215).
104Stackhouse, Complete Body of Divinity, I.vi (I, pp. 214–215), citing
Edwards, Body of Divinity, i.e., Theologia Reformata, I, pp. 322–323.
105 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 126).
106 Burman, Synopsis theologiae, I.xxxii.48.
107 Burman, Synopsis theologiae, I.xxxiii.1.
108 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 110, col. 1.
109 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 110, cols. 1–2.
110 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 110, col. 2.
111 Marckius, Compendium, V.xxviii.
112Cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xvi: margin, “Mysterium hoc non ex lumine
naturae probatur,” and text, “Unde nullus hic rationi, sed sola revelationi
locus.” Rijssen notes similitudes in nature and the threefold principle of
Platonism, “mind, word, and spirit”: the former do not constitute proof, and
the latter rests on a reading of Moses and the prophets and is, at best,
secondary; similarly Marckius, Comp. Theol., V.xxviii. None of the rational
arguments are developed at any length.
113 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, II.iii.
114 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2–6; Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.ii.2 and I.ii–
vi.
115Witsius, Exercitationes, vi.4, citing Gomarus, Disputationes and Gerhard,
Loci communes, iii.2. Gerhard was recognized as one of the significant
seventeenth-century scholars of patristic theology: note Johann Gerhard,
Patrologia, sive de primitivae ecclesiae christianae doctores vita ac
lucubrationibus (Jena, 1653) and see the discussion in Muller, After Calvin,
pp. 52–53; and cf. Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, pp. 140–46 with Heppe,
Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 111–118.
116Gomarus, Disp. theologiae, VI (p. 19); Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.2.
117 Gomarus, Disp.theologiae, VI (p. 19).
118 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 115, col. 2, citing Calvin, Institutes I.xiii.5.
119 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 116, col. 2.
120 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 116, col. 2.
121 Cf. Marckius, Compendium, V.iii. use of the term suppositum here
indicates the contact of orthodoxy with the terminology of medieval
scholasticism. A suppositum is “a complete being, incommunicable by
identity, incapable of inhering in anything, and not supported by anything”
(Ockham, cited in Copleston, History of Philosophy, III, pp. 100–101).
122 Downame, Summe, i (p. 33).
123 Marckius, Compendium, V.i.
124 Marckius, Compendium, V.i; Beza et al., Propositions and Principles,
II.iv.
125 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I; Bucanus, Institutions, i (p. 9);
cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.9; Amyraut et al., Syntagma
thesium theologicarum, I.xv.1.
126 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxxiii.1, 3, citing Nazianzus, Oratio 23.
127 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxxiv.3.
128 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxxv.19
129 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxxv.20, citing Scotus, I Sent., d. 2, q. ult.; d.
8, q. 4.
130 Marckius, Compendium, V.vi.
131 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, II.v.
132 See Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977),
pp. 132–156.
133 Stead, Divine Substance, pp. 160–162.
134 Spencer, Art of Logicke, I.iii.3 (p. 16).
135 Spencer, Art of Logicke, I.iii.4, 7; I.xxvii.1 (pp. 17, 21, 129).
136 Keckermann, Systema logicae minus, I.iii, in Opera, I, col. 175.
137 Keckermann, Systema logicae minus, I.iii, in Opera, I, cols. 175–176.
138 Keckermann, Scientiae metaphysicae brevis synopsis et compendium, I.ii,
in Opera, I, col. 2015; on form and matter, cf. Keckermann, Gymnasium
logicum, II.iii, in Opera, I, col. 431–432.
139 Boston, Commentary on the Shorter Catechism, I, p. 143.
140 Aretius, History of Valentinus Gentilis, VII (pp. 52–53, 56)
141 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.ii.3 (cols. 10–11).
142 Witsius, Exercitationes, VI.iv, citing John of Damascus, De fide, I.
143 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I; cf. Zanchi, De tribus Elohim,
pt. I, I.ii.5 (col. 13).
144 Aretius, History of Valentinus Gentilis, VII (p. 54), citing Augustine, De
Trinitate, V. ii.8.
145 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.3.
146 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.4, citing Hilary, De synodis, 32
(cf. NPNF, 2 ser., IX, p. 13).
147 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.4, citing Tertullian, Against
Praxeas: see cap. 9, 11, 18–19, 21–22 (cf. ANF, III, pp. 603–606, 613–618);
and Augustine De trinitate, V.ix (NPNF, 2 ser., III, p. 92).
148 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.ii.5; iii.1–2 (cols. 13–16).
149Symbolum Quicunque (Athanasian Creed), 9, 11 (in Schaff, Creeds, II, pp.
66–67).
150 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I.
151 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.18.
152 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.12.
153 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.12.
154 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.iii: “quatenus personae sunt, vere distinctae, ut
alius & alius; omnes tamen homoousioi, eandem numero Essentiam
habentes.”
155Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.8; Beza et al.,
Propositions and Principles, II.ix.
156 [Smalbroke?] Judgment of the Fathers, p. 66, referring to Bull, Defense of
the Nicene Creed, II.i (pp. 53–85).
157 [Smalbroke?] Judgment of the Fathers, pp. 68–70.
158 Cudworth, True Intellectual System, I, pp. 793–797; II, pp. 7–12.
159 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, VII (pp. 518–521); cf. the rather nicely
stated definition of Brown, Compendious View, II.i (pp. 128–129).
160 Cf. above, 1.2 (B.1); 1.3 (A.2–3).
161 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 1); Polanus, Partitiones, I.iv.
162 Polanus, Substance, I.iv (p. 13).
163 Cf. Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.6.
164 Marckius, Compendium, V.ii.
165 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.7.
166 Racovian Catechism, p. 33; cf. Crellius, Two Books, p. 140.
167 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.i; similarly, Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 116.
168 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2.
169 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2; cf. Amyraut et al.,
Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.10.
170 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.7.
622 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ii: “Persona divina nec solam Essentiam, nec
solum subsistendi modum significat, sed Essentiam tali modo se habentem.”
172 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.iv.
173 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 129).
174 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.7; Amyraut et al., Syntagma
thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.9.
175 Bennett, Discourse of the Everblessed Trinity, p. 218.
176 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, pp. 170–171.
177 See PRRD, III, 4.4 (C.3).
178 Cf. Pfizenmaier, “Was Isaac Newton an Arian?” pp. 73–79.
179William Gouge, A Learned and very Useful Commentary on the Whole
Epistle to the Hebrews (London: A.M., T.W. and S.G., 1655), 1:3, §21 (p. 18);
Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, II.vi–vii.
180 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiii.11.
181 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2 (1); cf. Leigh, Treatise,
II.xvi (p. 129).
182 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2 (1); cf. the virtually
identical (probably derivative) discussion in Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 129).
183 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 130); cf. Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.1.
184 Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.11.
185 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 151.
186 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, obj. 7 & resp.
187 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.4.
188 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, obj. 8 & resp.
189 Marckius, Compendium, V.iii.
190 Marckius, Compendium, V.iii.
191 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2 (2).
192 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.2 (3).
193 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2.
194Gomarus, Disp. theol., VI.i; cf. Walaeus, Loci communes, X, N.B., pp.
235–236. For the antitrinitarian view, see Racovian Catechism, p. 140;
Milton, Christian Doctrine, I.ii, v (in Complete Prose Works, VI, pp. 140–
142, 223–225).
195 Gomarus, Disp. theol., VI.xiv; cf. Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.iv.3
(col. 18).
196 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I.
197 Gomarus, Disputationes, VI.ii.
198 Gomarus, Disputationes, VI.iii.
199 Gomarus, Disputationes, VI.iv–xiii.
200 Gomarus, Disputationes, VI.xiii.
201 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (p. 16); cf. Amyraut et al.,
Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.15; on the Cappadocian use of
τρόπος ὑπάρξεως, see Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, pp. 265–266; Prestige,
God in Patristic Thought, pp. 245–246.
202 South, Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s Book, p. 34.
203 Ames, Medulla, I.v.9.
204Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (p. 19), citing a definition from
Ursinus, Exercitationes catecheticae, p. 173 (cf. Commentary, p. 130); Ames,
Medulla, I.v.1–10.
205 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 127).
206 See further below 6.3 on the aseity of the Son.
207 Ames, Medulla, I.v.1–4.
208 Gill, Complete Body of Divinity, I, pp. 201–202: the term “real modal”
strongly echoes Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.9.
209 Keckermann, Systema ss. theologiae, p. 59; cf. the similar language of
Rijssen, in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 114.
210 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.3.
211 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I.
212 Marckius, Compendium, V.v; Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.14.
213 Marckius, Compendium, V.vi.
214 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (pp. 128–129); cf. Beza et al., Propositions and
Principles, II.x–xi; Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum,
I.xvii.15.
215 Cf. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.iii.1–6, and above, 1.1 (A.2).
216 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.14.
217 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, controversia I.
218 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.14.
219 Rijssen, Summa theol., III.iii, argumenta; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxiii.16–17.
220 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.16.
221 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.17.
222 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 60).
223 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 61).
224 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 62).
225 Cf. Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 138).
226 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (pp. 138–139).
227 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 139).
228 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.1.
229 Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.1.
230 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 128).
231Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.v: “Essentia neque essentiam, neque personum
produxit, ut nec persona essentiam, sed producens & productum nonnisi
persona est.”
232 Cf. Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.3 (3).
233 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.vi; cf. Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.12.
234Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, margin: “Subsistentia in divinis non dicit
meram negationem.”
235 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix.
236Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.vii; very similarly, Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p.
131) and Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.9.
237 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.vii: “qui extribus personis tres fingit Spiritus
aeternos & inaequales, essentialiter inter se distinctos.”
238 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.vii.
239 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.viii.
240 [Smalbroke?] Judgment of the Fathers, p. 67.
241 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.8.
242 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.4.
243 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (p. 16).
244 Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (pp. 17, 19).
245 Zanchi, De natura Dei, II.ii (col. 69).
246 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.v.2 (col. 21).
247 See above 1.3 (A.3).
248De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.5; cf. the discussion in PRRD, III,
4.3 (C–D).
249 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.9.
250 Alting, Methodus theol, III (p. 77B).
251 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.3.
252 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.9.
253 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.8.
254 Owen, Divine Original of Scriptures, in Works, XVI, p. 340.
255 Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.12.
256 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvii.11.
257 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxiv.9: “non quidem oer solam
ratiocinationem, sed revera.”
258 Marckius, Compendium, V.v, citing only the first two of four arguments;
cf. Downame, Summe, i (p. 33).
259 Marckius, Compendium, V.v.
260 Marckius, Compendium, V.v.
 4
The Trinity of Persons in Their Unity and
Distinction: Theology and Exegesis in the Older
Reformed Tradition
4.1 The Trinity of Persons according to the Reformers
A. The Continuity of Precritical Exegesis and the Biblical Norm:
Protestant Trinitarian Formulation and the Interpretation of
Scripture
1. Shared perspectives: Trinity and precritical exegesis. The exegetical
foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity were of profoundest importance to
the Reformers and the Protestant orthodox, given their understanding of the
secondary and defensive value of the traditional trinitarian language. As noted
in the historical survey found in the preceding chapter, the received doctrine
itself and its largely patristic vocabulary could not be normative in the
ultimate sense—its traditionary heritage alone did not justify its presence in
the confessions. This issue was made abundantly clear in the earliest
Reformed confessions and in Calvin’s Institutes. The Reformers and the
orthodox, therefore, had to outline the biblical foundations of the doctrine in
far greater detail than the medieval doctors, and they were bound to rest their
teachings on exegesis rather than on the repetition of traditionary norms. This
characteristic of Protestant doctrine became a major point of issue in the
development of a Protestant doctrine of the Trinity, given the alternative
exegesis found in the writings of the highly biblicistic antitrinitarians of the
age.
The Reformed orthodox, despite the changing patterns of exegesis and
hermeneutics that affected their theology and, specifically, their ability to
formulate cherished dogmas inherited from previous ages, continued to
assume, as had the Reformers, that the broader theological scope of the text of
Scripture and the method of interpretation by means of the analogia
Scripturae offered not only warrant for traditional trinitarianism but also a
series of clear trinitarian references throughout the text of Scripture. Given
the shift in exegesis and hermeneutics that began to take place toward the
close of the seventeenth century and culminated in the eighteenth,
examination of the way in which the older orthodoxy conjoined the exegesis
of text to the formulation of doctrine becomes highly significant for an
understanding of their theology.
 Beyond the importance of the Old as well as the New Testament to the
exegesis of the doctrine of the Trinity in the eras of the Reformation and
orthodoxy lies the further issue of the continuity of precritical exegesis. The
Reformers and the Protestant orthodox inherited several interpretive
approaches to work with in their reading of the texts: as noted in general in
the preceding volume, Protestant exegesis in the eras of the Reformation and
orthodoxy did not entirely set aside a series of fundamental assumptions of
patristic and medieval exegesis and, in fact, stood in the center of a
developing line of literal, grammatical exegesis that included such luminaries
of the medieval period as Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Lyra.
2. The Reformers and trinitarian exegesis. From the lineage of Lyra in
particular, the Reformers inherited a highly useful model of a twofold literal
reading of texts in the Old Testament. In this view, the literal sense of an Old
Testament text could be read in a more historical, contextual manner and also
in a spiritual, prophetic manner. In addition to this double literal sense of the
text, the Reformers also had access to a hermeneutic of movement from
promise to fulfillment, shadow to full revelation, type to antitype that
understood the differences between the Old and the New Testament primarily
in terms of the movement of revelation as focused on Christ and redemption.1
This model served well in the understanding of the covenant history in the
Bible, given (in Calvin’s words) the unity of the covenant of grace in
“substance” from Abraham to the last days, but its difference in
“administration.”2
These differences in covenantal administration or economy not only
account for the different understandings of the law, particularly, the abolition
of the ceremonial law of the Old Testament in the New Testament and the
extension of the covenant of grace to the Gentiles in the New Testament, but
also for differences in the extent of the revelation of God and Christ. Thus,
Christ and his offices were often revealed under figures and types in the Old
Testament, only to be manifest fully in the New—and the threeness of the one
God was revealed vaguely in the plurality of reference to the one God, in
references to the Redeemer in divine terms and as having divine attributes,
and in references to the Spirit of God, only to be fully identified in the New
Testament as the one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. From the
perspective of the hermeneutic inherited by the Reformers and the orthodox
from the church’s tradition, it did not appear at all curious that God was
revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit in the New Testament but that these crucial
terms did not appear in regular conjunction throughout the Old Testament: in
fact, this difference in language appeared as a fundamental instance of the
movement from promise to fulfillment.
 3. Trinitarian exegesis in the era of orthodoxy. The exegetical
approaches of the Reformed orthodox illustrate exceedingly well the patterns
of continuity and discontinuity that characterize the development of Reformed
theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Identifying these patterns
and trajectories of interpretation is, in the first place, not a matter of
examining the exegetical results of Bucer or Calvin or Bullinger and then
searching out identical formulations or identical answers to all questions in
the writings of an individual seventeenth-century thinker. Among the
Reformers themselves as among the Reformed orthodox, there were
differences of interpretation and of emphasis in the exegesis of particular
texts. The continuities in interpretation, whether in general or with specific
reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, ought to be sought in the common set
of hermeneutical and doctrinal questions addressed to the text of Scripture
and in the common assumption that the text, interpreted correctly, does in fact
yield the right doctrine of the church, freed from the abuses and excesses of
the later Middle Ages and of the Roman Church, and therefore fundamentally
catholic. The discontinuities appear largely in the shifting methods of the
seventeenth century, brought on by increasing expertise in the biblical and
cognate languages and in the realm of textual criticism—and they register in
the debates of the Reformed orthodox with alternative exegesis of the
Socinians and Remonstrants and, perhaps most clearly, in the orthodox
response to text-critical exegetes like Grotius, whose advocacy of a highly
literalistic approach, increasingly approximating the eighteenth-century
beginnings of higher criticism, led them to results suspiciously like the results
of the heretics.
As might be expected, the Reformed orthodox approach to the trinitarian
and christological reading of the Scripture carried forward both the more
literal and the more allegorical or typological approaches of the sixteenth-
century Reformers. Thus, the more literal-grammatical approach represented
by Calvin finds its analogue in such exegetes as Calvin, Beza, Perkins,
Ainsworth, Willet, Rivetus, Diodati, and Poole. Although these exegetes
identify many of the traditional types, tropes, and doctrinal associations, their
emphasis usually falls on the text and its literal meaning, often on issues of
philology and right translation, and on those figures that, arguably, are
intrinsic to the text and therefore provide firm ground for the drawing of
doctrinal conslusions. By contrast, the more allegorized or typological
approach found in Vermigli carried forward in such Reformed exegetes as
Piscator, Cocceius and his various followers in the Federal School, Dickson,
and Matthew Henry.3
Protestant theologians, after all, were unable to claim the authority of the
early church as an absolute support for the doctrine of the Trinity as were
Roman theologians after the Council of Trent. Nor, of course, would they
need to argue, in the wake of Petavius, the fundamental authority of the
church’s magisterium to indicate the correct teaching. The sole ultimate norm
for doctrine was the Holy Scripture, albeit as read and interpreted in the
context of the believing community, guided by the testimony of the Spirit.
B. The Order and Distinction of the Persons: Views of the
Reformers
1. The Reformers and trinitarian definition: general considerations.
The doctrine of God remains incomplete until the concept of the unity and
simplicity of the divine essence is drawn into relation with the concept of the
Trinity of persons. Contrary to the frequently noted caveat that the doctrine of
the essence and attributes stands as a philosophical discussion of “what” God
is over against the doctrine of the Trinity as a biblical and “personal”
statement of “who” God is, it must be recognized that the lines between these
two parts of the doctrine of God are not so easily or neatly drawn. Not only
did the medieval scholastics, the Reformers, and the Protestant orthodox
recognize the necessity of a profound interrelationship between these two
parts of the locus de Deo, they also were aware of the biblical, traditionary,
and philosophical dimensions both of the doctrine of God as one in essence
and of the doctrine of God as three persons. Indeed, the great problem
confronting the doctrine of the Trinity as it passed through the Reformation
into orthodoxy was the problem of the traditionary and philosophical usages
necessary to the doctrine of the Trinity and their relationship both to changing
patterns of exegesis and to changing approaches to philosophy and its
problems. Like the Cappadocian fathers and Augustine, and in the tradition of
the medieval doctors, the Reformed orthodox recognized that the doctrine of
the Trinity could only be supported in the context of a carefully enunciated
monotheism—as argued in the doctrine of the divine essence and attributes
and quite specifically in the doctrine of divine simplicity.4
From the time of the initial codification of Reformed theology onward, the
major expositors of Reformed theology tended to offer lengthy discussions of
the language of the Trinity and of the individual divine persons, accompanied
by proofs of their divinity and coequality. Similar doctrinal presentations
(albeit resting on different exegetical and hermeneutical approaches) are
offered by Calvin, Vermigli, Musculus, Hyperius, and Bullinger: each accepts
the normative status of the language of traditional orthodoxy while at the
same time offering reflection on the limits of such extra-biblical terminology,
and each notes how the language ought to be understood in the context of
Scripture. There is a double burden identifiable in nearly all of these
Reformation- era discussions of the Trinity: on the one hand, the Reformers
evidence the need to distance themselves from the various heresies, while, on
the other, they evidence an equal need to set themselves apart from the
Roman Catholic claim that the traditionary language of the doctrine takes its
authority from the church. The problem of using the orthodox language was
complex: the Reformers were constrained to uphold the priority of Scripture
and at the same time argue the language of the tradition at the very moment
that more radical writers were discarding the tradition in the name of
Scripture and Roman Catholic opponents were upholding the tradition as
valid in relative independence from Scripture.
Despite a certain hesitance on the part of the Reformers to accord
normative status to traditional trinitarian language, the pressure of
antitrinitarianism, on the one hand, and of accusations of heresy from Roman
Catholics, on the other, led to fairly full discussions of the order and
relationships of the persons in the theological systems of the second
generation of Reformers. Calvin, thus, confesses that he is not quite sure
“whether it is expedient to borrow comparisons from human affairs” to
explain the doctrine of the Trinity, but he is certain that Scripture identifies
the Father as “the beginning of activity” in the Godhead and as “the fountain
and wellspring of all things,” attributes to the Son “wisdom, counsel, and the
ordered disposition of all things,” and to the Spirit “the power and efficacy”
of the divine activity. In addition, although there can be no “before” or “after”
in God’s eternity, “the observance of an order” in the Godhead “is not
meaningless or superfluous, when the Father is thought of as first, then from
him the Son, and finally from both the Spirit.”5 Even so, the mind is led to
conceive of God in an ultimate sense, of the wisdom that issues forth from
God, and of the “power by which he executes the decrees of his plan”:
because of this order, the Son is understood “to come forth from the Father
alone; the Spirit from the Father and the Son.”6
Characteristic of the trinitarian expositions found in the works of their
generation, the Reformers pass on, after their basic trinitarian formulations, to
the examination of various Old and New Testament texts that witness to the
distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and that “demonstrate”
the full divinity particularly of the Son and Spirit.7 Old Testament reference to
the Trinity is an assumption that they share with the fathers, the medievals,
and the later Protestant orthodox—and Old Testament texts are consistently
integrated into arguments for the divinity and the distinction of the Son and
the Spirit. Thus, against sixteenth-century antitrinitarians like Blandrata,
Gentile, and Servetus, the Reformers argued that the doctrine of the Trinity,
unlike the term “Trinity,” is not an invention of human beings—not of the
fathers or bishops of the early Church; nor was it originated following
Christ’s ascension. Rather, it belongs to the entire revelation of God,
including that in the Old Testament.8
Bullinger indicates that the mystery of the Trinity was known to the
patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament insofar as they speak of “the
promised Seed” and write the word for God, Elohim, in the plural with a
singular verb. Even so God speaks in the plural in the first chapter of Genesis
but tells us in Isaiah 44:24 that he alone is creator.9 Many other citations of
the prophets substantiate this argument.10 Calvin, of course, did not favor the
interpretation of Elohim as a trinitarian reference, but he is quite at one with
Bullinger in identifying the references to the “Mighty God” in Isaiah 9:6, to
the “branch of David” as “Jehovah our Righteousness” (Jer. 23:5–6), and to
the “Angel of the Eternal God” (Judg. 6:11–12, 20–22) as prophetic proofs of
Christ’s divinity.11 The faith in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is thus
received by us from God himself, delivered by the prophets, confirmed by the
Son of God and the apostles, and therefore taught by the whole church.
Vermigli cites several instances in the Old Testament in which God is spoken
of in the plural. These, he says, are an embarrassment to the Jews, who “will
not acknowledge three persons in the divine nature.”12 These passages cannot
be said to represent the opinion of men, as when Paul writes, “There be many
gods and many lords,” because, as in the instance of 2 Samuel 7:23, these
texts can only refer to the “true God” and therefore indicate “the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost: which being three persons, yet are they conjoined as
one substance.”13 Bullinger concludes his argument by noting sharply that, in
the Old Testament, bounds were set on conduct and knowledge and enforced
by the death penalty: “and we also have certain appointed bounds about the
knowledge of God, which to pass is hurtful to us; yea, it is punished with
assured death.”14 Here again, we have an adumbration of the seventeenth-
century debates between the orthodox and the Socinians: it remained typical
of Reformed orthodox theology to argue adumbrations of the Trinity in the
Old Testament.15
2. The views of Calvin and Bullinger. Citing Seneca, Calvin places his
doctrine of the Trinity into the context of an expostulation on the profound
contrast between pagan philosophical conceptions of God and the biblical
teaching concerning the “infinite and spiritual essence” of God. There is
nothing here like the modern contrast between the Christian notion of the
Trinity and a supposedly “Greek” conception of infinite essence—Calvin
quite explicitly couples the statement of essence and attributes with the
doctrine of the Trinity as essential to the Christian view over against the
pagan. We are forbidden by the language of Scripture to imagine God as in
any way earthly or carnal: Scripture teaches that he dwells in the heavens and
fills all things. Calvin singles out the Manichees, whose dualism attempted
“to destroy [God’s] unity and restrict his infinity.”16 This ultimate unity and
infinity distinguishes the true God from all idols—but, Calvin adds, there is
another aspect of the divine revelation that even “more precisely” sets God
apart from the idols, namely, the revelation that God is three in person.17
This truth of the divine threeness is necessary if believers are to have more
than a “bare and empty” conception of the divine. Clear definition is
necessary, moreover, if believers are to be preserved from two particular
errors, the understanding of God as a threefold being and the conception of
God as three beings. These two heresies are, moreover, the reason that
Christians ought to follow the wisdom of the church in its use of the terms
“essence” and “hypostasis” or “substance” and “person.” That these terms are
not words drawn from the Bible, moreover, ought not to distract Christians
from their usefulness in combating error: after all, Scripture itself indicates
that the Son is the “express image” of the Father’s “hypostasis,” and thereby
teaches that the Father’s subsistence differs in some way from that of the Son.
It is wicked, Calvin concludes, to complain about the terms when they merely
serve to explain the truths of Scripture!18
Calvin and Bullinger both trace the development of patristic trinitarian
language to the pressures of heresy. Early on in the history of the church,
Bullinger argues, “pestilent men” made the “perverse” claim that the three
divine persons could not have the same essence and nature. Both Bullinger
and Calvin take pains to deny the heresy of Noetus and Sabellius—
patripassianism—according to which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are simply representations of the “diverse attributes of God” and of the
threefold operation of creating, redeeming, and sanctifying.19 Thus, the names
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not simply refer to attributes: rather they
“show to us what God is in his own proper nature”:
For naturally and eternally God is the Father because he did from before
beginnings unspeakably beget the Son. The same God is naturally the
Son, because he was from before beginnings begotten of the Father. The
same God is naturally the Holy Ghost, because he is the eternal Spirit of
them both, proceeding from both, being one and the same God with
them both.20
In refutation of those, like the Arians, who would apply certain attributes to
the title of Father in isolation from the names of Son and Spirit, Bullinger
argues, “And when in the scriptures he is called a gentle, good, wise,
merciful, and just God, it is not thereby so much expressed what he is in
himself, as how he exhibits himself to us.”21 Such attributes, therefore, do not
identify distinctions between the persons, inasmuch as those distinctions are
internal rather than external to the Godhead.
It was these controversies that brought into use a set of terms necessary to
maintain the truth of the Scriptures:
Therefore immediately after the beginning there sprang up the terms of
Unity, Trinity, essence, substance, and person. The Greeks for the most
part used ousia, hypostasis, and prosopon: which we call essence,
subsistence, and person.22
Calvin, even more directly than Bullinger, moves toward the identification of
“subsistence” as the proper equivalent of hypostasis, and therefore as the
technical term used to express what, less technically, had been identified
under the Latin term persona:
By person, then, I mean a subsistence in the Divine essence—a
subsistence which, while related to the other two, is distinguished from
them by incommunicable properties. By subsistence we understand
something other than essence. For if the Word were God simply and had
not some property peculiar to himself, John could not have said
correctly that he had always been with God. When he adds immediately
after, that the Word was God, he calls us back to the one essence. But
because he could not be with God without dwelling in the Father, hence
arises that subsistence, which, though connected with the essence by an
indissoluble tie, being incapable of separation, yet has a special mark by
which it is distinguished from it.23
Calvin thus clearly preferred the Augustinian approach to the definition of
“person” as a “subsistence” in the divine essence rather than as some had
understood the term, a “substance”: whereas substantia and essentia are very
similar in meaning, subsistentia and essentia are relatively easily
distinguished. They both rightly interpreted persona and also permitted the
three persons to be distinguished within the Godhead, each having its own
distinctive characteristic or “incommunicable quality.” This, Calvin adds, is
clearly the sense intended in the first chapter of John’s Gospel:
For if the Word were God simply and had not some property peculiar to
himself, John could not have said correctly that he had always been
with God. When he adds immediately after, that the Word was God, he
calls us back to the one essence. But because he could not be with God
without dwelling in the Father, hence arises that subsistence, which,
though connected with the essence by an indissoluble tie, being
incapable of separation, yet has a special mark by which it is
distinguished from it. Now, I say that each of the three subsistences
while related to the others is distinguished by its own properties. Here
relation is distinctly expressed, because, when God is mentioned simply
and indefinitely the name belongs not less to the Son and Spirit than to
the Father. But whenever the Father is compared with the Son, the
 peculiar property of each distinguishes the one from the other. Again,
whatever is proper to each I affirm to be incommunicable, because
nothing can apply or be transferred to the Son which is attributed to the
Father as a mark of distinction.24
Nor is this discussion restricted to the Institutes: Calvin, very much in the
spirit of Bucer’s remarks on the same text, understands the distinction and full
divinity of the Son as clearly indicated exegetically: on the text of John 17:5,
he comments, “a manifest distinction between the person of Christ and the
person of the Father is here expressed; from which we infer, that he is not
only the eternal God, but also that he is the eternal Word of God, begotten by
the Father before all ages.”25
Bullinger also evidences extensive recourse to patristic language,
commenting on the ancient debate over the use of ousia and hypostasis and,
by extension, over the proper rendering of hypostasis into Latin. Citing
Rufinus of Aquilea, Basil the Great, Sozomen, and Socrates, Bullinger shows
that there was some question as to whether or not the words had in fact any
difference in meaning and whether or not they should be used in theology.26
The result of the patristic debates was, ultimately, that a difference in meaning
was identified between ousia and hypostasis and between substantia and
subsistentia—“substance denotes the nature of a thing and the foundation
(ratio) on which it stands … but subsistence … indicates the individual that
exists.”27
Calvin similarly notes with some sarcasm the patristic debate over the
translation of hypostasis either as substantia or subsistentia—he cannot make
too much of the value of the terms themselves when the fathers could not
agree, but he pledges himself to echo the “modesty” of Hilary and
Augustine.28 But he also assumes the doctrinal consensus of the fathers
despite the terminological debate—and he argues, against Servetus use of the
pre-Nicene tradition, that the distinction between Father and Son in Irenaeus
and Tertullian cannot be understood as an essential subordination of the Son.
Adumbrating later debate between orthodox writers like Forbes and Bull and
the Socinians, Calvin indicates that the pre-Nicene theology leads to Nicaea,
not to Arius.29
At best, then, such terms should be used cautiously in opposition to error,
but never elevated to the level of biblical authority. “Therefore,” concludes
Bullinger,
away with the pope’s champions to the place whereof they are worthy,
which, when we teach that all points of true godliness and salvation are
fully contained and taught in the canonical scriptures, by way of
objection do demand; in what place of the scripture we find the names
 of Trinity, person, essence, and substance; and finally wherein we find
that Christ hath a reasonable soul? For although those very words
consisting in those syllables are not to be found in the canonical books
… yet the things, the matter, or substance, which those words signify,
are most manifestly contained in those books … Neither is it greatly
material whether they are called substances, or subsistences, or persons,
as long as the distinction among them is plainly expressed, and each
one’s several properties; confessing so the unity, that yet ye confound
not the Trinity, nor despoil the persons of their properties.30
The unity and distinction of the three persons is the crucial point to which
Scripture testifies.31
The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Father; neither is the Holy
Ghost the Father, or the Son: but the Father is the Father of the Son, the
Son is the Son of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from them
both; and yet those persons are so joined and united, that he who denies
one of them hath in him none of them. Yea, whosoever denies this
Trinity is pronounced to be Antichrist: for he denies God, which is one
in Trinity and three in Unity; and so consequently confounding or
taking away the properties of God, he denies God to be such a one as he
is in very deed.32
3. Musculus on the distinction and order of the divine persons.
Following the examination of the nature of God according to his essence,
Musculus turns to God considered as person and as substance.33 He
differentiates between ousia and hypostasis—“essence” and “substance”—a
unity of essence does not presuppose a unity of substance or person. Essence
signifies “that which was common to all persons in the Holy Trinity” while
substance “that which is proper to every person in the Trinity” and which “so
appertained to one person, that it could not be attributed unto the other two
persons.” Thus,
To be unbegotten, is not applied to the Son, but to the Father & the Holy
Spirit. To proceed forth, is not said of the Father, nor of the Son, but
only of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. So
the substance or property of the Father is, that he is the Father and
unbegotten: the substance of the Son, that he is the only begotten Son:
the substance of the Holy Spirit is contained under this voice Spirit, and
is expressed by his proceeding forth.34
Those things which were previously stated of God’s essence Musculus now
expressly affirms of each of the persons. (Musculus follows the usage of
“substance” found in Latin patristic writers like Hilary and Jerome, where it is
the equivalent of hypostasis rather than of ousia, and avoids the usage of
“subsistence” in place of “substance.”)35
In the Old Testament these “three substances” were given by the words
Jahweh, dabar, and ruah. “That is to say, the existent, the word, and the
spirit: as in the 33. Psalm. ‘By the word of God the heavens were settled, and
by the spirit of his mouth all the powers of them.’ ” The Greeks expressed the
“property of the substances in God by this word prosopa, that is, a
countenance or face, the Latins by the word person, by which words every
substance might be set forth to be known and understood.”36
So that God in essence is one, as in nature and godhead, in substance or
person, three, which trinity not only the holy scriptures do set forth, but
also some of the Books of the Philosophers, and the Sybil’s verses. The
school of Plato also acknowledged to be in God nous, logos, kai
pneuma: that is to say, the understanding, the word, and the spirit.37
Musculus here reflects the assumptions of the church fathers, notably
Eusebius of Caesarea, who cited Plato and others, notably Numenius of
Apamaea, as having adumbrated the Trinity. Nonetheless, Musculus
continues,
this knowledge of the holy trinity was somewhat hidden, till the
revelation of the word that took flesh, when the holy spirit began more
especially to work. Then this mystery of the trinity in God was openly
set forth by Christ, when he said: Go, teach all people, baptizing them
in the name of the father, & the son, and of holy spirit.38
Christ might have spoken of the unity of God, writes Musculus, but he
chose to speak of something less known rather than of a point generally
agreed upon: he thus reveals the mystery of the Trinity to the world.
These things be manifest and must with a simple and clear faith be
believed, that God is one in essence, nature, and godhead, will, moving
and working; three in persons, of which every one hath several
substance and property, which for all that be so in God, that the essence,
nature, godhead, Majesty, working, will, power, honor, and continuance
forever, is common to them all, all coessential, all coeternal.39
Thus, the doctrine does not imply three gods “but three unsearchable
substances or persons in one true God set forth for the knowledge of Christ,
his only begotten son, and for the increase of his glory, according to the
measure of his revelation.” These three substances are not diverse in nature or
in being. Musculus gives, by way of clarification, the similitude of the Sun
—“a fountain of light never ceasing,” the brightness that comes forth from it,
and the heat that proceeds out of it; but farther than this, he refuses to
speculate:
 Now how the father from ever and evermore begat the son, and the holy
spirit from both not begotten but proceeding, doth as we may say
breathe forth, so that he may particularly be called the Spirit, not
withstanding that Christ commonly called God a Spirit, it is too obscure
for any man’s understanding to conceive, much less may it be plainly
expounded. Neither is it meet that we should search this secret of our
Lord God.40
Doctrine here depends entirely on Scripture, Musculus insists, and therefore
needs to follow it closely without speculation.
C. The Order and Distinction of the Persons: Views of the
Reformed Orthodox
1. Positive definition among the Reformed orthodox. The orthodox
presentations of the doctrine of the Trinity are considerably more elaborate
than those offered by the Reformers, but they can hardly be viewed either as
speculative or overly rationalistic. The Reformed orthodox attempted to
reproduce the basic arguments offered by the Reformers in the context of a far
more detailed analysis of trinitarian language. This detail arose in part
because of the detail already present in the tradition and in part because of the
rise of Socinianism. Indeed, the basic concern of the Reformers, so well
enunciated by Calvin, to use the terms of patristic orthodoxy as guides to the
interpretation of Scripture while at the same time recognizing the difficulty of
applying and using words to the text that are not found in it, remained a
concern of the orthodox, as did the use of rational argumentation in a locus
that taught so great a mystery. More than the Reformers, the early orthodox
writers borrow technical language from the older scholastic tradition and treat
the doctrine of the Trinity as integral to their doctrine of God, albeit typically
without the more speculative aspects of the medieval doctrine, such as
elaboration of the Augustinian metaphors or use of the “proofs” of divine
Trinity developed by Richard of St. Victor.
Perkins thus concludes his discussion of God with a fairly representative
early orthodox definition of trinitarian terms:
The persons are they, which subsisting in one Godhead, are
distinguished by incommunicable properties … They therefore are
coequal and are distinguished not by degree, but by order. The
constitution of a person is, when as a personal property, or the proper
manner of subsisting is adjoined to the Deity, or the one divine nature.
Distinction of persons, is that, by which albeit every person is one and
the same perfect God, yet the Father is not the Son or the holy Ghost,
but the Father alone; and the Son is not the Father or the holy Ghost, but
the Son alone; and the H. Ghost is not the Father or the Son, but the
 Holy Ghost alone: neither can they be divided, by reason of the infinite
greatness of that most simple essence, which one and the same, is
wholly in the Father, wholly in the Sonne, and wholly in the Holy
Ghost: so that in these there is diversity of persons, but unity in essence.
The communion of the persons, or rather union, is that by which each
one is in the rest, and with the rest, by reason of the unity of the
Godhead: and therefore each one doth possess, love and glorify another,
and work the same thing.41
Following out this traditional pattern of argument, an early orthodox
formulator like Keckermann could pay considerable attention not only to the
doctrine of the divine essence and attributes and to the doctrine of the Trinity,
but also to the way in which the doctrines related to one another. Keckermann
notes that the former presents the essentia Dei absolutè spectata, the essence
of God absolutely considered, while the latter discusses the manner or
disposition of the divine essence or existence (modus essentiae sive
existentiae).42 Nonetheless, God has chosen to reveal to the human race that
he is at once one and three (unum simul ac trinum patefacere)—and the
mystery ought therefore to be studied soberly in faith. Since the existence of
God is identical with the divine essence, Keckermann continues, it must be
fundamental rule of trinitarian doctrine that the mode or manner (modus) of
God’s existence does not differ from the mode of his essence. It is not as if
there can be diverse “things” in God—rather the divine modi existentiae must
be God himself.43
What is characteristic of the Reformed scholastics is an interest (echoing
that of the medieval doctors) to establish a suitable definition of persona for
trinitarian theology, given the imprecision of the Latin word over against the
Greek term hypostasis and given the relatively greater precision of such Latin
terms as substantia, subsistentia, and individuum. According to Trelcatius, the
names of the persons signify three things:
first the Individuum itself or singular thing subsisting, intelligible,
incommunicable, and not sustained of another: secondly, the very
properties of every Individuum, by which they are distinguished from
others, and which also the Schoolmen have called Principia
Individuantia: lastly, these both together, they are called subsisting
Individua, together with their properties and the manner of being,
because they signify nothing else than the Essence subsisting in some
one Individuum, and by the property thereof severed and limited.44
The persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are “distinct, not by
degree, or state, or dignity, but by the order, number, and manner of doing.”45
For in order the Father is just and of himself “not in regard of Essence, but in
regard of person existing.” The Son is second in respect of person, since as
person he exists by eternal generation from the Father: yet in terms of his
Essence “he is of himself and God himself.” Even so the Holy Ghost, third in
order, since he proceeds from the Father and the Son, is “God of himself, with
the Father and the Son, in regard of Essence.”46
Echoing many in the Reformed tradition, Pictet repudiates the “unbridled
audacity of the vain and speculating schoolmen” who only open the door to
heresy by their “dangerous subtleties” of explanation. Perhaps with Augustine
and with an early Reformed orthodox writer like Keckermann in mind, he
notes that “distinguished men, both in this and former ages, have attempted to
render this mystery plain by many examples”—these arguments captivate the
mind momentarily only to fade into oblivion before the incomprehensible
mystery of the Trinity and unity of God. Faith alone receives this doctrine.47
Pictet’s preference, reflecting both the decline of the older Christian
Aristotelianism and a distaste for the theological results of the new rationalist
philosophies, is to offer no arguments from reason but only from the Scripture
—nor is there any attempt to make the Trinity of God reasonable. Pictet
insists that the Trinity is a mystery which must be accepted on faith. Indeed,
he denies the efforts of those who have tried to explain the mystery: the
intellectual audacity of the scholastics, their “specious arguments” and
“dangerous locutions,” have only served to breed heresies.48
“Scripture,” he notes, “names three to whom the divine nature is ascribed,
specifically, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”—in the baptism of
Christ, the great commission (Matt. 28:19) and the Pauline benediction (2
Cor. 13:14).49 “Not only in the New Testament is mention made of these three
together, but in the Old Testament also … ‘the Spirit of the Lord God is upon
me (the Son), because the Lord hath anointed me (by his Spirit) to preach the
gospel to the poor’ ” (Isaiah 61:1). Nor must we omit those passages in which
the plurality of persons appears to be pointed out, such as, “Let us make man
in our own image.”50 Thus, as Wendelin comments, “Throughout Scripture,
there are three to whom the name of God, the properties of God and the work
of God are ascribed: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,”
and these three are distinct “in number, order, manner of working, proper
names, and personal properties.”51
2. Definition over against fundamental objections. Some argue that the
conception of God as one is a complete view of God—to which Rijssen
replies the concept of God as one concipit completum quoad complementum
essentiae, non personalitatis—the discussion of God as one attains a certain
completeness in the discussion of the essence absolutely considered, but this
does not amount to a complete view of God or, indeed, a complete view of the
divine essence, which must also be considered, relatively or relationally, with
regard to the divine persons.52
More serious are objections such as the claim that essential identity
demands personal identity: “The divine essence is the Father; the divine
essence is the Son; Ergo, the Son is the Father.” The logic of the syllogism is
fallacious, comments Rijssen, inasmuch as the subjects of both major and
minor are particulars: it is not as if the divine essence, understood universally,
can be called simply “Father,” without further qualification of meaning.53
Similarly, one could argue that the divine essence is incarnate, the Father as
well as the Son has the divine essence, therefore the Father must be incarnate.
Such arguments are fallacious—they are not logic but paralogism, given that
essence and person (or one person and another person) are not identical
absolutely or simpliciter.54
Yet there remains the problem, raised by antitrinitarians in both the late
sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, that a single essence, merely from the
fact that it is single, cannot be three persons: to say that one is three implies a
contradiction and, inasmuch as both essence and person indicate individual
existence, there appears to be no rational way of holding to the doctrine of the
Trinity. The objection is strengthened in some of the antitrinitarian writers by
a reversion to the ancient problem of the terms ousia and hypostasis, which
(even in the original Nicene anathemas) were understood as synonymous:
neither substance nor subsistence can add anything to an utterly
complete essence, and the word person, in its more recent use, means
any individual thing gifted with intelligence, while hypostasis means
not the thing itself but the essence of the thing in the abstract.
Hypostasis, therefore, is clearly the same as essence, and in the passage
cited above [Heb. 1:3] many translate it by the Latin word essentia.
Therefore, just as God is an utterly simple essence, so he is an utterly
simple subsistence.55
Furthermore,
it is quite impossible for any entity to share its essence with anything
else whatsoever, for it is by virtue of its essence that it is what it is, and
is distinguished numerically from everything else.56
According to this logic, if the Son is identical in essence to the Father, he is
either “no entity at all or the same entity as the Father.”57 Or, to make the
point another way, the fact that the Son is incarnate and the Father is not
determines them to be of differing essences.
Such arguments were not unique to Milton and were answered by various
writers from the early orthodox era onward. Ursinus, Beza, Zanchi, and other
Reformed orthodox reply that the argument may carry for a finite essence,
which cannot be an individual essence or substance and three persons at the
same time, given that not only its distinct properties but also its subsistence as
a “separate thing” (res separatae) give it its hypostatic character. Thus, Peter,
Paul, and Timothy share in the essence of humanity and its essential
properties, but they are not one human, inasmuch as they are three separate
things. The divisibility of the essence “humanity” renders it impossible for
there to be one human essence, in the strictest sense, as a single, unitary
primary substance, and at the same three human persons: the common
humanity of the three human persons does not indicate, as it must in God, a
numerical unity of essence, only a generic unity. There is no genus “God.”58
The argument, however, does not apply to the infinite, simple, and individual
essence of the Godhead: for here is a single essence or substance that cannot
be separated or divided, but in which there are distinct incommunicable
properties, three in number, that identify distinct, but not essentially separate
hypostases.59 Identity of essence in no way implies the removal of variations
or distinctions. Thus, the one divine essence is incarnate, but only in one of its
hypostases or persons.60
The orthodox argument was not in fact as simplistic as Milton and other
seventeenth-century antitrinitarians appear to have assumed. The
antitrinitarian claim was posed against the traditional orthodox view that
Trinity or triunity did not involve a logical contradiction. It remained within
the realm of logic to claim divine oneness and divine threeness, given that the
divine oneness referred to essence and the threeness to person. If essence and
person were equated, then the orthodox doctrine would amount to a claim that
God is one in the same way that God is three, which would amount to a
contradiction. But this, the orthodox counter, is precisely the limitation of the
old metaphor of three persons, Peter, James, and John, having the same
essence—if “essence” or “substance” refers to individual existence, then the
statement is impossible, because, clearly, the individuality that Peter has
cannot be communicated to or shared with James. This assumption, however,
“is the constant fallacy that runs through all the arguments of the Socinians …
all that they urge against a triple subsistence of the divine nature is still from
instances taken from created natures, and applied to the divine.”61 The fallacy
involves an illegitimate transition from genus to genus, from one kind to
another kind, concluding “because this holds true in things of this nature …
that therefore the same must be true in things that are of a clean different
nature; which is a manifest paralogism.”62
Similarly, it may be objected that when three things are one and the same,
they must be the same as each other and in no way distinct: “a most simple
essence cannot be the essence of three persons,” given that the persons, as
distinct and divided, remove the simplicity of the essence. Ursinus indicates
that the argument would be correct in the case of an essence that would have
to be divided or multiplied in order to produce multiple persons. In the
Trinity, however, the three are distinct in one respect, that is, as persons, and
the same in another respect, that is, as regards essence. The persons are united
in one essence and yet are not the same as one another—or, more precisely
against the argument, the claim “is false when understood of such an essence
as that which is the same and entire in each single person.”63 The orthodox
point is not merely that the divine essence is infinite in contrast to the finitude
of created natures and that infinity accounts for the possibility of one essence
being in three persons, but rather that, as seen from the differences between
God and creatures—such as infinity, simplicity, and other divine attributes,
not to mention the way in which all the attributes are predicated of God—the
point concerning the Trinity is not irrational, but in fact, it is “agreeable even
to the notions of bare reason to imagine, that the divine nature has a way of
subsisting very different from the subsistence of any created being.”64
So also, the objection that the distinction of the three persons from the
essence constitutes a quaternity—namely, the three persons and the essence
itself—and that therefore are three deities or three distinct things in God is
fallacious because the essence is not distinct from the persons as a thing (res).
Thus,
there is in the Trinity alius & alius, another and another, but not aliud &
aliud, another thing and another thing, as there is in Christ; the Father is
another person from the Son, but yet there is the same nature and
essence of them all. They differ not in their natures as three men or
three Angels differ, for they differ so as one may be without the other;
but now the Father is not without the Son, nor the Son without the
Father, so that there is the same numerical Essence.65
The persons are not distinct realiter, as separate “things,” from the divine
essence, but “differ from it, and from each other, only in the mode of
subsisting.”66
Yet, insofar as each person is fully divine, there is a sense in which,
considered as God, each person has the divine essence a se ipso. Accordingly,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in that they share the
“perfections of the divine nature” and that the Son and the Spirit both “have
the divine nature in the same sense in which the Father is said to have it.”67
Inasmuch as they are said to be equal in power and glory, we may
observe; that there are two expressions, which we often use, to set forth
the deity of the Son and Spirit; sometimes we say that they are God,
equal with the Father; at other times, that they have the same essential
 perfections. To which, it may be, some will reply, that if they are equal,
they cannot be the same; or, on the other hand, if they are the same, they
cannot be equal. For understanding what we mean by such-like
expressions, let it be observed, that when we consider them as having
the divine essence, or any of the perfections thereof, we do not choose
to describe them as equal, but the same; we do not say that the wisdom,
power, holiness, & e. of the Son and Spirit, are equal to the same
perfections, as ascribed to the Father: but when we speak of them as
distinct Persons, then we consider them as equal. The essential glory of
the Father, Son, and Spirit, is the same; but their personal glory is equal;
and in this sense we would be understood, when we say the Son and
Holy Ghost are each of them God, or divine Persons, equal with the
Father.68
The persons of the Trinity are thus distinct in number in the sense that their
relations and the names which signify their relations—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—are incommunicable. The personal properties of the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, “paternity, or not being begotten; a being begotten; and a
proceeding” are distinct internal works of the Trinity and proper,
incommunicably, to each person individually. The eternal works of the
Trinity, however, are indivisible, though the manner of execution relates to the
order of the persons.69 “These three persons are God; three in unity
unconfusedly, and one in Trinity indivisibly.”70
All men confess the divinity of the Father. That of the Son follows from
his essential equality with the Father: his works are one with the Father
(John 5:18) and Paul states expressly his divinity (Phil. 2:6 and Col.
2:9). Furthermore the divine names are given to Christ as are the divine
attributes of eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence (Rev.
1:17; Matt. 28:20) and the divine work of Creation and Redemption.71
The same arguments prove the divinity of the Holy Ghost: thus, the Holy
Ghost’s works are one with those of the Father and the Son; his divinity is
expressly stated in Scripture, and he is revealed to have both divine attributes
and a role in the work of creation and redemption.72 Thus, in conclusion,
there is a unity of divine essence, or as can be said, one divine res, yet there
are three distinct persons:
And these three persons are one God, for although personally the Father
be one; the Son be another; and the holy Ghost another person: yet
Essentially the Father is not one thing, the Son another thing, and the
holy Ghost another thing. The truth and perfection of this both Unity
and distinction, is seen in the knowledge of the Attributes or proprieties
both of the Essence and the persons.73
4.2 Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: Reformation and Orthodoxy
A. The Trinitarian Exegesis of Scripture: Hermeneutical
Assumptions
The Reformers and, subsequently, the Reformed orthodox appealed
directly to specific texts in Scripture as teaching the doctrine of the Trinity
directly—by presenting each of the three divine persons as God. These texts,
such as Genesis 1:1–3, 26–27; 11:7; Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 6:3, 8; 61:1–3; 63:7–
12; Haggai 2:4–5; Matthew 28:19; Luke 3:22; John 1:32–33; 3:34; 14:16–17,
26; 15:26; Galatians 4:4–6; 2 Thessalonians 2:13–16; 1 Peter 1:2; and 1 John
5:7, were typically referenced in the basic expositions and definitions of the
doctrine of the Trinity as explicit biblical statements of the three persons in
the one God. Interpretation of these texts, however, did not completely
present the biblical foundation for the Trinity any more than the texts
identifying God specifically as eternal or everlasting offered the complete
ground for the doctrine of divine eternity: the Reformers and the orthodox
both assumed that their interpretive method indicated use not only of texts
that provide direct statement of a doctrine but also texts that, taken together or
juxtaposed with one another, permit a conclusion to be drawn. This is only to
say that, in examining the Reformers’ and, later, the Reformed orthodox
exegesis of specifically trinitarian texts, we have not exhausted their biblical
argumentation and that the biblical demonstration of the doctrine of the
Trinity is complete only after other texts that individually or together argue
the divinity and personality of the Son (and still others, the divinity and
personality of the Spirit) have been presented.
In addition, the Reformers, as later the orthodox, assumed a hermeneutic of
movement from shadow and promise in the Old Testament to fulfilment in the
New, and accordingly held a partial revelation of the Trinity in the Old
Testament, a complete revelation in the New.74 This hermeneutical
assumption yielded an entire class of texts beyond what might be called the
standard series of juxtapositions for the sake of drawing conclusions. Each of
these additional sets of texts consisted in a text or texts from the Old
Testament in which God was unmistakably referenced, particularly texts in
which God was identified as Jehovah that was also cited in the New
Testament with specific reference to one of the divine persons, either the Son
or the Spirit. The necessary conclusion was that Scripture, in its larger
expanse, explicitly identified either the Son or the Spirit as Jehovah, and
therefore as the one God, demanding a trinitarian reading. The exegetical
argumentation, therefore, spans both the entire Bible and the entire locus.75
That this pattern of argument had been relatively successful in the
exegetical establishment of trinitarian doctrine can be inferred from the direct
attack on it by the Socinians. Nye thus gathered his antitrinitarian arguments
based on the Old Testament into two divisions—namely, an examination
either of those texts that were used singly or directly to argue the doctrine of
the Trinity or the divinity of the Son or the Spirit, and those texts that
“perhaps would not, if alone considered, prove the Orthodox Doctrine; but do
it sufficiently when compared with, and interpreted by some Texts of the New
Testament.”76 Of course, it was Nye’s intention to deny the interpretations, or
at very least, to show them either very obscure or highly figurative—on the
ground that a doctrine so supposedly important as the Trinity ought to appear
by direct statement or evident logic from the texts. In addition, the Jews never
concluded a Trinity, despite their detailed reading of the Old Testament—and
various theologians of the church, whether in the era of the fathers, in the
Middle Ages, or in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have occasionally
admitted that the doctrine of the Trinity belongs to the New Testament only.77
This latter datum is sufficient for the beginning of Nye’s argument, given the
orthodox insistence on the presence of the doctrine in the Old Testament.
B. Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: Old Testament
1. Trinity in the Old Testament: issues in debate in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The Reformed orthodox insisted—against the
Socinians—that plurality of persons is proved not only from the New but also
from the Old Testament.78 On this point, their assumptions were fully in
accord with the teachings of all centuries of Christianity, from the patristic
period and the Middle Ages through the Reformation. In particular, the
Reformed orthodox concern to identify a trinitarian faith in the Old Testament
echoes the traditional assumption, emphasized by early Reformed tradition, of
the unity of the faith and of the promise of salvation from the beginnings of
the biblical narrative, an assumption that included the claim that fundamental
teachings of Christianity were available to the patriarchs.79
The continuity with Reformation-era exegesis, moreover, is quite striking,
as are the various trajectories, from the more literal, less christological
approach of Calvin to the more allegorical and typological approach of other
Reformed exegetes, like Vermigli and Musculus: the trajectories continue into
the era of orthodoxy, often with the added feature of a polemic against those
antitrinitarians who point to the Old Testament as a disproof of the doctrine or
against the Remonstrants, who denied that the doctrine was fundamental or
had any practical significance. What becomes apparent in tracing out some of
these lines of interpretation is that the Reformed of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries did not, in a simplistic and rigidly eisegetical manner,
impose dogmatic categories on a set list of texts. Rather, they worked through
a series of traditionally identified texts, with varied results—recognizing with
consistency that the whole of Scripture, both Old and New Testament, spoke
to the fundamental articles of the faith, notably, in this instance to the doctrine
of the Trinity, but often arguing different exegetical nuances and sometimes
widely differing results of particular texts, despite the intensity of the
polemic. The polemical issue was nicely summarized by Turretin:
From what was previously indicated by us concerning the necessity of
this doctrine as a fundamental article, it might be satisfactorily gathered
that it was revealed and known under the Old Testament, since
fundamentals are the same among all believers, and cannot be either
augmented or diminished: but the Socinians, in order to destroy faith in
this mystery on whatever ground, typically argue that it is a new
doctrine invented after the time of Christ and the apostles, a point
mimicked by the Arminians. It is therefore necessary to assert our faith
in the mystery against both of these adversaries, not only from the New,
but also from the Old Testament.80
The difficulty of finding references to the Trinity of God in the Old
Testament was explained by the orthodox much as they explained the
movement from unwritten to written Word and the movement from “promise”
in the Old Testament to “fulfillment” in the New: “in the Old Testament the
Doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the unity of the God head was more
obscurely taught: but in the New Testament we are clearly and most
comfortably assured, that the Father, Son, and holy Ghost do sweetly conspire
to perfect the Salvation of the Faithfull, and confirme unto them the promises
of the Covenant.”81 In addition, the orthodox assumed, in all of the divine
work of revelation, the point noted above in our preliminary discussion of the
order of system: the fundamental revealed truth of God is his unity or oneness
both in being and in governance. Thus, Owen could argue:
From the foundation of the world, the principal revelation that God
made of himself was in the oneness of his nature and his monarchy over
all. And herein the person of the Father was immediately represented
with his power and authority; for he is the fountain and original of the
Deity, the other persons as their subsistence being of him: only, he did
withal give out promises concerning the peculiar exhibition of the Son
in the flesh in an appointed season, as also of the Holy Spirit, to be
given by him in an especial manner.82
In the work of the seventeenth-century exegetes and theologians,
moreover, the identification and explication of these traditional trinitarian
passages—like the creation narrative of Genesis 1—was not merely a matter
of citing the text into a dogmatic system. Proofs of the Trinity taken by the
orthodox from the Old Testament and other Jewish sources were not a set of
simple or fideistic readings of text to conform to a prior opinion: on the first
level, these interpretations are all accomplished within the bounds of orthodox
hermeneutic, usually by the method of interpreting Scripture by means of
Scripture—and in a large number of instances by the conference of Old
Testament with New Testament. There is an often subtle hermeneutic
exercised in the light both of the best textual tools then available and of a
study of traditionary materials, including Hebraica—and there was also
reflection on texts in view of various traditionary hermeneutical
understandings, including the movement from prophecy to fulfilment and the
related double literal sense associated with Nicholas of Lyra. On the second
and more exegetically detailed level we have such works as Pierre Allix’s
Judgment of the Ancient Jewish Church Against the Unitarians and, in the
late orthodox era, Gill’s treatise on the Trinity. The argument of Allix’s and
Gill’s treatises was of importance to orthodoxy in view of the Socinian
contention that the idea of a Trinity in God was inimical to biblical
monotheism and therefore to the theological context of the gospel.
2. Divine threeness in the exegesis the Pentateuch and the historical
books. In the story of creation (Genesis 1:1–3, 26–27), the Reformed note,
the plural noun Elohim is used of the one God (Gen. 1:1), and God speaks of
himself in the plural: “Faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram” (Gen.
1:26). Yet, whether in the era of the Reformation or that of orthodoxy, the
Reformed are less than unanimous concerning the implication of the text.
Thus, according to Bullinger, the “bara Elohim” of Genesis 1:1 might be
translated “creavit Dii” as a sign of the oneness and plurality of God.83
Calvin, by way of contrast, comments that although “the inference is drawn”
from the conjunction of the plural noun with the singular verb, “that the three
Persons of the Godhead are here noted,” the direct use of the text as an
argument for the doctrine of the Trinity “appears to me to have little
solidity.”84
Readers [ought] to beware of violent glosses of this kind. They think
that they have testimony against the Arians, to prove the Deity of the
Son and of the Spirit, but in the meantime they involve themselves in
the error of Sabellius, because Moses afterwards subjoins that the
Elohim had spoken, and that the Spirit of the Elohim rested upon the
waters. If we suppose three persons to be here denoted, there will be no
distinction between them. For it will follow, both that the Son is
begotten by himself, and that the Spirit is not of the Father, but of
himself. For me it is sufficient that the plural number expresses those
powers which God exercised in creating the world. Moreover I
acknowledge that the Scripture, although it recites many powers of the
Godhead, yet always recalls us to the Father, and his Word, and Spirit,
 as we shall shortly see. But those absurdities, to which I have alluded,
forbid us with subtlety to distort what Moses simply declares
concerning God himself, by applying it to the separate Persons of the
Godhead.85
Nonetheless, Calvin does view the fact of creation by means of the Word
implied by God’s speaking in Genesis 1 and confirmed by the text of John
1:1–3—and he can conclude from Genesis 1:3 that “since … by the Word of
God things which were not came suddenly into being, we ought … to infer
the eternity of His essence.” Thus, too, “the Apostles rightly prove the Deity
of Christ from hence, that since he is the Word of God, all things have been
created by him.” Servetus is therefore in error when he “imagines a new
quality in God when he begins to speak.”86
Among the early orthodox exegetes, Ainsworth finds the trinitarian
reference in Genesis 1 not by a simple and rather non-exegetical statement
that the God who speaks his Word and whose Spirit hovers on the face of the
waters must be a Trinity or by a simple reference to the plural form of Elohim
and the phrase “Let us make man.” This exegetical conclusion is reinforced
through a study of Hebraica: Ainsworth could note that in “the Chaldee
paraphrase called Jerusalemy”, the first verse of the chapter had been
rendered, “In wisdom …” “So,” Ainsworth continues,
sundry Hebrews apply this mystically to the wisdom of God, whereby
the world was created, as it is written, the Lord by wisdom, founded the
earth, Prov. 3:19. and, in wisdom hast thou made them all, Ps. 104:24.
R. Menachem on Gen.1. Many Christian writers also, apply it unto
Christ, the wisdom of God by whom he made the world, 1 Cor. 1:24;
Heb. 1:2; Prov. 8:27–30.87
Here, by way of the biblical hypostatization of Wisdom, the text of the
paraphrase, rabbinic argument, and an oblique reference, probably to the
fathers, Ainsworth finds ground in the Hebrew text and the Hebrew language
for the beginning of his trinitarian argument. Clearly God does not here speak
of himself and his angels, since the image indicated is the image of God
himself, and neither are angels God nor are men created in the image of
angels.88 This argument concerning the plurality of Elohim became of
increasing importance to the trinitarian exegesis of the Old Testament and the
related identification of Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of the faith, given
the seventeenth-century Socinian denial of any plural references to the
Godhead anywhere in the Bible.89
The same truth is clearly manifest in the references to God and his work
throughout Genesis, chapter 1: following out a traditionary pattern of exegesis
found earlier in Zanchi’s vast De tribus Elohim, Rijssen comments that the
Trinity is demonstrated “from the history of creation” where Moses distinctly
speaks of Elohim creating, the Spirit of Elohim moving on the waters, and the
Word producing all things. This interpretation of the text cannot simply be
asserted; it must be argued because “our adversaries do not deny that Elohim
is God,” rather they deny the genuine significance of the plural noun and its
singular verb. This is not merely the plural honoris causa employed by kings
and princes—for we have no further examples of this manner of speech in
relation to God. Rijssen also argues that the name of God, Jehovah, when
juxtaposed with other designations of God, implies a distinction that is
personal and not essential.90 By Spirit, moreover, “it is impossible to
understand air or wind, since no such thing had yet been created, and no
separate things had been made”; nor can Spirit here (Gen. 1:2) mean an angel,
inasmuch as God uses no intermediaries in creation; nor is it the power or
efficacy of God that brings about the life and fruitfulness of the created order,
since this nurturing of the world order is distinguished from the Spirit as an
effect from its cause or an action from its foundation. Thus, by Spirit or Spirit
of Elohim, we understand a person or individual (suppositum) who concurs in
the work of the God, Elohim.91
Of course, the concept of divine speech (“the Lord said”), uttered
“objectively and terminatively” for the production of creatures, indicates the
effective command of God in creation—and not directly and precisely the
second person of the Trinity. Here, however, the second person, the eternal
Word, understood ad intra et originaliter, is the foundation or principium
quod of the command. Even so, when Scripture states explicitly that it is the
“Word of the Lord” (Verbum Jehovae) by which the heavens were formed, the
text implies a distinction between Jehovah, the Word, and the Spirit.92
The point is quite easily made that this argument is not a matter of
dogmatic proof-texting,93 but instead a direct use of the then “assured result”
of exegesis, as presented by a grammatical-critical and even text-critical but
not yet historical-critical method. Poole and other exegetes of the day
continued, like the fathers, the medieval doctors, and the Reformers, to find
allusions to the Trinity in the first chapter of Genesis: the “Spirit of God” that
moved on the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2) could not have been “the wind,
which was not yet created, as is manifest, because the air, the matter or
substance of it, was not yet produced; but the Third Person of the glorious
Trinity, called the Holy Ghost, to whom the work of creation is attributed, Job
26:13, as it is ascribed to the Second Person, the Son, John 1:3; Col. 1:16, 17;
Heb. 1:3; and to the First Person, the Father, everywhere.”94 Similarly, the
creation by means of spoken word (v. 3), elicits the comment,
He commanded, not by such a word or speech as we use, which agreeth
 not with the spiritual nature of God; but either by an act of his powerful
will, called the word of his power, Heb. 1:3; or, by his substantial Word,
his son, by whom he made the worlds, Heb. 1:2; Ps. 33:6, who is called
The Word, partly, if not principally, for this reason, John 1:1–3, 10.95
If Calvin hesitated to infer a trinitarian reading from the Elohim of Genesis
1:1, he readily affirmed the trinitarian implications of Genesis 1:26, “Let us
make man in our own image.” “Christians,” he wrote,
properly contend, from this testimony, that there exists a plurality of
Persons in the Godhead. God summons no foreign counselor; hence we
infer that he finds within himself something distinct; as, in truth, his
eternal wisdom and power reside within him.96
As ought to be expected, the exegetical investigation of Genesis 1:26 also
continued to yield up a trinitarian consideration in the era of Reformed
orthodoxy, granting what the exegetes of the day felt to be the insuperable
textual obstacles to alternative interpretations, such as a plural of respect or a
heavenly council of other creative powers with God, as advanced by various
antitrinitarians and, as the seventeenth century faded into the eighteenth, by
the early proponents of a historical method. Thus, Poole:
The plurals us and our afford an evident proof of a plurality of persons
in the Godhead. It is plain from many other texts, as well as from the
nature and reason of the thing, that God alone is man’s Creator: the
angels rejoiced at the work of creation, but only God wrought it, Job
38:4–7. And it is no less plain from this text, and from divers other
places, that man had more creators than one person: see Job 35:10; John
1:2–3, etc.; Heb. 1:3. And as other texts assure us that there is but one
God, so this shows that there are more persons in the Godhead; nor can
the seeming contradiction of one and more being in the Godhead be
otherwise reconciled, than by acknowledging a plurality of persons in
the unity of essence.97
Poole also noted that the use of the plural verb ought not to be interpreted, as
some of the antitrinitarians of the era alleged, as merely a grammatical form
of deference—such usage is foreign to Scripture:
It is pretended that God here speaks after the manner of princes, in the
plural number, who used to say, We will and require, or, it is our
pleasure. But this is only the invention and practice of latter times, and
no way agreeable to the simplicity, either of the first ages of the world,
or of the Hebrew style. The kings of Israel used to speak of themselves
in the singular number, 2 Sam. 3:28; 1 Chron. 21:17; 29:14; 2 Chron.
2:6. And so did the eastern monarchs too, yea, even in their decrees and
 orders, which now run in the plural number, as Ezra 6:8 (Darius) make
a decree; Ezra 7:21, even Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree. Nor do
I remember one example in Scripture to the contrary.98
Similarly, the text from the narrative of the tower of Babel, “let us go
down, and there confound their language” (Gen. 11:7), is also a traditional
trinitarian text, although as Calvin indicates, was understood in rabbinic
exegesis as God calling on the angelic host:
The Jews think that he addresses himself to the angels. But since no
mention is made of the angels, and God places those to whom he speaks
in the same rank with himself, this exposition is harsh, and deservedly
rejected. This passage rather answers to the former, which occurs in the
account of man’s creation, when the Lord said, “Let us make man after
our image.” For God aptly and wisely opposes his own eternal wisdom
and power to this great multitude; as if he had said, that he had no need
of foreign auxiliaries, but possessed within himself what would suffice
for their destruction. Wherefore, this passage is not improperly adduced
in proof that Three Persons subsist in One Essence of Deity.99
Ainsworth, in the early orthodox era, understood the text of Genesis 11:7 in
precisely the same way, relating its plural “let us go down” to the plural in
Genesis 1:26, “let us make man,” commenting, “the holy Trinity here
determineth … against the former determination of vain men.”100
Of the threefold blessing in Numbers 6:24–26—“The Lord bless you and
keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto
you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace”—
Turretin comments “this threefold repetition can be employed for no other
purpose than to designate the three persons from whom, as from the sole true
Jehovah, that blessing derives.”101 The argument remains a significant
element of orthodox exegesis long into the eighteenth century, as evidenced
by Klinkenberg’s comment that the Jews themselves did not understand the
“mystery” enclosed in the text, namely, the trinitarian reference to God the
Father “as the first cause of all grace,” the Son and Mediator “as the cause of
reconciliation,” and the Holy Spirit as “the Comforter.”102
The first two verses of “the last words of David” in 2 Samuel 23:2–3
occupy a significant place in the trinitarian exegetical tradition inasmuch as in
very short order they refer to “the Spirit of the Lord,” “the God of Israel,” and
“the Rock of Israel” and include the juxtaposition “the Spirit of the Lord
spake by me, and his word was in my tongue”—although not all of the
orthodox theologians and exegetes of the post-Reformation era chose to
develop the doctrine at this point. On the one hand, the entirety of Trapp’s
brief annotation is devoted to the trinitarian interpretation: “the Spirit of the
Lord spake by me” he paraphrases as a statement of David that “Both here
and in other psalms composed by me; I had from the Holy Ghost both matter
and words.” He continues, “The God of Israel.] God the Father. The Rock of
Israel.] God the Son, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.103 Some
writers also understand the juxtaposition of the “Spirit” with the “word” as
indicating both Spirit and Son.104 On the other side of the argument, both the
Westminster Annotations and Poole omitted explicit reference to the doctrine
of the Trinity, but identified the “Spirit of the Lord” as the Holy Spirit, and
emphasized the messianic implication of the phrase “Rock of Israel.”105
Klinkenberg, probably echoing the Dutch Annotations, similarly notes the
“Spirit of the Lord” in verse 2 and comments at length on the messianic
meaning of the third verse.106 Henry points, without passing judgment, to the
exegetical tradition: “some think,” he writes, that this text “is an intimation of
the Trinity of persons in the Godhead,” while Diodati entirely omits trinitarian
reference.107
3. Trinity in the Writings. A text often cited in the tradition as a
trinitarian point of reference on the Old Testament is Psalm 33:6, “By the
word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the
breath [or spirit] of his mouth.” This is a difficult text, offering a juxtaposition
of word and Spirit similar to that encountered in 2 Sam 23:2 and subject to
varied readings among the Reformers and the orthodox and virtually never
used as a primary text in debate with the Socinians. Bullinger reads it in
relation to Psalm 110:1, “the Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right
hand …,” as certain testimony to the trinitarian faith of the Old Testament
and, therefore, to the antiquity of the Christian religion.108 The problem of
interpretation is seen immediately in Calvin’s reading. Creation of the
heavens by the word of God “magnifies” the power of God; but, Calvin
continues, it is proper here “to infer … that the world was made by God’s
eternal Word, his only begotten Son.” The next clause, Calvin continues, was
used “by the ancients” as a “proof of the eternal Deity of the Holy Spirit
against the Sabellians”; but since “breath of his mouth” most probably
indicates “effective speech,” this text ought not to be pressed into easy service
against heresy. It is sufficient to see here a testimony to “the eternal Deity of
Christ.”109 Musculus accepts the text directly and without qualification.110
Among the seventeenth-century writers, Dickson finds no trinitarian
reference in Psalm 33:6: creation by “the word of the Lord” indicates the
“omnipotence and wisdom of God in creating the world,” and the phrase
“breath of his mouth” manifests the ease of creation and governance.111 Poole
rather nicely indicates all of the options: the “word of the Lord,” he notes, can
mean either “the hypostatical Word,” which is identified in precisely this way
in John 1:1 as the agent of creation—or, he adds, the phrase can simply mean
“the will or command” of God, as would appear from the fourth and ninth
verses of the Psalm. As for the phrase, “the breath of his mouth,” it can be
taken as indicating the Holy Spirit, as in Job 33:4—or it may be a parallelism,
indicating the creative word of God, as in Isaiah 11:4 and 2 Thessalonians
2:8.112 Henry and Klinkenberg follow the full trinitarian reading of the text—
as, among the dogmaticians, do Amyraut, Turretin, Witsius, Mastricht, and
Venema, albeit without extensive comment.113 Similar arguments are found in
the orthodox discussions of Proverbs 8, in which Wisdom, hypostatized,
speaks: this is the “Son of God … the Fathers subsisting wisdom.”114
4. Trinity in the prophetic books. The prophetic books, like the Psalter,
provided the precritical exegete with a harvest of materials for arguing
various aspects of trinitarian doctrine, given the parallelisms in their God
language, the repetition of divine names and attributes in various formulae,
their messianic content and, in particular, either their frequent identification of
God as Redeemer or their attribution of holy names and divine attributes to
the Messiah or Christ. The triasagion, “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Jehova
Exereituum” of Isaiah 6:3, like the threefold benedictions of Numbers 6:24–
26, also points toward the Trinity.115 Calvin, echoed by many later Reformed
exegetes, had indicated that this text has been used by “the ancients” in order
to argue “three persons in one essence of the Godhead”—and that he himself
had “no doubt that “the angels here describe one God in three persons”—but
that better arguments ought to be used against the heretics, given that the
number “three” often indicated perfection in Scripture.116 The trinitarian
conclusion, although admittedly the result of a traditionary explanation, was
not argued absolutely by the later Reformed. Poole, for one, argued two
possible meanings of the text—the repetition of “Holy” indicating “either” the
“Trinity of persons united in the divine essence” or the eminence of the divine
holiness, “such repetitions being very frequent in Scripture, for the greater
assurance of the thing.”117
Certain of the messianic passages in the Prophets demand for their
interpretation a plurality of persons in the Godhead: this is particularly the
case with Isaiah 61:1–2, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord
hath anointed me to the evangelization of the meek.” When approaching
Isaiah 61:1–2, Calvin both knows and adopts the Lyra-like reading of the text.
In addition, as should be expected given his exegetical method, Calvin does
not discuss the Trinity in a doctrinal form in his exegesis of this text. He
begins his exposition by differing with those commentators who “limit” the
application of the text to Christ, as if Christ alone is the speaker and the text
cannot be understood with reference to the anointing of the Spirit that belongs
to all of the prophets. Of course, in Luke 4:18, Christ does apply the passage
to himself, as the one anointed by God to prophetic office—but the chapter,
Calvin writes, ought to be understood as referring to Christ as “the Head of
the prophets,” occupying “first place,” but also to Isaiah and the other
prophets who also make known the benefits of Christ. Still, the text does refer
to the Holy Spirit as the one by whom Christ and the prophets are anointed
and identify the Spirit as the “Spirit of God,” and provide Calvin with a
reference to the relationship of the Spirit to the work of Christ.118
The double literal sense continues to be the model in later Reformed
exegetes. Poole, for example, indicates that the phrase “the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me” serves to identify the transition from the preceding chapter: “that
which is foretold and promised in the foregoing chapter” is now being
“accomplished.” The “Spirit of the Lord” signifies, therefore, either the Holy
Spirit or, specifically, the “spirit” or “gift of prophecy.” This sense of the
phrase and of its connection with the preceding passage yields a double
conclusion: “though the prophet may speak this of himself in person, yet that
it is principally understood of Christ is evident, because he applies this text
unto himself, Luke 4:18.”119
The trinitarian conclusion, as Turretin argues, rests on a series of
interrelated points: first, Christ himself indicates, Luke 4:21, that Isaiah 61:1–
2 refers to him. But the work identified as messianic by Isaiah is consistently
described as a divine work and divine attributes are consistently ascribed to
the Messiah. Thus, the Messiah must be understood as divine (as well as
human), and his divinity, in such passages as this, is distinguished from the
Lord and the Spirit of the Lord by whom he is anointed.120
Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians and exegetes argue
that the three persons of the Trinity appear in the accomplishment of the work
of salvation, in the liberation of Israel out of Egypt, particularly as it is
clarified and interpreted in Isaiah, chapter 63. Calvin’s exegesis of Isaiah
63:7–12, like so many of his readings of the biblical text, does not offer any
gathered or inferred dogmatic conclusions, such as one would find in a formal
locus drawn out of the text—but it clearly provides much of the basis for such
a doctrinal gathering. With reference to the phrase in verse 9, “and the Angel
of his presence saved them,” Calvin comments “I have not doubt that the
office of Saviour is ascribed to Christ, as we know that he was the angel of
the highest rank.” Nor does Calvin have any doubt that the Holy Spirit
referenced in verse 10 is the third person of the Trinity.121
Among the orthodox, the exegesis of the text offers an example of the
collation of texts for the sake of drawing conclusions: Isaiah 63:7ff. collated
with Exodus 3:2. That the Angelus Jehovae first mentioned in Exodus 3:2, “is
the uncreated angel (angelum increatum) the Son of God himself (ipsum Dei
Filium) is clearly shown from his description and from the various attributes
that are given to him—which are such that they may only belong to God.”122
This conclusion follows necessarily when the verses in Exodus are conferred
with Isaiah 63:7, 8, 9ff: “I will mention the loving-kindness of the Lord …
For he said, Surely they are my people … he was their Savior … the Angel of
his presence saved them according to his love … but they rebelled, and vexed
his Holy Spirit.” Given that Isaiah 63:11–12 refers to the miracle at the Red
Sea, the hermeneutical “conference” of the passages in Isaiah and Exodus
arises out of the very fabric of the older exegesis.123 Rijssen concludes that in
this text, three distinct persons are indicated, “Jehovah, the Angel of his
presence, and the Holy Spirit,” and that three distinct operations are attributed
to them—to Jehovah, mercy or loving-kindness toward his people; to the
angel of his presence, the work of redemption; and to the Holy Spirit, anger
and contention against the people.124
Similarly, the text of Haggai 2:4–5—“I am with you, saith the Lord of
hosts; according to the Word that I have covenanted with you, so my Spirit
remains among you”—virtually begs for a prophetic reading, looking toward
the New Testament for the fulfillment of the covenant in the Word incarnate
and for the gift of the Spirit as the Comforter who remains with the people of
God. This is precisely the reading found in Calvin’s commentary on Haggai.
Calvin does not note specifically the doctrine of the Trinity—probably given
his reluctance to develop loci communes in the course of his commentaries—
but he does offer all of the trinitarian elements that later Reformed exegetes
would draw out into their doctrinal systems. God promises his people that his
Spirit would be among them and strengthen them, and he covenants with his
people to be their redeemer, the fullness of which “was at length made known
by the coming of Christ.”125
The Reformed orthodox exhibit two patterns of interpretation of Haggai
2:4–5. Diodati, for one, maintains an approach very similar to Calvin, noting
God, Christ, and the Spirit in his strongly covenantal reading of the text.126
Others, however, draw out the full dogmatic implication. According to several
of the seventeenth-century exegetes and theologians, the doctrine of the
Trinity necessarily results from the recognition that the text distinguishes the
“Lord of Hosts,” the covenanting “Word,” and the “Spirit” in the work of
salvation and, moreover, distinguishes them according to their respective
work.127 Trapp, following Tremellius, reads verse 5 as “With the Word, in and
for whom I covenanted with you,” and concludes “so it is a gracious promise
that the whole Trinity will be with them … Haggai, and other prophets and
patriarchs of old, did well understand the mystery of the sacred Trinity.”128
Others, however, are cautious: Poole simply indicates that the “word” of verse
5 could mean either the “word of promise” or “the Word, the son of God,
promised to them and us.”129
 C. Exegetical Issues and Trajectories: New Testament
1. Reformed exegesis of individual trinitarian texts in the Gospels. As
in the preceding section, there is no attempt here to offer a full picture of
sixteenth and seventeenth-century approaches to a trinitarian reading New
Testament texts—although we can come closer here to a complete listing of
the most important texts. The presence of clearer references to the Trinity in
the New Testament impressed the Reformers as an evidence of the basic
patterning of their biblical hermeneutics: “As God afforded a clearer
manifestation of himself at the advent of Christ, the three persons also then
became better known.”130 Again, the issue is patterns of interpretation and the
transition from exegesis to doctrinal expression. As would be expected, the
texts concerning Christ’s baptism (Matthew 3:16–17; John 1:32), play a major
role in the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity and have a confessional
status in the discussion, as does the Matthean baptismal formula (Matt.
28:19).131 Such a reading of the text is typical among the Reformers,132 and
carries over into the exegesis of their successors. In the era of orthodoxy,
Poole succinctly states, “This text (as is generally observed) is a clear proof of
the Trinity of persons or subsistences in the one Divine Being: here was the
Father speaking from heaven, the Son baptized and come out of the water, the
Holy Ghost descending in the form or shape of a dove.”133 In the seventeenth
century, the issue of theophany as an indication of a distinct person became a
matter of intense debate.134
Calvin takes the text of Matthew 28:19 as an opportunity to note the
hermeneutical premise that, although the true nature of God was in fact
known in the Old Testament, it was only “fully brought to light under the
reign of Christ”—with the soteriological result that “God cannot be truly
known” by Christians “unless our faith distinctly conceive of Three Persons
in one essence; and the fruit and efficacy of baptism proceed from God the
Father adopting us through his Son, and, after having cleansed us from the
pollutions of the flesh through the Spirit, creating us anew to
righteousness.”135
In his comment on Matthew 28:19, Poole indicates that baptizing into the
“name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost” is a baptizing or a
dedicating of the individual “into the profession of the trinity of persons in the
one Divine Being” and therefore “obliging” the “persons baptized … to
worship and serve God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”136 Against both the
patristic reading of the text and the typical orthodox reading of the day, the
Socinians indicate that the singular use of “name” with reference to Father,
Son, and Spirit no more indicates the single “Name, Power, and Dignity” of
the three than the text of Luke 9:26, where the Son of Man is spoken of as
coming in “his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels,”
indicates a single glory of the Son, the Father, and the angels. The linking of
Father, Son, and Spirit only indicates a common purpose.137
Owen, as would be expected, quite to the contrary, stresses the “name” as
the “name of God” that is shared by the three persons:
by the “name” of God either his being or his authority is signified; for
other intention of it none have been able to invent. Take the “name”
here in either sense, and it is sufficient to what we intend: for if it be
used in the first way, then the being of the Spirit must be acknowledged
to be the same with that of the Father; if in the latter, he hath the same
divine authority with him. He who hath the nature and authority of God
is God,—is a divine person.138
Not surprisingly, the Reformed orthodox writers mirror the Reformation-
era exegesis of John 1:1–3 with precision, reflecting both the doctrinal
reading of the text and also variant interpretations of the syntax. Diodati, like
Calvin, understands the phrase “In the beginning,” as indicating that “before
the creation of the world, when there was neither time nor temporall things,
but only the eternity, the Son of God had then his beeing.”139 Poole, by way
of contrast, reads “In the beginning” as intentionally parallel with the Genesis
narrative and meaning “the beginning of all things, when the foundations of
the world were laid.” The eternity of the Word, for Poole, is to be inferred
from the tense of the verb: “Nor is it said, that in the beginning was the Word
created … but was the Word: this proveth the eternal existence of the Second
Person of the Trinity; for what was in the beginning did not then begin to
be.”140
The evangelist’s language, moreover, referencing the Word “without the
addition of God,” like the subsequent statement that the Word was “with
God,” teaches that the Word is a distinct “subsistence” or “person,” who is
“equall with the Father in essence and in glory.”141 The second verse of the
chapter confirms the teaching of the first verse and “effectually” confutes
various ancient heretics: the Eunomians, “who distinguished betwixt the Word
which in the beginning was with God, and that Word by which all things were
made”; the Arians, “who made the Father to have existed before the Son”;
and the Anomians, “who would make the Father and the Son diverse both in
nature and in will.”142 The third verse, also, has particular significance for the
doctrine of the Trinity:
By him] Not only as by a joint and co-operating cause with the Father,
but also according to his personall property, operating by the immediate
and next application of his operations. Without him] this seems to be
added, to shew, that the Son creating the world, hath made it in the unity
 of the essence, with the communion of the will, counsell, and virtue of
the Father, who must alwaies be acknowledged to be as the well-spring,
and beginning of every thing, operating in his Son, and by him.143
Even so, the Word “is not the undifferentiated (simplex) command of God” as
is clear from the collation of Moses words with those of the Gospel of John
(1:1ff): the text of the initial verses of the Gospel of John consciously reflects
the first chapter of Genesis, where the creative word is uttered by God. “Nor
is it possible to understand either an external … or an internal word of God,”
since in the first place, the possible ministers of an external or spoken word,
the angels, were not yet created; and in the second place, the text will not
allow an internal word, as if God were simply speaking, granting that the text
(of John 1:3) is in the third person, as if a person other than God were the
agent of creation. Thus the “Word” indicates the personal word (sermo
personalis) or Son of God.144
That the oneness of the Father and the Son taught in John 10:30 (or, if 1
John 5:7 were added to the list of texts, of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit),
referred to a “union” of some sort was not in dispute—but was it merely a
“union in consent and agreement,” as the Socinians claimed,145 or a “union of
essence”? The Reformed orthodox commentators tend to argue the traditional
trinitarian sense of John 10:30 as given by Bullinger (unity of essence), rather
than Calvin’s non-trinitarian reading (unity of agreement, ironically in accord
with the Socinians)—but they register the difficulty of the text, and some note
both possible meanings: “I and my Father are one,” according to Trapp speaks
“both for nature or essence, and for one consent, both in willing and
working,” on the assumption that oneness of essence and oneness of will and
work are implicates of one another.146 Poole notes the two meanings,
acknowledges that eminent exegetes have held for a unity of agreement or
consent, but argues contextually that unity of essence is preferable: the Jews
would not have identified a claim of agreement with God’s will on Jesus’ part
as blasphemy.147 Pictet, reflecting the contextual argument found in such
exegetes as Piscator, Poole, and the Dutch Annotations, argues that
this passage cannot be explained of a unity of consent or will, for Christ
thus speaks, to prove that none can pluck his sheep out of his hand,
seeing that he was one with the Father, whose power, he says, is so
great that no one can pluck these sheep out of his hand. He means,
therefore, to prove that his own power is not less than that of his Father,
because he was one with him in essence; and in this sense the Jews
understood him, for they attempted to stone him, because he made
himself God.148
In this view, the text indicates that “As I am everlasting Son, I am of the same
essence and power as my Father,” a point which Diodati confirms from verse
33, where the Jews accuse Jesus of blasphemy, for declaring himself to be
God—acknowledging that they understood the text as a declaration of full
divinity. Verse 32, where Jesus states that he is from the Father, indicates that
God the father “is the first author, by order of subsistency and operation” of
what Christ, as Mediator, does by his “commission and power.”149 Henry
juxtaposes the parallel phrases from verses 28 and 29 as a basis for reading
the oneness of the Father and the Son in the following verse:
He proves that none could pluck them out of his hand, because they
could not pluck them out of the Father’s hand; which had not been a
conclusive argument, if the Son had not had the same almighty power
as the Father, and, consequently, been one with him in essence and
operation.150
2. Trinitarian readings in the Epistles. The Apostolic benediction, “The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14), offers three blessings that,
in Turretin’s words, embrace “the whole plan of salvation.” Here, the “Lord
who confers grace,” the “God who bestows love,” and the Holy Spirit who
provides communion with God are surely distinct persons, “distinguished by
three names.”151 Calvin’s commentary on the text does not raise the dogmatic
issue of the Trinity, although it clearly presupposes the doctrine.152 Later
writers, like Poole, tend to offer some comment on the doctrine of the Trinity
—Poole noting that “in this text is an eminent proof of the Trinity, all the
Persons being distinctly named in it (as in the commission about baptism)”:
“the apostle calleth the Father, God; the Son, Lord: he attributeth love to the
Father (moved by which he sent his only begotten Son into the world, John
3:16); grace to the Son, who loved us freely, and died for the fellowship of
communion of the Holy Ghost, by whom the Father and the Son communicate
their love and grace to the saints.”153
1 Timothy 3:16 continued to be a point of contention between the
Reformed orthodox and various antitrinitarians and textual critics during the
high orthodox era and continued to cause difficulty on into the late orthodox
era, given developments in the text-criticism of the passage.154 The Socinians
took a two-pronged approach to the text: they both called it into question
textually and reinterpreted it theologically. On the textual side of the
argument, they noted that “the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac, and Arabic versions”
omitted the word “God,” leaving the text as a testimony to the manifestation
of “the mystery of godliness.” On the theological side of the argument, the
Socinians add, unsure of the ultimate result of the textual argument, that even
with the word “God” in the text, “there is no reason why it might not be
referred to God the Father; since these things might be truly affirmed of the
Father,—that he was manifested in the flesh, that is, in Christ and the
apostles, or by Christ and the apostles, who were flesh.”155 The divine
manifestation, then, is God’s revelation “of the hidden secrets of his will.”
The subsequent phrases in the text, indicating that God was “seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory,”
can also be understood as a reference to God the Father, meaning that “the
same secrets of his will were at length perceived by the angels, and were
preached not to the Jews alone but also to the Gentiles; that the world
believed in God, and received him in a most distinguished manner and with
the highest glory.”156
The textual difficulty was debated throughout the seventeenth century, to
little conclusion. Grotius noted that the alteration of the text had been
recognized in earlier times, adding that Hincmar of Rheims (who was, of
course, following the Vulgate), had argued that the alteration derived initially
from the Nestorians. Grotius concluded that the Θεὸς ἑφανερώθη ἐν σαρκὶ,
“God manifested in the flesh,” was an altered reading, replacing ὁ ἑφανερώθη
ἐν σαρκὶ, “the one manifest in the flesh.” The removal of θεὸς, Grotius
concluded, “makes good sense” of the text. His reading of the verse, lacking
the θεὸς, paralleled the Socinian reading, much to the irritation of the
orthodox.157
The Reformed orthodox typically stand in continuity with the Reformers
and uphold the traditional reading of the text, which, they note, has the
support of many of the fathers of the first five centuries. Diodati, Poole,
Trapp, and Henry accept the reading, “God was manifest in the flesh,”
without comment on the textual difficulties—and all four understand the text
as a testimony to the identity of Christ as the eternal Son or Word of God.158
The orthodox writers of the day were not ready to give up 1 Timothy 3:16 to
the Socinians or the text critics—from their perspective the balance of
evidence, whether textual from the extant codices or theological from the
grammar of the text, favored their cause. Against the Racovian Catechism,
Pearson commented that “when they tell us that God, that is, the will of God,
was manifested in the flesh, that is, was revealed by frail and mortal men, and
received up in glory, … they teach us a language which the scriptures know
not, and the Holy Ghost never used.159 Referring directly to the texts of
Liberatus Diaconus and Hincmar of Rheims, moreover, Pearson disputed the
claim that the alteration could have come from the Nestorians, given the
presence of θεὸς in the writings of the Greek fathers prior to the Nestorian
controversy and in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria, Nestorius’ opponent.
Given also the number of Greek codices that concurred with the orthodox
fathers’ reading, Pearson concluded that θεὸς was a valid reading, as ancient
as ὁς or ὁ.160
On the theological side of the debate, following out the older Reformed
hermeneutic of interpreting Scripture by means of Scripture, Owen noted the
several biblical parallels to the phrase “manifest in the flesh,” and concluded
that, as with John 1:14 and Romans 8:3, the one made manifest or visible in
the flesh is Christ. Nor do the other phrases in the text indicate anyone but
Christ: numerous texts state that he was known to, seen by, announced by, and
will return with angels! Owen also cites texts referring to Jesus’ ministry and
his being received up into glory, concluding “that what is here spoken may
refer to the Father, is a very sorry shift against all those considerations which
show that it ought to be referred to the Son.”161 Even so, there is no “tolerable
sense” in which the text can be referred to the Father as manifest in the flesh,
seen by angels, justified in the Spirit, or taken up into glory—nor is there
“one instance” in Scripture in which “God” is understood to mean “the will of
God” or the phrase “manifest in the flesh” refers to the gospel message.162
In the late orthodox era, Venema (who rejected the “Johannine Comma” on
text-critical grounds) quite pointedly defended the text, indicating that “the
Socinians, indeed, have recourse to various readings and substitute ὁς or ὁ for
θεὸς, which is countenanced by some of the manuscripts and by the Latin
Vulgate.” On the contrary, Venema comments,
The Greek Fathers are all in favor of θεὸς. And the epithets employed
require that a rational subject be meant to whom they apply. For it
cannot be said of a mystery of godliness that it was manifest in the
flesh. It is spoken peculiarly of the Son, as in another passage we read
that the Word was made flesh, so here as God he was manifest.163
Venema’s bibliographically exhaustive contemporary De Moor also defended
the text as originally reading θεὸς, citing, among other authorities of the era,
John Mill, whose annotations had concluded in favor of the received text on
this point.164
Hebrews 1:1–3, long used by trinitarian orthodoxy as a key text in the
identification of the unity and distinction of the Father and the Son, became a
point of controversy in the seventeenth century as Socinian exegetes and
theologians offered an alternative, antitrinitarian reading.165 The Racovian
Catechism singles out the text of Hebrews 1:3 to ground its denial of Christ’s
divinity:
It cannot be proved from Christ’s being the Word of God that he
possesses a divine nature: indeed the contrary is the rather to be
inferred; for since he is the Word of the one God, it is evident that he is
not that one God. And the same may be replied to those testimonies
 wherein Christ is called ‘the image of the invisible God’ and ‘the
express image of his person.’166
The text—“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of
his person (hypostasis), upholding all things by the world of his power”—is
important historically inasmuch as it is the one text in the New Testament that
both uses one of the standard terms of the orthodox trinitarian vocabulary and
also offers a sense that the terms indicates a distinction in the Godhead. The
text is used consistently by the church fathers in this sense.167 Following the
tradition, Calvin comments that “when the Apostle calls the Son of God ‘the
express image of his person,’ he undoubtedly does assign to the Father some
subsistence in which he differs from the Son.”168 Calvin notes that “it would
be strange to say that the essence of God is impressed on Christ, as the
essence of both is simply the same.” Thus, the fathers understand hypostasis
to mean something other than ousia: Hilary, Calvin notes, renders hypostasis
as person, and the orthodox fathers consistently identify God as three in
hypostasis and as “simply one” in essence.169
The text retained the significance given it by the Reformers in the biblical
interpretation of the Reformed orthodox.170 In response to the Socinians,
moreover, the orthodox develop fairly lengthy discussions of doctrine at this
point in their commentaries on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Gouge,
commenting on the Authorized Version, indicates that the word hypostasis is
“fitly translated person” given that “according to the proper notation and
derivation of the word, it signifieth a substance or subsistence, which are in a
manner Latin words, and set out the being of a thing; even a particular or
distinct being, which is most properly called a person.”171 This usage stands
in contrast to “essence” or “nature,” which indicate “a common being, as
Deity or Godhead, which is common to the Father, Son, Holy Ghost … But
subsistence or person implieth a different, distinct, individual,
incommunicable property; such are these three, Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”172
3. The Johannine Comma—trajectories of interpretation. The so-called
Johannine Comma, 1 John 5:7, posed a textual problem for Protestant
exegetes from the beginnings of the Reformation—from the time of Erasmus’
Greek New Testament—and gradually came to be a significant point of
contention between the orthodox trinitarians and the various antitrinitarian
writers.173 This gradual shift in the discussion from a largely textual to a
highly charged theological debate with textual overtones demands some
examination. Calvin’s discussion of the text is of interest, given his tendency
to accept the verse as legitimate on textual grounds, his unwillingness to rest
great doctrinal questions on a disputed text, and his readiness to omit the text
from theological discussion without any polemic, despite his own acceptance
and his own positive exposition of the theological point. Clearly, Calvin did
not regard 1 John 5:7 as crucial to the doctrine of the Trinity.
The whole of this verse has been by some omitted. Jerome thinks that
this has happened through design rather than through mistake, and that
indeed only on the part of the Latins. But as even the Greek copies do
not agree, I dare not assert any thing on the subject. Since, however, the
passage flows better when this clause is added, and as I see that it is
found in the best and most approved copies, I am inclined to receive it
as the true reading. And the meaning would be, that God, in order to
confirm most abundantly our faith in Christ, testifies in three ways that
we ought to acquiesce in him. For as our faith acknowledges three
persons in the one divine essence, so it is called in so many ways to
Christ that it may rest on him.174
Musculus also accepted it as a basic proof.175 Calvin also observes, with
obvious interest in the texts and their variants,
When he says, These three are one, he refers not to essence, but on the
contrary to consent; as though he had said that the Father and his eternal
Word and Spirit harmoniously testify the same thing respecting Christ.
Hence some copies have εἴ ἕν, “for one.” But though you read ἕ εἰσιν,
as in other copies, yet there is no doubt but that the Father, the Word
and the Spirit are said to be one, in the same sense in which afterwards
the blood and the water and the Spirit are said to agree in one. But as
the Spirit, who is one witness, is mentioned twice, it seems to be an
unnecessary repetition. To this I reply, that since he testifies of Christ in
various ways, a twofold testimony is fitly ascribed to him. For the
Father, together with his eternal Wisdom and Spirit, declares Jesus to be
the Christ as it were authoritatively, then, in this ease, the sole majesty
of the deity is to be considered by us. But as the Spirit, dwelling in our
hearts, is an earnest, a pledge, and a seal, to confirm that decree, so he
thus again speaks on earth by his grace. But inasmuch as all do not
receive this reading, I will therefore so expound what follows, as
though the Apostle referred to the witnesses only on the earth.176
The Belgic and Scots Confessions resonate Calvin’s point by citing the
Comma for confessional purposes.177 Given the history of the text, the early
sixteenth-century objections to the removal of the verse, and the place of the
verse in antitrinitarian polemic, the confessional citation of the Comma is
hardly surprising—and its confessional use is certainly one of the grounds for
the later orthodox emphasis on the maintenance of the text in the canon as a
trinitarian reference.
Among the framers of early orthodoxy, Zanchi made substantive use of the
text as his initial citation (after noting the name Elohim) in arguing the
Trinity, collating it interpretively with Matthew 3:17 and 17:5, references to
the “beloved Son,” and with Romans 12:6 and 1 Corinthians 11:8—although,
given the length of his exegesis of other texts, he in no way understood the
doctrine of the Trinity as dependent on the Comma.178 Zanchi, moreover,
does not register the textual debate to any noticeable degree, but instead
refutes those opponents who deny the applicability of the text to Christ and
therefore the question of the unity of essence between Father and Son. On the
contrary, the text refers to the Logos, who clearly is identified in other places
in Scripture as the Son and, incarnate, as Christ—nor can the phrase “these
three are one” be interpreted any other way than as indicating that “these three
are one God.”179
The Johannine Comma continued to be cited confessionally in the era of
orthodoxy,180 but critical pressure on the text, particularly in the late
seventeenth century and the late orthodox era, left it less and less available to
the Reformed orthodox as a definitive biblical proof of the Trinity. Thus, the
Comma remained a point of fairly intense controversy through the
seventeenth century—with theologians and exegetes arguing its legitimacy on
the basis of patristic evidence and assigning denials of its presence in the
genuine text of the New Testament as either Socinian claims or as over
zealous text criticism deluded by the textual damage wrought by ancient
heretics. In the seventeenth century, the tide turned, and even orthodox writers
tended to omit the text from trinitarian proofs, often with grounds.181
Thus, many exegetes and theologians of the seventeenth century continued
to accept the text of the Johannine comma without question,182 with some,
notably the Dutch Annotations, arguing its omission from some manuscripts
through the machinations of heretics:
For [This verse seeing it contains a very clear testimony of the holy
Trinity, seems to have been left out of some copies by the Arrians, but is
found in almost all Greek copies, and even by many ancient and worthy
Teachers also, who lived before the times of the Arrians, brought out of
them proof of the holy Trinity: and the opposition of the witness upon
earth (verse 8) sheweth clearly that this verse must be there; as appears
also by the ninth verse, where is spoken of this testimony of God] there
are three [namely, persons, and distinct witnesses] who witness in
heaven, [that is, give from heaven an heavenly and divine testimony
hereof, which may never be doubted of. See Matt. 3:16, 17 and chap.
17:5, John 3:31, Acts 2:1 &c.] the Father, the Word [that is, the Son of
God. See John 1:1] and the Holy Ghost, and these three [namely,
persons. See Matt. 3:16, 17 and chap. 28:19] are one. [namely, of
 essence and nature: who testifie of this thing all three together of the
same thing. A very clear proof of the Trinity of persons in the unity of
the divine essence. See John 10:30.]183
Even so, when Benjamin Needler approached the doctrine of the Trinity in
1659 as the subject of his contribution to the famous series of “morning
exercises” known as the Puritan Sermons, he offered the title, “The Trinity
Proved by Scripture,” and although the sermon cited many collateral texts, its
basic biblical proof and the subject of its extended exegesis remained 1 John
5:7. What is more, Needler offered no indication that the text’s authenticity
had been questioned.184 A decade later, Ezekiel Hopkins could similarly cite
the same text as the place where “the Scripture hath expressly declared to us”
the mystery of the Trinity—also without any indication of the debate over the
text.185
The unsettled nature of the case, even after the textual work of Simon,
Bentley, and others, is evidenced by the varied treatment of the Comma in the
theological systems of early eighteenth-century Reformed thinkers, ranging
from use with little or no attempt to justify the validity of the verse to
extended textual argumentation within the locus on the Trinity. By way of
example, Rijssen, fairly representative of the arguments and conclusions of
the high orthodox era, offers a note on the various extant codices and their
inclusion or exclusion of 1 John 5:7: he notes that his own assessment yields
the result that the best codices then accessible include the text. Thus, Jerome,
in his preface to the canonical epistles, notes that the verse appears in the
Greek codices; Erasmus reveals that the text is contained in the most ancient
British codex. The most praiseworthy editions also contain it: the
Compultensis, the Antwerpiensis, and the editions of Arius Montanus and
Valtonus (i.e., Brian Walton, the “London Polyglott”).186 Pictet notes that,
inasmuch as three persons in the one divine essence are explicitly testified by
the disputed passage, 1 John 5:7, and given that the triunity of God is
established fully elsewhere, there is far greater likelihood of heretics striking
out such a passage than of orthodox inserting it.187 Beyond this, the context
seems to demand the verse:
for unless this verse be admitted, there seems no reason why John
should say, “There are three that bear witness in earth,” not having
before said anything about “three witnesses in heaven.” Nor can it be
objected that these words, in earth, were also added afterwards, for the
contrary appears from verse 9, where mention is made both of the
divine and the human testimony, “If we receive the witness of men, the
witness of God is greater.”188
Among the British divines, Boston takes the text as the basis of his
presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity, making no comment on the
debate.189 Ridgley, by way of contrast, in recognition of the difficulties posed
by the text, reserves his discussion of 1 John 5:7 until the conclusion of his
analysis of the biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity and notes, “I would
not wholly pass over that which some call a controverted text of Scripture …
lest it should be thought that I conclude that the arguments brought by the
antitrinitarians sufficiently conclusive to prove it spurious.”190 The text,
Ridgley notes, has surely been “corrupted,” either by the addition or by the
deletion of the verse. The problem remains, given the difficulty—Ridgley
assumes virtual impossibility—of proving which manuscripts are older or,
regardless of age, genuine. Thus, Richard Simon’s discovery of a manuscript
in which the Comma had been inserted by an editor or copyist as a marginal
gloss does not prove that the Comma is in fact an addition, first offered as a
gloss and later incorporated into the text: this marginal addition might just as
easily be interpreted as a scribal attempt to correct a corrupted manuscript on
the basis of an earlier text in which the verse was present! The likelihood of
this being the case is increased, according to various of late orthodox
exegetes, by the possible deletion of the phrase through the common error of
“haplography”—the eye of the scribe skipping from a phrase to its repetition
several lines below and leaving out the intervening text in his copy, in this
case moving from the first “three that bear” (verse 7) to the second “three that
bear” (verse 8) and omitting the intervening portion of the text, namely,
“record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three
are one. And there are …”191
More important to the case than inconclusive debate over the antiquity of
manuscripts or the possible reasons for deletion or augmentation in the text,
Ridgley continues, is the patristic testimony. From the fifth century onward,
he notes, many writers cite the text in defense of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The failure of fourth-century writers like Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen,
Cyril, Chrysostom, and Augustine indicates, at most, that they did not possess
the text—given the clear citation of the text by Cyprian in his De unitate
ecclesiae, § 5, and his passing reference to it in his epistle to Jubianus (Ep.
lxxiii). These sometimes disputed citations Ridgley finds satisfactory to his
argument, although it is clear from his introductory comments that he does
not view the text as necessary to the doctrine of the Trinity.192
The shift in understanding of the text among the late orthodox is seen in
the differences among Ridgley, writing in the first half of the century, Gill
writing toward the middle, and Venema, writing in the second half. Gill
affirms the genuineness of the verse and argues through a wide variety of
critical opinions, noting perhaps even more of the codices and versions
related to the question than Ridgley. He also uses the text substantively in the
chapter on the Trinity in his Body of Divinity. What is quite striking, however,
is that in Gill’s commentary the debate appears to be entirely textual or
philological: he makes no mention of the role of Socinian or other
antitrinitarians in the debate, and he accuses no one of perverting the text for
the purposes of supporting heresy.193 Nor, significantly, did Gill cite the text
in his treatise on the Trinity—although it does appear, without comment, in
the discussions of the love and goodness of God. In the Body of Divinity, the
argumentation is much the same as in the commentary, albeit augmented with
discussion of the possibility that ancient heretics—second-century followers
of Artemon or, later, the Arians—altered the text to their ends. Even here,
however, Gill’s emphasis is on textual issues and problems of the copyists.194
Venema works through an extended series of New Testament texts that
demonstrate the Trinity and only after the conclusion of his exposition
comments on 1 John 5:7—specifically, to give his reasons for not using the
text. First, Venema notes, the text cannot be definitively be shown to be
genuine, and even exegetes of unquestioned orthodoxy have expressed their
doubts: he mentions Luther and Bugenhagen and comments that Calvin
offered “no opinion.” Venema then offers a series of textual reasons for
rejecting the Comma, including the unqualified remark that “All rules of
criticism, which are applicable to the determination of the genuineness of
readings are against it”: there is no ancient attestation—no Greek text before
the fifth century, no Latin text before the invention of printing, and no other
ancient versions include the Comma—and (rejecting the allusions in Cyprian)
there is no genuine patristic attestation before the sixth century.195 Venema
accepts Simon’s argument that the Comma was introduced on the basis of a
marginal gloss, and he specifically rejects as spurious the references usually
claimed to have been made by Athanasius and Jerome, referring for his
patristic judgments to the seventeenth-century Benedictine edition of
Athanasius and to the early eighteenth-century critical work of Mill. What is
more, Venema comments, the disputed verse makes no good sense in its
context: the genuine sixth verse refers to “water and blood” and to the Spirit
as bearing witness—with an echo in the eighth verse, where the Spirit, the
water, and the blood are said to bear witness. The seventh verse offers what is
apparently a “superfluous” reference to Father, Son, and Spirit. Nor was there
any need for “three to bear record in heaven,” as if “testimony were needed
there! Those who doubt these arguments, he states, ought to consult Mill,
Bengel, and Wetstein.196 Of course, if one does consult Bengel, one finds
there a lengthy analysis of the textual debate, followed by a detailed analysis
of the argument of 1 John 5:1–13 in the context of the theology of 1 John, all
to the justification of retaining the Comma. Mill also retained the Comma.
Similarly, Vitringa cited the Comma as part of his trinitarian argument,
offering a massive footnote summarizing the debate of some two centuries
and noting briefly that the text could still be used.197
4. Trinity in the Revelation. Among the more significant pieces of
trinitarian exegesis is the orthodox reading of Rev. 1:4–5, 8, 17–18, and
collateral texts. The main phrases examined in the discussion are: “[4] Grace
be unto you and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to
come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; [5] and from
Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness … [8] I am Alpha and Omega, the
beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which
is to come, the Almighty … [17] And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as
dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the
first and the last: [18] I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am
alive for evermore …” The first chapter of the Apocalypse, particularly the
juxtaposition of verses just noted, offered the tradition a fundamental
testimony to the deity of Christ and his equality with the Father—given the
identification of God as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, or the
first and the last, in verse 4 and Christ with the same language in verse 17.198
The Racovian Catechism understood the trinitarian arguments drawn from
the book of Revelation as among the most significant supports of the
traditional orthodoxy and accordingly listed Revelation 1:4, 5, 7, 8, and the
parallel testimony in 4:8 as two out of the nine places to be exegeted in order
to show that Jesus was not given titles unique to God anywhere in Scripture.
The trinitarian reading of these texts depends—according to the Socinians—
on the repeated phrase “which was, and is, and is to come” with reference to
God or the Lord. In the orthodox view, the Socinians aver, such passages refer
to Christ and identify him as God and Lord, given that Christ alone can be
rightly identified as the one who “is to come.” Socinian critique, at least in the
catechism, rests on the translation of the word ἐρχόμενος, usually rendered
“to come,” but equally well rendered as “to be.” By way of example, in “John
16:13, our Lord says of the spirit which he promised to the apostles, that ‘he
would show them things to come or to be.’ ” Similarly, in Acts 18:21, the
catechism continues, “we read of a feast that was to come, or to be.” Both of
these references offer examples of ἐρχόμενος in which it means venturus, “to
be hereafter.”199 The texts in the Revelation ought, therefore, to be rendered
as “who was, who is, and who is to be,” so that “the whole passage may be
understood of existence; and not the first two [clauses] of existence, and the
last of a future appearance”: the subject of the passage is the divine eternity
that “comprehends all past, present, and future time.” When, therefore, one
reads in Revelation 1:4–5, “Grace be unto you, and peace, from him who is,
who was, and who is to come” or “who is to be” and “from Jesus Christ who
is the faithful witness,” it becomes quite clear that, according to the precise,
literal reading of the text, “Jesus Christ is a being wholly distinct from him
who is, and who was, and who is to be, or agreeably with the Greek idiom,
‘who is to come.’ ”200
Arguably, the Reformed orthodox exegesis was consistently more
sophisticated on this particular point than the Socinian attack, given that the
doctrinal issue does not depend, in their exegesis, on so narrow a point of
translation. A fairly standard orthodox reading of the text is found in Diodati,
who begins his annotations on the Apocalypse by noting that the reference to
“God” in verse one identified “the Father,” citing John 3:33ff., 8:26–27, and
12:49 as evidence of similar Johannine references.201 At verse 4, he also
identifies God the Father, but also the Holy Spirit:
From him] namely, from God the Father, whose eternity is described by
these three times, according to the capacity of humane apprehension,
and who in himself, and by himself, hath an everlasting an
unchangeable subsistence. From the seven] that is, from the holy Ghost,
whose power is most perfect, (the number seven in Scripture intimating
perfection) and whose operations are also very divers.202
Indeed, the seven spirits should be understood as the one Spirit giving a
sevenfold gift.203 Brightman, who noted the trinitarian reading of verse 4 and
its source, Aretius, rejected the reading on the ground earlier proposed by
Junius that such language applies to the entire Godhead, particularly the
language of Exodus 3:13–14—thus, for Junius the text refers to “the
immutable estate of God our Father as he is both in his own essence and
throughout all,” and for Brightman, who fastens on the economic aspect of
Junius’ double interpretation, “this threefold difference of time belonges to
the unchangeable and steadfast truth of God concerning his promises.”204
This reading also allows Junius and Brightman to move from the Father
(1:4a) to the Spirit, as understood by the “seven Spirits” (1:4b).205
Brakel adds to this exegesis the point that “who is, and who was, and who
will come” (v. 4) reflects the name of God, Jehovah, and its implication of
divine eternity. He also points to verse 5, with its reference to Christ, as a
reference to “God the Son” in his mediatorial office, thus completing the full
trinitarian revelation.206 Poole, similarly, sees a double reference: the text is a
“description of God, particularly of Jesus Christ in his eternity and
immutability: he was from eternity; he is now; and he shall be forever.” Or,
Poole adds, the text may also refer to Christ as “he was in his promises before
his incarnation; he is now God manifested in the flesh; and he is to come as
Judge, to judge the quick and the dead.”207
At verse 8, Diodati identifies the reference to Alpha and Omega as a clear
indication of “the indeterminable eternity of the Son of God, equall with the
Father in essence and glory.”208 Brakel comments that, in the light of the
identification of Christ as Alpha and Omega, this verse teaches the full
divinity of Christ, “the majesty, veracity, immutability and omnipotence of
[his] Person”—“he is JHWH, who is, who was, and who will come, the
eternal, almighty God, who calls the things that are not as though they were,
who speaks and it is so.”209 In nearly all the exegetes, the identification of the
Son as God in the language of verse 8 rests on the identification of the subject
of 1:4a as God in an unrestricted sense, and, on consideration of the parallel
between the language of 1:4a and 1:8: over against the Socinian reading, the
exegetical issue for the Reformed is that the phrase “who is, who was, and
who will come,” here clearly associated with Christ, reiterates the sense of
verse 4, which was a clear reference to God. The Reformed trinitarian
exegesis does not depend on the identification of Christ as the one “who is to
come” exclusive of the possible reading of ἐρχόμενος as “to be,” as assumed
in the antitrinitarian exegesis found in the Racovian Catechism.
The same reading is found among other Reformed exegetes of the era,210
although some, following Aretius, also raise the possibility that verse 8, by
itself, with its reference to the one “which is, and which was, and which is to
come, the Almighty,” is itself a trinitarian reference: “the Father is called ‘He
that is,’ Ex. 3:13. The Son, ‘He that was,’ John 1:1. The Holy Ghost, ‘He that
cometh,’ John 16:8–13.”211 Trapp appears to look on this reading positively,
at least as one of several possible alternatives, another being the
“indeterminable eternity of the Son of God”—taking over directly the words
of Diodati.212 Gill registered three of the Reformed readings of the phrase
“who is, who was, and who is to come,” noting that some take it as a
reference to Jesus Christ, some as a full trinitarian reference to Father, Son,
and Spirit, respectively, and others to the eternity of God the Father: he argues
the validity of the latter, based on the parallel with Exodus 3:15, “I am who I
am” and the rabbinic exegesis of the passage, citing “Rabbi Isaac” to the
effect that, “the holy blessed God said to Moses, Say unto them, I am he that
was, and I am he that now is, and I am he that is to come, wherefore ‫ אהיה‬is
written three times.”213
In the second half of the seventeenth century, in part because of the
Socinian attack, Durham made a point of elaborating on the doctrine of the
Trinity at this place, to the point of developing a locus on the “Holy Trinity
and Object of Worship” immediately following his trinitarian reading of
verses 1–4. “Observe,” writes Durham,
There are three distinct Persons of the blessed Trinity, the Father, the
son, and the Spirit, who are the same one God: in the Name of these
Three, is Baptism administrated; and from Them, Grace is wished and
 prayed for, 2 Cor. 13:14. For, 1. That there are Three, who are distinctly
mentioned here, cannot be denied; that the first is the Father; and the
third, Jesus Christ, really distinct from the Father, is clear: for the Son,
and not the Father was incarnate: and therefore the like must be said of
the seven Spirits, that they set forth the Holy Ghost personally, seeing it
is He who in the like places useth to be joined with the Father and the
Son, as 2 Cor. 13:13, 1 John 5:7,8, and therefore it’s said in the seven
Epistles, to be what the Spirit saith.214
Durham notes two other reasons for identifying this as a fully trinitarian
reference and as a testimony to the unity of the three divine persons. His
second reason is that the Son and Spirit are given equality with the Father,
most notably in the subsequent attribution to the Son (v. 18) of what is here
attributed to the Father, that the same petition is prayerfully addressed here to
all three, and that the “Grace and Peace, which only God can give” come as a
gift from all three. Such grace and peace, moreover, are “divine essential
Attributes,” so that the assumption of joint predication indicates also a
common divinity.215 Third, the Apocalypse testifies clearly (1:1; 22:18–19)
that “this Revelation and Salvation [are] from one God,” and yet, in 1:4 also
indicates “that this Revelation and Salvation cometh from the Father, Son,
and Spirit: therefore They are that One God.”216
Against this Reformed reading, the Socinians object that in this passage,
Christ is referred to as having been dead—and clearly, therefore, cannot be
God. In response, Durham comments that it is “one thing to speak of Him
who was dead, another to say that it speaks of Him as such”: whereas the text
does state that one who is God died, it does not state that he died “as God.”
All that the reference to Christ’s death proves is that Jesus Christ is truly
human—which is not something that the orthodox deny. Indeed, the reference
to Christ’s death and resurrection together with the identification of Christ,
with the Father, as first and last, beginning and end, indicates clearly precisely
what the Socinians wish to deny, that the person of Christ is both divine and
human.217 Nor is the objection that the text refers to “seven Spirits,” meaning
seven angels, of any weight—not only do the seven epsitles that follow
consistently state that “the Spirit saith,” but the rest of the Apocalypse does
not confirm that this is a reference to seven angels: rather it speaks
symbolically of sevens: seven churches, seven vials, seven trumpets, and
seven seals. Moreover, in Revelation 5:6, we read of the seven eyes of the
Lamb which are “seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth,” a clear
reference to the Holy Spirit, who alone can bestow the blessings here
indicated by the Apocalypse.218
1 On the medieval background to this model, see James S. Preus, From
Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the
Young Luther (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), and idem,
“Old Testament Promissio and Luther’s New Hermeneutic,” in Harvard
Theological Review, 60 (1967), pp. 145–161. Also note the discussion of
Reformation and post-Reformation patterns of interpretation in PRRD, II,
7.3–7.4.
2 Calvin, Institutes, II.x.2.
3 Cf. Richard A. Muller, “William Perkins and the Protestant Exegetical
Tradition: Interpretation, Style and Method in the Commentary on Hebrews
11,” in William Perkins, A Cloud of Faithful Witnesses: Commentary on
Hebrews 11, edited by Gerald T. Sheppard, Pilgrim Classic Commentaries,
vol. 3 (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991), pp. 71–94. On the exegetical
tendencies of the Federal School, see Ludwig Diestel, Geschichte des Alten
Testamentes in der christlichen Kirche (Jena: Mauke’s Verlag, 1869), pp.
527–534; and Wilhelm Gass, Geschichte der Protestantischen Dogmatik in
ihrem Zusammenhange mit der Theologie überhaupt, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1854–
67), II, pp. 289–290.
4 A point not sufficiently grasped by contemporary proponents of so-called
social trinitarianism, who attempt to find antecedents for their position in
patristic theology: cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius, I.19; and idem,
Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book, II in NPNF, 2 ser. V, pp. 57, 254–255;
idem, Great Catechism, I, in ibid., pp. 474–476; Basil the Great, Letter 134
(to Amphilochius), in NPNF, 2 ser., VIII, p. 274; Augustine, De Civitate Dei,
XI.10; idem, De Trinitate, VI.7, 8; Rufinus, On the Apostles’ Creed, 4, in
NPNF 2 ser. III, p. 544; cf. W. J. Hill, “Simplicity,” s.v. in NCE, vol. XII; Eric
Osborne, The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), pp. 31–78.
5 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.18.
6 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.18: note that the distinction between the decree and
its execution, sometimes described as a speculative notion absent from
Calvin’s thought, is in fact resident in Calvin’s view of the trinitarian activity
and is hardly a speculative concept; cf. Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 20–
22.
7 Cf. Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii, with Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii; Musculus, Loci
communes, i–iii; and note Vermigli, Commonplaces, (where the same pattern
is followed, courtesy of Vermigli’s editor, Massonius).
8Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.3–4; cf. Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, pp. 158, 160–
165, 169–172).
9 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, pp. 169–170).
10 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, pp. 170–172).
11 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.9–10.
12 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.3.
13 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.3.
14 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 173).
15 See Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.
16 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.1.
17 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2.
18 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2–3.
19 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 156); Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.4 …
20 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 156).
21 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 157).
22 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 158); cf. Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.4; cf.
xiii.21–24.
23 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.6.
24 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.6.
25 Calvin, Commentary on John, 17:5 (CTS John, II, p. 169); cf. Martin
Bucer, Enarratio in Evangelion Iohannis, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1988), John 17, sect. 1 (pp. 473–474).
26Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, pp. 158–160); cf. Calvin’s discussion of the
patristic debate in Institutes, I.xiii.5.
27 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 158), citing Rufinus’ Ecclesiastical
History.
28 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.5.
29 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.27–28.
30 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 160).
31 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, pp. 160–165: numerous citations).
32 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 165).
33 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 11, col. 2).
34 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 12, col. 2).
35 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 12, col. 2).
36 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 12, col. 2), citing Psalm
33:6. Calvin is somewhat more cautious, noting that reference to “the word”
of God certainly allows the inference that the “Eternal Word” or “only-
begotten Son” created the world, but that “the breath of his mouth,” often
used by the fathers as a reference to the Spirit, is only a metaphor for God’s
speech and thus synonymous with “word”: see Calvin, Commentary on the
Psalms, 33:6 (CTS Psalms, I, p. 543).
37 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 13, col. 1).
38Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 13, col. 1); cf. Eusebius,
Preparation for the Gospel, XI.xvii–xxii.
39 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 13, col. 2).
40 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 14, col. 1).
41 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 1).
42 Keckermann, Systema, I.iii (col. 72).
43 Keckermann, Systema, I.iii (col. 73).
44 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 56).
45 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 56).
46 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (pp. 56–57).
47 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiii.8.
48 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiii.7; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xvi.
49 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiii.1–2, citing but not quoting John 14:16; 1 Cor.
12:3; Gal. 4:6, and elaborating on the use of the names in Rev. 1:4–5. Cf.
Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumenta 1–2 (N.T.).
50 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiii.3.
51 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.3 (1).
52 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. I, objectio 4 & resp; cf. Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.1.
53 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, obj. 6 & resp.
54 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.vi.8 (col. 547).
55Milton, Christian Doctrine, I.ii (in Complete Prose Works, VI, pp. 142–
143).
56 Milton, Christian Doctrine, I.v (in Complete Prose Works, VI, p. 225).
57 Milton, Christian Doctrine, I.ii (in Complete Prose Works, VI, p. 225).
58 Venema, Inst. theol., V (p. 137).
59Beza, Theses seu axiomata de Trinitate, in Tractationes, I, p. 652; cf.
Ursinus, Commentary, p. 138.
60 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, V.vii.4 (col. 555).
61 South, Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Asserted, in Sermons, II, p. 405.
62 South, Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Asserted, in Sermons, II, p. 405.
63 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 138; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xi, obj. 5 &
resp.
64 South, Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Asserted, in Sermons, II, p. 405.
65 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 128).
66 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 138.
67 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 117, cols. 1–2.
68 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 117, cols. 1–2.
69 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (pp. 52–58).
70 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 58).
71 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (pp. 58–59).
72 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 59).
73 Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.iii (p. 60).
74 Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xv.3, 24–26.
75 In what follows, I have been selective, citing only a few of the major
arguments for the Trinity, leaving aside numerous texts cited by both
orthodox and Socinian. I also reserve discussion of texts related to the divinity
and personhood of the Son and the Spirit for later chapters.
76 Nye, Brief History, p. 42.
77 Nye, Brief History, pp. 67–68.
78 Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.
79 Thus, Bullinger, Old Faith, pp. 13–14, 24–27, citing Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History, I.iv.
80 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.1.
81 John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London, 1645), II.i (p.
201).
82 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, in Works, III, p. 43.
83 Bullinger, Decades, IV.iii (III, p. 135).
84 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:1 (CTS Genesis, I, pp. 70–71).
85 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:1 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 71).
86 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:3 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 75).
87Ainsworth, Annotations upon Genesis, Gen. 1:27 in loc.; cf. Christopher
Cartwright, Electa thargumico-rabbinica; sive Annotationes in Genesin
(London, 1648), p. 3, citing the Jerusalem Targum.
88 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumenta 1–2 (O.T.).
89 Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, p. 19.
90Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumenta 1–2 (O.T.); cf.
Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, IV, p. 164; Downame, Summe, i (p. 32).
91 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumentum 3.
92 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumentum 3; similarly
Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, II.i.2 (col. 25); Bucanus, Institutions, i (pp. 8–
9); Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (pp. 130–131).
93 Cf. the discussion of dicta probantia in PRRD, II, 7.5 (B).
94 Poole, Commentary, Gen. 1:2 in loc. (I, p. 2).
95 Poole, Commentary, Gen. 1:2 in loc. (I, p. 2).
96Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:26 (CTS Genesis, I, pp. 92–93); cf.
Belgic Confession, IX (in Schaff, Creeds, III, pp. 390–391).
97 Poole, Commentary, Gen. 1:26 in loc. (I, p. 4); similarly, Diodati, Pious
and Learned Annotations, Gen. 1:26 in loc.; Trapp, Commentary, Gen. 1:27
in loc. (I, p. 10); Ainsworth, Annotations upon Genesis, Gen. 1:26 in loc.
98 Poole, Commentary, Gen. 1:26 in loc. (I, p. 4).
99 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 11:7 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 331).
100Ainsworth, Annotation on the Pentateuch, Gen. 11:7 in loc.; similarly,
Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotation, Gen. 48:16 in loc.; Poole,
Commentary, Gen. 11:7 in loc. (I, p. 30).
101 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.1; cf. Ainsworth, Pentateuch,
Num. 6:24 in loc., for a similar statement, exegetically argued, with rabbinic
citation; also Trapp, Commentary, I, p. 260. Calvin makes no trinitarian
reference at this point: see Harmony of the Four Last Books, Numb. 6:24–26
(CTS Harmony, II, pp. 246–247).
102 Klinkenberg, Bijbel verklaerd, III, Num. 6:24–26 in loc.
103 Trapp, Commentary, in loc. (I, p. 533). N.B., the single square bracket is a
fairly typical seventeenth-century typographical practice, used to separate the
cited biblical text from the comment on it.
104 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, IV, p. 230.
105 Westminster Annotations, in loc.; Poole, Commentary, in loc.
106Klinkenberg, Bijbel verklaerd, VI, 2 Sam. 23:1–2 in loc.; cf. Dutch
Annotations, in loc.
107 Henry, Exposition, in loc.; Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in
loc.
108 Bullinger, Old Faith, pp. 53, 57.
109 Calvin, Commentary upon the Psalms, 33:6 (CTS Psalms, I, p. 543).
110 Musculus, Commonplaces, I (p. 16, col. 2).
111 Dickson, Explication of the Psalms, 33:6 (I, p. 172).
112Poole, Commentary, in loc.; so also Trapp, Commentary, in loc. (II, p.
504).
113 Henry, Exposition, Ps. 33:6 in loc.; Klinkenberg, Bijbel verklaerd, X, in
loc.; Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, IV, pp. 231–232; Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxvi.6, 8; Witsius, Exercitationes, VI.vi; Mastricht, Theoretico-
practica theol., II.xxiv.12; Venema, Inst. theol., IX (p. 211).
114 Cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Prov. 8:15 in loc.; Amyraut,
De mysterio trinitatis, IV, pp. 184–186; and note Poole, Commentary, Prov.
8:1 in loc., who registers at length the debate among the orthodox themselves
over whether wisdom here indicates the divine attribute or the second Person
of the Trinity.
115 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, argumentum 6 (O.T.).
116Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 6:3 (CTS Isaiah, I, p. 205) Poole,
Commentary, in loc.
117 Poole, Commentary, Isaiah 6:3 in loc. (II, p. 337).
118 Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 61:1 in loc. (CTS Isaiah, IV, p. 303).
119Poole, Commentary, Isa. 61:1–2 in loc. (II, p. 472); cf. Klinkenberg, Bijbel
verklaerd, XIII, in loc.
120 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.10; cf. Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, IV, pp. 235–237; Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.
121 Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 63:9 (CTS Isaiah, I, pp. 348–349).
122 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumentum 4 (O.T.); cf.
Klinkenberg, Bijbel verklaerd, XIII, Isa. 63:8 in loc.; Downame, Summe, i (p.
32).
123Cf. Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 63:9–11 (CTS Isaiah, IV, pp. 348–
351); Poole, Commentary, in loc. (II, p. 478); Trapp, Commentary, in loc. (III,
p. 434); Henry, Exposition, in loc.; cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned
Annotations, in loc.
124Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix; cf. Poole, Commentary, II, p. 478 and Henry,
Exposition, II, pp. 864–865.
125 Calvin, Commentaries on Haggai, 2:1–5 (CTS Haggai, pp. 353–354).
126 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Hag. 2:4–5, in loc.
127 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumentum 5 (O.T.); cf.
Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.10; Downame, Summe, i (p. 32).
128 Trapp, Commentary, Hag. 2:5 in loc. (IV, p. 377); cf. for Tremellius’
reading, Biblia sacra, sive libri canonici priscae Iudaeorum ecclesiae à Deo
tradit, Latini recens ex Hebraeo facta … ab Emanuele Tremmelio &
Francisco Iunio, accesserunt libri qui vulgo dicuntur Apocryphi, Latine
reddite … à Francisco Iunio … quibus etiam adjunximus Novi Testamenti
libros ex sermone Syro ab Tremellio, et ex Graeco à Theodore Beza in
Latinum versos, secunda cura Francisci Iunii (London: G. B., 1593). Among
the dogmaticians, note Venema, Inst. theol., IX (p. 211).
129 Poole, Commentary, Hag. 2:5 in loc. (II, p. 986).
130 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.16 (Allen).
131Cf. Belgic Confession, IX with Second Helvetic Confession, III.4 and
Westminster Confession, II.iii (Schaff, Creeds, pp. 241, 391–392, 608).
132 Cf. Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, Matt. 3:16–17 in loc. (CTS
Harmony, I, pp. 203–206); Augustin Marlorat, A Catholike and
Ecclesiasticall Exposition of the Holy Gospell after S. Matthew, gathered out
of all the singular and approved divines (London, 1570), in loc., citing from
Calvin and Musculus.
133Poole, Commentary, Matt. 3:16–17 in loc. (III, p. 16) cf. Amyraut, De
mysterio trinitatis, V, pp. 245–246; Bucanus, Institutions, i (p. 9); Downame,
Summe, i (p. 32); Mastricht, Theroetico-practica theol. II.xiv.3.
134 See below 7.2 (B.4).
135 Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, in loc. (CTS Harmony, III, p. 387);
cf. Belgic Confession, IX (Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 391).
136 Poole, Commentary, in loc. (III, p. 146); Downame, Summe, i (p. 32).
137 Biddle, XII Arguments (1691), p. 8; cf. the comments on Schlichting, De
trinitate, in Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.iii, in Works, III, p. 73.
138Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.iii, in Works, III, p. 73; cf. Amyraut, De
mysterio trinitatis, V, pp. 248–249.
139 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, John 1:1 in loc.; similarly,
George Hutcheson, An Exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to
John (London: Ralph Smith, 1657; reissued, Edinburgh, 1841), John 1:1, in
loc. (p. 10).
140Poole, Commentary, John 1:1 in loc. (III, p. 277); cf. Trapp, Commentary,
John 1:1, in loc. (V, p. 344).
141Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, John 1:1 in loc.; Poole,
Commentary, John 1:1, in loc. (III, p. 277).
142 Poole, Commentary, John 1:1 in loc. (III, p. 278).
143Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, John 1:1 in loc.; similarly,
Hutcheson, Exposition of the Gospel of John, John 1:1, in loc. (p. 10).
144Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, argumentum 3; cf. Leigh,
Treatise, II.xvi (p. 130).
145 Cf. Biddle, XII Arguments, (1691), p. 9.
146Trapp, Commentary, John 10:30 in loc. (V, p. 381); cf. Hutcheson,
Exposition of the Gospel of John, John 10:30 in loc. (p. 213); Poole,
Commentary, John 10:30, in loc. (III, p. 335).
147 Poole, Commentary, in loc (III, p. 335).
148 Pictet, Theol. Chr., II.xvi.3; cf. Piscator, Analysys logica Evangelii
secundum Johannem, in loc. (p. 115); Haak, Dutch Annotations, John 10:30 in
loc.
149 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.
150 Henry, Exposition, John 10:22–28 in loc.
151 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxv.11.
152Calvin, Commentary on 2 Corinthians, (CTS II Cor., pp. 403–404); cf.
Belgic Confession, IX (Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 392).
153Poole, Commentary, 2 Cor. 13:14 in loc (III, p. 639); cf., less elaborately,
Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.
154 Cf. PRRD, II, 6.2 (B.3).
155 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 121).
156 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 122).
157 Grotius, Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, 1 Tim. 3:16 in loc.; cf.
Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, 12, pp. 297–299. The typical modern
solution, namely, the assumption that the uncial ΟΣ or ΟϚ was mistakenly
read as ΘΣ or ΘϚ and taken as an abbreviation for ΘΕΟΣ, probably derives
from Wetstein: see the discussion in PRRD, II, 2.3 (C.3). This understanding
of the variant was also known, in the patristic era, to Liberatus Diaconus (ca.
560 A.D.), from whose work it passed over into Hincmar: see the citation of
Liberatus and discussion in The Expositor’s Greek New Testament, ed. W.
Robertson Nicoll, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), in loc. (IV, p.
118).
158Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, 1 Tim. 3:16 in loc.; Poole,
Commentary, in loc. (III, p. 781); Trapp, Commentary, in loc. (V, p. 642);
Henry, Exposition, in loc …
159 Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, II.iii.31 (1887, p. 198).
160 Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, II.iii.31 (1887, pp. 199–200).
161 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, 12, pp. 295–297, citing Heb. 1:6,
Luke 2:9–14; Matt. 4:11; Luke 22:43; Matt. 26:53; Matt. 25:31; and 2 Thess.
1:7 (seen by angels); Acts 2:5; John 1:10–11 (preached to the Gentiles); Acts
1:2, 9–11; Mark 16:19 (taken up into glory).
162 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 297.
163 Venema, Inst. theol., x (p. 226); note also Herman Venema, Exercitationes
de vera Christi Divinitate, ex locis Act. XX: 28, I Tim. III:16, I Joh. V: 20 et
Col. I:16, 17: quibus de vera lectione et genuio sensu eorum accuratius
disseritur (Leovardiae: Gulielmus Coulon, 1755); also note Owen, Vindiciae
evangelicae, in Works, 12, pp. 296–297.
164 De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.xxi.1, citing John Mill: see Mill’s
Novum testamentum graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus mss. exemplarium,
versionum, editionum, ss. patrum et scriptorum ecclesiasticorum; et in
easdem notis. Accedunt loca scripturae parallela, aliaque exegetica.
Praemittitur dissertatio de libris N.T. canonis constitutione, et s. textus n.
foederis ad nostra usque tempora historia, studio et labore Joannis Millii
S.T.P. Collectionem millianam recensuit, meliori ordine disposuit, novisque
accessionibus locupletavit Ludolphus Kusterus, editio secunda.
(Amstelodami: Apud Jacobum Westenium, 1746), 1 Tim. 3:16 in loc.
165
Cf. Biddle, Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity, p. 12; Crellius,
Two Books, pp. 139–140.
166 Racovian Catechism, p. 140.
167 Cf. Athanasius, etc.
168
Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.2; cf. Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews, 1:3, (CTS
Hebrews, p. 37).
169 Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews, 1:3, (CTS Hebrews, p. 37).
170 Thus, Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.; Poole,
Commentary, Heb. 1:3 (III, pp. 809–810); Gomarus, Disputationes, VI.14;
Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxiii.6.
171Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews, I, §21; cf. Owen, Exposition of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, 1:3, in loc. (I, p. 95); Diodati, Pious and Learned
Annotations, in loc.
172 Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews, I, §21.
173See the discussion in Franz Posset, “John Bugenhagen and the Comma
Johanneum,” in Concordia Theological Quarterly, 49 (1985), pp. 245–251.
174 Calvin, Commentary on 1 John, 5:7, in loc. (CTS 1 John, pp. 257–258).
175 Musculus, Commonplaces, I (p. 16, col. 2).
176 Calvin, Commentary on 1 John, 5:7, in loc. (CTS 1 John, p. 258); cf. the
discussion in Vermigli, Loci communes, I.xii.10–11.
177Belgic Confession, IX; Scots Confession, I (Schaff, Creeds, III, pp. 392,
439).
178 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, I.i.3 (col. 4).
179 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. II, V.iii.3 (col. 525); cf. pt. I, VII.vii.[9]
(cols. 330–331); cf. Bucanus, Institutions, i (p. 9).
180Westminster Confession, II.iii (1648 ed., p. 8); Larger Catechism, q. 9
(1648 ed., p. 3).
181See the discussion of text criticism and the “Comma” in PRRD, II, 6.2
(B.3).
182 Cf. e.g., Cocceius, Aphorismi prolixiores, VI.4; Downame, Summe, i (p.
33); John Mayer, A Commentarie upon the New Testament. Representing the
divers expositions thereof, out of the workes of the most learned, both ancient
Fathers, and moderne Writers, 3 vols. (London, 1631), III, pp. 215–216;
Westminster Annotations, in loc.; Trapp, Commentary on the New Testament,
in loc.; Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.
183 Dutch Annotations, 1 John 5:7 in loc.
184Benjamin Needler, “The Trinity Proved by Scripture,” in Puritan Sermons,
1659–1689: Being the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate, St. Giles in the
Fields, and Southwark by Seventy-five Ministers of the Gospel in or Near
London, 6 vols. (London, 1661–1675; republished, with notes and translations
by James Nichols, London: Tegg, 1844–1845), VI, pp. 54–66.
185Ezekiel Hopkins, A Discourse on the State and Way of Salvation, in The
Works of Ezekiel Hopkins, successively Bishop of Raphoe and Derry, ed.
Charles W. Quick, 3 vols. (1874; repr. Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria
Publications, 1995–1998), III, p. 453.
186 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. I, arg. 3 (N.T.). The state of scholarly
opinion on this verse has, of course, been reversed with the discovery of more
ancient codices; similar arguments appear in Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis,
V, pp. 289–291; Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 154, col. 1 - p. 156, col. 2; cf.
also Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 1 John 5:7 in loc.
187Pictet, Theol. chr., II.ix, p. 100; similarly, Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix,
controversia I, argumentum 3 (N.T.).
188Pictet, Theol. chr., II.ix, p. 100; similarly, Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix,
controversia I, argumentum 3 (N.T.).
189 Boston, Commentary on the Shorter Catechism, I, p. 142.
190 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 190.
191 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 191. It is of minor interest that
modern text-critical scholars regularly invoke haplography in order to explain
omissions in other places: cf. Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament:
Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, third edition, enlarged (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 189–190.
192 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 191–192, citing Cyprian, De
unitate ecclesiae, § 5, and idem, Epistle to Jubianus (Ep. lxxiii); cf. also Gill,
Exposition of the New Testament, 1 John 5:7, in loc., and note the negative
comments of Ridgley’s nineteenth-century editor, ibid., pp. 252–253, which
express what is surely the modern consensus, that the text is indeed an
interpolation and, after all, not necessary to the defense of the doctrine of the
Trinity, particularly given the absence of reference to the comma in the
writings of the great fourth and early fifth-century defenders of the doctrine of
the Trinity. Cf. the summation of the negative argument in Samuel Clarke, A
Reply to the Objections of Robert Nelson, and of an anonymous author
against Dr. Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity. To which is added, An
answer to the remarks of the author of Some considerations concerning the
Trinity (London: James Knapton, 1714), in Works, IV, pp. 322–324, and idem,
Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, in Works, IV, p. 121.
193 Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 1 John 5:7 in loc.
194 Gill, Body of Divinity, I, p. 113, 134, 184, 194.
195 Venema, Inst. theol., ix (pp. 214–215).
196 Venema, Inst. theol., ix (p. 214).
197 Johann Albert Bengel, Gnomon Novi Testamenti, in quo ex nativa
verborum vi simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubrita sensum
coelestium indicatur (Tübingen, 1742. 3rd ed., edited by Johann Steudel.
London: Williams and Norgate, 1855), in loc.; Vitringa, De doctrina
christiana, I.v.33 (pp. 216–218); similarly, Brown, Compendious View, II.ii
(p. 133).
198 Cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Rev. 1:8 in loc.; Trapp,
Commentary, Rev. 1:4 in loc. (V, p. 740); Poole, Commentary, Rev. 1:4 in
loc.; Henry, Exposition, Rev. 1:4–8 in loc.
199 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 82).
200 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 83).
201Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Rev. 1:1 in loc.; cf. Dutch
Annotations, Rev. 1:1 in loc.
202 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Rev. 1:4 in loc.
203Dutch Annotations, Rev. 1:4 in loc., citing James 1:17 and 2 Cor. 13:13
[14].
204 Junius, Apocalyps, 1:4 in loc (p. 8); Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of
the Apocalyps, that is the Apocalyps of S. Iohn, illustrated with an Analysis &
Scolions (Amsterdam: Hondius & Laurensz, 1611), 1:4 in loc (pp. 8–9).
205Junius, Apocalyps, 1:4 in loc (pp. 10–11); Brightman, Revelation of the
Apocalyps, 1:4, in loc (pp. 9–10).
206Brakel, Verklaring van de Openbaringen aan Johannes: Part 3 of ΛΟΓΙΚΗ
ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst, 3 parts (Dordrecht, 1700; 2nd printing,
Leiden: D. Donner, 1893–94), in loc. (III, p. 144).
207 Poole, Commentary, Rev. 1:4 in loc. (III, p. 949).
208 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Rev. 1:8 in loc.; cf. Junius,
Apocalyps, 1:4 in loc. (pp. 10–11); similarly, Poole, Commentary, Rev. 1:8 in
loc. (III, p. 950).
209 Brakel, Verklaring van de Openbaringen, in loc. (III, p. 145), using the
language of Romans 4:17.
210 Poole, Commentary, Rev. 1:2, 4, 8 in loc. (III, pp. 948–950); Trapp,
Commentary, Rev. 1:2, 4, 8 in loc. (V, pp. 740–741); James Durham, A
Commentarie Upon the Book of Revelation. Wherein the Text is explained …
together with some practical Observations, and several Digressions
necessary for vindicating, clearing, and confirming weighty and important
Truths (London: Company of Stationers, 1658; reissued, Willow Street, Pa.:
Old Paths Publications, 2000), Rev. 1:8 in loc. (p. 32).
211 Trapp, Commentary, Rev. 1:8 in loc. (V, p. 741), citing Aretius.
212 Trapp, Commentary, Rev. 1:8 in loc. (V, p. 741).
213John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, Rev. 1:4 in loc., citing Shemot
Rabba, sect. 3, fol. 73. 2.
214 Durham, Commentarie upon the Book of Revelation, Rev. 1:1–4, in loc. (p.
6), citing ad fin., Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29, “what the Spirit saith unto the
churches.”
215 Durham, Commentarie upon the Book of Revelation, Rev. 1:1–4, in loc. (p.
6).
216 Durham, Commentarie upon the Book of Revelation, Rev. 1:1–4, in loc. (p.
6).
217 Durham, Commentarie upon the Book of Revelation, Rev. 1:1–4, in loc. (p.
6).
218 Venema, Inst. theol., x (p. 214).
 5
The Deity and Person of the Father
5.1 God the Father: Exegetical Foundations and Doctrinal Definitions
A. God as “Father” in Exegesis and Doctrine
1. The logic of the locus: individual discussion of the persons.
Following the general arguments concerning the divinity of the three persons
in the Godhead, the orthodox typically examine the three persons individually
in order to identify both the grounds for the confession of the divinity of each
person in detail and the meaning of the names, relational terms, and titles
given to each person. Pictet clearly notes this point of transition in the
argument of his locus on the Trinity: “Having stated that the divine nature is
in Scripture attributed to three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, we must now treat of these persons separately.”1 The Reformed
orthodox doctrine of the full Godhead or divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit is
typically argued under four general categories, all of which are primarily
biblical and grounded either in the direct exegesis of texts or in the
hermeneutical process of drawing conclusions from biblical texts. Thus, the
persons of the Trinity are individually known to be divine:
I. From those divine names which are given to them, that are peculiar to
God alone.
II. From their having the divine attributes ascribed to them, and
consequently the divine nature.
III. From their having manifested their divine glory, by those works that
none but God can perform.
IV. From their having a right to divine worship, which none but God is
worthy to receive.2
These grounds of argument are stated by a large number of the Reformed
orthodox and are repeated, in only slightly varied forms, in the discussions of
each of the persons.
2. The exegesis of “Father”: two implications of the biblical language.
The deity of God the Father was, of course, never a matter of dispute, given
the consistent biblical identification of God as Father—the issue that the
Reformed would have to deal with was the distinct personhood of the Father.
Given that God is so frequently identified as “Father” in Scripture, distinction
must be made between the “essential” and the “personal” use of the terms—as
applied either to the Godhead generally or to the Father personally.3
 Thus, Scripture calls God “Father,” without indication of any distinctions
between the persons in such texts as Malachi 2:10, Hebrews 12:9, and (by
implication) Acts 17:26–28.4 In the first of these—“Have we not all one
Father? hath not one God created us?”—the text merely speaks of God as the
“common Father to all mankind.”5 There no reference here to “Father” in the
sense of “the Father of Christ” but only to God as the creator and governor of
the world—not to the exclusion of the Son and Spirit, who are elsewhere in
Scripture identified as creating the world.6 The point can also be argued from
Hebrews 12:9, where God is identified as “the Father of [our] spirits,”
juxtaposed with the “fathers of our flesh”: even Owen, whose massive
commentary on Hebrews is consistently sensitive to the problems raised by
the Socinians, fails to take up any trinitarian implication in this place.7 In the
text from Acts 17, the identification of human beings generally as the
“offspring” of God also directs our attention to divine Fatherhood, a theme
known, as Paul here shows, to the ancient pagan poets and philosophers.8
Ursinus notes, further, that the essential use of the name “Father” can be
applied to other persons of the Trinity: thus, “the Son is expressly called by
Isaiah, ‘the everlasting Father’ (Is. 9:6),”9 as opposed to the genuine
trinitarian passages where the first person is identified as “Father” in
distinction from the Son and the Spirit. Thus, “when the word Father is
attributed to God essentially, though all creatures are excluded, yet all three
Divine persons are included, because they are co-equal, they have one nature,
will and worship; they are one and the same God.”10
Some debate occurred among the Reformed over the reference to “Father”
in the Lord’s Prayer. According to quite a few of the British seventeenth-
century writers, the initial address of the Lord’s Prayer refers to the Godhead
in its oneness by the name “Father,”11 and therefore belongs to the group of
texts—like Malachi 2:10, Hebrews 12:9, and Acts 17:26–28—that use the
term “Father” to indicate the Deity and not one of the persons in the Trinity.
Others, however, typically continental Reformed writers, argue strongly that
“Father” in the Lord’s Prayer indicates the first person of the Trinity.12 Calvin
had certainly not used the text as a major trinitarian reference: in his
commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, he associated the phrase with the “fatherly
love” of God toward humanity: “God is willing to receive us graciously, …
ready to listen to our prayers … disposed to aid us.” Calvin also tells his
readers—in keeping with the theme of the duplex cognitio Dei—that “it
would be the folly and madness of presumption, to call God our Father,
except on the ground that, through our union to the body of Christ, we are
acknowledged as his children.”13 The Institutes takes up this theme at greater
length and does speak of Christ as the “beloved Son,” the “true Son,” and the
“only-begotten Son”of God and also speaks of the instruction of the Spirit
necessary to right prayer, implying that “Father” is a reference to the first
person of the Trinity, but offering no explicit trinitarian argument.14
Elsewhere, Calvin comments that in places where the divine persons are
mentioned together in the New Testament, the name “God” is often
specifically a reference to the Father,15 and conversely, in places such as John
17:8, where Christ prays concerning the words he has received from the
Father, that Christ speaks in the person of the Mediator and “Father” means
“God” and not the first person of the Trinity.16
The same logic with perhaps an unexpected turn is found in Ursinus’
lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. Ursinus insists that we are able to call
God “our Father” because of the work of the “only begotten and natural Son
of God,” through which “we are adopted children of God” and are privileged
to call God Father. He is our Father because he gave his Son to die for us. As
in the case of Calvin’s argument, one might conclude that Ursinus understood
the “Father” of the Lord’s Prayer as a trinitarian title—but the opposite is the
case. In answer to the objection that this prayer to the Father teaches us not to
pray to the Son or the Spirit, Ursinus indicates that here Father is to be
understood “essentially,” in opposition not to the other persons of the
Godhead but to creatures. The Lord’s Prayer, thus, addresses the triune
Godhead, not only the person of the Father: “Father,” in the prayer, then,
refers to God.17
Without laying down a hard and fast rule, the British Reformed writers in
the tradition of Westminster tend toward the view that “Father” in the Lord’s
Prayer is a reference to the One God, without trinitarian implication, whereas
the continental Reformed, in the seventeenth century, tend toward the view
that this is indeed a trinitarian reference. Oddly, the British writers are closer
to Calvin and Ursinus than the seventeenth-century continental writers are on
this particular point. One may even detect a slight pique in the words of the
normally irenic Witsius, who acknowledges, on grounds of the doctrine of the
Trinity, that the entire Godhead may be “denominated Father” and then goes
on to say that he agrees with “those judicious interpreters who maintain that
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is particularly addressed” in the Lord’s
Prayer.18 Van der Kemp, who references the Heidelberg Catechism explicitly
at this point—albeit without examining Ursinus’ lectures—also infers that the
reference is especially to the first person of the Trinity: “although the essence
of God, and also the Son and the Holy Ghost may be called Father, and ought
to be worshiped, nevertheless we must understand here, by the instructor, by
the Father, the first person: for he says, in order to explain this, that God is
become our Father through Christ.”19
Debate with the Socinians became intense over the distinction between
essential and personal usage of “Father”—particularly with reference to
various biblical texts. Given the readings of Acts 17:29, and Galatians 1:4 as
references to “Father” as an essential name, the Socinians, notably Crell,
contended that other texts, such as 1 Corinthians 8:6, Ephesians 1:3 and 4:6,
and 1 Thessalonians 1:3 and 3:11, were also references to the Godhead in
general as “Father.” With reference to the first of these texts, the Socinians
note that immediately prior, in verse 4, the apostle indicates that “there is no
God but one” and then states (verse 6), “there is but one God, the Father, of
whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are
all things, and we by him.” In the Socinian exegesis, the meaning of the
reference to God the Father in verse 6 was determined by verse 4, yielding the
argument the Father alone is God, in contrast to Jesus Christ. The point of the
text, as in the Socinian interpretation of Colossians 1:16, is the subordination
of Christ to God: all things are “of” the Father as the “first cause” but only
“by” Jesus Christ as a “second cause”—from which one can only conclude
that Christ cannot be God by nature.20 The Reformed orthodox respond that
the very phrasing of verse 6 argues the contrary, that Jesus Christ, as the one
involved with the Father in creation, is also by implication God, indeed, the
second person of the Trinity. What is more, the verse indicates the order of
trinitarian operation as “of the Father” and “by the Son.”21 As for Ephesians
4:6, the statement that there is one God and Father over all things also has a
trinitarian implication—Father as indicating the entire Godhead—given that
Scripture also speaks of Christ as over all things.22
Similarly, John 17:3 became important to the trinitarian exegesis of the
seventeenth century because of its use in the Socinian argument against the
deity of the Son. To the Socinians, the text offered clear testimony to the sole
deity of the Father and to the identity of Jesus as a messenger sent by God,
himself not divine. In response, differing with Calvin’s reading of the text, but
finding the same basic sense as Calvin did, Rijssen and various of the
seventeenth-century Reformed exegetes argued that the word monon, “only,”
limits not the subject of the phrase, “thee,” but the predicate “true God,”
indicating not “te solum esse verum Deum,” but “Te, qui es solus verus
Deus”—not “that you alone are the true God,” but “you, who alone are the
true God …” Thus, the statement that the Father is the one true God stands in
opposition not to the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, but to the claims of the
false gods of the Gentiles.23 The second objection is logical: “Qui sunt tres
numero, non sunt unus Deus.” Clearly three gods cannot be one God—but
three persons thus enumerated which participate in the same divine essence
may be one God.24 Nor does this oneness together with threeness constitute a
quaternity, since the three are not distinct realiter in essence.25
3. The personality of the Father. Apart from their disagreement over the
interpretation of the salutation to the Lord’s Prayer, all the Reformed orthodox
agree that Scripture also calls the first person of the Trinity “Father,” in
distinction from the Son and the Spirit.26 The point is most clearly made by
recourse to a text like John 17:2–3, where Christ first prays “Father, the hour
has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee” and then continues
(with the antecedent of “thee” being “Father”), “This is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”
The divinity of the Father and the priority of the person of the Father in the
order of the Godhead were not a matter of direct controversy. Yet, the identity
of the Father as one of the divine persons rather than as merely one of the
names of the one God is an issue at the root of the debate with the Socinians.
And it is an exegetical issue as well, given that such texts as John 17:2–3, in
the words of Van der Kemp, are “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense
to the Socinians,” who use them as proof that the “Father alone [is] God,
rather than the Son and the Holy Ghost.27
The orthodox are careful to indicate a series of ways in which the name
“Father” is applied to the first person of the Trinity that teach his individual
identity, his relation to the other persons, and his relation to the order of
creation and redemption. Several of these applications of the name are
identified, moreover, with specific documents—namely, the reference to God
the Father in the Apostles’ Creed and the reference to God as Father in the
Lord’s Prayer (as interpreted by the continental Reformed). In the creedal
form, as in the basic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the first person
of the Trinity
is … called the Father, not in reference to creation, by which we are all
“his offspring” (Acts 17:28), or to adoption in Christ, (Eph. 1:5), but in
reference to that singular relation which he bears to his only Son
(Filium proprium).28
Specifically, the credal phrase is not a reference to God “considered
essentially,” but to God “considered personally,” specifically as the first
Person of the Trinity, the Father. The creed intentionally here distinguishes
God the Father, as person, from God the Son and God the Spirit.29
This is not to say that these other aspects of divine paternity are to be set
aside, but only that the creedal form itself points toward the primary reason
for the identification of the first person as “Father,” namely, his relation to the
divine Son. In Perkins’ words:
The Father, is a person without beginning, from all eternity begetting
the Son … In the generation of the Son, these properties must be noted:
I. He that begetteth, and he that is begotten are together, and not one
before another in time. II. He that begetteth, doth communicate with
 him that is begotten, not some one part, but his whole essence. III. The
Father begot the Son, not out of himself but within himself. The
incommunicable property of the Father is to be unbegotten, to be a
Father, and to beget. He is the beginning of actions, because he
beginneth every action of himself, effecting it by the Son and the holy
Ghost.30
Given these relations to the other persons—as also the role of the first person
of the Trinity in the various relations of the Godhead ad extra, the first person
is rightly called “Father.” In general, “a person is a father, in consequence of
his having a child or children,” and God is Father in this sense, on several
grounds.31
First, God the Father is Father to the second person of the Trinity “by an
eternal and inconceivable generation, Psalm 2:7.”32 He is Father in relation to
Jesus Christ, the “only-begotten Son.”33 There is, accordingly, a relationship
between the divine Father and the divine Son unlike the entirely conceivable
relationship between human fathers and human sons: as we read in the Gospel
of John, “as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he also given to the Son to
have life in himself” (John 5:26).
Second, God is “Father” to all believers, for the sake of Christ, his Son—as
Christ himself declares, to his “brethren,” he ascends to his Father, who is
also their Father.34 God, in this sense, is the adoptive father of the elect, who
are accepted and adopted in his only-begotten son, Christ Jesus.35 Thus, the
God and Father of Jesus Christ is also the God and Father of believers (John
20:17), and is so on three grounds. In the first place, believers are participants
in the new birth or regeneration, according to which they are fashioned anew
according to the image of God, having been born again neither of blood nor of
human will but of God (John 1:12–13), and are therefore capable of calling
God Father. Next, in a conjugal sense, believers acknowledge God as Father
in view of their “spiritual marriage” to his Son: Christ is the “husband” of
believers (Isa. 54:5) and believers are “the bride and wife of the Lamb” (Rev.
21:9)—with the result that “God, the Father of the Son, is also the Father of
his bride and wife, who is therefore called the ‘daughter’ of the Father,’ Psalm
45:16.”36 (It is worth noting that this piety of spiritual marriage, with its
central image of believers as the bride of Christ, was a major theme of the
Nadere Reformatie, and that this particular argument for the fatherhood of
God occupied a significant place in late seventeenth-century Reformed
thought.)37 Finally, in an adoptive sense, believers know God as Father
because of their gracious adoption into the household of God, so that, “being
children, they are also heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom.
8:17).”38
 Third, God, the Father Almighty, is also identified as “Father” of all
creatures, particularly of human beings, inasmuch as all “have received life
from him by creation,” as testified in Malachi 2:10, “Have we not all one
Father? Hath not one God created us?”39 In summary, “to believe in God the
Father … is to believe in that God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;
and to believe that he is also my Father, and as such has a fatherly affection
toward me, for and on account of Christ, in whom he has adopted me as his
son.”40
B. The Personal Properties of the Father
1. God the Father as personally distinct: general issues. The importance
of the discussion of the personal properties rests on the fact that the persons
are not distinct from one another as finite things having different essences are
distinct: as the medieval scholastics had indicated, there can be no essential or
substantive distinctions between the persons. This topic, albeit somewhat
rarified, was not one ignored by the Reformers: Calvin comments that
when the Son is joined with the Father, relation comes into view, and so
we distinguish between the Persons. But as the Personal subsistences
carry an order with them, the principle and origin being in the Father,
whenever mention is made of the Father and Son, or of the Father and
Spirit together, the name of God is specially given to the Father. In this
way the unity of essence is retained, and respect is had to the order,
which, however derogates in no respect from the divinity of the Son and
Spirit.41
The person of the Father is distinct from the person of the Son “not according
to being” (non secundum esse), but according to the manner of subistence that
is proper to him as a divine person.42 Conversely, the manner or mode of his
subsistence is identified by the personal—as distinct from essential—
properties belonging to the Father. De Moor comments that, in the ancient
church, the Father was consistently identified as causa, principium, fons,
origo, and even totius deitatis.43 These personal properties of the Father are
variously enumerated: first, there is unbegottenness or aseity; second there is
primacy; and third and fourth, some of the orthodox argue active generation
and active spiration as properties of the Father,44 while others discuss these
terms as personal acts or operations, distinct to the Father or as properties to
be discussed once the order of operation of the Godhead has been defined.45
In what follows, unbegottenness, aseity, and primacy are discussed as
personal properties; active generation and active spiration are noted under the
discussion of the intra-trinitarian operations.
2. Unbegottenness and aseity. The initial proprietas distinctive of the
Father is the negative property “unbegottenness” (agennesia) or as it is
sometimes called “self-begottenness” (autogennesia), according to which his
subsistence “non est ab alia persona, sed Filius & Spiritus ab ipso”—“is not
from another person, but the Son and the Spirit are [both] from Him.” Even
so, Scripture generally places the Father first in references to the Trinity (cf.
Matt. 28:19; 1 John 5:7) not because of temporal precedence or greater
dignity—for all three are eternal and possess the same perfections—but rather
because “he is represented as begetting the Son and as sending the Holy
Spirit” and is not himself begotten or sent by any.46 The Father, therefore, is
traditionally identified as the principium, the “source” (sometimes the
“cause”), and the “origin of all divinity” (originem totius Deitatis).47
Thus, the primary positive personal property of the Father is that he is a se,
of or from himself. This aseitas, moreover, is not merely the essential aseitas
common to all persons of the Trinity, it is also the personal property of the
Father: the Father is utterly self-existent, not only as God but also as Father—
nor does the Father ever work by the power of another. The Father, unlike the
Son and the Spirit, has no principium: he is ἄναρχον, whether according to
essence or according to person.48 (The Son and the Spirit can be considered as
existing a se only according to essence, given that their persons proceed from
the Father as the principium of the Godhead.)
Wendelin can add a second ultimate property of the Father: the Father
alone eternally generates the Son, homoousios with himself, so that
begetting or generating is in a sense a property belonging solely to the
Father.49 The procession of the Spirit, of course, does not apply here, since it
belongs both to the Father and to the Son: we have here a hint of the medieval
notion of reflex relations—just as it belongs to the Son alone to be generated,
so does it belong to the Father alone to generate.
The Father, as the Reformed orthodox argue, is not first in duration, nature
or causality, dignity or excellence, but rather in subsistence and operation.50
The absence of priority in duration argues that God the Father was always
Father: the “fatherhood” of the first person of the Godhead is not an added
property, brought about in God (as the Arians would have it) by the temporal
act of begetting the Son; just as the first person of the Trinity is eternally God,
so also is he eternally Father.51
The second of these points, that the Father is not first in order of nature or
causality, raises a point of connection between the Reformed orthodox view
of the Trinity and the formulations of the Latin fathers (particularly following
Augustine) and a point of contrast, if not ultimately in meaning, certainly in
terminology, between the Reformed orthodox view and that of the Greek
fathers. Witsius indicates that a priority in nature or causality is “nowhere
affirmed in Scripture” given that a “cause is … that which gives existence to
something else”—and such giving of existence does not and cannot take place
in the Godhead, inasmuch as the essence of the divine persons is a single,
ultimate essence. It is incorrect, Witsius adds, to argue “any priority or
posteriority of nature” among the divine persons, given that the “nature is
one.”52
This consideration leads to the admission that just such a vocabulary of
causality can be found among the orthodox Greek fathers, who distinguished
between “the cause and what is caused” (τὸ ἀίτιον καὶ τὸ ἀιτιατὸν) in the
Godhead.53 This language, the Reformed conclude, was quite unfortunate,
although since the same fathers denied that God the Father has “priority or
inequality of nature” over the Son and the Spirit, their basic doctrinal
intention was sound. Thus, John of Damascus denies “any precedence in time
or superiority in nature of the Father over the Son,” indeed any and all
superiority of the Father except in “causation”—by which he means
specifically that “the Son is begotten of the Father and not the Father of the
Son, and that the Father is naturally the cause of the Son,” equating the
language of causality with that of begetting.54 This use of language of
causation, Witsius argues, is “inaccurate,” not to mention “harsh, indistinct,
and unscriptural.” The sense, however, of the Damascene remains orthodox
inasmuch as the causality indicates only the divine begetting. Still, adds
Witsius, reflecting a more Augustinian reading of texts like John 14:28, this
begetting is no ground for arguing the superiority of the Father, given that it
indicates the essential equality of the persons and that the Son (Phil. 2:6) did
not count it “robbery” to be “equal with God.”55 Similarly, the Father is not
greater in either dignity or excellence, since “infinite and supreme excellence
is an essential attribute of Deity: and if any person were possessed of greater
excellency and dignity than the Son or Holy Spirit, neither of these persons
could be the Most High God.”56
3. Primacy. Although in no way that relates to essence or essential
attributes, there is a primacy of the Father in the Godhead—a “personal
primacy in operation, both ad intra … and ad extra,” according to which the
Father is said to work “of himself (a se), by the Son and by the Spirit.”57 The
Father is the origin or source and principium of the Son and the Spirit.58 Even
so, Scripture identifies the Father as God more frequently than it identifies
either the Son or the Spirit specifically as God.59 The Father is first,
specifically, in subsistence or hypostasis, as is indicated in Hebrews 1:3; the
Son is the “express image” or “character” of the person or “hypostasis” of the
Father, or in Colossians 1:15, the Son is the “image of invisible God”—
yielding the conclusion that “the Father is the archetype, the Son the
resemblance.60 Even so, in the mystery of revelation, “the Father, according
to the distribution of the work of grace among the divine Persons, undertook
to display in his Person the majesty of the Godhead, and to reveal it in its
glory, as the Son undertook to make himself of no reputation, and the Holy
Ghost to act as the ambassador of the Father and the Son.”61
Thus, the Father’s primacy in subsistence or mode of subsisting points
directly toward the issue of the other personal properties of the Father,
namely, aseity, the begetting of the Son, and the processing, together with the
Son, of the Holy Spirit,62 and as well to the issue of the order of operation of
the Godhead. It is this primacy both in subsistence and in revelation,
according to which the Father displays the majesty of the Godhead, that yields
the identification of God as the cause of all things in such texts as 1
Corinthians 1:24, “We have but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things.”63
For Witsius, the primacy of the Father in the Godhead and in the order of
operation of the persons also relates to the form of prayer: in the Lord’s
Prayer, “the Son enjoins us to call God Father,” indicating “expressly the first
person of the Godhead, who is the Father of Christ, and in Christ and on
Christ’s account is our Father.” There is, however, the trinitarian assumption
that we do not address God the Father without also addressing or invoking the
Son and the Spirit, given that “they are one in nature and in honour” and that
“what is in common to all three persons in the Godhead” is properly called
“Father.”64 Witsius continues by noting his acceptance of the trinitarian
reading and he offers the following rule of interpretation:
In the economy of grace the Father is represented to us under that
character in which we ought to address him in our prayers, as sustaining
the power and majesty of the Godhead, and as originating and
bestowing all saving benefits; the son, as opening up our way to the
Father, and providing for us opportunities of approach by his merits and
intercession; and the Spirit as forming within us our prayers and groans.
And this is the reason why most frequently, and indeed almost always,
in Scripture, we find worship addressed to the Father; rarely to the Son;
very rarely to the Spirit.65
5.2 The Father as Origin and Source: “Works” of the Godhead Ad
intra and Ad extra
A. Views of the Reformers
At the outset of the Christological section of Vermigli’s Commonplaces,
the editor set a series of significant meditations on the relationship of the
Trinity and its mode of operation to the incarnation and work of Christ.
Vermigli here acknowledges the the significance of the traditional question of
“How … is the Son alone said to be incarnate?”—given that the incarnation is
an undivided work of the one God.66 Musculus similarly noted, “the three
persons of the holy triad effect this work of incarnation, but only one truly
puts on the flesh.”67
Vermigli recognizes as a fundamental presupposition of his argument that
the actions of the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct only ad intra and that all
acts ad extra have as their cause or author the One God: the entire Godhead
acts as one in all works or relations that “go out” from the Godhead. Vermigli
also holds as a presupposition that the order of operation of the persons
manifested in the divine economy and the assignment of a work to a particular
person corresponds to and indicates the order of existence or mode of relation
of the persons ad intra. Thus Vermigli can state both that the entire Trinity,
Father, Son, and Spirit, is presented to us in the incarnation even though
“Christ alone took on himself human nature.”68
Indeed, the problem faced by the doctrine of the incarnation is that it
appears to divide the Godhead, given that in the incarnation the Son of God
comes to us proprie tamen & singulariter as the Son:
For if indeed God is everywhere, we nevertheless say he came, for he
took human nature: and thus we say that he came to us and presented
himself to us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For if indeed the
works of the trinity which are inward are also singular—such as to
generate, to spirate, and to proceed—these indeed are done by the
divine power which is common to the three persons; however those
(works) which pertain to externals, are indivisible.69
In order to resolve the problem, Vermigli distinguished the incarnation into
two categories of divine operation, the divine actio and the resultant divine
opus. The actio, or action, of God in the sending of the Son is clearly
understood by Scripture as an action of the Father and the Spirit, and, indeed,
of the Son himself as well: “efficiens enim causa & actio, ad tres personas
pertinuit.” Vermigli acknowledges the difficulty of identifying the Son both
with cause and effect in incarnation, but he insists that this must be done—the
Son is both sender and sent.70
Although Calvin does not state the principle clearly in his Institutes, one
only need go to the commentaries to find the concept of the indivisible work
of the Trinity ad extra: “We must therefore believe that there is such a unity
between the Father and the Son as makes it impossible that they shall have
anything separate from each other.”71 In order to make more clear the
concurrence of the three persons in incarnation but the actual incarnation of
the Son alone, Vermigli distinguishes between the action of God in
incarnation and the work of the incarnate God. Christ alone took to himself
our human nature, but the efficient cause of the action is the entire Godhead:
as the Scriptures state, Christ is sent by the Father and by the Spirit; the Son,
moreover, “was the cause of his own coming.”72 It is only the union of
natures in the person of Christ and the work of salvation accomplished in the
incarnate one that belong restrictively to the Son—and, of course, even these
events are willed by the triune God.73
B. The Era of Orthodoxy: Traditionary Understandings
1. Divided ad intra—undivided ad extra: the orthodox understanding
of “works” of the Godhead in general. In the era of orthodoxy, despite the
intense pressure from the Socinian polemic to develop and clarify the doctrine
of the Trinity, the Reformed orthodox virtually never attempted to enter
speculatively into the sacred precincts of the divine work ad intra, but rather
sought to lay down rules for the discussion of God and his works—rules that
would reflect the numerical unity of the divine essence and the distinction of
the persons both ad intra and in their work ad extra. Polanus offered the
following two ways of dividing the subject:
First, the works of God (opera Dei) are either personal (personalia) or
essential (essentialia). The personal works of God are of two kinds
(duum generum): either purely personal (simpliciter personalia) or
[personal] in a certain manner (certo modo).
Second, the works of God are either internal or external. The internal
works of God in like manner are either personal or essential. The
internal essential works of God are the eternal counsel and the decree of
God (aeternum consilium & Decretum Dei) … The external works of
God are of two kinds: creation and providence.74
The seemingly missing category of “personal internal works of God” was, in
fact, dealt with previously in Polanus’ arrangement of topics and is found in
the Synopsis of book III: “The distinction of persons according to operation is
twofold: either according to the manner of working in essential operations, or
according to the personal operations.” The former member of this division,
“the manner of working in essential operations,” corresponds with the
personal works “in a certain manner”; the latter member of the division,
“personal operations” corresponds with the “purely personal” works.
Once this further pairing is recognized, there are four categories of opera
Dei: the inward personal works or operations, the divine begetting and
proceeding, which are “purely personal”; the inward essential works, the
counsel and decree, which are common works of all three persons; the
outward essential works, which are the undivided work of the three persons;
and the outward works that are considered “personal in a certain manner,”
namely, the outward works, like incarnation and sanctification, that are
performed by the entire Godhead but that terminate on one or another of the
persons.
The essential works of God are those performed by the divine essence,
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in common, and completed in
creatures; which is to say the common work of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, willed communiter by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
according to the unity of divine essence and directed communiter
toward creatures. The point of distinction between the essential and
personal works of God is that the former have as their principle the
divine essence absolutely considered, operating by the divine power
possessed in common by the persons.75
There are several canons or rules for clarifying the notion of divine
operations. First, the “immanent or internal works” of God are not “different
from the divine essence.”76 There are, of course, distinctions that can be made
within the Godhead, among the various immanent or internal works, but these
distinctions, like the distinctions of persons and attributes, are not to be
understood as parts of God, as alterations of the being of the Godhead, or as
incidental properties belonging only to God for the duration of their outward
effects. Second, of the Trinity, it may be laid down as a rule that the
opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, the outward works which
concern the creature, belong to one person as well as the other, as to
create, govern; but opera ad intra sunt divisa, the personal properties or
internal works are distinguished, as the Father begets, the Son is
begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father
and the Son.77
“Distinct actions” may indeed be attributed to each of the divine persons—as
they are in numerous places in Scripture—but, given the oneness of God,
“this must not be understood to intimate that either the power or the operation
of the Persons is divided, or that any one of them accomplished his work
more immediately that another.”78 Inasmuch as God is one, the “power and
operation of all the Persons are one and undivided; and each Person is the
immediate and perfect cause of the whole work.”79 Or, as Perkins had defined
the point,
The workes of God are all those which he doth out of himselfe, that is,
out of his divine essence. These are common to the Trinitie, the peculiar
manner of working alwaies reserved to every person.80
Therefore, as a further rule of the discussion, it can be argued that “one and
the same external work, in a different consideration, is both personal and
essential.81 Inasmuch as “the essence is common to all of the persons,” the
“essential operations” are also common operations that can be considered
both essentially and personally.82 Thus, by way of example, “the incarnation
of Christ, in respect of inchoation or initiation, is the essential work of the
whole Trinity, but in respect of bounds or termination, it is the personal work
of the Son alone,” given that Father, Son, and Spirit are equally the “cause” of
the incarnation, but only the Son is incarnate. So also, the ad extra works of
creation, redemption, and sanctification, are works of the entire Godhead, but
they are nonetheless each attributed, in view of their terminus, to one of the
persons, namely, to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, respectively.83 The
underlying issues addressed by these distinctions are the unity of the Godhead
and the distinction of the persons—specifically the issue that the revelation ad
extra corresponds with the reality ad intra, and the issue, so prominent also in
the Reformed orthodox discussion of the attributes, that the ad extra
manifestations of God are fully grounded in the essential reality of God.
Owen makes the same point concerning the relation of the opera ad extra
to the divine essence, relating it closely to issues of piety and Christian life:
Although the formal object of divine worship be the nature of God, and
the persons are not worshipped as distinct, but as they are each of them
God; yet, as God, they are every one of them distinctly to be
worshipped … Hence, the Scripture speaks not of anything between
God and us but what is founded on this account. The Father worketh,
the Son worketh, and the Holy Ghost worketh. The Father worketh not
but by the Son and his Spirit; the Son and Spirit work not but from the
Father. The Father glorifieth the Son, the Son glorifieth the Father, and
the Holy Ghost glorifieth them both. Before the foundation of the world
the Son was with the Father, and rejoiced in his peculiar work for the
redemption of mankind. At the creation, the Father made all things, but
by the Son and the power of the Spirit. In redemption, the Father sends
the Son; the Son, by his own condescension, undertakes the work, and
is incarnate by the Holy Ghost. The Father, as was said, communicates
his love and all the fruits of it unto us by the Son, as the Holy Ghost
doth the merits and fruits of the mediation of the Son.84
The language used here argues both unity and distinction in the divine works.
The Godhead is never to be conceived as divided or separated—as the
formula indicates, there is alius and alius, not aliud and aliud, namely, an
other and another “person,” not an other and another “thing”—and the
distinction of works must be stated in such a way as to respect the doctrine of
unity in trinity and trinity in unity. (The use of aliud here, moreover, the
neuter noun to indicate specifically not merely “another,” but “another thing,”
reflects the traditional usage, ensconced in the decisions of the Fourth Lateran
Council, that the personal threeness of the Godhead must be understood as
coordinate with the identity of God as one res, one “reality” or “thing.”)
These arguments yield three categories for the “acts” or operations of the
Godhead: first, the essential works of the Godhead in which all of the persons
work equally and undividedly—notably, the eternal decree and all of the
works ad extra; second the internal, personal works of the Godhead and the
“personal properties” related to them, which constitute the distinctions
between the persons; and third, the so-called appropriata or opera
appropriata, the external works of the Godhead that are attributed more to
one person than to another, not so as to divide the opera ad extra among the
persons but so as to indicate that the divine work terminates on one person
rather than another or for the sake of glorifying the persons “distinctly
according to their appropriated acts.”85
2. The Father’s active generation of the Son. In accord with the
medieval tradition, some of the Reformed include among the personal
properties of the Father terms that identify the Father’s action as distinct from
the Son’s and the Spirit’s in the ad intra operations of the Trinity. Thus,
instead of merely identifying the generation or begetting of the Son, the act of
the Father and the act of the Son can be distinguished—the former, an “active
generation” (generatio activa), the latter a “passive generation” (generatio
passiva). The point of the doctrine is simply to identify the Father as the
source of the action, the begetter or one generating, the Son as the recipient of
the action, the begotten or generated one.86 The theses debated at Saumur
make a point of noting that the Father generates the Son “voluntarily”—freely
and without coercion—but that voluntarius in this sense is not distinguished
from naturalis, as if it signified something contingent, that could be or not be.
The inward divine emanations are free and without coercion, but they are also
natural and occur by a necessity of nature. They are also eternal, denoting no
change in God—in fact, indicating the eternity of the generated or emanated
persons, who being eternally produced must have a duration identical with
that of the Father.87
This dogmatic language typically referred for its exegetical foundation to
Psalm 2:7, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,” on the ground
that the verse is directly applied to Christ in Acts 13:33 and that the entire
Psalm is given a messianic interpretation in Acts 4:25–26.88 There was some
debate, however, among the interpreters of the Reformation and orthodox eras
over the meaning and application of the text. Calvin, following out the older
pattern of identifying a double literal sense of the text, understands the text as
fulfilled in David, who “was begotten by God when the choice of him to be
king was clearly manifested,” and as “more truly fulfilled in Christ,” who is
prefigured or “represented” by David in the Psalm. “This day,” therefore,
indicates “the time of this manifestation,” whether of David or of Christ, not
the moment of birth for either David or Jesus, nor the eternal begetting of the
second person of the Trinity, but the moment of official manifestation as the
one sent by the Father. Calvin therefore associates Psalm 2:7 with John 1:14,
“We have seen his glory, as of the only begotten of the Father.” This reading
leads Calvin to argue that the ultimate reference of the test is to Christ as
God’s “only begotten Son,” but in his mediatorial manifestation, and not in
his “eternal generation.” There is no ground in the text for reading “this day”
as a reference to God’s eternity “without any relation to time.” The
“begetting” indicated in the verse, therefore, “ought not to be understood of
the mutual love that exists between the Father and the Son.”89
In accord with Calvin, the later Reformed exegetes do understand the
primary referent of the text to be Christ as the only-begotten Son of the
Father, but they often differ over the implications of the reference: does it
refer to Christ’s temporal manifestation and to his assumption of the office of
mediator in whole or in part, as both Ainsworth and Dickson argue, the
former emphasizing the priestly, the latter the prophetic office; or as Diodati
and Poole argue, does it refer to the eternal begetting, specifically to the
active generation of the Son by the Father?90 In the case of Poole’s exegesis,
moreover, all three understandings are noted: David as the primary referent,
in the day of his establishment in his kingdom; Christ as the primary referent,
either in his eternal generation or in his temporal manifestation. Reluctant to
argue a double referent in the text, Poole refers to the Davidic interpretation
as “far-fetched and doubtful” and identifies the two christological readings as
suitable, with “this day” either referring to the divine eternity in which “there
is no succession … but it is all as one continued day or moment, without
change or flux,” or day or moment when Christ was “declared to be the son of
God in power” as indicated in Romans 1:4 and by the reference to Psalm 2:7
in Acts 13:33.91
The exegetical debate among the Reformed rendered the text of Psalm 2:7
a less than adequate proof of a doctrine on which all were agreed and a point
for difficult debate with the Socinians, who declared it a reference to David
alone and irrelevant to the doctrine of the Trinity.92 Significantly, the text is
not argued at much length by Owen, despite his profound interest in the
relation between the Father and the Son, his assumption that the text did
speak of the eternal begetting, and his intense debate with the Socinians.93
The argument is catalogued through a series of commentators and
dogmaticians by De Moor—is the text a reference to the eternal filiation or
active generation of the Son by the Father, or is it a reference to the
manifestation of the Messiah?94 Ultimately, De Moor sees no difficulty in
reading the text as testimony to the twofold birth or generation of the Son: the
Psalm speaks of the begetting of the Son as declared in the decree of God,
prior to which the Son is Son by nature and actively generated by the Father
in eternity, subsequent to which the Son is to be “exhibited in time” as the
Messiah.95
3. The Father’s active spiration, with the Son, of the Holy Ghost. As in
the preceding comments on the Father’s active generation of the Son, so in the
inward work of the Trinity is the Father said to spirate or process the Spirit in
the active sense—spiratio activa—and, in view of the filioque, to do so with
the Son, as indicated by John 15:26 and to a lesser extent by Galatians 4:6.
Thus, active spiration is not a sole property or operation of the Father, but
belongs also to the Son. Like the role of the Son in the begetting or generation
of the second person, the Spirit’s role in his own emanation or spiration is, by
definition, passive: he does not spirate himself, but is spirated by the Father
and the Son. The Reformed orthodox note this traditionary point but typically
do not elaborate it either dogmatically or exegetically apart from their
discussions of the filioque,96 nor will they dwell on the question of a
difference between the active generation of the Son and the spiration of the
Spirit.97 Since the inward divine actions or emanations have no analogy in the
created order, they cannot be adequately conceived by human beings: all that
can be inferred is that they neither divide the divine essence into parts or
multiply it into different beings—rather these actions result in the multiplicity
of persons in the undivided essence.98
4. Personal distinctions in the undivided work ad extra. The personal
distinction of the works, therefore, assumes the undivided work of the
Godhead but identifies both “the order of the Persons, which ought to be
observed in their operation, as well as in their subsistence,” and the
termination of each divine act ad extra “upon some certain Person.”99 From
the first point, the order of persons in operation as well as subsistence, arises
the attribution of creation to the Father: just as the Father is the first and
unbegotten person of the Trinity, the one in whom the other two persons find
their beginning or foundation ad intra, so is creation the first work of the
Godhead ad extra and the beginning or foundation of all of the other works of
God ad extra. Still, in this attribution of creation to the Father, the agency of
Son and Spirit is assumed.100
The second point, the ascription of particular works to particular persons
on grounds of the personal terminus of the work, respects the identification of
the Son and the Spirit as Redeemer and Sanctifier. Thus, the work of
redemption is attributed especially to the Son, inasmuch as the Son (and
neither the Father nor the Spirit) is the divine person for union with whom
Jesus’ humanity was conceived and who is the incarnate Savior. Yet, the
Father is also active in the work of redemption, inasmuch as Scripture testifies
that he “reconciled the world to himself” in Christ and “made peace by the
blood of the cross of Christ.”101 Perkins can comment of the Son that “His
proper manner of working is to execute actions from the Father, by the Holy
Ghost.”102
Witsius also notes a third way in which the attribution of distinct works to
the individual persons is sometimes argued: some have distinguished between
remote and proximate or mediate and immediate principles of operation in the
divine acts ad extra. In this view, the entire Godhead is the remote and
mediate cause or principle of sanctification and the Holy Spirit the proximate
and immediate cause or principle. This view, Witsius indicates, must be
rejected: “for one divine person does not act by another, as an intermediate
cause; and as the power of all the persons is one and the same, each of them
accomplishes an effect by the same immediate operation.”103 When God is
identified as the sanctifier of his people (Ezek. 20:12), it is God, “essentially
considered,” who performs the work—“the Father and the Son perform this
work no less immediately that the Spirit; for the power and the operation of
all three are the same” even though, in the order of operation, “the Father acts
by the Son and through the Holy Spirit.” Witsius concludes that “it is only
where there is a diversity of essences and operations, that the distinction
betwixt a mediate and an immediate cause can have any place.”104
C. Reformed Approaches to Essential and Personal Works of the
Trinity Ad intra
1. The Father and the works or operations of the Trinity: general
considerations. Discussion of the Father’s primacy in the Godhead leads
directly toward and serves to define the work of the Father as distinct in order
(albeit never separate) from the work of the Son and the Spirit. Although the
entire divine work ad extra is consistently defined as the common work of all
three persons, it is nonetheless not a work that disobliges the distinction of
persons—indeed, it follows out the manner of the working of the persons ad
intra, where there are distinct personal operations even, according to some of
the Reformed, in the unified opera essentialia, namely, in the decrees of God.
These considerations lead the Reformed orthodox to discuss the opera
essentialia in their relation to the opera personalia in some detail, in close
relation to the form of the divine work ad extra. There is, moreover, a fair
amount of variety and difference among the Reformed on this point, with
some holding close to the traditional definition of the opera essentialia as the
common work of the persons and offering little by way of distinction of
personal roles, others developing a highly complex discussion of the distinct
ad intra roles of the persons in the essential work of God. Thus,
The persons of the Trinity have among them a certain economy,
according to which the works common and undivided as to operation
are claimed as proper to certain persons in respect of mode of operation.
The principle of operation is the same, common Deity, will, power: the
operation is common to all the persons. As to inception and operation
the work is common; as regards mode of operating it is peculiar and
distinct, according to the resemblance to that which is truly proper to
any person, and according to the dispensation of the mystery of
godliness and of human salvation.105
Thus, although the essential works of the Godhead have as their principium
the divine essence “absolutely considered” and operating or working as a
common or conjoint work, there is still an order or economy of the persons
belonging to it.106
According then to the order of subsisting and acting, even as the Father
is a se, subsists and operates through Son and Holy Spirit, the Son is
and operates a Patre through the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is and
operates a Patre et Filio, so, suitably to this order of subsisting and
acting ad intra, there is also assigned to the Father ad extra the
inauguration of things, or creation; to the Son their continuation, or
redemption; to the Holy Spirit their consummation, or sanctification and
regeneration. Likewise, because of the terminus of the action and of the
disposition peculiar to the particular person whose operation is
specifically illuminated in the work, the incarnation, although the work
of the entire Trinity, is referred singly to the Son.107
Thus, the inward trinitarian work of grounding or founding salvation moves
toward completion ad extra in the Son and the Spirit, manifesting a triadic
structure of the entire eternal and temporal work of salvation:
There are three sorts of work by which our salvation is completed and
accomplished.
1. Immanent in God toward us, as his eternal love set and passed upon
us, out of which he chose us, and designed this and all blessings to us.
2. Transient, in Christ done for us; in all he did or suffered representing
of us, and in our stead.
3. Applicatory, wrought in and upon us, in the endowing us with all
those blessings by the Spirit; as calling, justification, sanctification,
glorification.108
Venema similarly speaks of the priority of the Father in the order of working,
according to which the Father “begins the work, the Son executes it, and the
Holy Spirit perfects it”—or, in the case of the eternal decree, the Father in a
sense decrees, the Son executes, and the Spirit consummates the work.109
It was quite typical of the early orthodox to develop this point and to insist
on an understanding of the divine decree ad intra as a trinitarian work.
Beyond this, several seventeenth-century theologians, particularly those with
federal inclinations (whether Cocceian or Voetian), also argue an economy of
operation both ad intra and ad extra of the Godhead in which the Father has a
specific role, reflecting his primacy, without, of course, removing the
essential oneness of the Godhead. The preeminent example of understanding
the ad intra divine work in a trinitarian sense—specifically, the essential work
that in its execution ad extra is the common work of the three persons—is the
Reformed doctrine of the pactum salutis.
2. The eternal decree and the election of Christ. As Perkins indicates in
his initial bifurcation of the category of the “work” of God, “The worke or
action of God is either his decree, or the execution of his decree.”110 The
decree itself, of course, is an ad intra work, the execution, an ad extra work
of God. Yet the decree is not one of the opera personalia—rather it is an
essential work of God, a work of the whole Godhead. Thus, as Polanus
indicates,
The Father indeed elects us, not as Father, since election is not the
proper work of the person of the Father; but as God, for as much as
election is the common work of the whole sacred Trinity, of which the
principle is the Father.111
One of the emphases characteristic of the trinitarian conception of the decree
found in early Reformed orthodox writers like Polanus, Perkins, Bucanus,
Keckermann, and Ames was the detailed discussion of the relationship of
Christ as both divine Son and divine-human Mediator to the eternal decree.
Christ is, according to both natures, divine and human, one Son of God,
not two: according to the divine, by natural generation from the Father,
so that, thus, according to it he is Son of God, not elected, but
generated; according to the human (he is Son of God) truly first by
eternal election, in the second place by creation in the image of God,
and in the third place by the grace of personal union with the divine
nature.112
So also,
though it be true that Christ is set apart to the worke of mediation, as he
is Mediatour, or as he is man, yet as he is God he doth design & set
himselfe apart to the same work. For to design the Mediator is a
 common action of the three persons, the Father, the Sonne, and the Holy
Ghost; and yet considering the Father is first in order, and therefore hath
the beginning of the action: for this cause he is said especially to
designe, as when Saint John saith, Him the Father hath sealed.113
Thus, according to Perkins,
The ordaining of a Mediatour is that, whereby the second person beeing
the Sonne of God, is appointed from all eternitie to bee a Mediatour
betweene God himselfe & men. And hence it is, that Peter saith, that
“Christ was foreknowne before the foundation of the world.” And well
saith Augustine, that “Christ was predestinated to bee our head.” For
howsoever as hee is (logos) the substantiall word of the Father, or the
Sonne, he doth predestinate with the Father, and the Holy Ghost; yet as
hee is the Mediatour, he is predestinated himselfe.114
3. The love of the Father for the Son and the pactum salutis. There are,
certainly, two historical antecedents for the notion of the pactum salutis in
Reformed circles—first, the early orthodox trinitarian understanding of the
essential work of God ad intra and, second, the more traditional discussion of
the Son as the eternal object of the Father’s love. It is also the case that, if the
Reformed were less than universally enthusiastic over arguments for the
Trinity based on such metaphors and similes, they were very much in favor of
describing the relation between the Father and the Son in the Godhead in
terms of a mutual love.
For Owen, the love of God as expressed in the interrelationship of the
divine persons is the deepest mystery of the universe, “the principle part of
the blessedness of God” and “the only fountain and prototype of all that is
truly called love.” The divine love is “eternal and necessary,” inasmuch as it
is one of the essential properties of the divine being. The divine love,
according to Owen, is “natural and necessary unto the Divine Being” more
specifically defined as the “ineffable mutual love of the Father and the Son,
both in and by that Spirit which proceeds from them both.”115 Christ, as Son
of God, is the “principle object” of this love inasmuch as “the Father loves,
and cannot but love, his own nature and essential image in him.” Thus,
the person of Christ in his divine nature is the adequate object of that
love of the Father which is ‘ad intra’—a natural necessary act of the
divine essence in its distinct personal existence; and the person of
Christ as incarnate, as clothed with human nature, is the first and full
object of the Father in those acts of it which are ‘ad extra,’ or are
towards anything without himself.116
The Father, as first person of the Trinity, has a fundamental role in the pactum
salutis or covenant of redemption: it is the particular dispensation or economy
of the father that, “according to his eternal purpose … he appointed his Son to
be a surety, and delivered the elect to him, that he might redeem them.”117
The doctrine of the pactum salutis, characteristic of the work of Cocceius and
the federalist theologians of the mid-seventeenth century, had significant roots
in earlier orthodox Reformed meditation on the eternal foundation in God of
all divine works ad extra. Although the doctrine is, specifically, a part of the
locus de foedere, and not typically discussed in the context of the doctrine of
the Trinity, it deserves mention here, given its trinitarian implications and,
indeed, given its relation to the earlier Reformed discussion of the
relationship of the Son of God to the eternal decree and to its execution in
time. Thus, prior to the development of the pactum salutis, Polanus writes of
the trinitarian aspect of election with reference to the Son as sponsus:
The Son, indeed, is incarnate because he wills voluntarily to be made
our sponsor, voluntarily subjecting himself to the Father not according
to nature, but according to the voluntary arrangement (oeconomia) or
dispensation: a natural subjection is, surely, distinct from an economic
or dispensatory subjection: he is made freely obedient to the Father, not
according to the divine nature in itself (in se), but according to will:
obedience, indeed, is not the natural act of a nature (actus naturalis
naturae), but of the will or free accord of the person of Christ
(voluntarius personae Christi).118
The federal theologians of the seventeenth century also elaborate on the
trinitarian work in the incarnation by referring it to the covenant of
redemption, or pactum salutis:
This event took place according to an agreement between the Father
and the Son, or, as it is expressed by Zechariah (6:12–13), according to
“the counsel of peace,” which was between “the Lord of Hosts,” the
Father, and “the man,” the Son, who was to become man, “whose name
is the Branch,” being raised up by God (Is. 6:2; Mal. 1:11), and being
the new root of a new family, or of the Sons of God according to the
Spirit.119
Witsius further identifies three periods of the covenant of redemption—the
“commencement” of the covenant in the eternal counsel of God; the
“intercession” of Christ, which begins immediately after the fall of Adam and
Eve; and the voluntary servitude of Christ in the work of incarnation.120 The
first of these is an eternal intra-trinitarian work that serves as the foundation
of the entire work of salvation ad extra.
D. Opera Appropriata: Works Ad extra “in a Certain Manner”
Personal
 1. The works ad extra: undivided but trinitarian.121 Although the work
of the Godhead ad extra is, by definition, the work of the one God and,
therefore, the conjoint work of all three persons, there are still particular
aspects of the divine work in the temporal economy that pertain particularly
to one or another of the persons.122 This consideration follows quite logically
from the doctrine of the Trinity itself, according to which there is a single
divine essence, distinguished into three modes of subsisting: just as there is a
single divine essence, there is a single ad extra divine work—so also, just as
there are three persons or modes of subsistence in the Godhead, each
distinguished by personal properties and a specific operation, there are also
three modes of working in the single ad extra divine work.123 This is one of
the points of more detailed, even speculative, elaboration of the doctrine of
the Trinity that the Reformed orthodox share with the medieval
scholastics.124
The basic doctrinal point is quite simple: the order of the persons ad intra
in the opera personalia is mirrored ad extra in the opera appropriata. The
opera appropriata, moreover, are distinct not in the sense of separated works
but in the sense of modes of operation contributing to the ultimately
undivided work of the Godhead ad extra. In this distinction of modes of
operation, moreover, each of the persons not only performs what is
appropriate to each, but also the works assigned to the Son and the Spirit are
said to terminate on their persons. This usage of “terminate” or identification
of one of the persons as a terminus carries with it an important implication
that must not be overlooked. In the logical language of the older orthodoxy,
terminus is paired with fundamentum. Taken together, the terms are used in
descriptions of relations or of acts bringing about relations. The fundamentum
is the foundation or source of the relationship, and in the statement or
proposition that defined the relationship, it stands as the subject. The terminus
is the conclusion of the action constituting the relationship that stands in the
objective position in the descriptive proposition. Thus, in all actions or
operations of the Godhead, the Father is the fundamentum or fons who works
by the Son (as terminus) or with and through the Son by the Spirit (as
terminus).
Thus, after dividing the external works of God into two kinds, works of
nature and works of grace and then identifying the works of nature as
creation, providence, and government, Venema comments that in the work of
nature, “the three persons have their respective place, the Father being the
originating—the Son the efficient—and the Holy Spirit the perfecting cause”
and, by extension, the work of creation is typically assigned to the Father,
redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Spirit. This extension of the
argument, however, is a highly “unsatisfactory” way of understanding the
divine work ad extra, particularly given the biblical texts (John 1:3; Eph. 3:9;
Col. 1:16; and Heb. 1:2) in which the Father is revealed as creating by the
Son. It is more precise, therefore, to state that the Father is the “foundation”
or source of the entire divine work, whether in eternally decreeing all things
or in actually creating them.125 Owen, similarly, writes of the work of
salvation as the work of “the whole blessed Trinity, and each person therein,”
in such a way that
the spring or fountain of the whole lieth in the kindness and love of
God, even the Father … The procuring cause of the application of the
love and kindness of God unto us is Jesus Christ our Saviour, in the
whole work of his mediation … And the immediate efficient cause in
the communication of this love and kindness of the Father, and through
the mediation of the Son, unto us, is the Holy Spirit.126
This qualification of the Father’s role in the economy of divine working
reflects the identity of the Father as the “source of all that is divine and of all
the persons (fons omnis deitatis, & omnium personarum).”127
2. The primacy of the Father in all opera ad extra. Given that the Father
is the fundamentum or fons of the Godhead and of divine persons ad intra and
remains the foundation and source in all works ad extra, the primacy of the
Father can be identified in all of the works of God. Thus, first, the work of
creation belongs to the Father in the specific sense that creation is the means
by which the eternal counsel is executed. This execution of the eternal
counsel, moreover, relates to the creative work of God in two ways: in the
first place, since God has eternally determined to give his grace to the elect,
he must bring the elect into existence. The Father, as the divine person from
whom all flows and from whom arises the economy of the pactum salutis, is
therefore also identified as Creator: creation is the means to the end of his
elective will. In the second place, creation is the means by which God initially
reveals the covenant of works, in which mankind is promised eternal
fellowship in return for obedience. Here, too, God the Father, as promulgator
of the covenant of works, is the one to whom creation belongs.128
Second, the establishment and “administration of the covenant of Grace
under the Old Testament also belongs to the dispensation of the Father,”129
insofar as the Son was not yet fully revealed and insofar as it is the Father
who promises the Son as redeemer. Yet, on this point, there are differences of
opinion among the Reformed: Ball, for one, was reluctant to use trinitarian
language in relation to the Old Testament economy of the covenant of grace
in view of the obscurity of the Old Testament references to the Trinity and of
the fact that God is fully revealed as Father only in the redemptive work of
the Son.130
 Third, the Father performs particular works in relation to the redemptive
activity of Son and Spirit. In Goodwin’s words, “God the Father had but two
grand gifts to bestow; and when once they should be given out of him, he had
left them nothing that was great (comparatively) to give, for they contained all
good in them; and these two gifts were his Son, who was his promise in the
Old Testament, and his Spirit, the promise of the New.”131 Thus, it is the
Father who sends the Son in the temporal economy, to be made man, born of
Mary, and placed under the law. It is also the work of the Father to demand of
the Son the debt for sin and, following the Son’s payment, to raise him from
the dead. With reference to the Holy Spirit, it is the Father who bestows the
Spirit on the Son and who sends the Spirit into the hearts of believers.132
Fourth, the Father has a “special dispensation with respect to the elect,”
namely, “that he bestows his Son and all his sovereign benefits upon
them.”133 So too, fifth, although the office of judgment at the eschaton is of
given to Christ, seated at the right hand of God, the person of the Father is, for
a series reasons belonging to the economy of divine operations, identified as
the Judge of the world:
The Father in the work of salvation is considered as the supreme Judge,
who directs all things, who requires satisfaction, who receives it from
the one he sent to procure it, and who, to sum up all in a word,
maintains the majesty of the Godhead, for which reason he is
sometimes called God in contradistinction from the other persons.134
A right understanding of the work of the Father, argues Van der Kemp, sets
aside the Socinian objections to the divinity of the Son and Spirit. The
“offense” that they take at “the Godhead of the Father, the humiliation of the
Son, and the sending of the Holy Spirit” that leads them to declare only the
Father to be God is removed or set aside by right consideration of the manner
of the working of the Godhead, specifically in these “the dispensations” or
administrations of the Father—inasmuch as “we may thus clearly comprehend
in what manner the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are consubstantial with the
Father, can be sent, and in what manner the Son, who is himself God, is the
servant of God and satisfied the justice of God.”135
3. Creation: appropriate to the Father. The work of creation, the
incarnation, and the redemption of humanity in regeneration and
sanctification serve as significant illustrations of the basic principle that the
opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, but also, in coordination with that basic
principle, they also serve to illustrate the association of certain works of God
with individual persons of the Trinity. Creation is a case in point. It would be
as erroneous to assign creation purely to the Father as it would be to assign
incarnation purely to the Son and the work of regeneration and sanctification
purely to the Spirit.
The Father, as foundation and source, arranges “all things by his
determinate purpose” and assigns “to them their order and arrangement.” He
is also specifically identified by Scripture as the creator of the “heavens and
the earth,” namely, of the material foundation of all finite things (Gen. 1:1).
Yet, the Son, as the Word of God, is identified as the one by whom all
subsequent work of creation is accomplished. It is “the work of the Son,”
therefore, “to execute the will of the Father, by creating all things as to their
form”—“thus the creation of each part belongs to him, as God in the
beginning declares when he is said to have made all things ‘by his word,’
Psalm 33:6.”136 The Spirit also has a role in this work, specifically in
“carrying all things in creation and providence to a consummation, and in his
adapting them to their several ends.” Accordingly, the “beauty, harmony, and
motion” of all things in creation are understood as the work of the Spirit.137
This particular appropriation of the creation of the underlying matter of the
universe to the Father follows from the traditional trinitarian reading of
Genesis 1—but is not universally argued among the Reformed, probably
because, if pressed too far, it violates the underlying assumption that the
Father works by the agency of the Son and the Spirit. The first verse of
Genesis 1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” is
subject to several possible interpretations. Since the name of God in this place
is Elohim, the combination of the plural name with the singular verb lead
some of the traditionary exegetes to argue the Trinity from the very beginning
of the text, while others, notably Calvin,138 argued against a trinitarian
reading of the first verse and postponed discussion of persons of the Trinity
until verses 2 and 3, where the Spirit and the divine speech in creation are
introduced. Still others, following out the assumption that use of a general
designation for God, when conjoined with references to Word and Spirit,
ought to be taken as a reference to the Father, understand the first verse of
Genesis 1 as a reference to God the Father rather than to the Trinity.
4. Incarnation—appropriate to and “terminating on” the Son. As for
the incarnation, the underlying difficulty of the doctrine from the perspective
of a trinitarian monotheism is to identify the work as genuinely the work of
the one God but also as a work in which only one of the divine persons is
incarnate. This difficulty was observed early on in the history of the doctrine,
as indicated by one of Augustine’s theological letters.139 Augustine attempts
to resolve the problem by drawing on a set of basic questions (An sit, quid sit,
quale sit?) used in the rhetorical tradition, arguing that any thing must always
have about it a certain threefoldness—namely, the existence or original cause
of existence by which a thing “is,” the identity, species or form by which it is
“this” or “that,” and quality or condition in which it remains. These are the
modes of its existence: “whatever is must forthwith be this or that, and must
remain so far as possible in its own generic form,” and therefore, “these Three
do nothing in which all do not have a part.”140 In God there is existence itself,
the “is” of God, which is Father; there is also the identity or identifying form,
the species, the “that” or “this” of God, which is Son (here we see, probably a
natural Neoplatonic association of Word, Logos, and form); and finally, there
is the condition in which it remains, which is Spirit. What God is—the form,
the Word, the Son—teaches both that God is and that God remains what he is:
it is the function of the “that” to identify existence and condition. Even so, the
Son reveals the Father and the Spirit. Thus, the incarnation of the Son refers
not to a division of essence but to a distinction of operation. In one sense
Augustine’s answer merely turns the question back on itself: God as revealed
in the flesh is the second person, because the second person is the revelatory
modality of the Godhead. Thus incarnation is described as the unified work of
the three persons which, in the interpenetration or circumincession of the
persons, terminates upon the second person, the Word, the Godhead in its
revelatory modality.141
Polanus poses the question: “since the incarnation of Christ is the common
work of the whole sacred trinity, why is the entire sacred Trinity not
incarnate?” This question points toward a distinction and toward a
fundamentally Augustinian answer. Scripture teaches that “the Word was
made flesh,” indicating that, in Witsius’ words, “the subject of the incarnation,
or he who became man, is not the Father, nor the Holt Spirit, but the Son
alone,” given that “although the essence and operation of the three persons in
the Godhead are the same, the flesh was not assumed by the divine essence,
but by a certain person.”142 The incarnation, considered “inchoatively” or
from the perspective of its inception, as one of the works of the Godhead ad
extra, must be an undivided or common work (opus commune) of all persons
in the Trinity. However, considered “terminatively” or from the perspective of
its completion, it is a divine work that concludes in the person of the Son with
the assumption of human nature and is, therefore, the opus proprium of the
Son. Thus, “after a certain manner” (certo modo) the incarnation is a personal
work belonging to the economy of the Godhead ad extra, not an essential or
common work. Only the Son, not the Father or the Spirit, assumes human
nature.143 Thus, there is a sense that, although the entire undivided divine
essence is incarnate, the divine essence in union with Christ’s humanity is not
to be understood simpliciter, but as the “natura divina determinata in Filio, id
est, hypostasis sua persona Filii.”144 In brief,
The principal efficient cause and author of the incarnation is the entire
sacred trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in such a way that the
 human nature is created and suited for the person of the Son by the
Father, Son, and Spirit acting together.145
Scripture itself teaches that all three persons of the Godhead “concur” in the
work, and that the work is to be attributed to each of the divine persons.
Hebrews 10:5 teaches that incarnation is the work of the Father, Philippians
2:7 that it is the work of the Son, and Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:18, 20 that it
is the work of the Spirit.146
5. Regeneration as the proper work of the Spirit. Although the Spirit is
involved in all of the work of God ad extra, there are “especial works” that
are considered as the operations of the Spirit—notably those works relating to
“the calling, building, and carrying on the church unto perfection.” Owen
further divides the work of the Spirit into three parts, “1. Of sanctifying grace;
2. Of especial gifts; 3. Of peculiar evangelical privileges.” Owen also declares
that regeneration is “the proper and peculiar work of the Holy Spirit.”147 All
of these works stand in the category of “applicatory” as distinct from
“immanent” or “transient” works of the Godhead.148 From the trinitarian
perspective the question arises, as in the case of the incarnation of the Son, as
to how the Spirit is considered the particular author of the gifts of calling,
regeneration, faith, and sanctification when all of the ad extra works of God
are the works of the one, entire Godhead.
For many of the commentators on the Heidelberg Catechism, the issue of
the opera appropriata of the Spirit was raised directly by questions and
answers 53 and 65:
Q. 53. What dost thou believe concerning the Holy Ghost?
A. First, that he is true and co-essential God with the Father and the
Son; secondly, that he is also given unto me, to make me by a true
faith, partaker of Christ, and all his benefits, that he may comfort me,
and abide with me forever …
Q. 65. Since then we are made partaker of Christ and all his benefits by
faith only, whence comes this faith?
A. The Holy Ghost works it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy
gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.149
Under the former question, Ursinus argues that the effectual working of the
Spirit in believers belongs to “the giving of the Holy Ghost by the Father and
the Son” and, therefore, must be understood as a trinitarian work that respects
the “order of working” of the three persons in the Godhead. This order is “the
same as the order of their existence”: “the will of the Father precedes, the will
of the Son comes next, and that of the Holy Ghost follows the will of both the
Father and the Son, yet not in time, but in order.”150 Accordingly, by way of
example, Scripture teaches that faith is the gift of the Father (Eph. 2:8), but
also that the apostles prayed to Christ that their faith might be increased (Luke
17:5), and that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of faith” (2 Cor. 4:13). The
“outward” work of conferring faith, is, thus, “common to the three persons,”
but it is ascribed peculiarly to the Spirit—so that, “according to the
distribution of the work of grace among the divine Persons … the Father
ordained grace for the elect, the Son purchased it, and the Holy Ghost applies
and dispenses it to the favorites of God.”151
1 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiv.1.
2 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 134, cols. 1–2.
3 Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.iv; Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140; Cheynell,
Triunity, p. 326; Witsius, Exercitationes, vii.1.
4 Witsius, Exercitationes, vii.1.
5 Henry, Exposition, Mal. 2:10 in loc.; cf. Ridgley, Body of Divinity, II, p.
603.
6 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.v.3 (col. 539).
7 Owen, Hebrews, 12:9, VIII, pp. 269–271.
8 Henry, Exposition, Acts 17:26–28 in loc.
9 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140; cf. Calvin, Commentary on Isaiah, 9:6 (CTS
Isaiah, I, pp. 311–12); Poole, Commentary, Isa. 9:6 in loc. (II, pp. 347–7);
Trapp, Commentary, Isa. 9:6 in loc. (III, p. 320).
10 Cheynell, Triunity, p. 326.
11Cf., explicitly, Trapp, Commentary, Matt. 6:9 (V, p. 92); Watson, Body of
Divinity, p. 401; and implied in Flavel, Exposition of the Catechism, in Works,
VI, pp. 296–297; Poole, Commentary, Matt. 6:9 (III, p. 27); Henry,
Exposition, Matt.6:9 in loc.; Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), II, pp. 602–
607.
12Witsius, Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, VII (pp. 154–155); Van der
Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, II, p. 415.
13Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, Matt.6:9 in loc. (CTS Harmony, I, p.
317).
14 Calvin, Institutes, III.xx.34, 36–38.
15 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.20.
16 Calvin, Commentary on John, 17:8 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 171).
17 Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 626–627.
18 Witsius, Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, VII (p. 155).
19Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, II, p. 414, citing
Heidelberg Catechism, q. 120.
20 Racovian Catechism, iii.1 (p. 34); iv.1 (pp. 91, 97–98).
21 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, pp 325–326); Venema, Inst.
theol., x (p. 219); cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, 1 Cor. 8:6 in
loc; Poole, Commentary, 1 Cor. 8:6 in loc. (III, p. 564)
22 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.v.3 (col. 539), citing John 3:31; Rom.
9:5; and Heb. 1:3.
23 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia I, objectiones: “Non opposite ad
Filium & Spiritum S., sed opposite ad Deos fictitios Gentilium” (responsio ad
obj. 1); cf. Poole, Commentary, in loc. (III, pp. 367–368); Diodati, Pious and
Learned Annotations, in loc.
24 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix: “Tres numero Dii non possunt esse unus, sed
tres numero personae, quse participant eardem essentiam divinam” (resp. ad
obj. 2).
25 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, obj. 3 & resp. “Ubi sunt unum & tria, ibi sunt
quatuor. R. Si sunt realiter distincta ab essentia; sed hic non”; cf. the further
discussion of this text below, 6.2 (C.2).
26 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.1.
27 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 193, citing
also Rom. 3:25; 1 Cor. 13:13; and Gal. 4:6.
28 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiv.2; cf. Junius, Theses theol., XIII.2; Arminius,
Disputationes publicae V.1.
29 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 193.
30 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 2).
31Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195, citing
Ps. 2:7; John 5:26.
32 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195.
33 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140.
34Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195, citing
John 20:17.
35 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140.
36 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195.
37 See, e.g., Abraham Hellenbroeck, Het Hooglied van Salomo verklaart en
vergeestelyk (Amsterdam: Hendrik Burgers, 1718).
38 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, pp. 195–196.
39Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 196; cf.
Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140.
40 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 140.
41 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.20.
42 Junius, Theses theol., XIII.5.
43De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.7, citing Bull, Defensio, IV.i.1–6,
without noting Bull’s fairly radical subordination of the Son.
44 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xv.6; Van Til, Theol. rev.
compendium, II.iii (pp. 45–46); De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.7.
45 E.g., Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.ix–xii; cf. Vii.vii.
46 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiv.1.
47 Marckius, Compendium, V.vii.
48 Junius, Theses theol., XIII.7; cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol.,
II.xv.6
49 Wendelin, Christianae theologiae libri duo, I.ii.4 (3).
50 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.iv–vii.
51 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, III.ii.
52 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.iv.
53 Thus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, XXVIII.15; John of Damascus, De
fidei orthodoxa, I.8; cf. Forbes, Institutiones, I.xx; with Witsius,
Exercitationes, VII.vi.
54 John of Damascus, De fidei orthodoxa, I.8.
55 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.iv.
56 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.v.
57 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xv.6.
58 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, III.i–ii.
59 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 193; cf. Beza
et al., Propositions and Principles, III.i.
60 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.vi.
61 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 193.
62 Witsius, Exercitationes, VII.viii–xvi.
63 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 193.
64 Witsius, Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, VII (p. 154).
65 Witsius, Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, VII (p. 155).
66 Loci communes, II.xvii.1 (p. 411): “Vere quidem Deus ad nos venire
dicitur, multis modis. Proprie tamen & singulariter venit filius Dei, qui ipse
est vere Deus, in natura humana ad servandum humanum genus. Etsi enim
Deus sit ubique, tamen eum venisse dicimus, quoniam induit naturam
humanam: atque ita dicimus venisse ad nos, & sese nobis, repraesentasse &
Patrem & Filium, & Spiritum sanctum. Etsi enim opera Trinitatis, quod ad
interna attinet, sint singularia, qualia sunt generare, spirare, procedere, ista
enim fiunt a vi divina, quae tribus personis est communis, tamen ea, quod ad
externa attinet, sunt indivisa. Cur ergo, inquies, solus Filius dicitur
incarnatus?”
67 Musculus, Loci communes, cap.18 (p. 145): “Sic, inquiunt, tres sacrae
Triadis personae operatae quidem sunt in opere incarnationis huius, verum
una ex illis tantum carnem induit.”
68 Vermigli, Commonplaces, II.xvii (p. 599, col. 2).
69 Loci communes, II.xvii.1 (p. 411): “Vere quidem Deus ad nos venire
dicitur, multis modis. Proprie tamen & singulariter venit filius Dei, qui ipse
est vere Deus, in natura humana ad servandum humanum genus. Etsi enim
Deus sit ubique, tamen eum venisse dicimus, quoniam induit naturam
humanam: atque ita dicimus venisse ad nos, & sese nobis, repraesentasse &
Patrem & Filium, & Spiritum sanctum. Etsi enim opera Trinitatis, quod ad
interna attinet, sint singularia, qualia sunt generare, spirare, procedere, ista
enim fiunt a vi divina, quae tribus personis est communis, tamen ea, quod ad
externa attinet, sunt indivisa. Cur ergo, inquies, solus Filius dicitur
incarnatus?”
70Loci communes, II.xvii.1 (p. 411): “Durum quidem illud videri potest, idem
esse & efficientem causam, & effectum.”
71 Calvin, Commentary on John, 17:10 (CTS John, II, p. 174).
72 Vermigli, Commonplaces, II.xvii (p. 600, col. 1).
73 Vermigli, Commonplaces, II.xvii (p. 600, col. 1).
74 Polanus, Syntagma, Synopsis libri IV, V.
75 Polanus, Syntagma, IV.iii (p. 237, col. 1).
76 Wollebius, Compendium, I.iv, canons B.ii.
77Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 128); cf. the citations in Heppe, Reformed
Dogmatics, pp. 116–117.
78 Witsius, Exercitationes, VI.ii.
79 Witsius, Exercitationes, VI.ii; cf. Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.16.
80 Perkins, Golden Chaine, vi, in Workes, p. 15, col. 1.
81 Wollebius, Compendium, I.iv, canons A.i.
82 Wollebius, Compendium, I.iv, canons A.ii.
83 Wollebius, Compendium, I.iv, canons A.i.
84 Owen, Divine Original, in Works, XVI, p. 342.
85 Leigh, Body of Divinity, II.xvi (p. 253).
86 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xv.6; Amyraut et al., Syntagma
thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.15; Van Til, Theol. rev. compendium, II.iii (pp.
45–46).
87 Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.17; cf. Gürtler,
Synopsis theol., vi.25–26, 31, 33.
88 De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.8; cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-
practica theol., II.xv.6; Van Til, Theol. rev. compendium, II.iii (pp. 45–46).
The perpetuation of this reading of the Psalm in conjunction with Acts long
beyond the high orthodox era is seen in Bengel, Gnomon, Acts 4:27 in loc.
—“agit Psalmus ille de regno Christi.”
89Calvin, Commentary upon the Psalms, 2:7 in loc. (CTS Psalms, I, pp. 16–
18).
90 Cf. Ainsworth, Annotations upon the Psalms, 2:7 in loc.; Dickson,
Exposition of the Psalms, in loc.; Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in
loc.; Poole, Commentary, in loc. (II, p. 3).
91 Poole, Commentary, in loc. (II, p. 3).
92 Arnold, Religio Sociniana seu Catechesis Racoviana … refutata, i.16, 19.
93Cf. Owen’s brief note on the text in Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII,
pp. 213–214.
94 De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.8.
95 De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.8.
96 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xv.6; Van Til, Theol. rev.
compendium, II.iii (p. 46). On the filioque, see below 7.4 (A.2).
97Ames Medulla, I.v.15; Voetius, Syllabus problematum, iv (fol. H4v);
Venema, Inst. theol., x (p. 220).
98 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, III.v.
99 Witsius, Exercitations, VI.iii; Beza et al., Propositions and Principles,
IV.iv.
100 Witsius, Exercitations, VI.iii.
101 Witsius, Exercitations, VI.iii; citing 2 Cor. 5:19 and Col. 1:20.
102 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 15, col. 1).
103 Witsius, Exercitations, VI.iii.
104 Witsius, Exercitations, VI.iii; cf. Forbes, Instructiones in hist. theol, I.10.
105 Heidegger, Corpus theol., iv.45; cf. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 118.
106Polanus, Syntagma theol., IV.iii (p. 237, col. 1); cf. the discussion in
Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 149–151.
107 Heidegger, Corpus theol., iv.45; cf. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 118.
108 Goodwin, Work of the Holy Ghost, IX.i (p. 405).
109 Venema, Inst. theol., x (p. 222).
110 Perkins, Golden Chaine, VI (p. 15, col. 1).
111Polanus, Syntagma, IV.ix (p. 245, col. 1); cf. Scharpius, Cursus theol., I,
cols. 244–245.
112 Polanus, Syntagma theol., IV.viii (p. 244, col. 2).
113Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, p. 169, col. 1A–B; also, see Wollebius,
Compendium, I.xvii, props. 3, 4, 6, 8; Ames, Marrow, I.xix.4–6 (where the
pactum salutis enters the formulation); Conf. West, VIII.i and iii; and Watson,
Body of Practical Divinity, IV.6 (p. 192).
114Perkins, Trestise of Predestination, p. 608, cols. 1D–2A; cf. Golden
Chaine, p. 105, col. 2A.
115 Owen, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, in Works, I, p. 145.
116 Owen, ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, in Works, I, p. 145.
117 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 194, citing
Jer. 30:21 and John 17:6; cf. Cocceius, Summa theol., xxxiii.1–6; Witsius,
Oeconomia foederum, II.ii.2, 10; iii.2.
118 Polanus, Syntagma, VI.xiii (p. 364, col. 2).
119 Witsius, Exercitations, XIV.xvii.
120 Witsius, De oeconomia foederis, II.ii.2–4.
121 N.B., given that the topics in the following sections belong to the broader
body of doctrine, I have presented them only from the perspective of the
trinitarian work ad extra and the concept of opera appropriata—there is no
attempt to offer a full discussion of the various topics.
122 Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.16.
123 Cf. Owen, Pneumatologia, III.1, in Works, III, p. 209; Venema, Inst.
theol., xiv (p. 260); cf. Henry, “On Some Implications of the ‘Ex Patre
Filioque,’ ” pp. 22–23.
124 Thus, e.g., Bonaventure, Breviloquium, VI.1. See above 1.3 (A.2, 3).
125 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 260).
126 Owen, Pneumatologia, III.1, in Works, III, p. 209.
127 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxv.3.
128 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 194
129 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 194.
130 Cf. Ball, Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, pp. 200–201.
131 Goodwin, Work of the Holy Ghost, I.ii (p. 9).
132 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, pp. 194–195.
133 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195.
134 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xiv.1.
135Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 195; cf.
Witsius, Oeconomia foederum, II.iii.5–7.
136 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 262).
137 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 262).
138Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, Gen. 1:1 in loc. (CTS Genesis, I, pp. 70–
72); and see PRRD, III, 4.2 (B.6) for discussion of Elohim as a divine name.
139 Augustine, Letter XI, to Nebridus, in NPNF, 1 series, I, pp. 228–230.
140 Augustine, Letter XI, to Nebridus, 3 (p. 229).
141 Augustine, Letter XI, to Nebridus, 5 (p. 230). N.B., “mode” or “modality”
in this context is unrelated to the problem of “modalism” as exhibited in the
patristic heresy known as Modalistic Monarchianism, inasmuch as the
“modes” in Modalistic Monarchianism are “roles” that belong to God’s
revelation in the temporal economy, whereas the “modes” in Augustine’s
language are logical modalities representing the inward disposition of the
divine essence.
142 Witsius, Exercitations, XIV.iv.
143 Polanus, Syntagma, VI.xiii (p. 364, col. 1).
144 Polanus, Syntagma, VI.xiii (p. 364, col. 1).
145 Polanus, Syntagma, VI.xiii (p. 364, col. 1).
146 Witsius, Exercitations, XIV.xv.
147Owen, Pneumatologia, II.5-III.1, in Works, 3, pp. 206–207; cf. Witsius,
Exercitations, XXXIII.xxxv–xxxvi.
148 Goodwin, Work of the Holy Ghost, IX.i (p. 405), cited, above, 5.2 (C.1).
149 Heidelberg Catechism, qq. 53, 65, in Schaff, Creeds, III, pp. 324, 328.
150 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 281.
151 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, II, p. 5.
 6
The Person and Deity of the Son
6.1 The Person and Generation of the Son
A. The Personality or Personhood of the Son: Issues and Debate
1. Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God. Few objections had
ever been raised in the history of the church to the personality of Son apart
from his divinity—except for the antitrinitarian theory of Sabellius, Noetus,
and their followers—but in the late seventeenth century the Arminian Le
Clerc attempted to render Logos in John 1:1 as “reason” and to argue that the
Son was no more than “the eternal reason of God” or “a quality in God.” In
addition, the Socinians, although they were quite willing to identify Christ as
“Son of God,” grounded the identification not in the essential divinity of
Christ but in Jesus’ appointment to the office of Mediator, in his miraculous
birth from the virgin Mary, in his extraordinary spiritual gifts and his
resurrection, and in the exceeding love of God for him. Calovius managed to
list some thirteen reasons, gathered out of various Socinian works—other than
essential divinity or divine Sonship—that the Socinians used to explain the
biblical language of Christ as “Son of God.”1 The orthodox theologians
consistently, therefore, offer arguments for the unique personality or
personhood of the divine Son and his eternal generation from the Father—
whether against the classical heresies and their more recent representatives or,
in the high and late orthodox eras, specifically against Le Clerc, the
Socinians, various other antitrinitarians, and those who followed their
arguments.2 Like the ongoing complaint against Epicureans and skeptics,
orthodox-era complaint against classical trinitarian heresies should not be
understood as pro forma attacks on ancient problems but as present worries
over their contemporary versions, heresies revived in the wake either of a
more historically oriented patristic scholarship or as the result of changing
patterns of exegesis.3
As a preliminary point of argument, the orthodox acknowledge that the
various grounds acknowledged by the Socinians for identifying Christ as the
Son of God are genuine evidences of Christ’s sonship, but not at all suitable
grounds for the identification of him as Son. Were he not the Son of God,
none of these evidences of Sonship would belong to him: he would not be the
Mediator, he would not have been miraculously born or endowed with such a
degree of spiritual gifts, and he would not have been raised from the dead.4
Thus, specifically,
 that Christ is the Son of God’s love, and that he, who is the begotten
Son, is also the beloved Son of God, is certain; but God’s love to him is
not the foundation or cause of this relation. The reason why he is the
Son of God, is not because God loves him; but the reason why he loves
him, is because he is the Son of God.5
Rather Christ is called Son of God, in his divinity, because of his relation to
God the Father in the order of the inward subsistence of the Godhead.
Hoornbeeck argues the point, beginning with an extended examination of
Psalm 2:7, “thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee,” using the
analogia scripturae to draw out the messianic understanding of the Psalm and
the eternality of the begetting of the Son.6 Ridgley notes that personal
pronouns are used to distinguish the Father and the Son—as in Psalm 110.
The name “Son of God,” whatever else it entails, very clearly “denotes him a
Person distinct from the Father” as do the frequent New Testament references
to the sending of the Son by the Father. Moreover, references to the Son as
Redeemer, Mediator, Surety, Creator, Prophet, Priest, King, also denote
personality “and all those works which he performs, as sustaining these
characters or relations, are properly personal.”7 Neither are the Father or the
Spirit ever referred to by these names or said to do the work indicated by
them.
As indicated above in the context of antitrinitarian objections, the title
“Son of God” itself was a major point of debate. Certainly, all human beings
can be called “sons” or “children” of God—but, contrary to the claims of the
Socinians, this sonship does not merely refer to Christ’s birth from the Virgin
Mary.8 The identification of Christ as “Son of God” carries with it a distinct
“force and meaning,” a “higher sense” than other applications of the phrase:
he is called “the son of God with power” (Rom. 1:4), “the first-born of every
creature” (Col. 1:15), “the only-begotten Son” (John 1:18), and God’s “own
Son” (Rom. 8:32), all indicating that he is called Son of God in a manner
peculiar to him, and on the ground of “something higher than his human
nature.”9 The text in Colossians 1:15 indicates, for example, not that he was
“created” but that he was genitus, prior to all creatures.10 This conclusion
follows from the fact that Scripture identifies him as the firstborn of every
creature, speaks of his glory as the only-begotten Son and of his identity as
the divine Word before his incarnation and the assumption of the flesh: he is
called “Son of God” because of his divine essence—which is the foundation
of the incarnation, his mediatorial office, and his work of redemption.11
The orthodox identify three exegetical arguments used by the Socinians
against the traditional claim that the title “Son of God” is an indication of
divinity. First, from the nativity as recounted in Luke 1:31–35, where the
angel announces to Mary that Holy Spirit shall “come upon” her and the
power of the “Highest” shall “overshadow” her and that, therefore, her child
shall be “called the Son of God.”12 To the Socinian theologian or exegete, the
text simply indicated that the divine title was accorded to the human Jesus
because he was born by the agency of the Spirit.13 Second, the divinity of
Christ was questioned on the basis of the argument, drawn from John 10:36,
“Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world,
‘Thou blasphemest’; because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” The inference
here is that the title “Son of God” rests on the sanctification and sending of
Jesus by the Father, namely, on the appointment of Jesus to the office of
Mediator, not on his divinity.14 The third argument against sonship implying
divinity, based on the citation of Psalm 2:7 in Acts 13:32–33, was particularly
dangerous to the seventeenth-century orthodox position. Given the citation of
the Psalm in Acts 13:33, it had an assured christological reference and, in the
view of a large number, perhaps the majority of precritical exegetes, a very
specific reference to the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. In this
particular facet of the debate, the literal meaning and limits of Acts 13:32–33
were turned against the traditional dogmatic understanding—yielding the
dilemma that the very text used to argue the traditional doctrine had now been
turned against it. The text in Acts reads, “we declare unto you glad tidings,
how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the
same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also
written in the second psalm, ‘Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten
thee.’ ” Where the tradition had used the citation to argue a christological
reading of the Psalm as its primary meaning, the antitrinitarian criticism
extended the argument to read the Psalm through the text of Acts 13:32–33,
yielding the argument that the begetting of the Son in the Psalm was not a
reference to the inner life of the Trinity but rather to the resurrection.15
In response to each of these three arguments, the Reformed note that the
biblical texts cited do not state causes or reasons for Christ to be called the
Son of God but rather of the signs given to the world that he is indeed God’s
Son: the texts themselves indicate the priority of Christ’s sonship over the
event referred to in the text and identify the event as a manifestation of the
sonship. In the case of Luke 1:35, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,” the phrase,
“therefore also” (διὸ καὶ), “does not point to his miraculous birth as the only
reason why he should be so designated”; rather, the phrase teaches his sonship
and eternal generation and leads the reader “to the sure conclusion that he
who was born of Mary was the Son of God.”16
As for the claim, resting on John 10:36, that Christ is called Son of God
because of his sanctification by the Father to the mediatorial office, the text
itself indicates otherwise, given the preceding statement, “I and the Father are
one” (v. 30), which “gave offense to the Jews,” given its implication of
divinity: the following text (vv. 35–36) is part of Jesus’ response to the Jewish
objectors. The reference to his sanctification by the Father is not a basis for
his being named “Son of God,” but an appeal “to his sanctification by the
Father and to his mission into the world in evidence of the reality of his
sonship.”17 The use of Acts 13:32–33 to disprove eternal divine sonship fails
for similar reasons. Diodati specifically counters this antitrinitarian claim in
his Annotations: “not that the eternal Son was engendered of the Father at his
resurrection, or after it, but because by it all humane weaknesse which he had
put on, being put off, he was gloriously, and undoubtedly declared to be the
Son of God.”18 The Psalm itself, as cited in Acts 13, drives home the point: in
Venema’s reading, Psalm 2:7, “this day have I begotten thee,” does not refer
to the eternal begetting of the Son but to a “public sign” that Christ is the Son
of God, capable of being paraphrased as “I have not only constituted thee my
Son, but I have shown that thou art also,” similar to the implication of
Matthew 3:17, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”19
2. Sonship and the problem of subordination. The orthodox examine
also a series of objections drawn from Scripture: first, resting on Acts 2:36,
some have asserted that Christus factus est Dominus post resurrectionem.
This text refers not to his “essential lordship, which he had from the
foundation of the world,” argues Rijssen, “but to the fulness of the
manifestation and inauguration of his personal and economical rule, which is
given to him as he is the God-man.”20 Similarly, from Hebrews 1:2 it can be
argued that in so far as Christ had to be “constituted” heir of God, he must not
be essentially divine: yet his being heir is “not a gift of grace but a property of
his nature” in other words, “he is not Son in so far as he is heir, but heir
insofar as he is Son.”21
At various points in his exegesis of John 14, Calvin indicates that various
heretics have abused the text—most notably, perhaps, verse 28, “for the
Father is greater than I,” used by the Arians to claim that Christ “is some sort
of inferior God.” Still, Calvin does not accept the usual orthodox patristic
reading of the text: the fathers, in order to refute the Arians, referred the
passage to Christ’s humanity, but, comments Calvin, the subordination of
Christ to the Father does not refer here either to his humanity or to his divinity
or, indeed, to the way in which Christ differs from the Father, but instead to
the reason that “he descended to us,” namely, “to unite us to God.”22
Among the later exegetes, Diodati specifically reflects Calvin’s reading of
the text at the point that Christ speaks of the Father as greater than himself (v.
28), without, however, explicitly contradicting the patristic reading of the
text:
Is greater] not in respect of his nature or essentiall glory, for therein the
Sonne is equall with the Father, John 5:18; Phil. 2:6, but in the order of
redemption, in which the Father holds the degree of party principall, as
representing the whole Deity in its glory and Majesty: and the Sonne as
that of Mediatour of peace and Reconciliator. The meaning is: seeing
that I am issued from the Father, and have been manifested in the flesh
for this worke, my return to the Father in his glory, shall be a certain
proof to you that all things are accomplished.23
Hutcheson reads the text similarly, making no reference at all to the use of
this passage in arguments over the essential equality of the Son with the
Father, but refers it to the greatness of the Father in contrast to Christ’s
humanity and mediatorial office in the state of humiliation: Christ here tells
believers that, in “departing out of the world … as God he layeth aside that
veil under which he appeared in his state of humiliation,” evidencing “not
only his advancement” but also his accomplishment of “all things for which
he came into the world.” In the eschaton, on grounds of his accomplishment,
the Mediator will be “advanced to be next in glory to the Father.”24
Poole, by contrast, lines out both the patristic and the more distinctly
Reformed reading. He notes, explicitly against the Arians and the Socinians,
that the text does not indicate the Father to be “greater in essence” than the
Son, but can be understood to have three meanings:
1. Either as to the order amongst the Divine Persons; because the Father
begat, the Son is begotten; the Father is he from whom the Son
proceeded by eternal generation: in which sense, divers of the ancients,
amongst whom Athanasius, Cyril, and Augustine, and some modern
interpreters, understand it. Or, 2. As a Mediator sent from the Father, so
he is greater than I. Or, 3. In respect of my present state, while I am here
in the form of a servant; and in my state of humiliation.25
The last of these meanings, comments Poole, giving the nod to the Reformed
reading of the text without criticizing the fathers, is the best of the three in
view of the preceding text, “yea would rejoice, because I said, I go unto my
Father”—indicating the passage from the state of humiliation into the state of
exaltation.26
The divinity of the Son seems also to be denied by Colossians 1:15, which
calls him “the firstborn of all creatures.” Rijssen points out that the Greek of
the text is protokotos and not protoktistos: it refers to the lordship that
Christ has over all things made by him. He does not receive this title as a
created thing set foremost among creatures, for if this were so, the text would
not also say that he was in the beginning and that he formed all things.27
Thus, the text allows two readings, namely, that the “first-born” is the one
“begotten by the Father, of his own proper essence, and equall with him
before anything was created … that is to say, everlasting” or that “he is as
Gods great Deputy and Viceregent in the world, as the first-born were in
families.”28 Davenant specifically adds that the text must not be used to infer
a begetting of the Son in time or, as the Arians claimed, that the Son is a
creature.29 A similar explanation obtains in the case of Rev. 3:14, where
Christ is called the principium creaturae Dei. This text speaks of Christ “not
passively, as if he were the first creature, but actively, as if all creatures take
their origin from him—as explained in the citation from Paul,”30 although
many of the Reformed exegetes restrict the sense of this usage of “beginning”
to mean the redemptive beginning of those “creatures of God” that have been
“created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (cf. Eph. 2:10).31 And, again, when
it is said that Christ habet principium, it is said communicationis, by
communication, not inchoationis, not by way of a beginning.32
Some would also use 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 against the divinity of the Son—
for there Scripture states that the Father is the one God to the exclusion of
other Gods. The context here, however, does not manifest a contrast being
made between the divinity of the Father and the divinity of the Son or the
Spirit, but rather—as is seen from verse 4—a contrast between the divinity of
the true God and the false claims to divinity of the idols.33 Thus, the text of
verses 4 and 5 indicates that “there is none other God but one” even though
there are “many” beings and things identified as “gods” and “lords” both “in
heaven and on earth”: this is the common usage whether of Scripture or of
human language in general, inasmuch as the term “god” is applied “to the true
God, and to divers creatures, though not in an equal sense of truth, nor in
equall reality, but either by errour, or by some resemblance, or analogy.”34
When the text goes on to declare “one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and
we by him” (v. 6), it in no way implies that Christ is not God—no more than
it takes dominion away from the Father by calling Christ “Lord.” The text
does distinguish between God the Father in his eternal glory and God the Son
in his mediatorial work, especially in the phrase “and we by him.”35 The
language “of whom are all things” with reference to the Father and “by whom
are all things” with reference to Christ refers specifically to the “order of
working in the holy Trinity”—showing also that the order of working of the
Godhead is the same in redemption as it is in creation.36
3. Divine begetting and incarnation: debate over eternity and
immutability. From the earliest encounter with antitrinitarians, the Reformed
were pressed to argue the divine begetting of the Word and the incarnation as
the operations of an eternal and immutable being. Calvin noted the “outcry”
of certain persons who feared to deny the divinity of Christ but who
nonetheless denied his eternity, claiming that “the Word only began to be
when God opened his sacred mouth in the creation of the world.”37 To claim
this is to deny the immutability of God. Rather, the interpretation of the text
ought to observe the rule that “the names of God, which have respect to
external work, began to be ascribed to him from the existence of the work, as
when he is called the Creator of heaven and earth.” Even so “piety does not
recognize or admit any name which might indicate that a change had taken
place in God himself.”38 Calvin returned to the question from a different
perspective when confronting Servetus’ claim that Christ’s sonship derived
from the fact that “he was begotten in the womb of the Virgin by the Holy
Spirit.” On the contrary, Calvin insists that “the definition of the Church
stands unmoved, that he is accounted the Son of God” in his humanity
“because the Word begotten by the Father before all ages assumed human
nature by hypostatic union, a term used by ancient writers to denote the union
which of two natures constitutes one person,” and the Word himself “is called
a Son on account of his Godhead and eternal essence.”39
In the course of the seventeenth-century debate with the Socinians, the
Reformed orthodox continued to debate the problem of incarnation, divine
sonship, and the doctrine of the full divinity of the Son. Socinian theologians
continued to interpret the title “Son of God,” as found in Luke 1:35, as no
more than a reference to Jesus’ miraculous birth—with the result that the
incarnation was read as a “miraculous exercise of divine power” and “Son of
God” a term indicating Jesus’ origin by the work of the Spirit, not an
indication that “as we believe, he proceeded from eternity from God”40 The
filiation of the Son is a most unique “communication of essence from the
Father” by an eternal act of generation. This conclusion arises from the fact
that Christ is not simply called “the Son” of God by way of eminence (Matt.
16:16; Heb. 1:5) but God’s “own Son” (John 5:18; Rom. 8:2) and is identified
as the “only begotten Son” (John 1:14, 18) and the “most beloved” Son (Matt.
3:17), all implying essential Sonship. “If he were called Son only on account
of a gracious communication of existence and glory,” Turretin argues, he
would not have been called God’s “own Son” or the “only begotten”: sonship
resting on the “communication of existence and glory” is attributed to angels,
to Adam, to believers, and even to magistrates, none of whom are also
identified as God’s “only” Son or as the “only begotten.”
Therefore it is necessary that there be some other mode of filiation
proper and singular to him, which can be no other than by generation,
so that by nature he may obtain what is conferred on others by grace, as
 the apostle argues in Hebrews 1:5, where he teaches that Christ is so the
Son that, with respect to him, not even angels are or can be called
sons.41
This filiation, moreover, does not in any way contradict the divine
attributes and cannot be used as an argument against the divine immutability.
The logical objection is simple:
The Son of God, true God, was made man in time, prior to which he
was not man. God is not, therefore, utterly immutable.42
This problem was addressed by the fathers, who argue that the Son was
incarnate without alteration of his divinity: in the incarnation, the divinity
does not take on human attributes and the humanity is not absorbed into the
divine—either of these things would indeed indicate change in God, but
neither occurs in the incarnation. There is no mutation of the Logos in
substance or nature. Beyond this, the mutation belongs to that which comes
into existence, namely, the human nature of Christ, which did come to exist in
time, before which it did not exist, and which was exalted by gifts conferred
in the union. The divine nature, however, existed prior to the union and was
not altered by it.43
B. The Eternal Generation of the Son
1. Orthodoxy in polemic against the Socinians. Underlying the Socinian
attack on the traditional doctrine of the Trinity was their radical assumption of
the oneness of God as underscored by their denial of the generability of divine
substance. Thus, the Socinians argued that
this generation out of the Father’s essence involves a contradiction. For
if Christ had been generated out of the essence of his Father, he must
have taken either a part of it, or the whole. He could not have taken a
part of it, because the divine essence is indivisible. Neither could he
have taken the whole; for in this case the Father would have ceased to
be the Father, and would have become the Son: and again, since the
divine essence is numerically one, and therefore incommunicable, this
could by no means have happened.44
From Owen’s perspective, the Socinian claim is a product of rationalistic
reductionism: “this is the fruit of measuring spiritual things by carnal, infinite
by finite, God by ourselves, the object of faith by corrupted rules of corrupted
reason.”45 The Socinians had, in other words, failed to relegate reason to an
ancillary status—failing both to recognize its corruption and limitation or to
acknowledge its proper use.46 Owen begins with the premiss that the divine
begetting is in fact indicated by Scripture. Given this revelation from God, the
notion of a divine begetting cannot be declared impossible by human reason.
What is more, once the distinction between infinite God and the finite
creation is acknowledged, the theologian ought to be prepared to recognize
that “what is impossible in finite, limited essences, may be possible and
convenient to that which is infinite and unlimited, as is that whereof we
speak.”47 Clearly, in a finite essence, generation implies some sort of division
or separation—but in the infinite, simple divine essence, generation does not
indicate a division or separation, much less a partitioning of the divine
essence. Traditional orthodoxy has defined the generation as a communication
of “personal existence” or subsistence without any “multiplication or
division” of the divine essence. In the generation of the Son, the divine
essence remains undivided. The claim that such a generation is impossible,
Owen comments, rests on the error of arguing limitations of the divine on the
basis of “properties and attendancies of that which is finite.”48
Just as the general arguments of the Socinians are not to the point, so do
their exegetical arguments miss the mark. The Racovian Catechism indicates
that the eternal generation of the Son is argued primarily from four texts—in
the order of the catechism’s argumentation, Micah 5:2; Psalm 2:7; Psalm
110:3; and Proverbs 8:23. In the Socinian view, Micah 5:2—“But thou,
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose
goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” or, as in the Vulgate,
“from the days of eternity”—has no reference at all to the generation of Christ
from the Father nor reference to an eternal event, but rather to “beginnings
and days, which in eternity have not place”: the word olam, they note, ought
to be rendered “the days of an age,” not as “everlasting” or “days of eternity.”
As for the reference to a nativity here, the reference is to Christ only by way
of his ancestor, David, who was from Bethlehem.49
In response, Owen comments that the Reformed use of this text has been
misrepresented by the Socinians: it has been used, he indicates, to argue the
eternity of Christ’s generation, the generation of Christ from the Father
having been argued from numerous other texts. Thus, the Socinian arguments
that the text does not refer to the generation of Christ’s essence from the
Father are simply not to the point—that doctrine is proved elsewhere. As for
the Socinian claim that the text refers to “beginnings and days” and cannot
therefore refer to eternity, Owen notes that there is no reference in the text to
“beginnings” (this is an incorrect rendering of the phrase “from of old”) and
that Scripture often uses references to “days” in precisely this sense, namely,
as comparative references to God’s eternity over against human duration, as
in Job 10:5 and Daniel 7:9. The word olam, moreover, has, admittedly,
“various significations,” indicating a great extent of time, perpetuity, or
eternity: it derives, Owen comments, “from a word signifying ‘to hide,’ and
denotes an unknown, hidden duration.” It can, therefore, indicate simply “a
very long time” or have a sense of perpetuity, as in Genesis 9:12 and 16. With
reference to God’s sovereignty as in Genesis 17:13, or when “ascribed to God
as a property” as in Genesis 21:33, olam does signify “eternal”—as is the
case throughout the Old Testament.50 The usage and meaning of olam, as
supported by the way the Septuagint translates it, is identical to ἀιών in the
New Testament, which can also be understood as “from eternity,” as in 2 Tim.
1:9 and Titus 1:2.51
In the case of Psalm 2:7, the Socinians denied that this refers to “an eternal
and proper generation from the Father,” characterizing the begetting as a
temporal generation not directly or “properly” from the Godhead. “This day”
or “today” signifies a particular time, in fact the time of David’s being
declared “son of God”—and David was “neither begotten from eternity, nor
out of the essence of God.” The Psalm is only applied to Christ in a
secondary, messianic sense by the apostle Paul and the “Author to the
Hebrews.”52 Hoornbeeck replies that the text of the Psalm ought not to be in a
human and temporal manner given its divine subject, but theoprepos, as
attributing a temporal moment to God, who is above time and who is utterly
free of its vicissitudes.” This attribution of a day to God belongs to the pattern
of accommodation of the biblical text to human understanding—the “lisping”
of God to his children.53 Moreover, the Socinian claim of a primary reference
to David and a secondary application to Christ is questionable: the text goes
on, beyond verse 7, to call on the kings of the earth to worship the Son and
are “pronounced blessed” if they “put their trust” in him. This cannot be
referred to David, who was no more worthy of divine worship than any man
—and Scripture, in any case, explicitly says that they are cursed who put their
trust in man (Jer. 17:5–8).54
The next text cited by the Socinians as mistakenly used to argue eternal
generation, Psalm 110:3, is simply rendered incorrectly in the Vulgate as
“before the day star I begot thee” and is not to the point: the text cannot be
pressed against the Protestant teaching on eternal generation, because the
Protestant theologians and exegetes typically do not use it to that purpose.
Owen sets it aside categorically, and with it the Socinian objection.55 Poole
notes several possible readings of the text, now rendered “from the womb of
the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth”: it might be a reference to
Christ’s eternal generation, but equally so to “his human nature and birth,” or,
given the flow of the prophetic testimony in the Psalm, a reference to
“Christ’s subjects and people.” In any case, Poole identifies this text as “the
most difficult and obscure of any in this book” and subject to various readings
—not exactly a primary ground for a doctrinal point.56 In accord with Poole’s
third reading and strongly echoing Calvin, Diodati understood the text as a
reference to the rising up of God’s elect people “at the first manifestation of
[the] Gospel.”57
This leaves Proverbs 8:23, “I was set up from everlasting, from the
beginning, or ever the earth was.” The Racovian Catechism presents the
orthodox conclusion as a standard example of the method of juxtaposing texts
from Scripture and drawing conclusions: the Wisdom of God is begotten from
eternity (Prov. 8:22–24); Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24); therefore
Christ is begotten from eternity. In response to this argument, while not
disputing the syllogistic pattern of biblical interpretation, the Socinians
attempt to undermine the traditional reading of the terms. First, the text in
Proverbs speaks only of “wisdom,” whereas 1 Corinthians 1:24 speaks of “the
wisdom of God”: the middle terms of the syllogism are not equivalent, and
the argument is improper. Second, many exegetes, including some “whom the
Adversaries themselves account to be orthodox,” do not interpret Proverbs as
referring to “wisdom” as a “person,” whereas Paul does identify “wisdom as a
“person.” What is more, third, even if the text in Proverbs refers to wisdom as
a person, the person of reference is the Holy Spirit, not Christ, as
demonstrated from such passages in the Old Testament as Isaiah 4:4; 11:1–5;
and Exodus 31:1–6. Fourth, the Hebrew words rendered “from everlasting” or
“from eternity” ought not to be so translated, but rather as “from the age or
from of old.”58
Against this reading of the text, the orthodox respond that Proverbs 8:23
does indeed refer to the second person of the Trinity “under the name of
Wisdom” and that the text does in fact indicate that the divine wisdom is
“begotten from everlasting.” Nor is the orthodox argument the simple
syllogism proffered and refuted by the Socinians. In the first place, Solomon
clearly intended to refer to the wisdom of God—although the text does not
specify the phrase, the meaning ought to be obvious. This wisdom, moreover,
was with God “in the beginning of his way, before his works of old” (Prov.
8:22), which is affirmed in much the same way of Christ as divine Word in
John 1:1. What is said of Wisdom in Proverbs 8, moreover, cannot be said of
anyone other than the second person of the Trinity—and Christ is called the
wisdom of God “in Scripture, not only in the expression of ὁ Λόγος, but
ῥητῶς [specifically], 1 Cor. 1:30,” and is so called “absolutely and simply” in
Matthew 11:19. The whole chapter in Proverbs, moreover, clearly speaks of
wisdom as a “person.”59 As for the Hebrew word olam, the Reformed
argument is precisely the same as presented with reference to Micah 5:2: the
word can and should be rendered as “eternal” or “from everlasting”—
particularly so in Proverbs 8:23, where “everlasting, from the beginning” is
explained by the phrase in the preceding verse “the Lord possessed me in the
beginning of his way, before his works of old” and by the entire remaining
passage (vv. 24–29), where clearly this wisdom is said to exist before the
creation itself.60
2. The positive doctrine of the Reformed orthodox. The Son is said to
be by generatio à Patre: this generation of the Son is defined as an act of both
the Father and the Son, of the one generating and the one generated, actively
performed by the Father, passively accomplished in the Son. Scripture
explicitly refers to the generation of the Son (Psalm 2:7) and to the fact that
the Son is beloved (dilectus: Matt 3:17; 17:5), the proper (proprius) Son of
God (John 5:18; Rom 8:32), and only begotten (unigenitus: John 1:14, 18;
3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9).61 This generation is, moreover, eternal and perpetual,
and unlike the generation of things in the physical world. Marckius argues,
thus, that the generation of the Son is not a physical but a “hyperphysical”
generation from which—as in the via negativa approach to the attributes—all
“imperfection, dependence, succession, mutation, division, and
multiplication” is absent. Nonetheless, he adds, this is a “proper,” not a
“metaphorical,” generation, a genuine filiation flowing (fluens) from the
Father according to which the Son is the true image of the invisible God, the
representation of the glory and character of the Father’s person (cf. Col. 1:15;
Heb. 1:3). By this generation, the Son is “produced from the Father” in an
“eternal and incomprehensible communication of the unitary divine
essence.”62
Scripture thus teaches, in addition to the divinity of the Son, that he is
“begotten of the Father”: in the second Psalm (v. 7) God declares he has
begotten his Son and in Proverbs 8:24–25 “states that ‘Wisdom was brought
forth from him’ … And this is the true reason why the Son of God is called
‘the only begotten’ (John 1:14) … [and] is distinguished from others, who in
the scripture are called sons of God, either by creation, or by adoption.”63 The
generation of the Son is beyond our comprehension, and the doctrine, as
stated by theology, indicates only “that the Father from all eternity
communicated his name, his perfections, and his glory, to the Son.”64 We
understand the begetting of the Son as from eternity:
It is thus shown by all those passages [in which Christ is called eternal]
that Christ is God, since God is eternal. Christ is not therefore called the
Son, either on account of his conception by the Holy Ghost, or his
appointment to the mediatorial office, or by his resurrection from the
dead, or his exaltation to the Father’s right hand … He is … called the
Son of God, because begotten of the Father, and because, “as the Father
hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself”
(John 5:26). We must observe also that the mode of this generation is
not to be estimated by the laws of human nativity, or any created thing,
 for the heaven is not as far from the earth as the generation of the Son is
from other generations; for in this generation the begetter is not older
than the begotten, nor the generated younger than the generator; both
are eternal, and this generation took place without any mutation.65
Pictet refutes two possible objections to his interpretation of Scripture:
But if anything is said concerning the Father, which is not said
concerning the Son, as when the Father is said to beget the Son, this
only proves that there is a distinction between the Father and the Son …
Again, if the Son is said in any passage to be inferior to the Father, and
to work by the Father, such passage only shows that there is something
in Christ besides the divine nature, viz. the human nature, according to
which he is inferior to the Father, and also that there is a certain order of
operation between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and a kind of
economy; but it by no means proves that Christ, as God, is inferior to
the Father.66
Not only does Pictet move from the logic of his scriptural argument to the
enunciation of a doctrinal determination, he also states one of the central
presuppositions of the Reformed soteriology, the aseity of Christ considered
as God.
6.2 The Full Deity of the Son
A. Exegetical and Doctrinal Argument in the Era of the
Reformation
1. Calvin on the deity of the Son: the shape of argument in the
Institutes. The deity of the Son as second person of the Trinity became a
major issue for Reformed theology early in its development, given the rise of
antitrinitarianism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Reformed
assumption of that the Son is not only divine but also, as God, has all of the
divine attributes, including the attribute of aseity. The argumentation of the
Reformers is perhaps less complex and less neatly marshaled than that of the
orthodox, but its substance and sometimes even its structure is remarkably
similar, particularly in its assumptions that the deity of Christ can be argued
biblically by the fact that Scripture regularly gives to Christ the names and
attributes of God and regularly ascribed to him works that can only be divine
works. In their basic outlines and content the arguments presented by the
orthodox are little different from the discussion found in Calvin’s Institutes.
Immediately after his discussion of the basic issue of the oneness and
threeness of the Godhead, Calvin devoted considerable space to a
demonstration or proof, based on Scripture, of the deity of the Son and the
Spirit before going on to argue the distinction in essence and function
between these two divine persons. Calvin divides his discussion of the
divinity of the Son into a series of responses to heretical objections—notably
the denials of the Son’s eternity and the claim, similar in effect, that the Word
gained an independent subsistence only in the divine act of creation. (On the
latter point, Calvin certainly has in mind the objections of Servetus and other
sixteenth-century antitrinitarians, who had already begun to argue the
differences between pre-Nicene and post-Nicene understandings of God—this
historical debate would only intensify in the seventeenth century.)
The shape of his argument is of interest in itself, inasmuch as he offers first
a general discussion of the deity of the Son based on the identity of the Son as
the Logos of the eternal Father.67 He next devotes two sections of the
Institutes to the identification of Christ by means of divine names given to
him in the Old Testament, notably, Elohim and Jehovah.68 Calvin then
addresses New Testament texts in which Christ is given other names and
attributes assignable only to God,69 and he concludes with a lengthy
discussion of the divine work, particularly the work of salvation, performed
by Christ. The pattern will be reproduced by the Reformed orthodox, who
likewise insisted against various antitrinitarians that the Old as well as the
New Testament was foundational to the doctrines of the Trinity and Christ.70
The divine “Word,” Calvin argues, is nowhere in Scripture used as a name
for a “fleeting and evanescent voice” but rather is the name of “the Wisdom,
ever dwelling with God, and by which all oracles and prophecies were
inspired.” And, since this “Word” is indicated as belonging to God before the
incarnation, it must be understood as “begotten of the Father before all
ages.”71 The divinity of this Word, moreover, is evidenced in its irresistible
power among the prophets and even more so by its presence in the very
creation of the world. To those who claim that the speech of God in creation
is simply a divine “order or command,” Calvin responds with the apostolic
interpretation of creation in Hebrews 1:2, where the agent of creation is
clearly identified as the Son—with confirmation from Proverbs 8:22: clearly,
the agent of creation is the “eternal and essential Word of the Father.”72
The divinity of Christ is also clearly attested throughout the Old Testament
by the divine names given to him and by the divine powers attributed to him.
Calvin notes the messianic Psalm, “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever”
(Ps. 45:6)—and whereas “the Jews quibble that the name Elohim is applied to
angels and sovereign powers,” here to Solomon, the text itself points beyond
the literal sense of Solomon and his coronation to Christ and his eternal
kingdom. Calvin notes that “no passage is to be found in Scripture, where an
eternal throne is set up for a creature”: Christ is identified here as God and as
“the eternal Ruler.” So also in Isaiah 9:6, “Christ is introduced both as God,
and as possessed of supreme power, one of the peculiar attributes of God,”
whereas in Ezekiel 48:35, Christ is identified as “the true Jehovah from whom
righteousness flows.”73 Beyond this, there are the “numerous passages” in
which Jehovah appears in the form of an angel—Calvin comments, following
patristic exegesis, “the orthodox doctors of the Church have correctly and
wisely expounded, that the Word of God was the supreme angel, who then
began, as it were by anticipation, to perform the office of Mediator.”74 In the
New Testament, particularly by way of the fulfillment of Old Testament
prophecies, various divine names and attributes are assigned to Christ. Thus,
Isaiah 8:14 indicates that the “Lord of Hosts” will become “a stone of
stumbling” and a “rock of offense”—and Paul (Rom. 9:33) applies the
prophecy directly to Christ. Similarly, Paul cites the passage in Isaiah 45:23,
“As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall
confess to God,” and applies it to the coming “judgment seat of Christ” (Rom.
14:10–11).75
Finally, Calvin comes to the evidence provided by Christ’s works. This
testimony, in Calvin’s view, is irrefutable:
The divinity of Christ, if judged by the works which are ascribed to him
in Scripture, becomes still more evident. When he said of himself, “My
Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” the Jews, though most dull in
regard to his other sayings, perceived that he was laying claim to divine
power. And, therefore, as John relates (John 5:17), they sought the more
to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that
God was his Father, making himself equal with God. What, then, will
be our stupidity if we do not perceive from the same passage that his
divinity is plainly instructed? To govern the world by his power and
providence, and regulate all things by an energy inherent in himself
(this an Apostle ascribes to him, Heb. 1:3), surely belongs to none but
the Creator. Nor does he merely share the government of the world with
the Father, but also each of the other offices, which cannot be
communicated to creatures. The Lord proclaims by his prophets “I,
even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake”
(Is. 43:25). When, in accordance with this declaration, the Jews thought
that injustice was done to God when Christ forgave sins, he not only
asserted, in distinct terms, that this power belonged to him, but also
proved it by a miracle (Matt. 9:6). We thus see that he possessed in
himself not the ministry of forgiving sins, but the inherent power which
the Lord declares he will not give to another. What! Is it not the
province of God alone to penetrate and interrogate the secret thoughts
of the heart? But Christ also had this power, and therefore we infer that
Christ is God.76
 Exegetically, in his commentaries, Calvin offers his readers far more
material concerning the eternal deity of the Son or Word than can be inferred
from the Institutes. There, by way of example, Calvin offers a very brief
comment on Micah 5:2 in justification of Christ’s eternal sonship—in his
commentary on the text, by way of contrast, he provides an extended analysis
of the point.77 In his commentary, Calvin not only identifies the text as
messianic, he also contrasts the “going forth” of Christ in “the fulness of
time” in the incarnation with the “going forth” from the beginning or “from
the days of eternity” indicated in the text.” The text, according to Calvin,
refers to the eternal Word, the creator of all things, who was to become the
“Head of the Church”: “the going forth of Christ has been from the beginning
or from all ages … Christ who was manifested in the flesh that he might
redeem the Church of God, was the eternal Word … destined by the eternal
counsel of God to be the first-born of every creature.”78 (Calvin’s rendering
of the final clauses of the text, “whose goings forth have been from the
beginning, from the days of ages” [et egressus ejus ab initio, a diebus seculi]
is reminiscent of the Vulgate in its reference to the “beginning” and, like other
similar renderings, would play into the hands of the Socinians, who argued
against a reference to eternity at this point in the text.)
2. The divinity of Christ in Calvin’s commentaries: select texts. Calvin
clearly echoes the traditional trinitarian exegesis in his reading of Genesis
48:15–16, just as he echoes the typical reading of the text by other Reformers
and points toward the later Reformed exegetical and doctrinal tradition: “[15]
… God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which
fed me all my life and unto this day, [16] the Angel which redeemed me from
all evil, bless the lads … and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of
the earth.” Calvin writes,
He so joins the Angel to God as to make him his equal. Truly he offers
him divine worship, and asks the same things from him as from God. If
this be understood indifferently of any angel what ever, the sentence is
absurd … Wherefore it is necessary that Christ should be here meant,
who does not bear in vain the title of Angel, because he had become the
perpetual Mediator. And Paul testifies that he was the Leader and Guide
of the journey of his ancient people (1 Cor. 10:4). He had not yet indeed
been sent by the Father, to approach more nearly to us by taking our
flesh, but because he was always the bond of connection between God
and man, and because God formally manifested himself in no other way
than through him, he is properly called the Angel.79
Calvin’s reading of the various passages concerning the Angel of the Lord
in the account of the liberation of Israel from Egypt follows a similar pattern
of interpretation. Calvin commented extensively on Exodus 3:2–6, in the
spirit of his comment on Genesis 48:16 and with the same Pauline interpretive
confirmation:
And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him … For thus we must
believe that God, as often as he appeared of old to the holy patriarchs,
descended in some way from his majesty, that he might reveal himself
as far as was useful, and as far as their comprehension would admit …
But let us inquire who this Angel was? since soon afterwards he not
only calls himself Jehovah, but claims the glory of the eternal and only
God. Now, although this is an allowable manner of speaking, because
the angels transfer to themselves the person and titles of God … the
ancient teachers of the Church have rightly understood that the Eternal
Son of God is so called in respect to his office as Mediator, which he
figuratively bore from the beginning, although he really took it upon
him only at his Incarnation. And Paul sufficiently expounds this
mystery to us, when he plainly asserts that Christ was the leader of his
people in the Desert (1 Corinthians 10:4).80
Calvin reads Exodus 14:19; 23:20, 23, and 33:14 in accord with his
understanding of the first reference in Exodus to “the Angel of the Lord.”81
Here again, the later orthodox reading of the passages will follow quite
specifically on the traditionary understanding and, in particular the teaching
of the Reformers.
As a final example of exegetical patterns in Calvin’s christological reading
of the Old Testament, we note Malachi 3:1. “Behold, I will send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye
seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant,
who ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” Calvin, like
many other exegetes in the Christian tradition, distinguishes carefully
between the initial “messenger” of the text, identified as John the Baptist, and
the second messenger or “angel,” who is named by the Prophet both “Lord”
and the “messenger [or angel] of the covenant”:
He introduces here, not Jehovah, but the Lord, Adun; and hence he
speaks distinctly of Christ, who is afterwards called the Angel or
Messenger of the covenant. But the word Adun, commonly used for a
Mediator, as in Psalm 110, and also in Daniel 9:17; where it is expressly
said, “Hear, O Jehovah, for the sake of the Lord.”82
If we turn to Calvin’s exegesis of the New Testament, we find a significant
understanding of the divinity of the Son at Luke 1:35, “The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:
therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God.” As Calvin, notes, there are several significant trinitarian points
to be drawn from the text: the clause concerning the “power of the Highest”
appears to be a parallelism with the first clause, leading not only to the
identification of the Holy Spirit as the power of the Highest but, as Calvin
indicates, as “the essential power of God.” Calvin also notes that heretics
“seize on the particle therefore” as evidence that Jesus is merely called Son of
God because of the “remarkable manner” of his conception. This, however,
“is a false conclusion: for, though he was manifested to be the Son of God in
the flesh, it does not follow that he was not the Word begotten of the Father
before all ages.”83
Calvin’s commentary on the prologue to the Gospel of John stands as one
of the few places in the commentaries where Calvin explicitly identifies his
adversaries—in this case, Servetus on doctrinal matters and the “Sorbonne
theologians” on matters of translation. Against the “haughty scoundrel”
Servetus, Calvin argued the impropriety of understanding the juxtaposition of
God and Logos as indicating the beginning of the divine Logos in time for the
“creation of the world, as if he did not exist before his power was made
known by external operation.”84 The text does not indicate “the beginning of
time,” but rather “the beginning” without modifier, meaning that the Logos
was “before all ages.” This is, moreover, precisely the meaning of the next
clause, which states that the Logos was “with God”: the passage expressly
“excludes” the notion that Christ belongs to “the common order of the world”
and makes it equally an insult to God the Father to claim the beginning of the
Logos in time, inasmuch as such a reading would “deprive” God of this
“Eternal Wisdom.”85
In Calvin’s view, the Gospel not only testifies undeniably to the divinity of
Christ but also to the distinct divine subsistence of the Son:
We have already said that the Son of God is thus placed above the
world and above all the creatures, and is declared to have existed before
all ages. But at the same time this mode of expression attributes to him
a distinct personality from the Father; for it would have been absurd in
the Evangelist to say that the Discourse was always with God, if he had
not some kind of subsistence peculiar to himself in God. This passage
serves, therefore, to refute the error of Sabellius; for it shows that the
Son is distinct from the Father.86
Calvin also, here, as in the Institutes, argued the valid use of the patristic
terminology, after indicating his reservations about the use of such descriptors
in speaking of the mystery of the Trinity:
I have already remarked that we ought to be sober in thinking, and
modest in speaking, about such high mysteries. And yet the ancient
 writers of the Church were excusable, when, finding that they could not
in any other way maintain sound and pure doctrine in opposition to the
perplexed and ambiguous phraseology of the heretics, they were
compelled to invent some words, which after all had no other meaning
than what is taught in the Scriptures. They said that there are three
Hypostases, or Subsistences, or Persons, in the one and simple essence
of God. The word ὑπόστασις occurs in this sense in Hebrews 1:3, to
which corresponds the Latin word Substantia, as it is employed by
Hilary. The Persons (τὰ πρόσωπα) were called by them distinct
properties in God, which present themselves to the view of our minds;
as Gregory Nazianzen says, “I cannot think of the One (God) without
having the Three (Persons) shining around me.”87
On the third verse, “All things were made by him,” Calvin comments,
“Having affirmed that the Discourse is God, and having asserted his eternal
essence, he now proves his Divinity from his works.”88 This reading not only
confirms Calvin’s distinctly trinitarian reading of the text, it also finds the
order of argument taken up both in the Institutes and in the later orthodox
dogmatics rooted in the text of the Gospel: first, the proof of the essential
divinity of Christ, then, the argument from his works.
From the beginnings of the Reformation, there were differences, even
among the orthodox or magisterial Reformers over the interpretation of John
10:29–30. Calvin, for one, recognized the heavy use made of the text in
patristic trinitarian theology but still did not regard the text as a proof of the
homoousios of the Father and the Son:
[Christ] therefore testifies that his affairs are so closely united to those
of the Father, that the Father’s assistance will never be withheld from
himself and his sheep. The ancients made a wrong use of this passage to
prove that Christ is of the same essence with the Father. For Christ does
not argue about the unity of substance, but about the agreement which
he has with the Father, so that whatever is done by Christ will be
confirmed by the power of his Father.89
By way of contrast, Bullinger read the text in precise agreement with the post-
Nicene orthodox fathers:
When he saith “one,” he overthrows those who separate or rend the
divine substance or nature: and when he saith “sunt,” and not “sum,”
therein he refutes those who confound the subsistences or persons in the
Trinity. Therefore the apostolic and catholic doctrine teaches and
confesses, that they are three, distinguished in properties; and that of
those three there is but one and the same nature, or essence, the same
 omnipotence, majesty, goodness, and wisdom. For although there is an
order in the Trinity, yet there can be no inequality in it at all. None of
them is before other in time, or worthier than other in dignity: but of the
three there is one Godhead, and they three are one and eternal God.90
John 14:16, 28 receives the most detailed attention of virtually all of the
trinitarian passages in Scripture, inasmuch as it declares the identity and
indicates the relationship of the persons—and, if read wrongly, can lead to
enormous misconceptions concerning the Trinity. The importance of the
passage is also indicated by its use in various Reformed confessions.91 Calvin
notes the seeming conflict between verse 16, “I will pray to the Father, and he
will give you another Comforter” and the earlier statement (16:7), “If I depart,
I will send him to you.” This is not a contradiction, given that both of the
texts are true: “in so far as Christ is our Mediator and Intercessor, he obtains
from the Father the grace of the Spirit, but in so far as he is Son, he bestows
that grace from himself.”92 Calvin also emphasized the fact that the text does
not merely speak of the sending of the Comforter, but of the sending of
“another Comforter,” indicating that Christ himself is the Comforter and
protector of the disciples as well as the Spirit—and from this, Calvin allows
the conclusion to be drawn that there is “a distinction of persons” resting on a
specific characteristic or property of the Spirit in which he differs from the
Son.93
Calvin recognized that John 17:3—“And this is life eternal, that they may
know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ”—
could be read as if “Christ disclaims for himself the right and title of divinity.”
The words “true and only,” however, indicate here “that faith must distinguish
God from the vain inventions of men” and that “there is nothing defective or
imperfect” in God. As for the syntax of the text, Calvin prefers the reading
that associated the “only” with “thee” rather than with “true God”: not “That
they may know thee, who alone art God,” but “That they may know thee
alone to be the true God.” Still, the text is not, in its grammatical intention,
antitrinitarian—the textual distinction between the Father as God and Jesus
Christ as sent by God follows the “manner of speaking” typical of Christ’s
discourses in the Gospel of John:
Christ, appearing in the form of a man, describes, under the person of
the Father, the power, essence, and majesty of God. So then the Father
of Christ is the only true God; that is, he is the one God, who formerly
promised a Redeemer to the world; but in Christ the oneness and truth
of Godhead will be found, because Christ was humbled, in order that he
might raise us on high. When we have arrived at this point, then his
Divine majesty displays itself; then we perceive that he is wholly in the
 Father, and that the Father is wholly in him. In short, he who separates
Christ from the Divinity of the Father, does not yet acknowledge Him
who is the only true God, but rather invents for himself a strange god.
This is the reason why we are enjoined to know God, and Jesus Christ
whom he hath sent, by whom, as it were, with outstretched hand, he
invites us to himself.94
The text of John 17, therefore, does testify, albeit obliquely, to the divinity of
Christ—what it does not do, however, is testify to the union between the
Father and the Son in the Godhead. Calvin was convinced that, given the self-
representation of Jesus in this text (and throughout the Gospel of John) as the
Person of the Mediator, “Christ’s design” here “was widely different from
raising our minds to a mere speculation about his hidden Divinity.” Rather the
union between the Son and the Father, like that among believers and between
believers and Christ their head is a unity in the Spirit, identified by the
presence of the blessings of salvation.95 This line of argument carries over
into the later Reformed tradition.96
Calvin’s comment on 1 Timothy 3:16—“And without controversy great is
the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received
up into glory”—is of considerable interest to the later Reformed orthodox
reading inasmuch as it not only highlights the importance of the text to
traditional doctrinal understanding and even focuses on the phrase “God
manifested in the flesh” (Deus manifestatus in carne) as a primary
christological reference but also adumbrates the textual problems of
orthodoxy. Calvin begins his comment by noting that “the Vulgate’s
translator, by leaving out the name of God, refers what follows to “the
mystery,” but altogether unskillfully and inappropriately, as will clearly be
seen on a bare perusal.”97 The Vulgate text reads, “and manifestly great is the
mystery of piety which was manifest in the flesh,” the phrase in question
being quod manifestatum est in carne—which implies a reading of the Greek
as ὄς ἑφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί. Calvin also indicates his knowledge of this
reading in Erasmus’ New Testament, commenting that this alteration of text is
unworthy of refutation. “All the Greek copies,” Calvin continues,
“undoubtedly agree in this rendering, ‘God manifested in the flesh.’ ” Despite
his dismissal of Erasmus, Calvin nonetheless indicates his own underlying
worry about the text, as well as his resolution to follow the tradition:
But granting that Paul did not express the name of God, still any one
who shall carefully examine the whole matter, will acknowledge that
the name of Christ ought to be supplied. For my own part, I have no
hesitation in following the reading which has been adopted in the Greek
 copies.98
Calvin then proceeds to work through the text, stressing how “appropriate”
a designation of Christ is the phrase “God manifested in the flesh,” perhaps
by way of justifying his reliance on the uncial Greek copies against
Erasmus.99 From a theological perspective, once accepted in the form that
Calvin argues, the text holds several significant points for christological and
trinitarian formulation:
First, we have here an express testimony of both natures; for he declares
at the same time that Christ is true God and true man. Secondly, he
points out the distinction between the two natures, when, on the one
hand, he calls him God, and, on the other, expresses his “manifestation,
in the flesh.” Thirdly, he asserts the unity of the person, when he
declares, that it is one and the same who was God, and who has been
manifested in the flesh.
Thus, by this single passage, the true and orthodox faith is
powerfully defended against Arius, Marcion, Nestorius, and Eutyches.
There is also great emphasis in the contrast of the two words, God in
flesh. How wide is the difference between God and man! And yet in
Christ we behold the infinite glory of God united to our polluted flesh
in such a manner that they become one.100
Calvin rather nicely summed up the historical problem of Titus 2:13
—“Looking for that blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory of the great
God and our Savior Jesus Christ”101—for the larger part of the history of
interpretation:
It is uncertain whether these words should be read together thus, “the
glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great God and our Savior,” or
separately, as of the Father and the Son, “the glory of the great God, and
of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The Arians, seizing on this latter
sense, have endeavored to prove from it, that the Son is less than the
Father, because here Paul calls the Father “the great God” by way of
distinction from the Son. The orthodox teachers of the Church, for the
purpose of shutting out this slander, eagerly contended that both are
affirmed of Christ. But the Arians may be refuted in a few words and by
solid argument; for Paul, having spoken of the revelation of the glory of
“the great God,” immediately added “Christ,” in order to inform us, that
the revelation of glory will be in his person; as if he had said that, when
Christ shall appear, the greatness of the divine glory shall then be
revealed to us.102
For Calvin, 1 John 5:20—“… and we are in him that is true, even in his
Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life”—was an incontestible
statement of the divinity of Christ. He offered a curt dismissal of heretical
readings, both ancient and of the sixteenth-century: “Though the Arians have
attempted to elude this passage, and some agree with them at this day, yet we
have here a remarkable testimony of the divinity of Christ.” The Arian
exegesis identifies the last cited sentence as a reference to God the Father, “as
though,” Calvin comments, “the Apostle should again repeat that he is true
God.” Inasmuch as the text has already identified God the Father twice as the
true God who sent Christ in to the world, Calvin finds the repetition of
meaning unacceptable. The apostle John often refers to Christ as “eternal
life,” and what is more, “the relative οὐτος usually refers to the last person”
indicated, which in “his Son Jesus Christ.” Thus, both the precise grammar of
the text and the Johannine usage testify “that when we have Christ, we enjoy
the true and eternal God, for nowhere else is he to be sought.”103
3. Christ’s divinity according to Musculus and Vermigli. Musculus
similarly addresses the problem of Christ’s divinity, writing that “the Holy
Scriptures report of Christ that he is the everlasting Word of God, by whom
all things were made.”104 John, in the first chapter of his Gospel, states also
that the Word was God, while Paul in Colossians, chapter 1, calls him “the
image of invisible God” who is before all things, all things being made in him
and by him. “These things,” argues Musculus, “cannot be attributed to any
creature: there fore it is necessary to conclude that he is God.”105
Scripture also consistently speaks of Christ as the Son of God—not, writes
Musculus, in the sense of his being “an adopted son, as we all are, as many as
are elect” but as “John the Evangelist” states, “the only begotten Son” who
comes from the Father and who alone has seen the Father. Thus, as “only
begotten,” Christ is “distinguished from adoptive sons as one who is a natural
son.”106 Scripture, furthermore, in many places calls Christ “God,” as in
Thomas’ confession, “My Lord and my God” (John 20), or in Romans 9,
where Christ is called “God blessed above all things.” Christ, moreover,
claims for himself attributes which can belong only to God, as in John 5
where he says that whatsoever the Father does, he does also, or in John 6 and
10, where he claims to bestow life everlasting. Even so, in John 8 he declares,
“Before Abraham was, I am” and in the seventeenth chapter he speaks of the
glory that he had with the Father before the world began.107
The Son’s divinity is proved against all hints of Arianism by the baptismal
formula of Matt 28:19, where Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are manifestly
shown as “three persons coequal with one another.” Nor could John call
Christ “the first and principal good, or else eternal life, unless he were God”
(citing John 14:6 and 17:3). Even so, when the high priest asked of Christ
whether he were “the son of the living God” (Matt 26:63), he answered,
“Thou hast said.” The first chapter of John offers definitive proof in saying,
first, that “God was the word” and, then, “the word was made flesh.”
Furthermore in the words of John 1:18, “No man hath seen the father at any
time, but the Son … he hath declared him.” These words show that Christ as
Son of God “is exempted from the common condition of men.”108
The “subtle argument of the Arians” that Christ was called God but was
less than divine, thus, cannot hold.
It is said by the same John (1:3) All things are made by him. Upon
which place Augustine doth very well infer, that the Son of God was not
made: for if he had been made, then all things that were made, had not
been created by him; at leastwise he had been created by another
thing.109
Calvin similarly argues full equality of the Son in the context of the sending
of the Comforter in John 14:16—
Here he calls the Spirit the gift of the Father, but a gift which he will
obtain by his prayers; in another passage he promises that he will give
the Spirit. If I depart, says he, I will send Him to you (John 16:7). Both
statements are true and correct; for in so far as Christ is our Mediator
and Intercessor, he obtains from the Father the grace of the Spirit, but in
so far as he is God, he bestows that grace from himself.110
Vermigli also employs Thomas’ confession, “My Lord and my God” (John
20:28), as a proof of Christ’s divinity and Christ’s own words to his heavenly
Father, “glorify me, O Father, with the glory, which I had with thee, before the
world was made: which saying might not stand, unless that Christ had the
divine nature; for his human nature was not before the world was made. Also
the Lord said; All things that my Father hath, are mine: and that the Father
hath the divine nature, is by none called into question; and so of necessity the
Son is not without the same. Besides, Christ testifieth and saith; All things
that my Father doth, I also do: but the action of them both, being all one, the
natures of them must needs be one and the same.”111 Similarly John 8:58,
“Before Abraham was I am,” and John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the
life,” must be referred to a divine nature. The equality of the Son with the
Father is seen from John 5:26, “As the Father hath life in himself, so he hath
granted to the son to have life in himself.”112
Christ’s divinity is also proved by the conference of Deuteronomy 6:13,
“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve” with
Philippians 2:10, “In the name of Jesus, let every knee bow, both of things in
heaven, of things in earth, and things under the earth.”113 Vermigli continues
to cite Scripture out of both Testaments which attribute divinity to Christ: one
is struck by the minimum of patristic and scholastic terminology and the
restriction of the argument to a conferring of one Scripture text with another.
One is also struck by the continued reliance on Old Testament texts as well as
texts from the New Testament and the insistence on the definite, albeit partial,
revelation of the Trinity in the Old Testament as well as in the New.
B. Grounds of Doctrinal Argument in the Era of the Reformed
Orthodoxy
1. The deity of the Son: general argumentation. The Reformed orthodox
of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries codified and developed these
categories of argument, but in no way altered the underlying exegetical
patterns of the doctrinal discussion. As also in the case of the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, the Reformed orthodox typically present two sets of closely
interrelated arguments, one concerning the full divinity or deity of the Son,
the other concerning the personhood or individual subsistence of the Son. The
order of these sets of arguments varies, as does the order of argument within
each set. The reason for this exhaustive and potentially somewhat
cumbersome approach is certainly the nature of the various heresies—some of
which acknowledge the divinity of the Son or Word but deny personhood,
instead identifying the Word as a power of the Godhead, namely, adoptionism
or dynamic monarchianism; some of which acknowledge the personhood of
the Son or Word, but deny his full divinity, namely Arianism. In their own
day, the Reformed orthodox encountered Arian or Arianizing and Socinian or
Socinianizing thinkers who represented these particular problems, with the
Arians tending toward an identification of the Son as a “person” but as less
than divine and some of the Socinian or Socinianizing writers reducing the
Word to a power of the Godhead. Thus, the orthodox argue that the Word is
both fully divine and an individual subsistence in the Godhead, usually in that
order.
In their polemic with the Socinians and, in the English context, with
antitrinitarian deists as well, the orthodox were obliged to defend the eternal
deity of the Son, “who in the fulness of time assumed human nature.”114 In
other words, the name “Son” or “Son of God” itself was a focus of debate.
The antitrinitarian arguments of the era indicate a variety of reasons for the
title “Son of God” other than identification of the Son as an eternal divine
subsistence: namely, that the name refers to Christ’s miraculous conception by
the Spirit of God and his birth from the Virgin Mary, as indicated in Luke
1:31–35; or that his sonship indicates his sanctification to mediatorial office
and his endowment with special gifts by the Spirit (cf. John 10:35–36); or that
he was identified as divine Son in his resurrection from the dead, as implied
by the use of Psalm 2:7 in Acts 13:32–33.115
The orthodox had to combat, moreover, not only a variety of simple
denials of Christ’s divinity but also a more subtle adoptionist Christology: the
point is to prove the Son’s eternal and essential deity. The argument must
show three things: “1) that Christ is God; 2) that he the most high God, equal
to the Father; and 3) that he is begotten of the Father.”116 Or, as Rijssen states
the question, “Whether our Saviour Jesus Christ is himself the most high
God.” Against the Socinian identification of Christ as Son of God in a
“precarious and dependent” sense, on grounds only of his preeminence on
earth, his authority, lordship, and office, as well as against the Arian and
semi-Arian tendencies evident particularly in Britain, the Reformed insist that
Christ is “properly” the son of God.117 Contrary to all such adoptionistic or
subordinationistic heretics—Ebion, Cerinthus, Arius, the Jews,
Mohammedans, and the Socinians—who either deny the divinity of Christ or
who confess him to be less than God or not absolute God, Christ must be
confessed to be God
not by office, nor by favor, nor by similitude, nor in a figure, as
sometimes Angels and Magistrates are called gods, but by nature; he is
equal and coessential with his Father: there is one Godhead common to
all three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.118
Thus the Reformed exclude interpretations of passages like John 1:1, “The
Word was God,” which would denominate him “a kind of subordinate and
created God.” Scripture does not employ the word “God” in such improper
fashion.119
2. The divinity of the Son in the interpretation of Scripture:
hermeneutical issues. There is very little pure rational argumentation in this
division of the orthodox system: the divinity of Christ must stand upon
Scripture. The orthodox arguments on this point explicitly follow their
hermeneutical assumption that doctrine arises either from explicit statements
of Scripture or by way of legitimate conclusions drawn from the text, just as
the pattern of argument also obliges the instrumental function of reason,
illustrating the orthodox theologians’ use of the rules of argument set forth in
their prolegomena. Thus, writes Leigh, the divinity of Christ may be argued in
two ways—
(1) By clear texts of Scripture affirming this truth in so many words.
The Prophets foretelling of him, saith this is his name by which you
shall call him, Jehovah, or the Lord our righteousness, Jerem. 23:6. and
the mighty God, Is. 9:6. Paul saith, 1 Tim. 3:16. Great is the mystery of
Godliness, God manifested in the flesh; and accordingly Thomas made
his confession, John 20:28. My Lord, and my God, which title he
 accepteth and praiseth Thomas for believing, and that he could not have
done without extreme impiety, had he not been God.120
(2) By evident reasons drawn from the Scripture … Divine Names and
Titles are given to Christ; He is the only blessed Potentate, 1 Tim. 6:15.
the King of Kings, Rev. 1:5 and Lord of Lords, Rev. 17:14 and 19:16.
He is called the Image of the invisible God, Col. 1:25; the brightness of
his glory, Heb. 1:3; the word and wisdom of the Father, John 1:1, 2;
Prov. 8:21 and 9:1.121
The interpretive model indicated here is the basic approach of the
Reformation and of Reformed orthodoxy: a doctrinal point is considered
established when it rests either on the explicit statements of Scripture or on
conclusions capable of being drawn from explicit statements of Scripture,
often by the collation and comparison of texts. The orthodox assumption,
then, is that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is established not from only
a few texts of Scripture but also from an extended series of texts, some used
as direct attestations to the doctrine, others used as grounds of argumentation.
Owen, for one, objected nearly as much to the Socinians’ distorted or
reductionistic approach to the traditional argumentation as he did to their
doctrine: he found that both Biddle and the Racovian Catechism tended to
divide up the traditional exegetical arguments, severing texts used in
argumentation from collateral texts and often failing to acknowledge either
the structure of the argumentation or the large number of texts brought to bear
by the tradition on each doctrinal issue. Thus, he faults the Socinians for
citing only four texts (Ps. 2:7; 110:3; Prov. 7:23; Micah 5:2) as indicating the
eternity of the Son and for severing the discussion of Christ’s eternity from
discussion of his generation from the Father, as if generation from the Father
were not itself a form of testimony to eternity: “Let the gentleman take their
own way and method,” comments Owen sarcastically, “we shall meet them at
the first stile, or rather brazen wall, which they endeavour to climb over.”122
Much of the debate was specifically over the method of interpretation of
Scripture.
These hermeneutical considerations tended to yield a topical pattern of
argument in the orthodox proofs of the divinity of the Son, much as they had
done in other contexts as well. The underlying model of movement from
exegesis to doctrine remains, therefore, the locus model introduced into
Protestant theology by Melanchthon and followed in one form or another by a
majority of the Reformers and their successors. In the present instance, the
topical argumentation follows out the logic of the general hermeneutical
model noted above: each of the topical divisions of the argument rests both on
the clear testimonies of Scripture (as confirmed by the exegesis of the era)
and on “evident reasons drawn from Scripture,” usually by the collation of
texts. Accordingly, the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s divinity is demonstrated,
against the arguments of the “antitrinitarians,” on four scriptural grounds: “1)
From the divine names … 2) From the divine attributes … 3) From the divine
works … 4) And finally from the divine worship” accorded to the Son.123 A
major subcategory of the exegesis of the divine names, moreover, requiring
separate discussion is the identification of Christ as the “Angel of the Lord” in
the Old Testament.
C. The Divine Names and Attributes of the Son in the Reformed
Orthodox Theology
The importance of this subtopic, and its exegetical nature arises from the
fact that the antitrinitarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
expended considerable exegetical effort in an attempt to show that the Father
alone was God and that various divine names and titles did not properly apply
to the Son. The former point could be argued directly from a series of biblical
texts: Malachi 2:10; John 17:3; 1 Corinthians 8:6; and Ephesians 4:6.124 The
Reformed respond by arguing the applicability of the divine names, without
qualification, to Christ.
1. The name of God: “Jehovah.” “Jehovah,” the personal name of God,
which must be peculiar to God, is attributed to Christ. This attribution occurs
when passages in the Old Testament that speak of Jehovah are applied to
Christ by the writers of the New Testament.125 This particular argument is,
moreover, the point at which a refutation of Socinian views first registered in
the doctrine of the divine names bears its ultimate fruit: the Socinians had
labored to show that Jehovah was not the proper name of God, belonging to
God alone—and the orthodox exegetes had rather nicely shown that all of the
exceptions noted by the Socinians were not in fact applications of the Holy
Name to creatures or things.126 Having succeeded in this prior argument, the
Reformed orthodox could argue coherently that the attribution of the name of
God to Jesus Christ was indeed a proper predication. Given, moreover, that
the name “Jehovah” belongs to God essentialiter, absolutè, and indistinctè
apart from any identification or determination of the persons of the Godhead,
Scripture can also apply the name and the texts in which it occurs to
individual persons, namely, to Christ. The threefold glory of Isaiah 6:3 is,
thus, applied to Christ by the evangelist John.127 A preeminent example of
this predication is the New Testament’s use of Isaiah 40:3, “The voice of him
that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord (Jehovah), make
straight in the desert a high-way for our God”: this text is applied directly to
Christ by Matthew 3:3, which identifies the “voice” as John, the forerunner of
Jesus.128
 Similarly in Numbers 21:5–7, the Lord, that is to say, Jehovah, sent fiery
serpents against those who sinned against him—but in 1 Corinthians 10:9,
Paul refers this text to Christ: “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them
also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents.” The Socinians suggested that
the Pauline argument presented a parallel between Christ in Paul’s time and
someone else in the time of the Exodus, probably Moses or Aaron, “for what
Christ is now to us, they were then, in some respects, to the Israelites,
particularly Moses, who … indeed is called Christ, their anointed, Habakkuk
3:13.”129 Few of the Reformed exegetes take up this gambit at Numbers 21:5,
and only a few of the dogmaticians note it among their lists of texts
identifying Christ as Jehovah—among the British, Ridgley refers to it
positively; among the continental theologians, Turretin and Mastricht note it
in passing.130 On the other hand, the Reformed do address 1 Corinthians 10:9
as a clear reference to the pre-incarnate divinity of Christ. Calvin commented
that “this is a remarkable passage in proof of the eternity of Christ.” He also
noted his disdain for Erasmus’ exegesis: “the cavil of Erasmus has not force
—‘Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them tempted God’; for to supply the
word God is extremely forced.”131 Similarly, Poole argued,
The term Christ here is very remarkable to prove Christ’s Divine nature
and existence before he was incarnate; for the same person who is here
called Christ is called God, Ps. 106:14 and Jehovah also, in the same
Psalm; neither could they have been tempted by Christ at that time, if at
that time he had not been existent. Were destroyed by serpents; by
serpents he meaneth the fiery serpents; we have the history, Numb.
21:6–9.132
Further, Isaiah’s vision of Jehovah (6:5) is applied to Christ in the Gospel
of John (12:41), “These things said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and spake
of him.” “From whence it is evident,” argues Ridgley, echoing one trajectory
in the exegetical tradition, “that the Person who appeared to him, sitting on a
throne, whom he calls Jehovah, was our Saviour.”133 Conference of the verses
indicates not only that Christ is called Jehovah but that he is “naturally and
essentially God.”134
The orthodox also adduce the truly remarkable passage in Isaiah 45 (vv.
21–25) as proof of the deity of Christ and the attribution to him, along with
the Father, of the holy name of the One God. Isaiah’s prophecy says first,
“there is no God else besides me, a just God and a Saviour, there is none
besides me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am
God and there is none else,” clearly manifesting God to be the Saviour and
“the object of faith.” Isaiah next prophesies that before this God every knee
shall bow and every tongue shall swear—a text applied directly to Christ both
in Romans 14:10–12 and Philippians 2:10–11. Finally Isaiah states (v. 25), “In
the Lord (Jehovah) shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory”:
here, argue the orthodox, the same Jehovah is also clearly and undeniably
applied to the Mediator in his work of justification. In the case of Philippians
2:9, the statement that Christ is given the “name above every other name” can
only mean that he is to be called “Jehovah.” Nor, as Arians claim, is this name
applied only after the resurrection: he was humiliated and died as a man; he
was exalted as a man—but it is not as a man that he is called Jehovah. The
fallacy of the adversaries here is the fallacy secundum quid: they move from a
relative statement to one that is made absolutely or simpliciter; the revelation
is given post-resurrection, but it is not stated simply and absolutely of the
resurrected Christ or of his humanity.135
Similarly, Jeremiah (23:6) says “he shall be called the Jehovah, our
righteousness” in a direct reference to the Messiah. The identification of this
reference to “Jehovah our Righteousness” as to the Messiah rather than
simply to God as such rests on the full passage where the preceding verse
speaks of the Lord or Jehovah raising up “unto David a righteous Branch,”
namely, “a King” who will “reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement
and justice in the earth”—this one, as the next verse testifies, “shall be called,
Jehovah our Righteousness.” The reference “must be understood of the
Messiah.”136 Diodati also comments that, according to this passage in
Jeremiah, Christ “shall be acknowledged to be the true everlasting God, who
in his humane nature shall fulfill all manner of righteousness for his
Church.”137
2. Lord and God. Malachi 3:1, “… the Lord, whom ye seek, shall
suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, who ye
delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” The reading of this
text found in Calvin’s commentary is followed nearly exactly by later
exegetes in the Reformed tradition: thus, Diodati comments,
Suddenly] presently after that John shall begin to preach, Christ the true
everlasting God shall appear, and publickly exercise his office … The
Messenger] namely, Christ the Mediatour, and foundation of the
covenant of grace, with the elect, see Ex. 23:20, 21; Isa. 63:9; Heb. 8:6;
9:15; 12:24.138
Other Reformed exegetes of the era offer much the same interpretation,139
and the theologians incorporate the exegesis into their doctrinal discussions:
In Mal. 3:1, he is called “the Lord” who shall come into his temple,
which the evangelists indicate is to be spoken of the Messiah, Mk. 1:2;
Lk. 1:76. Now, who is the Lord to whom the temple belongs by way of
eminence, but God?140
 Christ is also specifically identified as “God”: in Isaiah 9:6 the future
Messianic king is called “mighty God” and “everlasting Father,” a
designation of his divine “majesty and glory.”141 Here the Reformed have two
distinct adversaries to refute—Grotius and the Socinians—who pose rather
different readings of the passage against the traditional orthodox reading.
Grotius, for his part, understood the text as a reference to an “infant recently
born,” probably Hezekiah.142 The orthodox respond that the language of the
verse is clearly messianic and is endowed with divine attributes, such as are
inapplicable to a human ruler such as Hezekiah and, in fact, can only point to
one who is both divine and human.143
In the case of the Socinians, there is a fair amount of difference between
the edition of the Racovian Catechism cited by Owen and the edition of 1680,
translated by Rees. The earlier edition follows out the same form of argument
as found in the discussion of 1 Timothy 3:16—first, denying the received text
and, then, even if the received text is allowed, offering a variant reading.
Owen singles out for his critique the earlier edition’s contention that the
passage does not refer to Christ, but rather to God the Father as “everlasting
Father” or “Father of eternity,” followed by its statement that, if the text is
taken as referring to Christ, the phrase “Father of eternity” indicates that
Christ is “the prince or author of eternal life, which is future.” Owen
comments that this approach is clearly self-contradictory:
our catechists … fix only on that expression, “The eternal Father,” and
then say that we cannot intend the Son here, because we say he is not
the Father; and yet so do these gentlemen themselves! They say the
Christ is the Son of God, and no way the same with the Father; and yet
they say that upon a peculiar account he is here called “The eternal
Father.”144
Owen does not dispute the second part of the Socinian argument concerning
the meaning of the phrase, but only the conclusion that the catechism draws
from it: whether the text refers to Christ as “Father of eternity” because of his
eternal deity or because of his authorship of our future salvation is quite
irrelevant to the issue in dispute, given that however the clause is interpreted,
it is placed in the text in relation to such other phrases as “the mighty God”
and “Prince of Peace,” which, taken together, must refer to one who is fully
divine.145 The later version of the catechism leaves out the claim that the title
“Father of eternity” refers to God the Father and concentrates on the second
line of argument only.146
Christ is also called both “Lord” and “God” in the New Testament. These
references are, the Reformed writers argue, of a demonstrably different
character than references to idols or to creatures or creaturely masters as lords
and gods.147 The references to him as “Lord” are of particular significance to
the doctrinal point, but also the focus of considerable debate. Leigh notes with
some emphasis that in the New Testament, Christ is also called “ho kyrios by
which name the Septuagint expressed Jehovah the proper name of God alone,
John 20:28, My Lord; Jude 4, the only Lord; Acts 10:36, the Lord of all; 1
Cor. 15:47, the Lord from Heaven; 1 Cor. 2:8, the Lord of glory.”148 Christ “is
called ho theos cum articulo, John 1:1; Acts 20:28; 1 Tim 3:16; … the great
God, Titus 2:13; the true God, 1 John 5:20; God over all, or blessed above all,
Rom 9:5; the most high, Luke 1:76.”149
The names “Lord” and “God,” particularly the former, are on occasion
given to creatures, but the biblical text always provides “sufficient light,
whereby we may plainly discern when they are applied to the one living and
true God, and when not”—and if not conclusively from the text itself, then
from the “context.” The word “lord” when applied to a creature simply
denotes a certain superiority as of a master over a servant—whereas in each
of the biblical texts cited, the implication is clearly a divine title.150 So also,
when the word “god” is predicated of a creature, it invariably is reflected in
the words of the text, which speaks of “strange gods” (Deut 32:16) or “molten
gods” (Exod. 34:17) or “new gods” (Judg. 5:8) or some similar expression
denoting the creaturely or idolatrous character of the “god.”151
Each of these texts associates the word “God” with Christ and was the
subject of considerable exegetical argument—particularly the syntactically
difficult Titus 2:13. We see here the bearing of the orthodox hermeneutic
upon the actual determination of doctrine: the systems included a great deal of
exegesis, whether in the form of direct, positive exposition of text or in the
form of refutation of alternative, frequently Socinian, readings. If, after the
initial controversies, much of this exegesis appears as a kind of repetitive
proof-texting, it was not so at the outset—and enough controversy arose
throughout the seventeenth and even the early eighteenth century to prevent
the orthodox exegetical enterprise from ever growing entirely stale. By the
same token, the “new” rationalist or critical exegesis of the period should be
judged fresh or stale to the extent that it is truly inventive or merely repeats
old trinitarian and christological heresies.
In John 20:28, Thomas confesses Christ to be “my Lord and my God.” In
the typical reformed exegesis of the era, the text clearly indicated that Thomas
identified Christ as God—indeed, it was the first place in the narrative scheme
of the New Testament where this confession or revelation appears, given that
it is in and through the resurrection that Christ is “declared to be the son of
God in power.”152 As Turretin insists, only an act of exegetical “violence” can
yield an alternative reading.153 The “violence” of which Turretin speaks is
certainly to be found, accepting seventeenth-century Reformed standards, in
the Racovian Catechism, where the text of John 20:28 is dismissed rather
obliquely following the examination of Acts 20:28: inasmuch as some Greek
texts emend the phrase, “the church of God,” to read “the church of the Lord
and God,” the Socinians argue, a parallel can be identified in the words of
Thomas, so that “Thomas, if he addressed those words to Christ, was not
satisfied with addressing him Lord, but styled him also God, that he might
acknowledge, not his ordinary, but his divine authority over him.”154 The
problem that the Socinians fail to note is that, however one reads the final
clause of Acts 20:28 concerning the purchase of salvation with “his blood,”
the phrase “Lord and God” found in some of the manuscripts remains a
reference to God—and, if it is used as a key to the reading of John 20:28, the
variant in Acts actually supports the orthodox reading of the Johannine text!
Thus, the accusation of “violence.” As Turretin points out, Thomas’
exclamation, “my Lord and my God,” is preceded in the text of the Gospel by
the words “he said unto him,” rendering the reference utterly certain.155
Nor does the antitrinitarian reading of John 17:3 argue the contrary: there
Jesus prays to the Father “that they might know thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Socinians and other objectors declare that
these words prove that the Father alone is God and that Christ is simply his
messenger. The text states that the Father alone is the true God—not that only
the Father is God. The point of the passage, specifically, is that there is no
God beside the God who is the Father. It therefore is no denial of the deity of
Son and Spirit: indeed, if the Father were not true God, the Son could not be
genuinely divine. This reading of the text is confirmed by conference with 1
John 5:20.156 The purpose of the text is to identify the “true God”—fully
identified on the basis of other biblical passages as “the one only divine
essence subsisting in three persons”—thereby excluding the false gods of the
“heathen.” The phrase “Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” refers to Christ in
his mediatorial office.157
Debate over the understanding of 1 John 5:20 was also quite intense,
particularly because of its just noted use in confirming the orthodox reading
of John 17:3: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us
an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is
true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” The
antitrinitarians of the seventeenth century offered much the same argument
concerning 1 John 5:20 as that attributed by Calvin to the “Arians,” namely,
that “this,” as the subject of the final clause, referred to the “his” of the
previous clause—that is, to the Father, and not to “his Son.” In other words,
“this” refers not to the person spoken of immediately before, not to the
immediate antecedent and the proper subject of the verse. The orthodox
dispute this reading on purely logical and grammatical grounds: the phrase
“the true God and eternal life,” prefaced by “this” must refer to Christ,
concerning whom the text had spoken just before, as normal grammar would
indicate. This reading is also substantiated by “the scope of the apostle, which
is to teach us that Christ is come in order that we might be led to the
knowledge and communion of the true God.”158
Beyond this, “God” in the final clause of the text is set in apposition to
“eternal life” and shares the same verb. Now God the Father is never called
“eternal life” by Scripture, but only the giver of eternal life; whereas
it is not only said concerning our Saviour, that in him was life, John 1:4
but he says, John 14:6. I am the life; and ‘tis said in 1 John 1:2. The life
was manifested, and we have seen it, or him, and show you that eternal
life, which was with the Father, pros ton patera, which is an
explanation of his own words, John 1:1. pros ton theon, with God; and
then he explains what he said in ver. 14. of the same Chapter, when he
says, the word of Life, or the Person who calls himself the life was
manifested unto us; which seems to be a peculiar phrase used by this
Apostle, where he sets forth our Saviour’s glory under this character,
whom he calls Life, or eternal life; and he that is so, is the same Person,
who is called true God.159
This text yields, moreover, a second biblical text (in addition to John 17:3) in
which there is a declaration of the “true God,” here the Son, obviously not to
the exclusion of the deity of the Father. The clear identification of the Father
as “true God” in John 17:3 now serves the trinitarian cause—as the orthodox
point out, the Son could not be divine if the Father were not.160 This reading
of the texts also corresponds with that of the fathers, notably Athanasius,
Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and Chrysostom.161 By orthodox standards this
is the perfect application of accepted exegetical method: the explanation of a
difficult text by collation with other texts—and by any standard, it was a close
analysis of Johannine usage.
As Pictet comments, the identification of Christ as God, indeed, as fully
equal in divinity to God the Father, is directly taught by the apostle Paul. He
cites
Phil. 2:6, where the holy apostle says of Christ, “who [namely, Christ]
being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with
God.” What could be said more directly—and is it likely that Paul
would have broken forth into these expressions, if Christ had not been
the true and supreme God?162
The Socinian rejoinder is that the equality indicated in the text derives from
the fact that Christ did the Father’s work, not from an equality in essence
—“in the Greek it is not that he is equal to God, but … that he is equally God,
is like God.” Neither this statement nor the following statement, that Christ
laid aside the form of God, “comport with him who is God by nature.”163
“The form of God cannot mean here the nature of God, since the apostle
states that Christ emptied himself of this form: but God cannot in any respect
empty himself of his nature.”164 Yet, Turretin replies, recognizing that form is
not identical to nature, how could Christ have had the “form of God” if he
were not “God by nature”? Nor can the phrase “form of God” be used to
explain Christ’s performance of divine work or his miracles—given that
Scripture does not designate anyone else who performed miracles as having
the “form of God.” What is more, the Greek word, ἴσα, cannot mean merely
similar here, “since such an ἰσότης is to be understood here as arises from the
possession of the form of God, which indicates not only a similitude, but a
genuine equality and identity.”165
Against the Socinians, Reformed writers declare that Titus 2:13 must refer
to Christ as “God,” inasmuch as a single article governs the phrase “the
glorious appearing of the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”166 Of the older
Reformed writers, Calvin is not decided on the exegetical point, but clearly
recognizes the problem:
It is uncertain whether these words should be read together thus, “the
glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great God and our Savior,” or
separately, as of the Father and the Son, “the glory of the great God, and
of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” The Arians, seizing on this latter
sense, have endeavored to prove from it, that the Son is less than the
Father, because here Paul calls the Father “the great God” by way of
distinction from the Son. The orthodox teachers of the Church, for the
purpose of shutting out this slander, eagerly contended that both are
affirmed of Christ. But the Arians may be refuted in a few words and by
solid argument; for Paul, having spoken of the revelation of the glory of
“the great God,” immediately added “Christ,” in order to inform us, that
that revelation of glory will be in his person; as if he had said that, when
Christ shall appear, the greatness of the divine glory shall then be
revealed to us.167
The Socinians’ approach to the text of Titus 2:13, together with their
exegesis of Jude 4 (“denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus
Christ”—καὶ τὸν μόνον δεσπότην καὶ κύριον ἡμων Ιησουν Χριστὸν
ἁρονούμενοι), begins by examining the grammatical argumentation of the
orthodox, namely, that “since in the Greek there is but one article prefixed to
both titles, they ought, conformably to a rule of Greek composition, to be
considered as designating one person only, that is Jesus Christ.”168 The
Socinian response to this claim is that Greek composition does not always
follow the rule, and that the “circumstances” of the individual text must
determine the meaning: thus, in Hebrews 9:19, the phrase “the blood of calves
and goats” has one article, but does not identify calves and goats—and
likewise, in Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5, the phrase “the apostles and prophets”
does not identify prophets and apostles. Similarly, the language of Titus 2:13,
“the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ,” hardly demands an identification
of God with Jesus.169 Second, the Socinian exegesis takes on the more
significant question of the meaning of the specific text, where, in the case of
Titus 2:13, the Greek rule of composition seems to be supported by the fact
that Christians expect the future appearance of the Son, not of the Father—
and here, quite clearly, the one who appears is called “the great God.” But
there is no reason to claim, the Socinians argue, that the glory of the Father
will not be revealed in Christ:
Now that it may be truly said that the glory of God will appear when
Christ shall come in judgment, is evident from the declaration of our
Lord, that “he shall come in glory,” that is, in the glory of God his
Father. There is, however, no impropriety in saying that God the Father
will come, or rather will appear, when the Son shall come to judge the
world. For will not Christ, in judging the world, sustain and represent
the person of God the Father, as the sovereign from whom he will have
received his judicial office.”170
There is little variation in the exegesis of Titus 2:13 in the era of
orthodoxy. Diodati simply states, without noting any controversy, that in the
phrase “the great God,” the apostle “gives Christ Jesus this title, because he is
despised of the world, and intimates that his glory and greatness shall then
appear.”171 Poole does not mention controversy either, but his commentary
clearly reflects debate over the text with the Socinians. “The same person,” he
writes, “is here meant by the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Poole
also offers two grounds for this conclusion beyond the grammar of the
passage—first, it is Christ who has been “appointed to be the judge of the
quick and the dead,” and presumably, therefore, the text must point to one and
only one who comes in glory; and second, “ἐπιφάνεια, by us translated
appearing, is attributed only to the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity, 2
Thess. 2:8; 1 Tim. 6:14; 2 Tim. 4:1, 8.” This point is not found in Calvin. It
does add considerably to the argument, without what might be called the
addition of a dogmatic grid: given the broad New Testament denial of the
visibility of God the Father and the inability of human beings ever to see God
and given the identification of Christ alone as the one who will return visibly,
however one reads the conjunction, there is an insurmountable difficulty
entailed on a reading that claims the future “appearing” of the Father (or,
indeed, of the Spirit). Poole concludes, “From this text the Divine nature of
Christ is irrefragably concluded; he is not only called God, but μέγας Θεὸς,
the great God, which cannot be understood of a made God.”172
There is, moreover, the statement in Acts (20:28) that God purchased the
church with his own blood.173 These arguments are placed beyond doubt by
Matthew 1:23, which speaks of the Savior as “Emmanuel, … God with
us.”174 “These titles,” comments Leigh, “are too high and excellent to be
given to any mere man whatsoever; God therefore who will not have his glory
given to another, would never have given these titles to another, if he were not
God.”175
Socinians (and various others not to be easily classed as antitrinitarians,
such as, in England, Samuel Clarke)176 protested against the traditional
reading of Romans 9:5 and its use in substantiating the divinity of Christ: in
place of “as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed
forever,” the Socinians would read, “as concerning the flesh, Christ. Let God
(i.e. the Father), who is over all, be blessed forever,” making a separate
sentence of the two final clauses of the verse. The orthodox object that their
reading agrees more precisely with the Greek and note that the ancient
versions and the Fathers also confirm this reading. “The Apostle,” reasoned
Ridgley, “had been speaking of our Saviour, as descending from the father,
according to the flesh, or considering him as to his human nature; therefore it
is very reasonable to suppose he would speak of him as to his divine nature,
especially since both these natures are spoken of together in John 1:14, and
elsewhere.”177 Thus, the text of Romans 9:5 is not a “doxological apostrophe
to the Father,” but a clear reference to Christ, who is the only possible
antecedent of the phrase.178
There are also several places in the New Testament where Old Testament
references to God are applied directly to Christ. In John 12:39–41, the
evangelist applies to Christ words of Isaiah by which the prophet intended
“the supreme God”; similarly Paul in Romans 14:10 applies the words of
Isaiah, “Look to me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God,
and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22–23) to the judgment seat of Christ. In
both cases logic requires that we understand the New Testament text as
testimony to Christ’s divinity.179
3. Word of God. The Johannine identification of Jesus as the Logos also
figured strongly in the Reformed orthodox discussion. Leigh writes that “He
is called the Word, because he is so often spoken of and promised in the
Scripture, and is in a manner the whole subject of Scripture.”180 The
Johannine language carries with it several implications: first, “For this cause
also he is the WORD of the Father, not a vanishing but an essential word.”181
Second, the incommunicable property of the Word is “to be begotten”:
reflecting the medieval and specifically Thomist interpretation of the Son’s
procession as intellectual, Perkins explains, “because as a word is, as it were,
begotten of the mind, so is the Son begotten of the Father.” Third, the Son is
also called Word “because he bringeth glad tidings from the bosom of the
Father.” Each of these three implications of “Word,” moreover, carries with it
the assumption of full divinity.182
The Socinian counter to the orthodox argumentation interprets “Word” and
“Word of God” entirely differently. “It cannot be proved from Christ’s being
the Word of God,” the Racovian Catechism contends, “that he possesses a
divine nature.” In fact, the correct inference is the opposite,
for since he is the Word of the one God, it is evident that he is not that
God … Jesus is called the Word or Speech of God because he is the
immediate interpreter, and at the same time the executor, of the divine
will: for this belongs properly to the Word of God. In the Greek, the
article is prefixed to the term Word (ὁ λογος) in order to designate this
illustrious, or most excellent and divine interpreter and executor of the
divine will; by whom, as we learn from what follows, God effected the
new creation of the world and of all things. John himself, explaining
this title a little further on, writes (John 1:18), “No man hath seen God
at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him.”183
Given that “Word” is merely the title of the interpreter of God and that the
creation of worlds by the Word indicates not the original creation but the
redemptive re-creation of the world through the Gospel, it follows that the
“beginning” of which the prologue to John’s Gospel refers is the beginning of
the Gospel: “there is no reference here to an antecedent eternity, without
commencement; because mention is made here of a beginning, which is
opposed to that eternity.” The word “beginning,” without article, “used
absolutely, is to be understood of the subject matter under consideration,”
namely, the Gospel message. This reading is confirmed by the similar usage
in 1 John 1:1, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard …
and our hands have handled, of the Word of life”—the “evangelist,” thus,
“states himself to have been present” at this “beginning.” Quite simply, the
meaning of both passages is “that the Word was in the beginning of the
Gospel.”184 As for John 1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” the text clearly
means that “the Word was made flesh in the days of the writer,” and it
indicates also “what it was made, when it was made,—namely, flesh” and
therefore that “the Word, although endued with as much divinity as the
language of John ascribes to it, was as to its substance a man.”185
When Turretin cites John 1:1 for the purpose of arguing that the divine
attribute of eternity ought to be ascribed to Christ, he refers to the Socinian
claim, commenting that “in the beginning” cannot be read as meaning “in the
beginning of the gospel or of the new creation, as our adversaries would like,
but in the beginning of time, for no other beginning can be understood here
than that with which Moses was concerned, Genesis 1:1; to which John
clearly alludes, as the scope of his gospel demonstrates.” The Socinian
reading, Turretin continues, is “absurd.”186 Reformed commentators, often
without naming the Socinians, make the same point: the “beginning”
referenced in John 1:1 can only be the beginning of the world, and not the
beginning of the Gospel—as if also the case with the text of 1 John 1:1 and
2:13.187 The impact of the Socinian exegesis is still evident in Gill’s
commentary on John 1:1, to the effect that “this is said not of the written
word, but of the essential word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, is clear, from
all that is said from hence, to John 1:14, as that this word was in the
beginning, was with God, and is God.” Then, clearly reflecting the problem of
the Socinian reading, Gill continues,
This word, he says, was in the beginning … nor is the beginning of the
Gospel of Christ, by the preaching of John the Baptist, intended here …
but by the beginning is here meant, the beginning of the world, or the
creation of all things; and which is expressive of the eternity of Christ,
he was in the beginning, as the Maker of all creatures, and therefore
must be before them all.188
4. The “Angel of the Lord” and the divinity of Christ. Virtually a
separate class of texts are those containing references to angelic mediators.
These texts, moreover, not only occupy a distinct place in the Reformed
orthodox reading of the Old Testament, they also stand as a distinct portion of
the argument in the thought of the Reformers, notably, Calvin.189 The
exegetical point and its doctrinal application are, in other words, still further
indications of the nature of the continuity in Reformed theology from the era
of the Reformation through the orthodox era.
Although, as in other places in the Old Testament, there are differences
among the exegetes as to the reading of particular passages, the key to the
trinitarian understanding of Exodus is its frequent and substantive reference to
the “Angel of Jehovah,” who stands next to God as divine. That the Angel is
distinct from God is clear from the passages themselves, as is the divinity of
the Angel, given his description in attributes that can only be predicated of
God: the Angel is identified as the divine presence (Exod. 33:14) or as having
“in him” the name of God (Exod. 23:21). The Angel also identifies himself to
Moses as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and sends Moses to deliver
“his people” from Pharaoh (Exod. 3:2–6).190
The Reformed orthodox reading of these texts simply follows out the view
of the Reformers and the older tradition. Allix notes that the “whole difficulty
of the place may be reduced to three heads,” namely, whether the God,
Elohim, noted in verse 15, is indeed Jehovah; whether the angel identified in
the following verse is to be identified syntactically as the Elohim of verse 15
or is to be distinguished “from him as a Creature … from its Creator”; and
whether the prayer is “made to God alone or to the Redeeming Angel together
with him.”191 This angel, declares Poole, is surely not
a created angel, but Christ Jesus, who is called an Angel, Ex. 23:20, and
the Angel of the covenant, Mal. 3:1, who was the conductor of the
Israelites in the wilderness, as plainly appears by comparing of Ex.
23:20–21, with 1 Cor. 10:4, 9. Add hereunto that this Angel is called
Jacob’s Redeemer, which is the title appropriate by God to himself, Is.
43:14; 47:4, and that from all evil, and therefore from sin, from which
no created angel can deliver us, but Christ only, Matt. 1:21; and that
Jacob worshippeth and prayeth to the Angel.192
There is a distinct continuity between the seventeenth century Reformed
exegetes and the older tradition, including the Reformers, in the exegesis of
these texts from Exodus—although contrary to what might be expected, the
seventeenth-century writers do not read all of the “angel” text from Exodus in
a uniformly trinitarian or christological manner. They reflect, perhaps, textual
debate in the seventeenth-century, including the more literalistic readings
argued by Grotius, and exercise more caution than Calvin. For Poole, as for a
majority of the seventeenth-century orthodox exegetes, the determinative text
is Exodus 3:2–6, and the others are read in terms of their relationship to it. At
verse 2, Poole comments that “the Angel of the Lord” is clearly
not a created angel, but the angel of the covenant, Christ Jesus, who
then and ever was God, and was to be man, and to be sent into the
world in our flesh, as a messenger from God … That this Angel was no
creature, plainly appears by the whole context, and specially by his
saying, I am the Lord, &c.193
He is less anxious to press the trinitarian interpretation and the parallel with
the usage of Exodus 3:2, however, at Exodus 14:19—the text refers to the
“angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel” and then to the pillars
of cloud and fire, which Poole takes as a reference to God, without qualifier,
and then notes that these assignments of place do not imply “change of place”
for God and therefore do not compromise the divine omnipresence.194 Diodati
differs and declares the angel of Exodus 14:19 to be “the son of God Himself,
the perfect intercessor and eternall Mediator between God and men.”195 The
reading of Exodus 23:20, “Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in
the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared,” however, is
typically trinitarian: this, according to Poole, refers to “Christ, the Angel of
the covenant,” with Diodati adding that Moses here “represents the Father or
the Holy Trinity as sending the Sonne, Is. 48:16.”196 Poole does not parallel
Calvin by developing the identity of the “angel of [God’s] presence” in
Exodus 33:14—rather he offers a collateral citation to the same phrase in
Isaiah 63:9, noting that this is the same angel that guided Israel through the
wilderness and is variously called “an angel,” “his presence,” and “Jehovah”
in Exodus. This, he comments, “must be the Lord Jesus Christ, who appeared
to Moses in the bush, as Stephen doth interpret it, Acts 7:35 &c.” Diodati,
however, draws out the point at Exodus 33:14, with a collateral reference to
Isaiah 63:9—while Trapp makes no comment and Ainsworth is only
obliquely chirstological.197
Among the later exegetes, Henry reflects the result of critical debate in the
late seventeenth century and notes the spectrum of readings of the texts: on
Exodus 3:2, he writes that “an angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses]; some
think, a created angel, who speaks in the language of him who sent him;
others, the second person, the Angel of the covenant, who is himself
Jehovah.”198 Nor does Henry add the christological reading at Exodus 14:19
—rather he postpones the point until Exodus 23:20. Here, the salvific
implication is sufficient to demand the christological or trinitarian reading,
although Henry still notes the two possible interpretations of the text, “a
created angel” and “minister of God’s providence” or “the son of God, the
Angel of the covenant” and then concludes, somewhat weakly, “we may as
well suppose him God’s Messenger, and the Church’s Redeemer, before his
incarnation,” given that it is Christ whose redemptive task it is to prepare “a
place for his followers.”199 Henry also avoids christological readings at
Exodus 33:14.
5. Other names and titles. Christ is called the “Father of eternity” by
Isaiah, a title only suitable for one who is divine, indeed, who is “Eternitie it
selfe, and the Author of it.”200 So too, the identifications of Christ as a “rock
of offense” and “stumbling-stone” (1 Pet. 2:5–8; cf. Matt. 21:42; Rom. 9:32–
33) immediately raise the issue of the divinity of Christ and the problem of
those monotheists—that is, the Jews, whether of the era of the New Testament
or in seventeenth-century polemic and apologetic—who refuse to accept the
divinity of Christ. Henry notes the parallel with Isa. 8:13–14, where the terms
are applied to God himself, and concludes that this is both a significant
trinitarian text and a warning to the high priests and “Jewish doctors.”201
 6. Arguments for the divinity of Christ from divine attributes
accorded to him in Scripture. The divine attributes are predicated of Christ
—and since these include predicates or attributes that can belong only to God,
they offer clear proof of Christ’s true divinity. “Not only is he called God,”
argues Pictet, “but all the attributes of deity belong to him.”202 Ridgley
argues,
We proceed to consider how our Saviour’s deity appears, from those
divine attributes, which are ascribed to him, which are proper to God
alone; to which we will add those high and glorious titles, by which he
is described in Scripture: the attributes of God, as has been before
observed, are all essential to him, and therefore cannot, in a proper
sense, be any of them applied to a creature, as they are to Christ.203
The reference to previous discussion of the essential character of the divine
attributes is a reference to Ridgley’s treatment of question 7 of the catechism,
“What is God?”—the locus of the formal treatment of the divine essence and
attributes. Thus we establish a formal relationship between the portions of the
locus de Deo that deal with the divine essence and various attributes and the
specific locus de Trinitate: instead of the separate treatment devoting an
entirely philosophical treatment of essence and attributes, it now is seen to be
merely a delineation of steps in the argument.
The Son must be understood as both immense and omnipresent, given the
ways in which he is described in various biblical texts.204 He is with his
people wherever they are gathered together (Matt. 18:20) and promises to be
so even to the end of the world (Matt. 28:20).205 He also declares that “No
man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even
the Son of Man which is in heaven” (John 3:13)—a text that the Socinians
attempt to distort by ignoring the present tense of the final clause as well as
the location of the speaker. The one who is the Son of Man, while on earth,
states that he came down from heaven and “is in heaven.” To be both on earth
and in heaven at the same time is an indication of omnipresence: Christ is
rightly “said to have descended from heaven by incarnation” and at the same
time to be in heaven “by immensity.”206
The attribute of eternity, the Reformed declare in opposition both to the
Socinians and to the Arians, belongs definitively to Christ. The former count
the beginning of the Son’s existence from his conception in the womb of the
Virgin Mary. The latter “distinguish between Christ’s being in the beginning
of time and his being from eternity.”207 Even when the Arians state that “there
was not a point of time in which Christ was not, or that he was before the
world, they are far from asserting that he was without beginning, or properly
from eternity.”208
 In answer hereunto, let it be considered, that we cannot conceive of any
medium between time and eternity; therefore what was before time,
must be from eternity, in the same sense in which God is eternal. That
this may appear, let us consider that time is the measure of finite beings,
therefore it is very absurd, and little less than a contradiction, to say that
there was any finite being produced before time; for that is, in effect, to
assert that a limited duration is antecedent to that measure whereby it is
determined, or limited. If we should allow that there might have been
some things created before God began to create the heavens and the
earth, though these things might be said to have had a being longer than
time has had, yet they could not have existed before time, for time
would have begun with them; therefore if Christ had been created a
thousand millions of ages before the world, it would be inferred from
hence, that time, which would have taken its beginning from his
existence, had continued so many ages; therefore that which existed
before time, must have existed before all finite beings, and
consequently was not produced out of nothing, or did not begin to be,
and is properly from eternity.209
In Pictet’s view,
Eternity is ascribed to him, for he is not merely said to have been
“before Abraham was” (John 8:58), nor merely to “have been in the
beginning” (John 1:1), but before all the works of God: for thus speaks
eternal Wisdom, which is the same as the Son, “the Lord possessed me
in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old …” (Prov. 8:22–
24) … For no one can doubt the eternity of God’s wisdom, any more
than the eternity of God himself. Nor would a being deserve the name
of God, who could have been at any time without wisdom.210
So also is he called “Father of eternity” in Isaiah 9:5 [6] and the “Alpha and
Omega” in Revelation 1:8, 11.211
Christ, moreover, “is said to be unchangeable, which perfection not only
belongs to God, but is that whereby he is considered as opposed to all created
beings, which are dependent on him.”212 The immutability of Christ is easily
seen from the words of Psalm 102:25–27, “they shall be changed; but thou art
the same, and thy years shall have no end,” which are applied specifically to
Christ in Hebrews 1:10–12. The author of Hebrews also testifies to the
eternity of Christ’s kingdom (1:8) and states (13:8) that Christ “is the same
yesterday, today, and forever.” In this latter place the Scripture intends “to
establish” the faith of Christians on “the consideration of Christ’s
immutability, whatever changes they are liable to from the death of their
teachers, or the innovations of those who succeed them, and endeavor to carry
them away by divers and strange doctrines.”213 Nor ought the incarnation to
be taken as an objection to the essential immutability of the second person of
the Trinity. In Witsius’ words, “the incarnation of the Son was effected … not
by a change of the divinity into humanity, for it is altogether incapable of
change” but “by the assumption of the human nature into the individual unity
of the Divine person.” Witsius comments that “most absurdly have some
inconsiderate men restricted this perfection to the deity of the Father: for the
divine nature is one only; immutability is clearly ascribed to God the Son (Ps.
102:27; cf. Heb. 1:12); and even after becoming man, he continued God
(Rom. 9:5).”214 Even so the phrase “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14)
indicates not the “transmutation of Divinity into humanity,” an utterly
intimate “union” of humanity with divinity.215
Christ’s omniscience is amply testified by John 21:17, where Peter says to
Christ, “Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee.” And the
point is confirmed by John 16:30, “Now we are sure that thou knowest all
things,” by the identification of Christ as the “searcher of hearts” (Rev. 2:23)
and as the one who knows the thoughts of the heart (Luke 6:8; John 2:24–
25).216 This understanding is also confirmed by John 1:18, where the Son
alone sees and reveals the Father.217 “Besides, this,” comments Ridgley,
there is another expression that abundantly proves this matter, wherein
he is denominated the searcher of hearts, which is a glory that God
appropriates to himself, in Jer. 17:10 … and … 1 Chron. 28:9 … and all
creatures are excluded from having any branch of this glory, when it is
said, in 1 Kings 8:39. thou only knowest the hearts of all the children of
men: now such a knowledge as this is ascribed to Christ; sometimes he
is said to know the inward thoughts and secret reasonings of men within
themselves, Mark 2:8.218
Nor ought 1 Kings 8:39 be used to argue that only the Father is omniscient—
any more that Christ’s statement that he knows not the day of the final
judgment (Matt. 13:32) be taken in this way. In the latter text, Christ speaks as
to his questioners as Son of Man, namely, with reference to the limitation of
his human knowledge, not as Son of God, who knows all things. When
Scripture states that God the Father knows something, this is not to be taken
to the exclusion of the Son and the Spirit, but as reference to the knowledge
of God in which God is referred to under the general use of the name
“Father.”219 Furthermore, the statement that the Father alone knows no more
excludes the knowledge of the Son and the Spirit than the statement that “No
one can know the Father, save the Son” (Matt. 11:27) should be understood as
a claim that the Father is “ignorant of himself”!220
On this point, particularly with reference to Colossians 2:3, “In whom are
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” the Reformed came into
conflict with the Lutherans, who held that the divine omniscience, like the
divine omnipotence, was communicated to the human nature of Jesus. This
teaching, according to the Reformed, fails to distinguish rightly between the
“uncreated wisdom” or knowledge belonging to the second person of the
Trinity and the created wisdom that belongs to Jesus’ humanity—the former is
a knowledge of all possibility, literally, “of all that God can do” that
comprehends the fullness of the Godhead. This the soul of Christ cannot
know, even though it may know all that can be known concerning all
creatures—as is necessary for the one who is the final Judge of the world. The
medieval scholastics, notes Davenant, argued a blessed, an infused, and an
acquired knowledge in Jesus, and some, like Alexander of Hales, argued a
special knowledge through the grace of union. But the distinction remains
between the infinite knowledge belonging to Christ’s divinity and the exalted
but finite knowledge belonging to the human mind or soul of Jesus.221
Christ is also given by Scripture the attribute of omnipotence.222 The
modern Arians deny this power to Christ and to the Spirit and argue that it
belongs only to the Father, who has power over all creation and also over his
Son and his Spirit.223 Nevertheless, such power indeed seems to be attributed
to Christ in Isaiah 9:6, where he is called “the mighty God,” and in Psalm
45:3, where he is called “mighty one” or “most mighty.” Christ is also said
(Phil. 3:21) to be able to change our corrupt body into a glorious body like his
own “according to the working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to
himself.” John 5:27 states that he does all that the Father does, while 5:21
attributes the same power to raise the dead to the Son as its does to the Father.
In Hebrews 1:3 we read that he upholds all things by his power. Revelation
1:8 and 11:17 distinctly refer to Christ both as “Alpha and Omega” and as
“the Almighty,” ho pantokrator, not to mention all the other divine titles
given to Christ in that book.224 Finally, Matthew 28:18 states that “all power”
is given to him—and it is impossible to understand him as having “all power
in heaven and on earth” unless he is omnipotent God. Here, as in John 5:19,
where the Son is said to do nothing by himself, without the Father also willing
it, the conferring or derivation of power (diversitas ordinis) implies no
limitation or diminution but only an order in working: “diversity in order does
not create a diversity in essence and power (diversitatem essentiae et
virtutis).225
D. Other Grounds for the Divinity of Christ according to the
Reformed Orthodox
1. Christ’s divinity demonstrated ex operis divinis. The orthodox also
argue that specifically divine works are consistently ascribed to Christ in
Scripture.226 From a purely doctrinal perspective this argument, although
consistently placed after arguments based on direct predication of names and
attributes, occupies a central place in the orthodox trinitarian and
christological discussion—inasmuch as the identification of Christ as divine
in his work is one of the underlying points of the satisfaction or substitution
theory of atonement held by orthodoxy. Christ performs both ad intra and ad
extra divine works. Ad intra, “He sendeth forth the Holy Ghost out of his
owne substance, and therefore is indeed and truely God, if (as shall bee
prooved anon) the Holy Ghost himself bee God.”227
The proof of Christ’s divinity from his divine works, specifically the work
of creation, was posed in exegetical detail by the orthodox as a direct counter
to the Socinian reading of John 1:3, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 1:2 and various
other texts, where the traditional argument that one who, with the Father,
creates the world must be truly God was undermined by the claim that the text
identifies the Son as a means or instrument rather than a coequal creator.228
Divine works argue a divine efficient, or that he has infinite power, and
consequently that he is an infinite person, or truly and properly God,
who performs them. Now these works are of two sorts; either of nature
and common providence, or of grace, to wit, such as immediately
respect our salvation; in all which, he acts beyond the power of a
creature, and therefore appears to be a divine person.229
Christ is clearly denominated creator of the world in John 1:3 and Colossians
1:16, and in Hebrews 1:2 and Ephesians 3:9 he is called cocreator with the
Father. Thus, on Hebrews 1:2, the Westminster Annotations indicate that the
Son works with the Father in creation “not as by an instrument or inferior
cause, but by Him as by his eternall wisdome, and by way of a conjoyned
cooperating and equal cause.”230 Hebrews 1:10, spoken by God the Father,
also refers to the Son as creator, and Hebrews 1:3 refers to his providential
work in preserving what he has created.231 “He who upholds all things by his
powerful word is God, so doth Christ, therefore he is God.”232
Nor, indeed, does the Socinians’ alternative reading of John 1:3, “all things
were made by him,” as the “second creation” or “beginning” of the Gospel or
work of salvation offer a substantive reading of the text—any more that their
similar claims function as a reading of “the beginning” in John 1:1.233 The
text of John indicates no limitation or restriction to the work of making “all
things” such as appears in references to the “new creation”: this verse refers
to the “universal creation” as clearly indicated by the second clause, “and
without him was not any thing made that was made,” and by the tenth verse,
in which the evangelist refers to the creation of whole world, specifically as
the world, as it is ignorant of Christ apart from the Gospel. Such a reading of
Christ as creator of the world also accords with Paul’s words in Colossians
1:16–18.234 As for divine works of grace,
No one will deny that the work of redemption is attributed to him (Acts
20:28), also remission of sins, sanctification, the sending of the Holy
Ghost, the giving of eternal life, the judgment of the world, and the
raising of the dead.… The building of the church is attributed to him, in
Heb. 3:4, from which passage the deity of Christ is indisputably
established.235
Similar arguments appear, at length, in Leigh and Turretin.236 Neither do the
arguments of the antitrinitarians that Christ only enacted the will of the Father
or worked according to the power of the Father avail, given that Christ
himself states that he and the Father are one and that the Father is in him and
he in the Father.237
2. Christ’s divinity argued from worship and faith. The Reformed
orthodox registered the debate over this point that had occurred among the
Socinians themselves. Socinus had held that, in a limited sense, Christ could
be understood as the object of worship, whereas others among the Polish
Brethren and several of the Hungarian antitrinitarians had denied any sense in
which Christ might be the object of worship and had specifically argued that
no text in Scripture could be properly understood as implying wither that
Christ could be worshiped or that his name could be invoked in worship.238
The Reformed orthodox argue, utterly to the contrary, that Scripture
commands believers to worship Christ and have faith in him in a manner
suitable only to God. Christ himself commands us to believe in him: “Ye
believe in God, believe also in me”; also to place our hope and trust in him.
Even the angels (Heb. 1:6) are commanded to worship him.239
Every knee is commanded “to bow” to him (Phil. 2:10). The apostles
seek “grace and peace” from him as well as from the Father (Rom. 1:7;
1 Cor. 1:3; Rev. 1:4, 5). The faithful are described as those who call on
the name of Christ (Acts 9:14; 1 Cor. 1:2) and “every creature” is
introduced as ascribing “Honour, glory, and power unto the Lamb”
(Rev. 5:13). From all that has been said, therefore, it is plain that Christ
is God … so much the less can this be denied, because, since God
“giveth not his glory to another,” as he declares by Isaiah (48:11), it is
impossible that he should not be God to whom are ascribed the name,
the attributes, and the works of God, in which his glory consists.240
A similar hermeneutical use of Isaiah 48:11, collated with biblical references
to Christ forgiving sins, sustaining the world, hearing those who call on him,
requiring belief, and being one in whom believers rejoice, is found as proof of
divinity in various other Reformed orthodox writers.241
All the arguments which prove Christ to be truly God, prove him to be
the supreme God, and equal with the Father. For to suppose two Gods,
one of whom is inferior to the other, is to be totally ignorant of what
God is. For the idea of God is the idea of a Being than whom there is
none greater, more powerful, more perfect.242
Again we encounter the adaptation of language from Anselm’s ontological
argument—in Pictet’s case, probably by way of Cartesian philosophy—as a
proof of the oneness of God and therefore the equality in unity of Father and
Son.
6.3 The Aseitas, or Self-Existence, of the Son
A. Views of the Reformers
The Reformed doctrine of the Trinity (and, of course, also the doctrine of
the Person of Christ) is characterized by a declaration of the aseity of Christ’s
divinity: considered as God, the Second Person of the Trinity is divine a se
ipso—he is autotheos. This had been a point of controversy with both the
antitrinitarians and with Rome since the time of Calvin, and in the course of
the development of Reformed dogmatics in the late sixteenth and the
seventeenth century, it became not only the distinctive feature of Reformed
trinitarianism but also a crucial point, defended against any and all
opponents.
Calvin consistently agreed with traditional orthodoxy that the person of the
Son subsists in relation to the Father by generation, but he also insists that,
considered according to his full divinity, the Son shares the divine attribute of
self-existence, or aseitas. After all, the essence is undivided in the three
persons, so that each of the persons contains in and of himself the full essence
of the Godhead.243 Calvin also argued the Son’s aseity in answer to the attack
on his views made by Chaponneau and Courtois, both pastors of Neufchâtel.
They, like his earlier opponent Caroli, had accused Calvin of heresy for
claiming the self-existence of the Son. Calvin insisted that the subordination
of the Son and the Spirit was a matter of order, not of essence, and that the
subordination referred only to the generation of the Son and the procession of
the Spirit.244 The aseity of the Son, moreover, was indicated by the text of
Colossians 2:9, “in Him dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead”:245
Truly this is where these donkeys are deceived: since they do not
consider that the name of the Son is spoken of the person, and therefore
is included in the predicament of relation, which relation has no place
where we are speaking simply (simpliciter) of the divinity of Christ.246
 Debate over the use of the terms autotheos and a se ipso or aseitas
continued in Calvin’s further troubles with Caroli in 1545,247 and it
reappeared in Calvin’s response to the anti-trinitarian heresies of Blandrata
and Gentile in 1558. Against Caroli, Calvin insisted that in discussion of “the
divinity of Christ,” understood in the strictest sense as the divine essence, “all
that is proper to God” must be attributed to Christ—given that such
discussion does not raise the issue of the distinction between Father and Son
but addresses only the question of the divine essence itself as shared
indivisibly by the three persons: “in this sense, it is correct to say that Christ
is the one eternal God, existing of himself.” Calvin continues his argument by
denying explicitly that the Son is from the Father “with respect to his eternal
essence.”248 Citing both Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine, Calvin comments
that neither of these fathers would deny that Christ has life and immortality of
himself or that, as God, he was self-existent: the names and attributes that
refer to the divine essence or substance belong equally to each of the divine
persons—so that Christ is “from another” only as concerns his person, not as
concerns his essence, which is underived.249
Gentile’s debate with Calvin had a different cast, given that Gentile held an
antitrinitarian view and insisted on a radical monotheism of the Father,
arguing that “the Father is a unique essence … the Father is the only true
God; it is he who gives his essence to the other persons of the Divinity.”
Gentile further insisted that a formulation such as Calvin’s implied a
quaternity—a divine essence, plus the three divine persons that share in it.
Gentile’s alternative was to argue three distinct divine persons, but the Father
alone as fully and of himself God: Son and Spirit were subordinate to the
Father.250 In his response, as he had done against Caroli, Calvin specifically
identified the Son as autotheos and as God a se ipso—the latter phrase
underlying the term aseitas—over against the views, particularly of
Gentile.251 As Calvin pressed the point, the concept of the Son’s aseity
became a defining factor in his understanding of the Son’s eternal generation:
specifically, Calvin defines the generation of the Son from the Father as an
origination of sonship, not of divinity. The generation of the Son, therefore, is
neither an origin in time nor an origin of being: “as to his essence, the Son is
absque principio, while considered as to his person, he finds his principium in
the Father.”252 Calvin’s view, like that of many of the later Reformed, follows
out the line of the Western, Augustinian, trinitarian model, as defined by the
Fourth Lateran Council, rather than the Greek model.253
B. The Reformed Orthodox Debate over Aseity
1. Early orthodox diversity and debate. The radical statement of the
Son’s aseity found in Calvin’s trinitarian polemic is not echoed by all of the
early orthodox Reformed theologians: as Amyraut noted, there was no debate
among the orthodox over the distinct personal identity of the Son, but there
was discussion over whether he stood in utterly equal majesty and dignity
with the Father.254 Ursinus, for one, offers a series of trinitarian definitions in
which he consistently speaks of the “communication” of the divine essence
from the Father to the Son in the eternal act of begetting.255
The essence of man is communicable, and common to many men,
generically, but not individually. But the essence of God is
communicable individually, because the Deity or nature of God is the
same and entire in all the three persons of the Godhead … The sum of
this distinction between the terms Essence and Person, as applied to
God, is this: essence is absolute and communicable—Person is relative
and incommunicable.256
This argument leads Ursinus to the declaration that
God the Father is that Being who is of himself, and not from another.
The Son is that self-same Being, or essence, not of himself, but of the
Father.257
The potential contrast among the Reformed themselves is clear from Polanus
and Bucanus, who virtually duplicate Calvin’s argument: “The Son of God is
the second person of the Godhead, ever begotten (semper generata) of the
Father, not however according to his essential existence, but according to his
personal existence.”258
Polanus goes on to argue that the Son of God, considered as a “person or
subsistence of the Godhead” has “the entire divine essence by nature” and
therefore is by nature “Jehovah, autotheos, God according to essence,
existing of himself”—and “with respect to the divine essence, which singly is
common to the three persons, not only the Father, but also the Son and the
Holy Spirit, is God primarily and through himself.”259 This argument does
not, of course, contravene the doctrine of the generation of the Son from the
“essence and subsistence of the Father,” but it does certainly qualify what can
be meant by generation: the generation is not material and is not a “dilation of
the Father’s essence,” not a propagation of the essence—but a
“communication” of existence or subsistence, such that the Son is begotten,
but the divine essence that he has is itself not begotten.260 These formulations
are, to say the least, quite distinct: where Ursinus speaks of a communication
of Deity or Godhead by eternal generation, Polanus speaks more restrictively
of a communication of Sonship or subsistence.
Still, definitions that speak of the communication of essence are not
necessarily opposed to the notion of the Son’s aseitas: Bucanus also speaks of
the essence as communicated, but notes that it is not begotten—sonship alone
is “begotten.”261 As Perkins defined the point,
The other two persons have the Godhead, or the whole divine essence,
of the Father by communication, namely the Son and the holy Ghost.
The Son is the second person, begotten of the Father from all eternity
… Although the Son be begotten of his Father, yet nevertheless he is of
and by himself very God: for he must be considered either according to
his essence, or according to his filiation or Sonship. In regard of his
essence he is autotheos that is, of and by himself very God: for the
Deity which is common to all the three persons, is not begotten. But as
he is a person, and the Son of the Father, he is not of himself, but from
another: for he is the eternal Son of the Father. And thus he is truly said
to be very God of very God.262
Perkins, thus makes a distinction between begetting or proceeding and the
communication of essence that identifies the Father alone as principium of the
Godhead but nonetheless argues the aseity of the essence and, therefore,
according to essence, the aseity of all the persons.
When considered in terms of his sonship, the second person of the Trinity
is begotten and second in order—when considered in terms of essence,
however, he is God a se ipso: the divine essence as such is not begotten.
Although the Sonne bee begotten of his Father, yet neverthelesse he is
of and by himselfe very God: for hee must bee considered either
according to his essence or according to his filiation or Sonneship. In
regard of his essence he is autotheos that is, of and by himselfe very
God: for the Deitie which is common to all the persons is not begotten.
But as he is a person and the Sonne of the Father hee is not of himselfe,
but from another: for hee is the eternal Sonne of his Father. And thus he
is truely said to be very God of very God. For this cause he is said to be
sent from the Father. Iohn 8:42 … This sending taketh not away the
equality of essence and power, but declareth the order of persons. Iohn
5:18 … His proper manner of working is to execute actions from the
Father by the Holy Ghost. 1 Cor. 8:6 … Ioh. 5:19.263
The Son is “non autohuios tamen autotheos.”264
For the thing itselfe, it is Christ; who must be considered two waies, as
he is a Sonne, and as hee is God. As he is a sonne, he is not of himselfe,
but the sonne of the father begotten of him: nevertheless as he is God,
he is of himselfe, neither begotten, nor proceeding; for the essence or
godhead of the Father is of itselfe without all beginning, but the
godhead of the sonne is one and the same with the godhead of the
 Father: because by what godhead the Father is God, by the same and no
other the sonne is God: therefore the sonne, as he is God, he is God of
himselfe without beginning even as the Father. Whereupon it followes,
that the Sonne is begotten of the Father as he is a sonne, but not as he is
God.265
As for Christ’s work as the Mediator, he said to be “sent” from the Father in
such a way as does not detract from the equality of his “essence and power”
but as “declareth the order of the persons.”266 The distinction, to say the least,
is difficult to define and, therefore, difficult to maintain in this form, creating
a problem for the Reformed orthodox formulation.
Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Roman Catholic polemicists,
notably the theologian and exegete Gilbertus Genebrardus, accused Calvin of
heresy on the specific point of the identification of the Son as autotheos.
Much to the discomfiture of the Roman church of the day, Bellarmine
examined Calvin’s work with some care and pronounced his christology
orthodox.267 Still, the formulation of the doctrinal point was a issue over
which theologians differed, even in the Reformed context. One early orthodox
debate in particular can be singled out as a significant index to the doctrinal
problem: beginning in 1606 with a student’s query, Arminius and his
colleague at Leiden, Lucas Trelcatius II, debated the suitability of identifying
the Son as autotheos. Arminius had taught that the term could be used in
definitions of the divinity of the Son if it were understood as “truly God”—
but it ought not be understood as “God from himself,” which was not only the
typical usage and the etymological sense of the term but also the sense in
which Trelcatius used the term in his theology.268 Whereas Trelcatius, quite in
line with the definitions that we have already extracted from Polanus and
Perkins, held that only the sonship or begottenness—and not the essence—of
the second person was generated, Arminius insisted that Christ, as God, has
both his sonship and his essence by generation.269 Arminius, in short, rejected
the distinction, then generally accepted among the Reformed, between the
second person of the Trinity considered personally and the second person of
the Trinity considered essentially.270 In Arminius’ view, the Reformed
doctrine of the Son’s aseity or self-existence, departed from the patristic norm
—specifically by identifying each of the persons as having the essence a se
ipso and, as a consequence, losing the unity of the Godhead, in effect, lapsing
into tritheism.271 The fathers, Arminius argued, intended “by the word ‘Son’ a
certain mode of having [the divine essence], which is through communication
from the Father, that is, through generation.” Thus, “to have deity from no
one” can be characteristic of the Father only who, in the teaching of the
fathers is the sole principium of the Godhead.272
 2. Formulation of the doctrine in high and late orthodoxy. Reformed
insistence on the essential aseity of the Son in contrast to the personal
begottenness continued to be a matter of both positive doctrine and polemic in
the period of high orthodoxy and was noted as a significant doctrinal issue on
into the late orthodox era. It is certainly arguable in this particular case that
the relative diversity of early orthodox statement failed to carry over easily
into the later theology because of the association of denials of the Son’s aseity
with Arminius and the subsequent connections between Remonstrant
theology and the heterodoxies bred by Vorstius and the Socinians. Not only
was the denial of aseity a characteristic of Arminius’ theology, it became in
the course of the seventeenth century a subordinationistic problem associated
with the antitrinitarianism of the age. Indications of the importance of the
issue as an index of Reformed orthodoxy are found throughout the high
orthodox era and on into late orthodoxy, as evidenced by the extended
discussion of the point in diverse works ranging chronologically from Leigh’s
Treatise of Divinity (1646) and Amyraut’s De mysterio trinitatis (1661) to De
Moor’s Commentarius (1761–71). Amyraut draws out in detail the argument
that, considered according to the divine nature and essence that he has, Christ
is a se, while considered according to the communication of that essence in
the generation of his sonship, Christ is a Patre. This distinction, he observes
is respected by neither Petavius nor Arminius—but it was quite clearly
identified by Calvin, Polanus, and Danaeus.273 In the case of De Moor, in the
latter half of the eighteenth century, the issue is not only engaged at length,
but its history, beginning in Calvin’s polemics and running through the
Arminian controversy, is documented as part of the movement toward
positive formulation of doctrine.274
The New Testament, Marckius argues, teaches the “true deity” (1 John
5:20), the divine “eminence” (Rom. 9:5), and the essential “independence”
(John 5:26; Rev. 1:8, 11, etc.) of the Son. “Nor could he be true God, even as
the Father, and eternal, unless he was Deus à se.”275 Leigh presents the issue
as a fundamental trinitarian distinction in almost propositional form:
Christ as God is from himself, but if the Deity of Christ be considered
as in the person of the Son, so it is from the Father.
The Son in respect of his essence is from none; in respect of the manner
of subsistence he is from the Father.276
This doctrine must be defended against “Origen, Valentin Gentile, Arminius,
various Lutherans, and above all the Papists, who call our teaching the
Autotheanistic heresy” on the pretext of such New Testament verses as Matt.
11:27, John 5:26; 7:29; and 17:8. These texts, Marckius notes, point either to
the Christ’s mission and his coming in the flesh in time or to Christ as distinct
from the Father by generation—and are therefore not to the point, for the
Reformed never claimed that the Son or second person was Son of himself
(Filius à se) and are fully in accord with the Nicene confession of Christ as
Deum de Deo et Lumen de Lumine.277
Thus, “the Son is said to be from the Father, but is no less also called
autotheos, not by reason of person, but by reason of essence, not in relation
as the Son (for in this sense he is of the Father) but in an absolute sense as
God: thus the Son is God à seipso, but he is not à seipso Son.”278 Various
“Papists,” like Genebrardus, and heretics like Valentin Gentile identified the
divine essence so with the Father as to deny the attribute of aseity to the Son
and the Spirit—but the scrupulous Bellarmine himself had exonerated Calvin
of heresy on this point and had thus undercut the arguments of earlier Roman
polemicists.279
Even so, all subordinationist passages in the New Testament—such as
John 14:28, “My Father is greater than I”—are to be referred either to the
human nature of Christ or, preferably, to his person in his official status as
Mediator.280 Forbes makes this Reformed orthodox point with reference to
what is arguably the primary Western or Latin trinitarian answer to the
problem of subordinationistic passages in the New Testament, forcefully
present in the writings of Hilary and Augustine: “according to the form of
God the son is equal to the Father … according to the form of a servant he is
less than the Father … for he emptied himself, not setting aside the divinity
but assuming the humanity.” Forbes also points to a similar solution in the
Greek fathers: as Athanasius had argued, “the Son has the same nature as the
Father and is subject not according to the divine nature, but according to the
economy of [his] humanity.”281 Thus also, God is not the Father of Christ and
our Father in the same way: he is the Father of Christ in view of a natural
relation and our Father “not according to nature but by the grace of
adoption.”282 The “natural relation,” moreover, given that it is the relationship
of the Father as God to the Son as God, cannot imply an essential
subordination.
In the era of late orthodoxy, particularly among the English writers,
extended controversy over Socinianism and Arianism yielded further worries
over the suitability of trinitarian terminology. As evidenced by Ridgley’s
extended analysis, various terms and arguments, such as the identification of
the Father as the “cause” of the Son, discussion of differences between
generation and procession, the definition of generation in relation to the role
of the Father and the role of the Son, and arguments concerning the
communication of essence from the Father to the Son, could be viewed as at
best unwarranted and in the worst case fundamentally destructive of the
doctrine of the Trinity. Ridgley’s solution was to excise some of the more
speculative vocabulary, particularly when the vocabulary itself defies
definition: thus, the expression “eternal generation” or “eternal production” of
the Son, given its presupposition that this generation or production is different
from any other generation or production, ought in Ridgley’s view, to be set
aside.283
The generation of the Son is understood, Ridgley notes, as a
“communication”—so that, in the act of generation, “the Father
communicated the divine essence, or, at least, personality to him, which is
[the Father’s] act alone.”284 Here, in a late orthodox form, the difficulty
identified in Perkins’ definition and in Arminius’ critique is registered in a
refusal to acknowledge the intelligibility and therefore usefulness of all of the
traditional language: discussions of the communication of essence, Ridgley
continues, often “enter too far into the explication of this unsearchable
mystery.”285
His own view of the communication of essence, Ridgley hopes, will not
trouble any orthodox trinitarians—he assumes that the term “communicate”
must be construed in such a way as never to imply that the Father imparts or
conveys the divine essence to the Son or the Spirit. Rather the communication
of essence, like the christological language of communicatio idiomatum in
concreto, ought to be taken to mean “that all the perfections of the divine
nature are communicated, that is, equally attributed to, or predicated of, the
Father, Son and Spirit.”286
As to the specific question of the ground of the Son’s aseity in the
underived or ingenerate divine essence, Ridgley comments,
I cannot but take note of another nicety of inquiry,—namely, whether, in
the eternal generation, the Son is considered as co-existent with the
Father, or as having the divine essence, and hereby deriving only the
sonship from him, from all eternity; or whether he derives both his
sonship and his essence. The former of these is the more generally
received opinion. But I am not desirous to enter into this inquiry.287
Still, despite his confessed unwillingness to enter into the discussion, Ridgley
goes on to argue that the full divinity of the Son (and of the Spirit as well)
demands that one recognize that the Son’s Essence is not derived—and, in
addition, that neither the Son nor the Spirit has “a communicated personality.”
Many theologians assert this, Ridgley notes, “but, I think, without sufficient
proof; for I cannot but conclude that the divine personality, not only of the
Father, but of the Son and the Spirit, is as much independent and underived,
as the divine essence.”288 Underlying the point is Ridgley’s assumption that
neither divinity or divine essence nor individuality or personhood can be
imparted from one individual to another: his teaching presses on the
boundaries of orthodoxy and leans toward Sabellianism, largely because of
his desire to avoid the subordinationistic pitfalls of his day.

1 Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, II.i (pp. 6–8); cf. Abraham

Calovius, Socinianismus profligatus, hoc est, Errorum Socinianorum
luculenta confutato (Wittenberg: Joh. Borckard, 1668), ii.6 (p. 201).
2 Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, II.i (pp. 8–9).
3 Cf. the remarks on Epicureanism and skepticism in PRRD, I, 1.3 (A.4); 6.3
(B.3); III, 3.2 (B.1, 4; C.3); changing patterns of exegesis are discussed in
PRRD, II, 2.3 (B–C).
4 Venema, Inst. theol., xiii (p. 245).
5 Gill, Doctrine of the Trinity, pp. 145–146.
6 Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, II.i (pp. 9–19).
7 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 118, col. 1.
8 Gürtler, Synopsis theol., vi.29; note the prior element in the Socinian
argument, namely, the attribution of “God” to beings that are not divine: see
PRRD, III, 4.2 (B.6).
9 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (pp. 245–246).
10 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, III.xii.4 (col. 494).
11 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 246).
12 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 257).
13Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 53–54); Biddle, Duae Catecheses, iv (pp.
48–49).
14 Biddle, Duae Catecheses, iv (p. 49).
15Biddle, Duae Catecheses, iv (p. 49); cf. Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 259).
Note the discussion of the exegesis of the Psalm above, 5.2, B.2.
16Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 257); cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V, p.
244.
17 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 258).
18 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Acts 13:33 in loc., citing Rom. 14
as collateral argumentation.
19 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 259); cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis., V, p.
245.
20 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia II, obj. 1 & resp.; cf. Turretin,
Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.30.
21 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia 2, obj. 2 & resp.; cf. Turretin,
Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.31.
22 Calvin, Commentary on John, 14:28 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 102).
23 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.; so also Trapp.
Commentary, John 14:28, in loc. (V, p. 397); cf. Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt.
2, V.vii.3 (col. 554).
24 Hutcheson, Exposition of the Gospel of John, 14:28 in loc. (p. 310).
25Poole, Commentary, John 14:28 in loc. (III, p. 357); cf. Zanchi, De tribus
Elohim, pt. 2, I.ii.3 (cols. 384–385), strongly arguing the second.
26 Poole, Commentary, John 14:28 in loc. (III, p. 357).
27 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix,, controversia 2, obj. 3 & resp.; cf. Turretin,
Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.37.
28Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc., citing Ps. 89:27 as an
example of the latter point.
29 Davenant, Exposition of Colossians, 1:15 in loc (I, pp. 185–186).
30 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia 2, obj. 4, resp.; cf. Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.37; also, Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations,
in loc.
31Thus, Junius, Exposition upon the Apocalyps, p. 47; cf. Poole Commentary,
Rev. 3:14 in loc., allowing either or both readings (III, p. 959).
32 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix,, controversia 2, obj. 6, resp.; cf. Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.36.
33 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. II, obj. 5 & resp.; cf. Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.38.
34 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, 1 Cor. 8:5 in loc.
35 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, 1 Cor. 8:5 in loc.
36 Poole, Commentary, 1 Cor. 8:6 in loc. (III, p. 564); Diodati, Pious and
Learned Annotations, 1 Cor. 8:5 in loc.; and note the nearly identical
exposition in Calvin, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
8:5–6 in loc. (CTS Corinthians, I, pp. 276–278).
37 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.8.
38 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.8.
39 Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.5.
40Venema, Inst. theol., iv (p. 257); cf. Biddle, Duae Catecheses, iv (pp. 48–
49), for a version of the Socinian argument; and see below 6.2 (B.1–2) on the
debate over the title “Son of God.”
41 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxix.14.
42 Zanchi, De natura Dei, II.iv, q. 2.2 (col. 79).
43 Zanchi, De natura Dei, II.iv, q. 2.2 (col. 79).
44 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 70); cf. the citation in Owen, Vindiciae
evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 237.
45 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 237.
46 Cf. discussion of the Reformed approach in PRRD, I, 8.3 (A–B).
47 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 237.
48 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 237.
49 Racovian Catechism (1652), [IV] Of the Knowledge of Christ, i (p. 33); cf.
the citation in Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 237–238; citing
among the Socinian exegetes Smalcius, Contra Smiglecius, xxvi; Ostorodius,
Institutio, vii.
50 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 238; note the extended
exegesis in Edward Pococke, A Commentary on the Prophecy of Micah
(Oxford: Printed at the Theatre, 1692), 5:2 in loc. (p. 49), noting also Ps. 90:2,
“necessarily rendered from everlasting to everlasting” and denoting eternity
as an existence “not circumscribed by daies”; cf. Poole, Commentary, Gen.
17:13 in loc. (I, p. 40) and Micah 5:2 in loc. (II, p. 948); Diodati, Pious and
Learned Annotations, Micah 5:2 in loc.
51 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 239; cf. Ainsworth,
Annotations upon Genesis, Gen. 21:33 in loc., who also offers “God of
eternity” and “God of the world” as possibilities, but also agrees with the
Septuagint in the sense of “eternal God” and of olam as rightly rendered
ἀιών.
52 Racovian Catechism (1652), [IV] Of the Knowledge of Christ, i (p. 34),
citing Acts 13:33 and Heb. 5:5.
53 Hoornbeeck, Socinianismus confutatus, II.i (p. 17), not only echoing
Calvin’s concept of accommodation, but using the same metaphor.
54 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 241.
55 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 243.
56 Poole, Commentary, Ps. 110:3 in loc. (II, p. 173).
57Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Ps. 110:3 in loc.; cf. Calvin,
Commentary on the Psalms, 110:3 in loc. (CTS Psalms, IV, pp. 302–303).
58Racovian Catechism (1652), [IV] Of the Knowledge of Christ, i (pp. 35–
36).
59 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, pp. 243–244.
60 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, pp. 244.
61 Cf. the exegetical discussion of Ps. 2:7 in Calvin, Commentary upon the
Psalms, 2:7 in loc. (CTS Psalms, I, pp. 16–18); Poole, Commentary, Psalm
2:7 in loc. (II, p. 3); Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.;
Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium theologicarum, I.xvii.15; also above 5.2
(B.2) on the Father’s active generation of the Son.
62 Marckius, Compendium, V.viii; cf. Gürtler, Synopsis theol., vi.24.
63 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xvii.1.
64 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xvii.2.
65 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xvii.3; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xi.
66 Pictet, Theol. Chr., II.xvi.9.
67 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.7–8.
68 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.9–10.
69 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.11.
70 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.12–13.
71 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.7.
72 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.7.
73 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.9; cf. Calvin, Commentary upon the Book of
Psalms, 45:6 (CTS Psalms I, pp. 178–183), offering a Lyra-like movement
from the literal-historical Solomon to the broader, prophetic sense. Also note
the discussion of these passages in Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the
Trinity,” pp. 242–243.
74 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.10.
75Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.11; cf. the discussion of this interpretive issue in
David L. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), pp. 88–100.
76 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.12.
77 Cf. Calvin, Institutes, II.xiv.7, with Calvin, Commentaries on Micah, 5:2 in
loc. (CTS Minor Prophets, III, pp. 295–303).
78Calvin, Commentaries on Micah, 5:2 in loc. (CTS Minor Prophets, III, pp.
299–300).
79 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 48:16 (CTS Genesis, I, pp. 428–429).
80Calvin, Harmony of the Four Last Books of Moses, Exod. 3:2 in loc. (CTS
Harmony, I, pp. 60–61).
81 Calvin, Harmony of the Four Last Books of Moses, Exod. 14:19 in loc., the
same reading, as Ex. 3:2, confirmed by the same Pauline citation; similarly,
ibid., Exod. 23:20, 23; 33:14 in loc. (CTS Harmony, I, pp. 248, 402–404; III,
p. 375).
82 Calvin, Commentaries on Malachi, 3:1 in loc. (CTS Malachi, p. 568).
83 Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, in loc. (CTS Harmony, I, p. 43).
84 Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:1 in loc. (CTS John, I, p. 26).
85 Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:1 in loc. (CTS John, I, p. 27).
86 Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:1 in loc. (CTS John, I, pp. 28). N.B.,
Calvin disputed the traditional translation of λόγος as verbum, indicating that
verbum better rendered ῥημα. Sermo was his preferred translation of λόγος—
in the above text, I have translated Calvin’s sermo as “discourse” rather than,
as frequently seen, “speech.”
87 Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:1 in loc. (CTS John, I, pp. 28–29).
88 Calvin, Commentary on John, 1:1 in loc. (CTS John, I, p. 29).
89 Calvin, Commentary on John, 10:30 (CTS John, I, pp. 417).
90 Bullinger, Decade, IV.iii (p. 157).
91 Belgic Confession, IX, XI, citing Jn. 14:16; Second Helvetic Confession,
III.4, citing Jn. 14:26 (Schaff, Creeds., III, pp. 241, 392, 394).
92 Calvin, Commentary on John, 14:16 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 92).
93 Calvin, Commentary on John, 14:16 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 93).
94 Calvin, Commentary on John, 17:3 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 167).
95 Calvin, Commentary on John, 17:21 in loc. (CTS John, II, p. 183).
96Cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Jn. 17:21 in loc.; Poole,
Commentary, in loc. (III, p. 370).
97 Calvin, Commentary on 1 Timothy, 3:16 in loc. (CTS 1 Timothy, p. 92).
98 Calvin, Commentary on 1 Timothy, 3:16 in loc. (CTS 1 Timothy, p. 92).
99On the importance of the phrase to Calvin’s own Christology, see Muller,
Christ and the Decree, pp. 28, 37, 191, n. 92.
100Calvin, Commentary on 1 Timothy, 3:16 in loc. (CTS 1 Timothy, pp. 92–
93).
101 Following Calvin’s reading of the verse; alternatively, the KJV reads
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God
and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
102 Calvin, Commentary on Titus, 2:13 (CTS Titus, pp. 320–321).
103Calvin, Commentaries on the First Epistle of John, 1 John 5:20 in loc.
(CTS 1 John, p. 274).
104 Musculus, Loci communes, ii (Commonplaces, p. 14, col. 2).
105 Musculus, Loci communes, ii (Commonplaces, p. 15, col. 1).
106 Musculus, Loci communes, ii (Commonplaces, p. 15, col. 1).
107 Musculus, Loci communes, ii (Commonplaces, p. 15, col. 2-p. 16, col. 1).
108 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.4.
109 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.4.
110 Calvin, Commentary on John, 14:16 (CTS John, II, p. 92).
111 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.4; citing John 17:5, 16:15; 5:19,
respectively.
112 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.4
113 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.5
114 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.1.
115 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (pp. 257–259).
116 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.1.
117 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia II.
118 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 135).
119 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.2.
120 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 131).
121 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (pp. 131–132).
122 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 236.
123 Marckius, Compendium theologiae, V.xxi; cf. the same pattern of
argument in Owen, Brief Vindication of the Trinity, in Works, II, pp. 387–388;
Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.5; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica
theol., II.xxvi.8; Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 134, cols. 1–2; and note the
similar logic of the proofs of the Spirit’s divinity in Marckius, Compendium
theologiae, V.xxvi.
124 Cf. Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.v.3 (col. 539).
125 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.6.
126 Cf. Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 76–77), with Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.ix.13–16; and see the longer discussion in PRRD, III, 4.2 (B.2–
3).
127 Jasz-Berenyi, Examen doctrinæ ariano-socinianæ, p. 29, citing
John12:41.
128 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 139, col. 1.
129 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 113).
130 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 139, col. 2; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxviii.6; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvi.9.
131 Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians, 1 Cor. 10:9, in loc. (CTS
Corinthains, I, pp. 325–326).
132 Poole, Commentary, 1 Cor. 10:9 in loc. (III, p. 572).
133 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 139, col. 2; cf. Calvin, Commentary on the
Gospel of John, 12:41: “the Evangelist takes for granted, that Isaiah saw the
glory of Christ; and hence he infers, that Isaiah accommodates his instruction
to the future state of Christ’s kingdom” (CTS John, II, p. 44); Poole,
Commentary, III, p. 347, on John 12:41: “The evangelist expounds this [i.e.,
Isa. 6:1] of Christ, which is an evident proof of the Deity of Christ, that he is
Jehovah; for it was Jehovah whom the prophet saw”; and note Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.5–6.
134 Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, II.iii (1887, p. 194).
135 Zanchi De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, III.xii.2–3 (cols. 493–494).
136Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.5; cf. De Moor, Commentarius
perpetuus, I.xxi.1; Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 139, col. 2-p. 140, col. 2;
Calvin, Commentaries on Jeremiah, 23:6 in loc. (CTS Jeremiah, III, p. 138);
and Poole, Commentary, II, p. 430.
137 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Jer. 23:6 in loc.
138Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Mal. 3:1 in loc.; cf. Calvin,
Commentaries on Malachi, 3:1, in loc. (CTS Malachi, pp. 568–569).
139Poole, Commentary, Mal. 3:1 in loc. (II, p. 1025); Trapp, Commentary,
Mal. 3:1 in loc. (IV, p. 514); Henry, Exposition, Mal. 3:1 in loc …
140 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.5; cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-
practica theol, II.xxvi.9.
141 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.5; Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, IV, pp. 199–201.
142See Grotius, Annotationes ad Vetus Testamentum, Isa. 9:6–7 in loc.; and
see Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, 12, pp. 315–321, noting that
Grotius’ reading corresponds to that of some of the rabbinic commentators.
143 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, IV, p. 208.
144 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, pp. 314–315.
145 Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 314.
146 See Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 138–139).
147
Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 142–143, citing Rev. 1:5; 17:14; 1 Cor. 2:8;
Hebrews 1:8.
148 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132); N.B., κύριος is only in some of the codices
of 1 Cor. 15:47—see the collation in The Greek New Testament, ed. Aland et
al., in loc. In addition, note that the word translated as “Lord” in the phrase
cited from Jude 4 is not κύριος but δεσπότης, on which see Beza,
Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, in loc.: also see the discussion of the
text below, this section.
149 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132).
150 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 141, col. 2-p. 142, col. 1.
151
Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 142–143, citing Rev. 1:5; 17:14; 1 Cor. 2:8;
Hebrews 1:8.
152Poole, Commentary, John 20:28 in loc., citing collaterally Rom. 1:4; cf.
Hutcheson, Exposition of the Gospel of John, in loc.; and note also Calvin,
Commentary on John, in loc. (CTS John, II, pp. 275–278).
153 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.10.
154 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 84). N.B., the catechism is correct
concerning the variant readings: cf. The Greek New Testament, ed. Aland, et
al., in loc.
155 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.10.
156 Wyttenbach, Tentamen theol., I, iii, §338.2; cf. the argument in Johannes
Piscator, Analysis logica evangelii secundum Johannem: una cum scholiis &
observationibus locorum doctrinae (London: George Bishop, 1595), John
17:3 in loc. (p. 174); Jasz-Berenyi, Examen doctrinæ ariano-socinianæ, p. 22;
also Poole, Commentary, in loc. (III, p. 367).
157 Dutch Annotations, in loc.; cf. Jasz-Berenyi, Examen doctrinæ ariano-
socinianæ, p. 22; Poole, Commentary, in loc. (III, p. 367); also note Calvin’s
similar reading of the text, 6.2 (A.2).
158 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.8; cf. Ridgley, Body of Divinity,
p. 146, cols. 1–2.
159 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 147, col. 2; similarly, Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxviii.8.
160 Piscator, Analysis logica evangelii secundum Johannem, John 17:3 in loc.
(p. 174); cf. Dutch Annotations, 1 John 5:20, in loc.; Poole, Commentary,
John 17:3 and 1 John 5:20 in loc. (III, pp. 367, 941); cf. Wyttenbach,
Tentamen theol., I, iii, §338.2.
161 Jasz-Berenyi, Examen doctrinæ ariano-socinianæ, p. 22.
162 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xvi.1.
163 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 133–134).
164 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 119).
165 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.11.
166 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.9.
167 Calvin, Commentary on Titus, 2:13 (CTS Titus, p. 321).
168 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (p. 80).
169 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 80–81).
170 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 81–82).
171 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.
172 Poole, Commentary, Titus 2:13, in loc. (III, p. 803).
173 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 131, margin).
174 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 143, col. 2.
175 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132).
176 Cf. Clarke, Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, in Works, IV, pp. 46–47.
Exemplifying the difficulty of assigning a name to the problem, note Thomas
Burnet, The Scripture Trinity Intelligibly Explained: or, an Essay toward the
Demonstration of a Trinity in Unity, from Reasons an Scripture. In a Chain of
Consequences from Certain Principles. Which … may serve as an answer to
Dr. Waterland and Dr. Clarke and all Others … whether Arians, Socinians, or
whatever other Denomination. (London: J. Roberts, 1720).
177 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 146, col. 1; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxviii.9.
178 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.9.
179 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xvi.4–5.
180 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132).
181 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 2).
182Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 2- p. 15, col. 1); cf. Venema, Inst.
theol., xi (p. 224).
183 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 139–140).
184 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 63–65).
185 Racovian Catechism, iv.1 (pp. 118–119).
186Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.14; cf. the virtually identical
exegetical point in Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, II.iii (1887, p. 184).
187Thus, Poole, Commentary, John 1:1 and 1 John 1:1; 2:13 in loc. (III, pp.
277, 929, 932).
188 Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, John 1:1 in loc.
189Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.10; cf. Pierre Allix, A Dissertation concerning the
Angel who is called the Redeemer, Gen. XLVIII (London: R. Chiswell, 1699).
190 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. I, II.ii.1 (col. 35); Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, IV, pp. 174–178; Downame, Summe, i (pp. 37–39); Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxvi.9.
191 Allix, Dissertation Concerning the Angel, p. 436.
192Poole, Commentary, Gen. 48:15–16 in loc. (I, p. 107); cf. Diodati, Pious
and Learned Annotation, Gen. 48:16 in loc.; Ainsworth, Annotation on the
Pentateuch, Gen. 48:15–16 in loc.; Downame, Summe, i (pp. 37–39).
193 Poole, Commentary, Exod. 3:2 in loc. (I, p. 120); similarly, Diodati, Pious
and Learned Annotations, Exo. 3:2 in loc.; cf. Trapp, Commentary, in loc. (I,
p. 184); and note Ainsworth, Annotations upon Exodus, Ex. 3:2 in loc., citing
rabbinic exegesis to the effect that the Angel of the Lord is the Redeemer.
194 Poole, Commentary, Exod. 14:19 in loc. (I, p. 146).
195Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Exod. 14:19 in loc.; so also
Ainsworth, Annotations upon Exodus, Ex. 14:19 in loc …; and Trapp,
Commentary, Exod. 14:19 in loc. (I, p. 199).
196 Poole, Commentary Exod. 23:20 in loc. (I, p. 169); Diodati, Pious and
Learned Annotations, Exod. 23:20 in loc.; so also Ainsworth, Annotations
upon Exodus, Exod. 23:20 in loc.; and Trapp, Commentary, Exod. 23:20 in
loc. (I, p. 216).
197 Poole, Commentary Isa. 63:9 in loc. (II, p. 478); Diodati, Pious and
Learned Annotations, Exod. 33:14 in loc.; Trapp, Commentary, Exod. 33:14–
15 in loc. (I, p. 225); Ainsworth, Annotations upon Exodus, Exod. 33:14–15
in loc.
198 Henry, Exposition, Exod. 3:2 in loc.
199 Henry, Exposition, Exod. 23:20 in loc.
200 Downame, Summe, i (pp. 41, 44).
201 Henry, Exposition, Isa. 8:13–14 in loc.
202 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.3; cf. Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (pp. 131–133).
203 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 160, col. 2; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxviii.13.
204 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.14.
205 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. II, arg. 2.
206 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.16; so also Pictet, Theol. chr.,
I.xv.4; cf. Calvin, Commentary on John, 3:13 in loc. (CTS John, I, p. 121);
Dutch Annotations, in loc.; Poole, Commentary, in loc (III, p. 292), adding a
comment against the Lutherans, who ascribe immensity to Christ’s humanity
—which, Poole notes, “is to ascribe a body unto Christ which is indeed no
body, according to any notion we have of a body.” Cf. the Lutheran
definitions in Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, pp. 314–315, 327–334.
207 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 161, col. 1.
208 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 161, col. 1; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxviii.14.
209 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 161, cols. 1–2.
210 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.3; cf. Downame, Summe, i (p. 41); Leigh, Treatise,
II.xvi (pp. 131–133).
211 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V, p. 305; cf. Downame, Summe, i (pp.
41, 43). N.B., Amyraut cites Isa. 9:5—the versification of English Bibles
differs, thus, 9:6.
212 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 161, col. 2.
213 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 162, col. 1; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxviii.19; Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, controversia II, arg. 2;
Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 133).
214 Witsius, Exercitationes, XIV.vii–viii.
215 Witsius, Exercitationes, XIV.xi.
216 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.18.
217 Downame, Summe, i (p. 33).
218Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 165, col. 1, citing also John 2:25; 6:64 and
Rev. 2:23; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. II, arg. 2.
219 See above 5.1 (A.2).
220 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.18.
221Davenant, Exposition of Colossians, 2:3 in loc. (I, pp. 361–363); and cf.
the discussion in PRRD, I, 5.4 (A–B) and note Preus, Theology of Post-
Reformation Lutheranism, I, pp. 168–173.
222Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. II, arg. 2; Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p.
133), cites Rev. 1:8 and Phil. 3:21.
223 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 166, col. 2.
224 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 167–169; cf. Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, V, p. 306; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.17.
225 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.17; cf. Amyraut, De mysterio
trinitatis, V, p. 306.
226 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. III, arg. 3.
227 Downame, Summe, i (p. 45).
228 Cf. Crell, Expiation of a Sinner, fol. B2v with Racovian Catechism, iv.1
(pp. 91–94).
229Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 169, col. 2-p. 170, col. 1; cf. Witsius,
Exercitationes, viii.50.
230Westminster Annotations, in loc.; cf. Gouge, Commentary on Hebrews, p.
14; Poole, Commentary, in loc.; Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V, pp. 307–
308.
231 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 170–176; Pictet, Theol. chr., I.xv.8.
232 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132).
233 Cf. above 6.2 (C.3).
234 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxviii.22.
235 Pictet, Theol. chr., I.xv.8.
236 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 132), citing John 6:54; 5:21 as “divine
miracles”; Luke 1:68; Matt. 20:28; Eph 1:7; Rev. 1:5 for the work of
redemption; John 14:16 and 21:22 for his sending the Holy Spirit; his sending
of angels, Matt. 13:41 and Rev. 1:1; and the forgiveness of sins, Mark 9:2, 5;
John 10:28, the gift of eternal life. Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxviii.21.
237 Zanchi, De tribus Elohim, pt. 2, V.vii.3 (col. 554).
238 See above 2.2 (B) on the Socinian debate; note the comments in Venema,
Inst. theol., xii (pp. 238–239); Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 225
239 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.9; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.ix, cont. I,
argumentum 4, “Ex honore divino. In ipsum credendum. Joh. 3:16. In eius
nomen baptizandum. Matth. 28:19. Ad eius nomen flectendum omnegenu.
Phil. 2:10.”
240 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xv.9.
241 Cf. Bastingius, Exposition or Commentarie upon the Catechism, q. 33 (p.
43, verso); Cheynell, Trinuity, p. 31.
242 Pictet, Theol. Chr., II.xvi.1.
243 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.19, 25; cf. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the
Trinity,” pp. 233–243.
244 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.17–18; cf. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the
Trinity,” p. 237; and Niesel, Theology of Calvin, p. 59.
245 Calvin, Letter to the Ministers of Neufchâtel (May 1543), in CO, XI, col.
560: “Quantum ad locum illum ubi quasi ex tripode haereticos pronunciat qui
dicunt Christum, in quantum Deus est, a se ipso esse, facilis est responsio.
Primum mihi respondent annon verus et perfectus Deus sit Christus? Nisi Dei
essentiam partiri velit, totem in Christo fateri cogetur. Et Pauli expressa sunt
verba: quod in eo habet plenitudo divinitatis. Iterum rogo, a se ipsane an
aliunde sit illa divinitatis plenitudo? At obiicet, filium esse a patre. Quis
negat? Id ego quidem libenter non modo semper confessus sum sed etiam
praedicavi. Verum hoc est …” Cf. Calvin, Commentary on Colossians, 1:19;
2:9–10 (CTS Colossians, pp. 154, 182–183).
246 Calvin, Letter to the Ministers of Neufchâtel, CO, XI, col. 560: “Verum
hoc est in quo asini isti falluntur: quia non considerant nomen filii dici de
persona ideoque in praedicamento relationis contineri, quae relatio locum non
habet ubi de Christi divinitate simpliciter agitur.” Cf. Warfield, “Calvin’s
Doctrine of the Trinity,” p. 238.
247 See John Calvin, Pro G. Farello et collegis eius adversus Petri Caroli
calumnias defensio, in CO, VII, col. 289 et seq.
248John Calvin, Pro Farello et collegis eius, CO, VII, col. 322; cf. the citation
and analysis in Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” p. 240.
249 Calvin, Pro Farello et collegis eius, CO VII cols. 322–323.
250 Cited in Gaberel, Histoire de l’Église de Génève, II, p. 227. A survey of
these controversies is available in Rotondo, Calvin and the Italian Anti-
trinitarians.
251 Calvin, Expositio impietatis Valentini Gentilis, in CO, IX, col. 368.:
“Atque haec una furendi causa quod Athanasius filium facit autotheon. Unde
perspicuum fit hunc esse causae statum, quod contendit Valentinus Christum
aliunde esse Deum, qui ab alio mutuatus sit id quod est. Valde enim
logodaedalum, qui eius personam sumpsit, delectant iste voces: unum esse
Deum patrem, qui et sit autotheos, et solus autousian in se habeat.”
252Calvin, Expositio impietatis Valen. Gentilis, in CO, IX, col. 368. Cf.
Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.17–18.
253Contra Thomas F. Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” pp. 165–
193; idem, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Gregory of Nazianzen and John
Calvin,” pp. 7–19; cf. above 1.2 (B.2) on the Fourth Lateran Council.
254 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V, p. 296.
255 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 135.
256 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 130.
257 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 130.
258 Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.v (p. 204); cf. Bucanus, Institutions, i (p.
11).
259 Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.v (pp. 205–206); cf. Bucanus, Institutions, i
(p. 11).
260Polanus, Syntagma theol., III.v (p. 215); Amyraut et al., Syntagma thesium
theologicarum, I.xvii.13.
261 Bucanus, Institutions, i (p. 11).
262Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 2); similarly, Zanchi, De tribus
Elohim, col. 540; Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, III.viii; Ainsworth,
Orthodox Foundation, p. 14.
263 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V, p. 14, col. 2-p. 15, col. 1 (my italics).
264Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, p. 171, cols. 1–2, and margin; cf.
Bucanus, Institutions, i (p. 11).
265Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, p. 171, cols. 1–2; cf. Zanchi, De tribus
Elohim, col. 540.
266 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 14, col. 2).
267 Bellarmine, De Christo, II.xix.
268Arminius, Apologia adversus articulos XXXI. in vulgus sparsos, in Opera,
pp. 134–183: art. xxi, “Duptici autem sensu accipi posse iuxta Eymon, ut vel
significet, qui vere & seipso Deus est, vel qui a se Deus est: ilto sensu dixi
vocem tolerari posse, hoc sensu contravenire Scripturis & orthodoxae
vetustati, (Arminius’ italics). Cf. Dec. sent., pp. 124–125.
269 Arminius, Epistola ad Hippolytum, pp. 938–940.
270 Arminius, Epistola ad Hippolytum, pp 938–940; cf. Arminius, Apologia,
art. xxi with the discussion in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 121–123.
271Arminius, Epistola ad Hippolytum, pp. 938–940, and Dec. Sent., pp. 124–
125, with Gentile, as cited in Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 30–31.
272 Arminius, Dec. Sent., pp. 124–125; cf. idem, Epistola ad Hippolytum, p.
939: “Voce Dei significatur generatim, id quod essentiam Divinam habet citra
certum subsistendi modum: at voce Filii significatur certus modus habendi,
nempe per communicationem à Patre, id est, per generationem.”
273 Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, VII (pp. 525–526).
274 De Moor, Commentarius perpetuus, I.v.10.
275 Marckius, Compendium, V.x.
276 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 133).
277 Marckius, Compendium, V.x.
278 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.x.
279 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.x, citing Bellarmine, De Christo, II.xix.
280Cf. Witsius, De oeconomia foederum, II.iii.20; Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p.
134).
281 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxv.1–2; cf. Hilary, De trin., X.22:
“Evacuatio formae non est abolitio naturae.”
282 Forbes, Instructiones hist., I.xxx.1.
283 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 157.
284 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 158.
285 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 158.
286 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 158.
287 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 159.
288 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 159.
 7
The Deity and Person of the Holy Spirit
7.1 “Spirit” and Deity in the Reformed Doctrine of God
A. Initial Definitions: The Positive Doctrine and the Issues Argued
1. The Reformers on the Spirit: definitions, issues, and adversaries.
The Reformers’ approach to the definition of the Holy Spirit as one of the
three persons of the Godhead is fairly uniform. There was also little attempt
on the part of the various Reformers to present an independent locus on the
Holy Spirit—rather, their doctrine of the Spirit stands as a subset of the
doctrine of the Trinity supplemented by polemical and exegetical comments.
Calvin’s early statement of the doctrine, in the 1536 Institutes, is instructive in
its brevity, its close adherence to the traditional language of the doctrine of
the Trinity, and its echo of Melanchthon with reference to the proper approach
to such deep mysteries of the faith:
we confess that we believe the Holy Spirit to be true God with the
Father and the Son, the third person of the holy trinity, consubstantial
and coeternal with the father and the Son, omnipotent, and the creator
of all things. As has been stated, there are three distinct persons, one
essence. Which, since they are exalted and profound mysteries, ought
better to be adored than investigated—for they neither ought nor can be
ascertained either by the small measures of our imaginations or by the
reckonings of our tongues.1
Bullinger, more simply, refers to the Holy Spirit as “the third Person in the
reverend Trinity,” to be believe in as “one God with the Father and the Son.”
Our faith in the Spirit, therefore, Bullinger continues, is “rightly … joined to
faith in the Father and the Son.”2
Although the chief trinitarian debates noted by the Reformers were debate
concerning the divinity of Christ, several of their cautions relate also to the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Calvin warns that partial denials of
Arianism and Sabellianism, characterized by lack of the language of
orthodoxy, can yield accusations of either heresy: one must speak of the
consubstantiality of the persons and of their genuine distinction in order to
avoid the heresies entirely. His discussion of the Holy Spirit, therefore, will
argue both that the Spirit is truly God and that the Spirit is a distinct
subsistence in God.3 Calvin also commented on the problem of “Libertines”
who held the apparently pantheistic doctrine that there was a single divine
Spirit that is the sole substance of all things.4 In addition to his refutation of
ancient heresies, such as the patripassian or Sabellian, and his arguments
against Servetus, Hutchinson recognized the importance of showing the Spirit
to be “a substance, not an inspiration coming from God,” given the mistaken
notions of various contemporary “English Sadduccees and outlandish
Libertines.”5
2. The Reformed orthodox doctrine of the Spirit—definition and
points of debate. The issues and doctrines addressed by the orthodox writers
of the seventeenth century are little different from those addressed by the
Reformers, although here again, the hermeneutical strains and stresses are far
more difficult for theological system to bear than they were at the beginning
of the sixteenth century. First, by way of definition:
The Holy Ghost is the third person of the true and only Godhead,
proceeding from the Father and the Son, being co-eternal, co-equal, and
consubstantial with the Father and the Son, and is sent by both into the
hearts of the faithful, that he may sanctify and fit them for eternal life.
That this description or definition may be established against the
heretics, the same things must be proven from the Scriptures concerning
the divinity of the Holy Ghost which we have already demonstrated in
regard to the divinity of the Son; viz., that the Holy Ghost is a person—
that he is distinct from the Father and the Son—that he is equal with
both, and that he is consubstantial with the Father and the Son.6
Pictet begins his doctrine of the Spirit at much the same place and with much
the same issues to hand as did the Reformers:
Concerning the Holy Ghost we have to inquire, 1) what he is, whether a
mere power of God, or really a person distinct from the Father and the
Son; 2) whether he is God; 3) from whom he proceeds; 4) why he is
called the Spirit; 5) why the Holy Spirit?7
The patterns of argument developed in the era of the Reformation by
thinkers like Vermigli and Calvin are virtually identical with those found
among the later Reformed orthodox and—as noted in the discussion of the
divinity and personality of the Son—indicates the need to argue both deity
and person, on the grounds that a heresy might potentially hold one point or
the other of the orthodox view, namely, that the Spirit is a divine power but
not a distinct person or that the Spirit is a distinct person and, therefore, not
divine. The former is the view of Adoptionists and some Arians, while the
latter was taught by other Arians, notably Aetius and Eunomius, and the
Macedonians or Pneumatomachians.8 The larger number of Socinians denied
the personality of the Spirit, whereas the English Socinian John Biddle argued
that the Spirit was a lesser or intermediary being—the patristic parallels did
not go unnoticed by the orthodox.9
 The Reformed orthodox typically mount their arguments for deity and
distinct person of the Spirit in a manner similar to that used in their
discussions of the Son’s divinity and personhood—by collation of texts,
following out their hermeneutic of citing the direct declarations of Scripture
and of drawing conclusions from juxtaposed texts.
B. The Reformers’ Views on “Spirit”
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit proved a significant point of contention for
orthodox Protestantism throughout the eras of the Reformation and
orthodoxy. Although denial of the deity of Christ was the focal point of their
argument, the earliest antitrinitarians tended to doubt the distinct subsistence
or personhood of the Spirit. All of the Reformers noted draw on and explain
the traditional language of the Trinity in relation to their discussion of the
doctrine of Spirit, with Vermigli’s discussion drawing most consistently on
the Athanasian and Nicene discussions of the Trinity for its definition of the
divinity of the Spirit.10 Among the great Reformed codifiers of the mid-
sixteenth century, Calvin, Bullinger, and Vermigli each devoted considerable
space to arguments for the divinity of the Holy Spirit, almost certainly in
response to the beginnings of antitrinitarianism in the writings of Servetus,
Blandrata, and Gentile. By comparison with Vermigli, Bullinger, and Calvin,
Musculus’ Loci communes engage in little discussion of the divinity of the
Spirit: it should be enough to prove the divinity of the Spirit, Musculus
comments, to show that Christ joined together in the baptismal formula the
names of Father, Son and Spirit or to cite Psalm 33, where Spirit is conjoined
with God and God’s word, showing that the Spirit is of the same divine nature
as the Father and the Son.11
Even allowing for differences in exposition caused by the editorial
compilation of Vermigli’s Loci communes by another hand in contrast to
Calvin’s own editorial hand in the Institutes, the difference between the
expositions is remarkable: Calvin plunges into a largely exegetical or biblical
discussion of the divinity of the Spirit, whereas Vermigli begins at what is the
logically prior point, the meaning of the word “spirit” in its various uses,
moving from the most general to the most specific, only arriving at the
individual divinity of the Holy Spirit after having discussed all of the other
applications of the term. Still, the Vermigli-Massonius Loci communes is also
rooted in exegesis, inasmuch as it takes up the question “Whether the Holy
Ghost is God” in a lengthy section drawn from Vermigli’s commentary on 1
Corinthians 12.12 Bullinger, similarly, takes up the definition of “spirit” in
general first and, like Vermigli, makes the larger number of his points
exegetically. Hutchinson’s discussion of the Spirit is noteworthy, along
similar lines, for its point, made against “English Sadduccees and Libertines,”
that the Holy Spirit is a “substance,” not merely an inspiration, affection, or
quality.13
Bullinger indicates that the discussion of the word “spirit” and its
implications is an important topic for Christian meditation, given that
Scripture itself uses the word “diversely,” and interpreters who are ignorant of
this textual problem will often mistake the meaning of Scripture. By spirit
“properly” so called, Bullinger continues, Scripture means “an element,
signifying air, wind, breath.”14 Vermigli offers an extended definition:
This word spirit, sometimes signifies a certain motion, or a nature
moveable; sometimes it is taken for life, or mind, or the force of the
mind, whereby we are moved to do anything; it is also transferred to the
signifying of things, which be separate from matter, as be the angels,
which the philosophers call Intelligences: yea, and it is so far drawn, as
it represents our souls. Which metaphor seems to have respect
thereunto, because we sometimes signify by this name, the thin
exhalations, which breath either from the earth, from the water, from the
blood, or from the humors of living creatures: which exhalations,
although they be not easily perceived by the senses, yet they are
effectual, and of exceeding great force; as it appeareth by winds,
earthquakes, and such like things.15
Bullinger notes that the apostle Paul uses the word “spirit” to mean the
“breath or voice”—and in this context links the word “spirit” to the tongue in
contrast to the “mind.” This contrast, moreover, yields a broader usage: “by
metaphor [spirit] is translated to every bodiless substance, and is set against
the body.”16 Or as Vermigli comments, the various breathlike “exhalations”
that we experience become the basis for identifying various beings as
“spirits”:
And so it cometh to pass hereby, that the name of these most subtile
bodies, whose force is exceeding great, hath been translated to the
expressing of substances without bodies. Wherefore it is taken for a
word general, both unto God, unto angels, and unto our souls. And that
it is attributed unto God, Christ shows, when he says, God is a spirit
(John 4:24), and thereupon concludes, that he must be worshipped in
Spirit and truth.17
Thus, the word can mean “an angel, either good or bad”—as in the case of the
psalmist’s and the apostle Paul’s references to angels as “ministering spirits.”
So also does Scripture speak of lesser spiritual beings, evil spirits, or unclean
spirits, just as it is common to speak of ghosts “which have taken some shape
that cannot be well discerned” as spirits. In addition, “spirit” is also used to
identify “the reasonable soul of man.”18
 Finally, “spirit” can also refer to God, and do so in two ways: “it is
attributed unto God, Christ shows, when he says, God is a spirit (John 4:24),
and thereupon concludes, that he must be worshipped in Spirit and truth,” and
it also, more restrictedly, indicates the Holy Spirit, the third person of the
Trinity.19 Bullinger comments, after a review of this and other New Testament
texts, that “the word [spirit] is common to all the persons of the reverend
Trinity; howbeit it is peculiarly applied to the third person in the Trinity.”20
Although Calvin does not press the point in the Insitutes that “Spirit” is
predicated of God in two distinct ways, he definitely concurs with Bullinger’s
and Vermigli’s exegesis, even to the point of faulting the church fathers: “This
passage [John 4:24] is frequently quoted by the Fathers against the Arians, to
prove the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, but it is improper to strain it for such a
purpose; for Christ simply declares here that his Father is of a spiritual nature,
and, therefore, is not moved by frivolous matters, as men, through the
lightness and unsteadiness of their character, are wont to be.”21
C. The Meaning of “Spirit” according to the Reformed Orthodox
1. “Spirit”: the range of biblical meanings. When compared to the views
of the Reformers, the teachings of the Reformed orthodox evidence an equal
awareness of the difficulties of biblical language concerning the Holy Spirit,
and they recognized, as clearly as Calvin, Bullinger, and Vermigli and,
indeed, in much the same way, that some discussion of the varied biblical
usage of “spirit”—ruach or pneuma—was a necessary prologue to the
doctrine of the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. The necessity,
moreover, was a twofold one: on the one hand, the Reformed orthodox
present the basic exegetical task of studying and defining the biblical usages,
given that the term “spirit,” like the term “word,” is used is several ways in
Scripture, not always as the designation of a divine person, and the usages
must be clarified for the sake of formulating Christian doctrine; on the other
hand, the Reformed orthodox note that, particularly in their own times, the
ambiguity or equivocity of the biblical usage has been used as a pretext for
heterodox teachings and such problems must be dealt with for the
preservation of true doctrine in the church.22 In the course of the seventeenth
century, other issues and problems also plagued the orthodox doctrine of the
Spirit, perhaps the most significant problem being raised by Cartesian
philosophy, which did not recognize “spirit” as a distinct substantial entity
and proposed “thought” and “extension” as the basic kinds of substance, or by
Hobbes, who denied the existence of immaterial spirit entirely. These
philosophical developments rendered all the more important the analysis of
possible meanings of the word “spirit” in the orthodox Reformed theology—
pointing to a significant new use of an exegetical argument that they held in
continuity with the Reformers.
 The doctrinal clarification of the biblical language, moreover, fits well into
the structure and assumptions of the older hermeneutics. Owen declares at the
outset of his discussion of “the names and titles of the Holy Spirit” that
although “some make their advantage of the ambiguous use” of the term
“spirit” in the Bible, “the Scripture is able of itself to manifest its own
intention and meaning unto humble and diligent inquirers into it.”23 The
method for clarifying and developing correct doctrine, in other words,
assumes the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture as a whole and proceeds by the
comparison of text with text.24 In addition, from the perspective of the
orthodox, the exegetical problem caused by Socinians and other adversaries
for the biblical language of “spirit” is quite similar to the way in which the
Socinians treated the problem of other usages, notably, the use of Jehovah:
ambiguities found in particular places are drawn into argument for the sake of
confusing the meaning of even the clearest texts. The biblical range of
meaning is of the highest significance to the orthodox, inasmuch as no one
sense of the word can be used as the exclusive index to the meaning of all
biblical occurrences, and each occurrence must be established in its own
sense within the probable range of meaning—and also because of shifting
senses of the term “spirit” in the seventeenth century and the need for
theology to be certain of its own meaning as specified by the text of
Scripture.
The words ruach and pneuma, taken in their most basic sense, indicate a
“wind” or “spirit,” in the sense of “any thing which moves and is not seen.”25
Scripture also evidences a highly generalized use of the words ruach and
pneuma, indicating “any thing that cannot be seen or touched, but is itself
material and corporeal, or absolutely spiritual and immaterial.”26 More
specifically, the term “spirit” can refer either to a cause or to an effect—and
“when taken for the cause it means the being or force that puts anything in
motion, and is either uncreated or created.”27 The varied usage of Scripture,
together with this pattern of understanding something unseen that moves,
whether as uncreated or created, cause or effect, yields some six possibilities
of meaning—without, however, yielding any lack of clarity in the text, given
as Owen remarks, that “every place where it is used gives [the word a]
determinate sense.”28
There are various references in Scripture to created spirits, which are either
immaterial or material. First, the former category—immaterial spirits—
includes angels, whether good or evil, and human souls. The Psalmist says
that God “maketh his angels spirits” (Psalm 104:4). Evil angels or devils are
also identified as “spirits”—as in the text, “and there came forth a spirit, and
stood before the Lord, and said I will persuade him [Ahab] … and I will be a
lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets” (1 Kings 22:21–22).29 The
human soul as well is identified as “spirit” in Scripture, in such texts as
Hebrews 12:23, “the spirits of just men made perfect,” a reference, Gouge’s
words, to “the excellency of men’s souls, as they are spiritual substances.”
Gouge emphasizes the point that a right reading of the text and of the biblical
notion of the soul demands the conclusion that it is a distinct “spiritual
substance”: souls, after all, come from God, who is called “the God of the
spirits of all flesh” (Num. 16:22; 27:16) and “the Father of spirits” (Heb.
12:9)—and the human being is said to be created in the image of God, “which
a mere body without a spirit could not be.”30 Note that this point became a
matter of contention in the seventeenth century, when not only a materialist
philosopher like Hobbes but also various Socinians will argue that the divine
substance and angelic substance, like all other substances, are both corporeal
and dimensive.
Second, the latter category—material spirits—includes the wind and
“vapors.” Scripture refers to the wind as “spirit,” blowing “where it listeth”
(John 3:8), indicating the air that has been moved by the word “spirit” or
“breath,” or indicating the effect of the air, namely, the “motion” or
movement of the air as experienced, or indicating the variations of the wind
or vapors.31 Here also belongs what Owen calls the “vital breath which we
and other living creatures breathe … by which our lives are maintained in
respiration,” mentioned in Genesis 7:22, as “the breath of the spirit of life.”
This, too, is a material vapor or air.32
Third, by metonymy, Scripture also uses the term “spirit” or “wind” to
indicate a place from which the wind blows, notably the “four corners of the
earth.” Thus, Ezekiel states, “I will scatter a third part into all the winds”
(Ezek. 5:12)—and we read of “the four winds” in Matthew 24:31, indicating
all parts of the earth.33
Fourth, the “unaccountable variation, inconstancy, and changes” of the
wind yields a series of metaphorical uses in Scripture that indicate vanity,
falsehood, and uncertainty. Given that wind is uncertain and untrustworthy,
the wise man who “observeth the wind shall not sow” (Eccl. 11:4)—or,
conversely, one may ask “what profit heth he who hath laboured for the
wind?” (Eccl. 5:16). Job questions, rhetorically, “Should a wise man utter
knowledge of wind?” (Job 15:2)—and refers to intellectual vanity and
“pretense of knowledge and wisdom” as “words of wind” (Job. 16:3).34
Fifth, in Scripture, “spirit” can refer by metonymy “to the affections of the
mind or soul of man … whether they be good or evil.”35 In other words,
“spiritual affections, and exercises whether good or bad,” like “the spirit of
fear,” belong to this extended meaning. Even so, we identify as “spirit” or
“spiritual” the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the latter sense, referring to gifts,
Paul says, “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19).36 So also, “because evil
spirits are wont to torment the minds and bodies of men, therefore evil
thoughts, disorders of mind, wicked purposes … are called … sometimes ‘an
evil spirit.’ ”37
Sixth, Scripture does use the term “spirit” to indicate the uncreated creator
or mover of all things: God is referred to as spirit inasmuch as he is the
uncreated cause of all things who puts them, as it were, in motion. As such,
God is both “essentially and personally a Spirit, that is, incorporeal,
indivisible, having a spiritual essence, but no bodily dimensions.”38 This is
what Scripture intends when it states that “God is a spirit” (John 4:24). This
final sense of the term “spirit,” as a reference to God, must also be qualified.
In the most general sense of its application to God, therefore, the term “spirit”
indicates not a particular characteristic of the third person of the Trinity, but
“that nature whereof each person is a partaker.”39 But there are also the
biblical references to “the spirit of God,” where a more specific identification
of “spirit” is required—given that, among other things, these phrases parallel
the biblical usage “Son of God,” in which another divine person is
indicated.40 The orthodox, therefore, offer an extended discussion of the
biblical references to the divine “spirit.”
2. The divine “Spirit” in the language of the Bible and orthodoxy. With
reference to those texts in Scripture in which “spirit” refers to God or the
works of God, three basic usages can be distinguished:
the term Spirit, when used with respect to God, is taken either
essentially, or personally, or metonymically. It is taken essentially,
when it is ascribed to God in reference to the essence common to all the
persons (John 4:24); personally, when it is attributed to some one
person, whether the second (Mk. 2:8; 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 1:4; 1 Tim.
3:16; 1 Pet. 3:18, 19), or the third (Matt. 28:19; 1 John 5:7);
metonymically, when it denotes certain effects or gifts, as in John 7:39,
where “the spirit” signifies those gifts, the effusion of which had been
predicted by Joel and other Prophets.41
Thus, 1) the Holy Spirit is “Spirit” essentially, “because he is a spiritual
essence, immaterial and invisible” and, as such, “is God, equal and the same
with the Father and the Son; and God is a Spirit.”42 But the Holy Spirit is also
identified personally as Spirit: therefore, 2) when the third person of the
trinity is specifically identified as the Spirit, the point of the text is frequently
not to refer to what he has in common with the Father and the Son, namely,
that he is “a most simple essence, intelligent, and exempt from all corporeal
imperfection” (which, of course, is the case, inasmuch as the Spirit is fully
God), but rather to refer to his “mode of procession” or to his personal
“operations.”43 The Holy Spirit is not, therefore, called “spirit” simply
because of the essential attribute of spirituality (which is shared by the three
persons) and which the Holy Spirit has in actu primo as a fundamental
attribute of essence like life, understanding, will, and power, but because of
his distinct mode and operation—so that as person, the Spirit is spirit in actu
secundo as well.44 From this perspective, namely, the identity of the third
person as Spirit in actu secundo, the “third person is called the Holy Ghost”
or Holy Spirit “because he is spired or breathed from the Father and from the
Son, in that he proceeds from them both.”45
There is also 3) the identification of the Holy Spirit as “Spirit” on the basis
of his special operation ad extra. Just as he is “inspired” or “breathed” forth
from the Father and the Son, so also is the Spirit the “immediate agent of
divine works,” the person “through whom the Father and Son immediately
influence the hearts of the elect,” an activity for which he is called “the power
of the Highest.”46 This point, moreover, returns to the initial definition of
spirit as either cause or effect, created or uncreated, immaterial or material:
the Holy Spirit is the uncreated “cause which influences or moves [and]
works effectively in the minds of men.”47
By the end of the era of orthodoxy, this view of the relationship between
uncreated Spirit and the problem of causality—including what must have
seemed fairly obvious in Ursinus’ time, that spirit, whether infinite or finite,
uncreated or created, is a fundamental cause of motion from potency to act in
other things—has so altered that the argument seemed difficult to justify. The
difficulty was particularly intense in the context of Cartesian and post-
Cartesian metaphysics, which saw no connection between spiritual or
intellective substance in general and corporeal or extended substance in
general, to the point of undoing the traditional connection between soul and
body and undermining the concept of secondary causality or intermediate
movers.48 Perhaps, comments Pictet, he is called the Spirit because he is “that
power by which the Father performs everything which he has decreed in his
wisdom: for it is almost always the custom, in every class of things, to
attribute the power of self-motion and the power of moving things to some
spirit.” This question, according to Pictet, cannot be decided definitively.49
The Spirit, further, is called “Holy” because, on the one hand, of “his
unsullied purity and glorious majesty”—not, however, as if he were holier
than the Father and the Son, for all are holy and “the divine holiness, being
infinite, does not admit of degrees.”50 Holiness, after all, is expressly
attributed both to the Father (John 17:11) and to the Son (Luke 1:35; Acts
4:27), and is a divine attribute that belongs indivisibly to the Godhead: the
Father, Son, and Spirit, considered as God are “holy by one and the same
holiness.”51 Holiness, as an essential attribute of the Godhead, is equally
attributed to each of the divine persons—and, inasmuch as the divine holiness
is infinite, it does not admit of “degrees of comparison”—so that the Holy
Spirit is not called “holy” “by way of eminence” in the Godhead itself.52
Rather, the specific attribution of holiness to the Spirit arises because it is
his special operation to make us holy: “in the order of the divine operations,
the sanctification of believers is usually attributed to him, as election is to the
Father, and redemption to the Son.”53 Still, as in the case of all divine
operations or works ad extra, sanctification is the work of the entire Godhead:
it is not as if the sanctification of believers were a separate work of the Spirit,
apart from the will and the work of the Father and the Son—“but such is the
order of the operations of God, that although they are effected by the common
counsel of the same will, and by the same energy of the same power, yet some
of them are appropriated to each person respectively.”54 Thus, the Holy Spirit
is the person of the Godhead “who immediately sanctifies and makes holy the
people of God,” while the Father and the Son participate in this work
“through the Holy Ghost,” acting “mediately.”55
7.2 The Personality or Individuality of the Spirit
The twofold pattern of argument concerning the Spirit—arguing his
divinity and arguing also his distinct personality—although a rather
traditionary procedure grounded in the patristic heresies, took on particular
significance in the era of the Reformation and orthodoxy, with the revival of
diverse forms of antitrinitarianism. On the one hand, some of the
antitrinitarians, notably a majority of the Socinians, acknowledged the
divinity of the Spirit, but identified that divinity as merely the power of God
exerted in a particular way, thus denying the individual subsistence or
personality of the Spirit. The Arians of the seventeenth century, on the other
hand, were willing to identify the Spirit as an individual subsistence, but as a
necessary consequence of his individuality, as a being less than God the
Father. Thus, there are three points to be argued concerning the Holy Spirit:
first, “that he is a Person”; second, that he is divine, namely, a “divine
person”; and third, that as a “divine person” he is also “distinct from the
Father and the Son.”56
A. Arguments of the Reformers.
Vermigli’s exposition evidences perhaps the clearest argumentative
structure, developing two bifurcations in argument: first, he distinguishes
between different biblical attributions of “spirit” to God, some of which
indicate the Godhead itself, while others indicate the specifically Holy Spirit:
When [Spirit] is so taken, this name comprehends under it, the Father,
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But sometimes it is taken particularly; for
the third person of the Trinity, which is distinct from the Father and the
Son.57
A second bifurcation serves to define the parts of the doctrine of the Spirit:
And of this person we speak at this time, wherein two things must be
showed: first, that he is a person distinct as well from the Father as the
Son: secondly, we will show that by this means the Holy Ghost is
described to be God.58
Vermigli continues:
As touching the first, the apostles are commanded in the Gospel, that
they should baptize in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost. Which place doth most plainly express the distinction of
the three persons, and doth signify nothing else, but that we may be
delivered from our sins, by the name, power, and authority of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.59
Similarly, at the baptism of Christ, Luke teaches that the voice of the Father
identified Jesus as his “beloved son” and the Holy Spirit appeared in the form
of a dove: clearly the Spirit is identified as a distinct person.60
The Gospel of John in particular offered the Reformers (as it had offered
the older tradition of the church) its most telling arguments for the distinct
subsistence of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Vermigli indicates,
In John it is said; I will ask my Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter. Here also the Son prays, the Father hears, and the Comforter
is sent.61
Although he does not elaborate on the passage in the Institutes, Calvin cites it
to argue the distinction of the Spirit, and in his commentary on John, after
having emphasized the soteriological focus of the passage, he adds (with
greater clarity than in the Institutes), “yet there would be no impropriety in
inferring from this passage a distinction of Persons; for there must be some
peculiarity in which the Spirit differs from the Son so as to be another than
the Son.”62
So also the text of John 16:13–14—the phrase “He will take of what is
mine, and will declare it to you” signifies “that the Holy Ghost doth so differ
from the Father and the Son, as he is derived from both.”63 It also indicates
that “every thing which the Holy Spirit shall bring proceeds from God
himself.”64 Nonetheless, over against misrepresentations of meaning of the
text, “these words take nothing away from the majesty of the Spirit, as if he
were not God, or as if he were inferior to the Father, but are accommodated to
the capacity of our understanding.”65 Again, the Gospel points toward the
distinct personality of the Spirit, without indicating any subordination.
And least that any man should think, that when Christ promised that the
holy Ghost should come upon the believers (as in the day of Pentecost it
came to pass) only a divine inspiration and motion of mind was
signified, the words of Christ are against it, wherein he said; He shall
teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance which I
have told you. But inspiration and motion of mind, do not teach nor
prompt any thing; but are only instruments, whereby something is
taught and prompted. And the action of teaching and prompting, cannot
be attributed but unto one that is a person indeed. Which is proved by
other words of Christ, when he said of the Holy Ghost; He shall speak
whatsoever he shall hear.66
Even so, the work of inspiration also testifies to the distinct personality of the
Spirit: when Peter teaches that “Holy men of God spake by the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost,” he “putteth a plain difference between him and an
inspiration: for he is not an inspiration, but the worker thereof, the sender of
it,” for “as the workman is not his work … as Apelles is not Venus, the
carpenter is not the house; nomore is the Holy Spirit an inspiration.”67
B. The Reformed Orthodox Approach to the Person of the Spirit
1. The problem of the personality of the “Spirit”: objections to the
doctrine and Reformed responses. Given the recognition on the part of both
Reformers and Reformed orthodox that “spirit” could (and often does) refer to
motions of air, vapors of various sorts, nonphysical being in general, and God
in particular, without any added implication of distinct personhood, the
identification of the Holy Spirit as a distinct divine person was not only an
important but also hotly debated point of doctrine during the era of orthodoxy.
Whereas there was never any debate over the distinct subsistence of God the
Father, but only over whether the Father was one of three fully divine
subsistences—and virtually no debate over the independent subsistence of the
Son, but only over the full divinity of his subsistence—there was intense
debate over the personal subsistence or personality of the Spirit.68 In brief, the
Reformed defended the doctrine in four sets of arguments—from the personal
properties attributed to the Spirit, from personal appearances or theophanies
of the Spirit, from personal “operations” of the Spirit, and from biblical
references to the Spirit in conjunction with but also distinct from the Father
and the Son.69
Objections ranged from the ancient Macedonian or Pneumatomachian
objection, typical of the Socinians, that the Spirit was merely a power of God
to the materialist denial of spiritual being as such, found in or extrapolated
from the new rational philosophies of the seventeenth century, notably that of
Hobbes and the Cartesians. Accordingly, the orthodox indicate that proof of
the distinct personality of the Spirit is particularly needed since it is so
strenuously denied:
The distinct personality of the Spirit … is denied, not only by the
Sabellians, but by some of the Socinians; yea, even by Socinus himself;
who describes the Holy Ghost as the power of God, intending hereby …
the energy of the divine nature; or that whereby the Father, who is the
only one, to whom, according to him, the divine nature is attributed,
produces those effects which require infinite power; so that they call the
Spirit, the power of God essentially considered.70
The texts cited by Socinians to prove the point are Luke 1:35 and 24:49,
collated with Acts 1:4–5, 8; 10:38, the former texts speaking in conjunction
with the Spirit or power from “on high,” the latter texts speaking of anointing
by the Spirit and power. But the texts, even if they do identify the Spirit as the
“power of God,” given the forms of expression found in Scripture, do not
constitute a denial of personality: after all, the followers of Simon Magus
identified him as “the great power of God” (Acts 8:10) without denying his
individual personality, and the apostle Paul speaks of Christ as “the power of
God” (1 Cor. 1:24) without implying that Christ is not a person.71 Witsius also
notes that such phraseology is also found among the Rabbis, who use the
word ‫[ גבורה‬geburah], “power,” with the article, to indicate God—a locution
which may in fact be found in the New Testament verse, “Ye shall see the Son
of Man sitting in the right hand of power” (Mark 14:62). The possible
identification of the Spirit as “the power of God,” therefore, provides “no
solid objection” to his personality or personal subsistence, although, notes
Witsius, the texts do not actually make the identification in the way the
Socinians claim.72
Others, notably Crellius, in order to give further support to Socinus’
claims, that “all that is affirmed of the Spirit as a person must be understood
figuratively as a prosopopoeia, just as Paul speaks of charity as suffering
long, kind, and seeking not her own, 1 Cor. 13:4, &c., and of sin as reigning,
having dominion, and working death in him, Rom. 6:12, 14; 7:13,” or, indeed,
of Scripture “foreseeing” the justification of the Gentiles through faith (Gal.
3:8).73 Against this latter denial of personhood, the Reformed orthodox point
out that the claim of figurative language, specifically prosopopoeia or
personification, cannot stand scrutiny. Scripture stands, when viewed as a
whole, as a clear and accurate revelation. The difficult passages may
consistently be illuminated by comparison with clear passages, and no point
concerned with the salvation of humanity (which is the primary divine
intention in the revelation) will ultimately be opaque to the community of
belief. This assumption belongs to the center of the orthodox Protestant
exegetical enterprise.74 Specifically to the point of the claim that all
references to the Spirit that appear to be personal are merely figurative
personifications, the orthodox respond that the clarity or perspicuity of
Scripture is such that “there is no instance of its continually employing the
prosopopoeia”: surely, the figure of prosopopoeia does appear in Scripture
and both sin and charity are personified, but it is also quite clear from other
places in the scriptural account that sin and charity are not regarded by
Scripture as persons. Typically, Scripture employs the figure to personify
things that lack “life and sense,” as in the texts which speak of the heavens
hearing or the rivers clapping their hands.75 There is no case in the entire text
of Scripture in which a thing or effect that is not a person is uniformly
referred to as such—which would have to be the case if the personal
references to the Spirit were merely figures. Nor can the personal references
to the Spirit be the only biblical exceptions to this rule, inasmuch as
prosopopoeia “is never employed except about objects in regard to which no
one doubts that they are not persons,” a rule of rhetorical usage that is quite
evident in the counterexamples of heavens, rivers, sin, and charity.76
It is abundantly clear, the orthodox insist, that the divine names and
attributes given to the Spirit, the distinction made between him and the Father
and the Son, and the various theophanies or “personal actions” and operations
of the Spirit mentioned in Scripture evidence a personal sense of the word
“spirit” that is impossible to reduce to a figure of speech. Such passages as
Matthew 28:19, where believers are enjoined to baptize in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Spirit, understand “Spirit” as no more a figure than
“Father” and “Son.” The same is true of 1 Corinthians 12:11, where the
“communion of the Holy Spirit” is juxtaposed with the grace of Christ and the
love of God—the passage makes no sense if the word “Spirit” is read
figuratively while “Christ” and “God” are read personally.77 So also is the
Spirit said to be “grieved” (Isa. 63:10), to have anointed Christ and sent him
to preach to the poor (Isa. 61:1), and to have led Israel through the wilderness
(Isa. 63:11–14).78
Even so, Crell’s attempt to read the crying of the Spirit, “Abba, Father,” in
the heart of believers as a personification (Gal. 4:6), by paralleling it with the
apostle’s earlier statement that Scripture foresaw the redemption of the
Gentiles (Gal. 3:8), falls short of valid interpretation of either passage. (The
debate here is interesting particularly because both the Socinians and the
orthodox use the technique of comparing texts for the sake of drawing
conclusions.) The one passage states that the Spirit is sent into the hearts of
believers and, by operating in the heart, cries out—in other words, the Spirit,
present in the heart “so causeth us to cry, that our crying is his voice.” This is
not personification, but a direct reference to an operation of the Spirit. In the
other passage, “the Scripture is said to foresee, because the Spirit who dictates
the Scripture, foresees.” Neither is this a personification rather it is a
metonymy. In short, the passages are not parallel, and the reference to the
Spirit is so clearly a reference to a subsistent individual that Crell is forced to
label it an instance of prosopopoeia in order to dismiss it as evidence.79
Nor can the Socinian reading of a series of references to the Spirit, Romans
8:9, 1 Corinthians 12:3, 2 Corinthians 3:6, and James 4:12, as personifications
of the “doctrine of the Gospel” be sustained. The Socinian claim was that the
contrast between being “in the flesh” and being “in the Spirit” or between the
“letter” that kills and the “Spirit” that give life, and the statement that no one
can say that “Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” are merely references to
the gospel, specifically, to the contrast between law and gospel, with the
gospel personified as the Spirit. On the contrary, the passages do not identify
“law” and “letter” implying a similar identification of “gospel” and “Spirit”—
rather the text “teaches that the letter is in the law, and the Spirit in the gospel,
so that they who minister to the law, minister to the letter; they who minister
to the gospel, to the Spirit.”80 The “Spirit” in such texts indicates both the
divine person and his grace, which are both “disclosed, and rendered
efficacious, by means of the Gospel.” This contrast between Spirit and gospel,
moreover, is confirmed textually by the apostle—he speaks of the Corinthian
believers as an “epistle written in our hearts,” and then states that this epistle
was “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God”: the Spirit, in
this passage, is clearly distinguished from the doctrine.81
2. The names, attributes, and operations of the Spirit. The personality
of the Spirit, like that of the Son, also appears from the names and activities
predicated of him—Sanctifier, Reprover, Witness, Comforter—and from the
works attributed to him—teaching, comforting, witnessing.82 In other words,
the Spirit is understood to be a subsistence or person, given that “the
properties of a person are continually attributed to him.”83 The Holy Ghost is
also said “to constitute or appoint” believers to an office (Acts 20:28).84 So
also is the Spirit said to have understanding, will, and power or to act
powerfully (1 Cor 2:10–11; 12:11; Luke 1:35; 24:49; Acts 10:38; 15:28)—
which are characteristics of persons only.85
When Scripture states that the Spirit “searches the deep things of God” and
that no human being knows the “things of God,” but only the Spirit, it clearly
identifies the Spirit as having understanding. Nor do these passages refer to a
human being endowed with the Spirit, for the Spirit is consistently
distinguished from the human beings to whom his gifts are given. The
personal distinction of the Spirit and the distinction of the Spirit from human
beings is also implied in the statement that God has revealed things to us by
his Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10). Even so, the Spirit is a giver of gifts who works “as he
wills” (1 Cor. 12:11).86 For Owen, this attribution of understanding or
wisdom to the Spirit underlines the Spirit’s personal identity inasmuch as this
attribute “is the first inseparable property of an intelligent subsistence.”87
Witsius notes that in the passages that refer to the Spirit and power, there is
a clear distinction made by Scripture between the Spirit and the power that he
has. Thus, Luke 24:49 indicates that the “power from on high” is given to the
Apostles, meaning the power with which they were filled—which is not the
Spirit himself, but a gift of which the Spirit is the author. This is not only the
implication of the text in Luke; it is the necessary conclusion drawn when this
particular text in Luke is compared to other places, such as Acts 1:8, where
the Apostles are told, “ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is
come upon you.” Similarly, in Acts 10:38, God is said to have anointed Jesus
“with the Holy Ghost and with power.”88
The Spirit comforts (John 14:16, 18), teaches and testifies (John 14:26;
15:26), prophesies the future (Luke 2:26, the death of Simeon; Acts 10:19, to
Peter concerning Simeon), guides believers into all truth (John 16:13),
prevents Paul and Silas from entering Bithynia (Acts 16:7), makes
intercession for believers with unutterable groanings (Romans 8:26), is
tempted or tested by individuals who lie to him (Acts 5:9), and bears witness
in heaven with the Father and the Son (1 John 5:7). Clearly, argues Pictet, the
Holy Spirit is a “person subsisting distinct from the Father and the Son” as is
demonstrated particularly in the Johannine references to the Spirit as
Comforter, as one who abides, as guide into truth, and as one who speaks not
of himself but of Christ.89
Again, dwelling is a personal character … but the Holy Ghost is said to
dwell in believers, John 14:17. and alluding hereto, as also connoting
his divine personality ‘tis said, 1 Cor. 6:19. Your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost; as a house is the dwelling place of a person, so a temple
is the dwelling place of a divine Person.90
Similarly the frequently mentioned sins against the Spirit—as in Isaiah 63:10,
where Israel is said to “vex” the Holy Spirit, or Matt. 12:31–32, where we
read of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” or Acts 5:3 where Ananias and
Sapphira are accused of “lying” to the Spirit—manifest the Spirit as a person:
“Is autem, adversus quem peccamus, non potest non esse persona divina.”
This is particularly the case since the sin against the Spirit is thus expressly
distinguished from sin against the Father and the Son.91
Socinian objectors argue that personal characteristics are attributed
metaphorically only to the Spirit even as conscience is said to witness
(Romans 9:1). Biddle, who assumes that the Spirit is not God but an
intermediary being, notes that all sins are against God, so that mention of a
specific sin against the Holy Spirit, far from proving the Spirit’s divinity,
actually disproves it!92 In answer, the orthodox note that most metaphorical
attributions occur in poetical passages—whereas the Spirit is referred to
personally throughout Scripture.93 Furthermore, the Socinian argument is
weak, since it rests on the supposition that some metaphorical
characterizations of impersonal things in a personal way show other personal
references to be merely metaphorical—but similar modes of speaking do not
necessarily indicate the same meaning. No one claims that the use of personal
language in referring to God the Father is purely metaphorical. Nor is it usual
to stretch the use of metaphors to include not only personal characteristics but
also personal works and personal relations—as Scripture continually does of
the Son and the Spirit. In particular, the personal properties of begetting,
begottenness, and proceeding attributed to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,
respectively, manifest them as distinct persons.94
3. The distinction of the Spirit from the Father and the Son. Not only is
the Spirit personal as God, but he is clearly a person distinct from the Father
and the Son: there are passages in Scripture, like Matthew 28:19, in which the
Spirit is “joined in the same place and order with persons, without any mark
of difference”: we are enjoined to baptize in the name of the Holy Spirit “no
less than of the Father and the Son.”95 Given that when a deed is performed in
the name of someone it is done by his authority, and that the authority of the
Spirit here appears to be equal to that of the other persons, the Spirit must be
understood as a person and as the equal of the Father and the Son in “the
ordinance of baptism.”96
Witsius recognizes that there are objections to this reading of Matthew
28:19—some have argued that there are passages in Scripture that link
persons with “things that are not persons,” like Acts 20:32, where “Paul
commends the Church ‘to God, and to the word of his grace.’ ” The objection
fails on two counts: in the first place, nowhere in Scripture is there an instance
where something is said “to be done in the name of that which is not person,”
so that the comparison of Acts 20:32 (where nothing is done in the name of a
person) with Matthew 28:19 (where baptism is commanded to be performed
in the name of persons) is not germane. Second, there is the distinct
possibility that in Acts 20:32, the phrase “word of his grace” is not a reference
to the gospel, but a reference to Christ. Witsius takes the argument from
Gomarus: given that Christ is called “the Word” in the Gospel of John and
even “the Word of life,” the phrase “word of his grace” may in this context
refer to the person of Christ.97
 The Spirit is consistently called the “Spirit of the Father” and the “Spirit of
Christ” or the Son, “but no one is his own spirit, no more than he is his own
father or his own son.”98 Even so, Scripture specifically indicates that the
Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son: Christ prays to the Father that
he would send a Comforter (John 14:16). It is clear that one who is sent by
another is distinct: a person does not send himself—yet Scripture consistently
speaks in this way of the Spirit. Christ sends the Spirit from the Father (John
15:26), and the Father sends the Spirit in Christ’s name (John 14:26). The
Spirit “bears witness with the Father and the Son in heaven (1 John 5:7).99
As various Johannine passages (14:16; 15:26; 16:27) show, the Spirit is
sent by both the Father and the Son. Diodati explicitly reflects elements of
Calvin’s reading of John 14. Christ, he notes, states that he sends “another” (v.
16) inasmuch as the Holy Spirit “is distinct from the Sonne in his personall
subsistence, and in the manner of working in beleevers.”100 The name
“Paraclete” or “Comforter,” moreover, is an indication of a personal work
(officium personale), and the word pneuma, a negative noun, is joined with a
masculine pronoun in John 16:13.101
Objections to the distinct personality of the Spirit are also raised on the
ground that the Spirit is identified by Scripture not as a person but as “the
power of God,” an argument based on Luke 1:35; 24:49 compared with such
texts as Acts 1:4–5, 8; 10:38. Since Christ is also called “the power of God”
(1 Cor. 1:24), and since “power” is one of the titles of God Himself, it would
not be a credible objection to the personality of the Spirit that he is sometimes
called “the power of God.” But, Witsius argues, even this contention cannot
be proven, given that in all of the texts brought forward to indicate that the
Spirit is called the power of God, there is a distinction made between the
Spirit and divine power.102
4. Theophanies and “personal actions” of the Spirit. There are places in
Scripture that teach of appearances of the Spirit in visible forms: in Matthew
3:16 and Luke 3:22, the Spirit descends in the bodily form of a dove and Acts
2:3, the Spirit appears on the heads of the disciples in the form of “tongues of
fire.” Such appearances indicate individual subsistence inasmuch as “it is not
possible for any quality or exercise of mind or heart to assume and wear a
bodily form; for an accident does not only not assume any particular form, but
it even requires something else to which it may attach itself, and in which it
may exist.”103 The point is well taken in the context of a traditional Christian
Aristotelianism, in which incidental properties such as qualities and functions
of beings cannot have an independent status apart from the being of which
they are the properties: attributes and properties are not and cannot be
freestanding realities. They cannot, therefore, act independently, and they
cannot become the subjects of other properties. Thus, if it was the Spirit that
took on the forms of a dove and of fire, the Spirit is not merely a property but
an independent subsistence—if the Spirit is not an independent subsistence,
then some other subsistence took on the appearances of a dove and fire, but
Scripture clearly identifies the Spirit as the subject of these forms. Owen takes
particularly angry exception to Crell’s argument that, inasmuch as a dove is
not a person, having no understanding, the text cannot be taken to indicate
that the Spirit is a person: the point is that only an individual subsistent would
appear as an individual subsistent.104
If, moreover, it is objected that “things which are not persons are
sometimes figuratively said to come down from heaven, and that such things
may be adumbrated by some external appearance,” as at Pentecost, when the
gift of “speaking in various languages” was manifest in the form of tongues of
fire on the heads of the apostles, the objection does not in fact undermine the
basic argument: “we do not deny that the gifts of God, which are not always
persons, descend from heaven: we only urge that nothing which is not a
person, ever came from above clothes with a bodily shape.” In matter of fact,
the tongues of fire on the apostles’ heads did not directly indicate the gift of
tongues—rather they denoted “the person of the Holy Spirit, the Author of
that gift, ‘who gave them utterance,’ as it is explained in the fourth verse.”105
7.3 The Full Deity of the Spirit
A. The Divinity of the Spirit in the Teaching of the Reformers
1. Reformation-era approaches to the divinity of the Spirit. Although
the nature of the polemic in the era of the Reformation was such that the
emphasis of trinitarian discussion was placed on the divinity of the Son, there
was nonetheless some concerted discussion of the divinity of the Spirit. The
Vermigli-Massonius Loci communes, Calvin’s Institutes, and Musculus’ Loci
communes all provided later orthodoxy with examples of carefully structured
discussions of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Despite Massonius’ use of
Calvin’s Institutes as a basic model for his Vermigli Loci communes, the
pattern of argument in the Loci communes is quite different from the pattern
of the Institutes. We have already seen Vermigli bifurcate his discussion of
divine Spirit into the general reference of Spirit to God and the specific
reference to the Holy Spirit, with an initial accent on the identification of the
Spirit as “person.” Once he has shown that the Spirit is a person and is
distinct from the Father and the Son, Vermigli again bifurcates his discussion
and presents arguments showing that the person of the Spirit is divine.106
Calvin begins his examination of the Holy Spirit with the comment that “in
asserting the divinity of the Spirit, the proof must be derived from the same
sources,” namely, the same sources used to argue the divinity of the Son. The
shape of the argument is, thus, quite different from the Vermigli Loci: Calvin
has first presented the doctrine of the trinity and then moved to discuss the
divinity of the Son and the Spirit, reserving discussion of the unity and
distinction in the Godhead as a final point in his positive argument. The
“sources” of his argument are those biblical passages that, like the passages
used in the preceding sections of the Institutes, demonstrate that the Spirit is
(in the words of the sixteenth-century editors of the apparatus to the
Institutes) “the Creator and Preserver of the world,” the one who “sent the
Prophets,” and who “quickens all things,” who is “everywhere present,” who
“renews the saints, and fits them for eternal life,” and to whom “all the offices
of Deity belong.”107 The following sections offer a composite view of the
thoughts of Calvin and various of his contemporaries on these biblical
foundations of the doctrine of the divinity of the Spirit.
Musculus’ Loci communes offers a very straightforward approach to the
doctrine of God, presenting a first chapter on God, a second on the divinity of
Christ, and a third on the divinity of the Spirit.108 The third is quite brief and
appeals to the baptismal formula as more than enough to demonstrate the full
divinity and personhood of the Spirit: it would hardly be suitable to take the
formula of baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as
indicating three Gods—nor is it possible that the one God could have more
than a single nature or essence, as would be the case “if the holy spirite were
not of the same essence and of the same nature of godhead with the father and
the sonne.”109
2. Divine names, titles, and attributes given to the Spirit. In this
category of argument as well, the theology and exegesis of the Reformers
offers a precedent for the teaching of the later orthodox, if only in the form of
a mediated tradition of exegetical result. Calvin argues the divinity of the
Spirit from the simple fact that “Scripture … in speaking of him,” uses “the
name of God.” Specifically, when Scripture speaks of believers as temples of
God, it explains this designation on the ground that the Spirit dwells in them.
So also when Peter confronts Ananias in Acts 5:3–4 for lying to the Holy
Spirit, he states that Ananias has lied to God. Calvin also cites Augustine on
the point: Augustine had indicated that it “would be clear proof of the Spirit’s
divinity” if Scripture enjoined us to build temples for the Spirit—and, just so,
Scripture has called believers the temple of God.110 In his commentary on the
text, Calvin writes,
we must note, that he saith that he lieth to God who doth lie to the Holy
Ghost. For the divinity of the Holy Ghost is manifestly proved by this
form of speech. In like sort Paul saith, “Ye are the temples of God,
because his Spirit dwelleth in you,” (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:19).111
Much the same argument is offered by Bullinger and Vermigli.112
Calvin also offers arguments for the omnipresence of the Spirit that fall
largely into the category of conclusions drawn from the statements of
Scripture. Thus, the Spirit who is “diffused over all space, sustaining,
invigorating, and quickening all things, both in heaven and on the earth,”
cannot be a mere creature. So too do the Scriptures indicate that the Spirit is
“not … circumscribed by any limits.”113 Nor does the language of Matthew
3:16, indicating that the Spirit “descended” in the form of a dove, imply either
a physical nature of the Spirit or a local presence (as if descending implied
that the Spirit does not fill all things), or an essential visibility of the Spirit.114
Bullinger and Vermigli find a variant of this particular argument so attractive
that they cite it out of Jerome’s version of Didymus the Blind’s treatise on the
Spirit, in Bullinger’s case, at length. Since the Holy Spirit “is in many
places,” Bullinger declares, he cannot be said to have “a limitable substance.”
Specifically, Scripture tells us that the Spirit dwelt in the apostles as they
spread the gospel abroad throughout the earth—“severed one from another
with a very great distance of place, and yet [they] had present with them the
Holy Ghost dwelling with them.” Clearly the Spirit is without limit of
place.115
There is also a textual argument that can be made on the basis of 1
Corinthians 2:10, “The things which be of man, no man knoweth, but the
spirit of man which is in him; even so the things that be of God, none
knoweth but the spirit of God.” Vermigli comments that “even as the spirit of
man is unto man; so the spirit of God is towards God”—and, given that “the
spirit of man belongeth unto the nature of man,” it is clear that, according to
the text, “the spirit of God is of his divine nature.” Similar conclusions must
be drawn, Vermigli notes, from the several texts that identify the Holy Spirit
as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son: since the Spirit is from them, he
must be “wholly partaker of their nature,” and therefore, as Basil argued
against Eunomius, truly God.116 Similarly, as Basil also argued, if we are
adopted as children of God by the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is consistently
identified as “the Spirit of adoption,” his divinity should be clear, as by a
direct attribution: “none that is not God can adopt any to be the children of
God.”117
3. Divine works attributed to the Spirit. No less important to the
understanding of the divinity of the Spirit than the explicit biblical attribution
of divine names and attributes to him are the numerous places in Scripture
where the Spirit is identified as performing a divine work. “By operations,”
writes Bullinger, “we manifestly acknowledge, that the Holy Ghost is God, of
the same essence and power with the Father and the Son.”118
 First, the Spirit is identified by Scripture as creator and preserver of the
world. Since, this power to create belongs only to God, the Spirit is
“undoubtedly” God.119 The divinity of the Spirit is first attested in Genesis
1:2, “when [Moses] says that the Spirit of God was expanded over the abyss
or shapeless matter; for it shows not only that the beauty which the world
displays is maintained by the invigorating power of the Spirit, but that even
before this beauty existed the Spirit was at work cherishing the confused
mass.”120 Bullinger appeals to two texts from Job as proof that “the Holy
ghost from the beginning before all creatures, visible and invisible, is a
Creator and not a creature,” namely, “His Spirit hath garnished the heavens”
(Job 26:13), and “the spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the
Almighty hath given me life” (Job 33:4).121 The Spirit, moreover, breathes
“into all things … being, life, and motion.”122
Second, the Spirit is also identified by Isaiah as governing and guiding the
Israelites in their journey out of Egypt, just as the Spirit “governeth now the
present congregation: for Christ promiseth that ‘he would pray the Father to
send us another Comforter, to abide with us forever.’ ”123
Third, the Spirit was sent to and spoke through the prophets. Drawing on
this point, Calvin and Bullinger both juxtapose combinations of texts to press
the conclusion that the Holy Spirit is indeed the Lord of Hosts. Thus, the
prophets consistently indicate that they speak the words of the Lord and we
read in the Gospel of Luke that “the Lord God of Israel … spake by the
mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began” (1:68,
70). From the New Testament, however, we also learn that it is the Holy Spirit
who speaks through the prophets (Acts 6:10; 2 Pet. 1:21). Isaiah refers to the
Lord of Hosts as speaking (Isa. 6:9) and Paul cites the text with reference to
the Holy Spirit (Acts 28:25–26).124 The point is significant from a
hermeneutical as well as a doctrinal perspective, inasmuch as Calvin and
Bullinger avail themselves of the technique of drawing conclusions from
juxtaposed biblical texts as a basis for doctrinal formulation—the technique
stands in continuity with the earlier practices of the church and with the later
Reformed orthodox.
Fourth, the Spirit graciously regenerates the elect and preserves them to
life eternal. Citing 1 Corinthians 6:11, “now ye are cleansed, and sanctified,
and lastly justified, through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the
Spirit of our God,” Bullinger argues that the text yields the conclusion that “it
is, as it were, the property of the Holy Ghost to sanctify.” We ought to
recognize “the power in working” that Scripture attributes consistently to the
Spirit—specifically, “that all the faithful are cleansed, washed, regenerated,
sanctified, enlightened, and enriched of God … through the Holy Ghost.”
This, indicates Bullinger, is the primary ground for our belief in the Holy
Ghost.125 “The Holy Ghost doth sanctify, renew, regenerate, give life and
save,” and these, states Bullinger, “are operations agreeable to God only.”126
So also does the Spirit teach us “all things” (John 14: 26)—which is the
proper work of God alone.127
Thus, the work of the Spirit, which he does by his own personal power,
testifies to his divinity:
if regeneration to incorruptible life is higher, and much more excellent
than any present quickening, what must be thought of him by whose
energy it is produced? Now, many passages of Scripture show that he is
the author of regeneration, not by a borrowed, but by an intrinsic
energy; and not only so, but that he is also the author of future
immortality.128
For Calvin, Bullinger, and Vermigli, the divinity of the Holy Spirit is
demonstrated not only by the nature and character of the gifts of the Spirit but
also by the syntax of the biblical references to the gifts of the Spirit.
This doth Paul show … when it is said; There be diversity of gifts, but
one Spirit; diversity of operations, but one and the same God. But to
give gifts and spiritual faculties, is no whit less, than to distribute
operations: wherefore, seeing the Holy Ghost is said to distribute gifts,
and God to impart actions unto men, it is manifest that the Holy Ghost
is God.129
Since, moreover, the apostle Paul not only states that the Spirit is the source
of God’s gifts but also that the Spirit distributes the gifts “even as he will” (1
Cor. 3:16), the Spirit has in himself “the sovereign choice … to impart gifts,”
which is certainly the power of God alone. Vermigli also draws the conclusion
that “if the Spirit be the author of graces, and the Father of operations; it is
meet that the Holy Ghost should be equal to God the Father.”130 Calvin offers
a similar argument from the same text:
Particular attention is due to Paul’s expression, that though there are
diversities of gifts, “all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit”
(1 Cor. 12:11), he being not only the beginning or origin, but also the
author; as is even more clearly expressed immediately after in these
words “dividing to every man severally as he will.” For were he not
something subsisting in God, will and arbitrary disposal would never be
ascribed to him. Most clearly, therefore does Paul ascribe divine power
to the Spirit, and demonstrate that he dwells hypostatically in God.131
B. The Reformed Orthodox Approach to the Deity of the Spirit
 1. The framework of argument. In arguments similar to those found in
the works of Calvin, Vermigli, Bullinger, and other Reformers, the Reformed
orthodox argue the divinity of the Spirit under five basic categories, reflecting
closely the arguments for the divinity of Christ. Some writers present
arguments for the aseity of the Spirit, paralleling those noted in the discussion
of the deity of Christ.132 More broadly, the Spirit is known to be a divine
person 1) from the divine names given to him; 2) from the divine attributes
acknowledged to belong to him; 3) from the divine works he performs; 4)
from the divine worship accorded to him; and 5) from his placement, at the
same divine “rank and order,” with the Father and the Son in statements
concerning the Godhead.133 Granting that the Spirit could be clearly
distinguished as a “person” or subsistence distinct from the Father and the
Son, the argument for the divinity of the Spirit as a divine person was of
considerable importance to the theology of the orthodox inasmuch as various
antitrinitarians, dissenting from Socinus, define the Spirit as a Person less
than God himself—as “the chief of created Spirits, or the Head of the
Angels.” Owen and Ridgley cite the English Unitarian Biddle as an example
of this doctrine.134
2. The divine names given to the Spirit. Although, as Witsius indicates,
Scripture nowhere states simply and explicitly that “the Holy Spirit is the
Most High God,” it certainly offers clear attestation of the divinity of the
Spirit when the hermeneutical step of comparing various passages is taken—
for things are affirmed of the Holy Spirit in some passages that are predicated
of God alone in other texts.135 Specifically, there are passages in which the
Spirit is clearly identified that parallel other passages in which the person
spoken of is Jehovah himself, and there are other passages in which things are
affirmed of the Spirit that either are elsewhere affirmed of Jehovah or can
only be affirmed of Jehovah. In both instances, the necessary conclusion is
that the person of the Spirit is fully divine.136 (Given, moreover, that, in the
order of argument, the Spirit has already been shown to be a person, these
latter arguments cannot be directed toward the conclusion that the Spirit is
merely a power of God.)
There are major arguments for the divinity of the Spirit by way of collation
or comparison that are of interest hermeneutically, given that they illustrate
the orthodox sense of the larger scope of Scripture and the mutually
interpretive relationship of texts: Lev. 16:1–34 collated with Heb. 9:7–10;
Lev. 26:11–13 collated with 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19, and 2 Cor. 6:16; Ps. 95:7–11
collated with Isa. 63:10–11, 14; Deut. 9:24–25; 32:12; and Heb. 3:7; and Isa.
6:3, 9 collated with Acts 28:25–26.137 The arguments, for the most part are
quite simple: the passage cited from Leviticus 16 recounts the direct words of
Jehovah to Moses and Aaron concerning the annual offering of sacrifices for
sin before the altar of the Lord, specifically sacrifices for the atonement of sin
made by the sprinkling of blood. There is no question that the speaker
throughout the passage is God, quite specifically, Jehovah. Hebrews 9:7–10
refers directly to the passage in Leviticus, identifying the discourse
concerning yearly blood sacrifice as a “figure” of the sacrifice of Christ, and
stating that “the Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all
was not yet made manifest.” Reformed exegetes concluded that the Holy
Ghost, as “author of all the Mosaicall institutions,” was also the speaker in the
passage in Leviticus.138 The Holy Ghost is, thus, Jehovah, and the text
demonstrates that as “the institutor of all these worships,” the Holy Ghost is
“one true eternal God, with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct
person.”139
The words of 2 Corinthians 6:16, “… ye are the temple of the living God;
as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them: and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people,” are drawn in part from Leviticus 26:11–13
and in part from Ezekiel 37:27. The text from Leviticus is important to the
argument because it yields the Holy Name of God: the divine speaker states,
“I am Jehovah, your God” (v. 13)—and, therefore, the “living God” of 2 Cor.
6:16 who dwells in and walks with his people, making them his “temple” is
Jehovah. But 1 Cor. 3:16, which also identifies believers as “the temple of
God,” states that it is the “Spirit of God” that dwells in them, while 1 Cor.
6:19 identifies the believer’s body as “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” Again,
the conclusion, based on collation, is that Scripture identified the Holy Spirit
as Jehovah.140
Psalm 95:1, 8–9, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord … for the Lord is a
great God,” continues with the intercessory prayer, “harden not your heart …
as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me.”
Witsius comments that “none will deny that he is the Supreme God” who
utters these and the following words concerning himself.141 This temptation,
in turn, is identified in Isaiah 63:10 as a time in which Israel “rebelled, and
vexed his Holy Spirit.” Moreover, by way of citation in Hebrews 3:7–9, the
apostle indicates to us that these words refer to the Holy Spirit, indeed, are his
own words: “wherefore as the Holy Spirit saith … harden not your hearts …
as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me.”
Thus, the “God,” identified as the “Lord” or “Jehovah” in Psalm 95 is shown
to be the Holy Spirit.142
Similarly, in Isaiah 6:3, God is called the “Lord of Hosts,” “Jehovah
Sabaoth,” and subsequently, in verses 8–9, the “voice of the Lord” tells
Isaiah, “Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not,” while in
Acts 28:25–26, the apostle Paul states, “Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esajas
the prophet unto our fathers, Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye
shall hear, and shall not understand.” The conclusion follows ineluctably:
for in the Acts, Paul shows that Isaiah is speaking of the Holy Ghost,
“Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers.”
But … Isaiah is speaking of the supreme God.143
The Old Testament reference to Jehovah, collated with its citation in the New
Testament, identifies the Holy Spirit as fully divine.144 As in the case of all
the arguments by collation of Old with New Testament texts, the fact that the
Old Testament speaks of Jehovah and does not clearly identify the Holy
Spirit, while the New Testament citation of the Old Testament identifies
Jehovah in the person of the Holy Spirit, fits the general model of the
Reformed hermeneutic of the Old and New Testaments—there is a single
covenant of grace, a single promise of salvation, but a diversity of
administrations and, in or through those administrations, a movement from
promise to fulfillment. What is offered in types and shadows under the Old
Testament is revealed with clarity under the New Testament.
The Socinian exegetes, who used the method of collation of texts and
drawing conclusions when it suited them, branded this particular collation as
“frivolous” and called into question this “kind of arguing” on the part of their
“adversaries.” Biddle comments that, by the same method, he might collate
Exodus 32:11, where “the Lord” is said to have “brought forth” his people out
of the land of Egypt, with verse 7 of the same chapter, where Moses is
described by the Lord as the one who brought forth Israel out of Egypt, and
conclude that Moses is the Lord! Or, again, in Isaiah 65:1, “the Lord” says “I
am found of them that sought me not,” while in Romans 10:20, the apostle
Paul states that Isaiah was “very bold” to say “I was found of them that
sought me not.” From this collation, Biddle remarks, one would conclude that
Isaiah was the Lord.145
The Reformed orthodox respond, in part, by showing that the collation of
texts from the Old and New Testaments is not necessary to their argument,
given that the New Testament, taken by itself, offers a clear testimony to the
divinity of the Holy Spirit. The baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 is the
best example, but there are numerous other testimonies. Apart from the
collation with texts from Leviticus, the Spirit is identified indirectly as “God”
when believers are identified as the “temple of God” because the “Spirit of
God” is said to dwell in them (1 Cor. 3:16). So too are believers called “the
temple of the Holy Spirit”—and “a temple is the residence of God alone.”146
In Ridgley’s view, the text indicates not only that the Spirit is fully divine but
also that he is a distinct divine person.147
Similarly, the divinity of the Spirit (as well as the personality) can be
shown from Acts 5:3–4: there, Witsius points out, “Ananias, whom Peter
declares to have ‘lied to the Holy Ghost’ is said also to have ‘lied unto God.’ ”
The point of the text is to identify a sin against the Holy Ghost as a “most
heinous sin” by indicating that a sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin against
God. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, God—as Witsius points out, the argument
of the apostle would not hold if the Spirit were not fully divine.148 The
continuity of exegetical argument is here at its clearest: the orthodox
reproduce nearly verbatim the views of the Reformers.149 In the orthodox
discussions, however, there are a pair of objections to be dealt with, based on
exegetical and philological considerations of the text raised by various
Socinian adversaries.150 In Biddle’s view, the passage “neither expressly …
nor by good Consequence” can be read as identifying the Holy Spirit as God:
the text contains a “metonymy of the adjunct”—“the Holy Spirit being put for
Men endued with the Holy Spirit.” This reading of the text, Biddle adds, is
found even in an orthodox Reformed writer like Piscator. It therefore does not
follow that “Ananias by lying to Men endued with the Holy Spirit … lied not
to Men, but to God,” and, therefore, one cannot conclude that the Holy Spirit
is God. A person may lie to God by lying to God’s messengers, whether the
apostles or the Spirit—but this is not ground for identifying the messengers as
God. The text is in fact analogous to 1 Thessalonians 4:8, “he therefore that
despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy
Spirit” where neither the Holy Spirit nor the Apostles are identified with God,
and the despising of God is inferred from the despising of his messengers.151
As Nye put the argument,
‘tis manifest, that those who despised the Apostles, are said to despise
God, because God was in them by his Spirit: What hinders then, but for
that same reason, those that lied to the Apostles, should be said and
understood to lie to God?152
(Piscator would probably not have appreciated this use of his commentary—
or, indeed, of the metonymy of the adjunct—given that his point was not
Biddle’s, namely, that by metonymy the Apostles, who were filled with the
Spirit were to be understood by the reference to the Spirit, with the result that
the text indicated only that Ananias had lied to the apostles. Rather, Piscator’s
point was that, by lying to the apostles, Ananias had in fact lied to the Spirit
and that the author of the Acts used a metonymy of the adjunct to state that
point directly.)153
Biddle and other Socinians offer a more pointed philological argument on
the text of Acts 5:3–4: the phrases “to lie to the Spirit” and “to lie to God” are
not equivalent—in verse 3, the aorist infinitive ψεύσασθαί is followed by
“Spirit” in the accusative—whereas in verse 4, the aorist middle, second
person singular ἐψεύσω is followed by “God” in the dative. They argue that
the first instance of the verb ought not to be translated as “to lie to” but rather
“to belie, pretend, or counterfeit,” yielding the sense that Ananias (v. 3)
pretended to be moved by the Spirit and, in so doing, (v. 4) lied to the
Apostles, the messengers of God, by implication, lying to God. This reading,
Biddle notes, was allowed by Erasmus, Calvin, and Aretius—he does not note
that Calvin preferred the traditional reading, “lied to the Holy Spirit.”154
From Witsius’ perspective, neither of these Socinian arguments is
successful. It is certainly true that the passage in 1 Thessalonians does not
indicate that the Apostles are God, but the point, much like that of the text in
Acts 5, is that “contempt of the discourses which the Apostles preached by
the inspiration of the Spirit of God, recoils upon God himself.” Even so, in
Acts 5:3–4, “the lie of Ananias, which he endeavored to impose upon the
Apostles, ultimately redounded against the Holy Spirit,” who, “by
consequence” of the argument in the text, is known to be God.155 Had Peter
intended to claim that the Holy Spirit, like the Apostles, was a messenger of
God and that Ananias lied to God by way of lying to the Apostles and by way
of lying to their source of inspiration, the Spirit, as if the Spirit were a
“medium, or middle person, between God and the Apostles,” the text would
have read “Thou hast not lied unto men, nor unto the Holy Ghost, but unto
God.”156 As for the philological argument of the Socinians, Witsius indicates
that this, too, is specious, given that ψεύσασθαι is used “indiscriminately” in
classical Greek with either the dative or the accusative and can mean “to lie
to” with its object in either case. He cites a series of examples.157
3. The divine attributes acknowledged to belong to the Spirit. Beyond
these texts, there is also the fact that Scripture consistently applies or
attributes to the Spirit a variety of things that can only be spoken of God: the
Spirit is eternal, immense or omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, immensely
good and holy, immutable, and true. The apostle teaches, for example, that
“Christ through the eternal Spirit offered himself up without spot unto God”
(Heb. 9:14), a verse which is best explained as a reference to the Spirit as
distinct from Christ and, therefore, as the attribution of eternity to the Holy
Spirit.158 Admittedly, the text could be taken as a reference to “Christ’s
eternal Godhead,” as some exegetes had argued,159 but in the view of many of
the Reformed writers of the era of orthodoxy, the best construction of the
passage identified the “eternal Spirit” as the Holy Spirit in his work of
anointing Christ to the task of Mediator, in order that his “oblation” might be
“without blemish.”160 Owen wrote at length on the passage, noting the
variations in ancient texts and versions—with the Vulgate and some Greek
codices reading “the Holy Spirit,” but the Syriac and a majority of the best
Greek codices reading “eternal Spirit.” Still, he argued the coherence of both
readings, given that “the Holy Spirit is no less an eternal Spirit than is the
Deity of Christ Himself” and that “both these concurred in, and were
absolutely necessary unto the offering of Christ.”161 Both readings, moreover,
Owen writes, are “equally destructive” of Socinian theology, given that one
established the deity of Christ, the other the deity of the Spirit.162 (It is also
worth noting here that the text-critical and exegetical detail of the
commentaries together with the varied readings found in the theological
systems of the era illustrates both the complex interrelation of biblical
interpretation and theology in the seventeenth century and the fact that the
writers of the day were not involved in a haphazard process of proof-texting.)
The eternity of the Spirit can also be inferred from his presence in the
beginning of creation and from the fact that “God never has been without his
Spirit.”163 In Genesis we read that the “Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters” (1:2), while Job testified that God has “garnished the heavens”
and has made human beings by his Spirit (Job 26:13; 33:4). In the case of the
passage in Genesis, “spirit” cannot mean a wind, given that the air was not
created “til the second day, when God made the firmament.”164 The eternity
of the Spirit is demonstrated by these texts, inasmuch as “he who made the
world and all finite things, wherewith time began, must have been before
them, and consequently everlasting.”165
The attribute of immensity or omnipresence attributed to the Spirit in the
traditional exegesis of such texts as Psalm 139:7, “Wither shall I go from thy
Spirit? or wither shall I flee from thy presence?” was also a matter of
controversy.166 Witsius adds to his argument the exegetical proposal of an
anonymous Greek catena on the Psalter that the two parallel questions of the
text indicated the Spirit and the Son, the Son being identified with the divine
“presence.” This reading, comments Witsius, is supported by the frequent
reference to the Son as the “presence” of God in the Old Testament: in
Malachi the Lord says, “Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall
prepare the way for my presence” (Mal. 3:1)—where the messenger is clearly
John the Baptist, and John prepared the way for the revelation of the Son. So
also, in Exodus, God promises to send his Angel before the Israelites to
prepare their way to the Promised Land and he also says that his presence will
go before them: in both cases, these are references to the work of the Son.167
Given the reference to the Son and the identify of the Son as a person, it
follows that “Spirit ought surely to be understood in a similar manner”—and
that, therefore, the Psalm teaches “the immensity of the whole adorable
Trinity, with regard to essence, knowledge, power, and effectual
operation.”168
Biddle in particular took umbrage at this doctrine and endeavored at length
to argue against the traditional exegesis. From Biddle’s perspective, the
argument for omnipresence was a case of an unbiblical appeal to reason or
philosophy from those who tended to decry reason as used by the Socinians
and to demand unreasoned acceptance of the words of Scripture and of divine
mysteries.169 Scripture speaks of the Spirit being “sent down from heaven” (1
Pet. 1:12) and as “descending” in the form of a dove (Matt. 3:16): in both
places, Biddle insists, the clear meaning of the text is that the Spirit moves
from place to place and does not remain in heaven when sent to earth—a clear
denial of omnipresence. As for the text in Matthew, Biddle insists, it does not
say that the form or shape of the dove descended, “but the Spirit in the
Shape.”170 From Biddle’s perspective (as distinct from the more typical
Socinian exegesis of the Spirit as a power of God) the biblical references to
theophanies of the Spirit, used by the orthodox to identify the Spirit as
personal, served also to identify the Spirit as a finite intermediary.171
In the orthodox view, Scripture teaches that the Spirit extends his influence
everywhere and also that the Spirit dwells in all the children of God,
something that would be impossible were the Spirit not capable of being
everywhere; if, Brakel argues, “the Holy Spirit is everywhere in his Being, as
the psalmist says, so must he be the true God”—precisely the logic attacked
by Biddle as unbecoming those who consistently resort to claims of
mystery.172 In Biddle’s view, the ability of the Spirit to “be in so many
persons” is no different than the ability of Satan to threaten the salvation of so
many Christians—and no one would claim that Satan, a finite spiritual being,
was omnipresent. Such abilities refer not to essential omnipresence but to the
exertion of power, in the case of the Spirit, to the bestowing of gifts and
effects on believers. For, Biddle comments, the Spirit is not omnipresent “in
his Person or Substance, for then his Person or Substance would fill the
World, and dwell in all Men a-like, whereas the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
is by the Scripture made a peculiar Priviledg of the Saints.”173
Turretin explicitly states the contrary point against the Socinians, namely,
that such passages refer to “the presence of his essence and not only of his
power, as was proved, above, in the question concerning the immensity of
God.”174 The point is important on several counts—Turretin here offers an
indication of the interrelationship of the discussions of the divine attributes
and the Trinity, he confirms the significance of the discussion of the attributes
as not merely a speculative exercise, and he indicates the extent to which
fundamental soteriological questions, such as those raised by the Socinians,
belong to the formulation of the doctrine of God.
The divine omnipotence belongs to the Spirit inasmuch as he “created and
preserved all things in connection with the Father and the Son.”175 So also
does the apostle attribute “the most sovereign will and omnipotent power” to
the Spirit, inasmuch as the Spirit “works divine effects, and divides divine
gifts, as he will, by his own power, and according to his own pleasure,” as
testified in 1 Cor. 12:11.176 “It is now surely evident that [the Spirit] is the
true God; for he who is not God cannot be eternal, omnipresent, all-knowing,
… and sovereignly mighty.”177 The Spirit is also directly identified in
Scripture as “the power of the highest” (Luke. 1:35). One of the points to be
noted is that this attribute is to be understood as not merely essential, but
personal: the Spirit is not merely the essential power of God exercised, but is
a divine person exercising his power.178
Omniscience can be inferred from 1 Corinthians 2:10–11, “the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God … even so the things of God
no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God.” The text offers evidence that the
Spirit has “a knowledge entirely divine” given that the text indicates 1) that
“the Spirit of God knows ‘all things’ absolutely”; 2) that the Spirit knows
“ ‘the deep things of God,’ the most hidden mysteries of [God’s] essence and
perfections, and the secrets of the divine counsels”; 3) “that he knows them
exactly as if he had searched them with great care”; 4) “that he knows the
most secret counsels of God as his own counsels, just as the mind of a man
knows the things of a man”; and 5) “that all these are evidence of a
knowledge entirely divine.”179 There is also a collateral argument based on 1
Corinthians 2:11. The text reads, “The things which be of man, no man
knoweth, but the spirit of man which is in him; even so the things that be of
God, none knoweth but the spirit of God.” The parallel of the human spirit
with the divine Spirit presses the argument that “just as the spirit which is in
man is of the essence of man, so the Spirit which is in God is of the essence of
God.”180 Similarly,
This allusion seems to imply that the Holy Spirit is as much in God as a
man’s mind is in himself. Now the mind of the man is plainly essential
to him. He cannot be without his mind. Nor can God be without his
Spirit.181
Or, as the Dutch Annotations indicate, collating the text with other Scriptures,
“for the Son knoweth the Father, and the Father the Son, Matt. 11:27; and
here also the Holy Ghost, as one only God with the Father and the Son, Rom.
8:27, knoweth that which is of God.”182
Scripture teaches the immutability of the Holy Spirit in his counsel and
promises: what the Spirit speaks will be fulfilled.183 The Spirit is also
immeasurably good, holy, and true, leading, as Ursinus remarks, to the
“production of the same in creatures.” Thus, the psalmist tells us that “the
Spirit is good” and prays that the Spirit will “lead” him “into the land of
uprightness” (Ps.143:10), and Paul indicates that the Spirit has the power by
which we are justified (1 Cor. 6:11). As for the attribute of truth, the Spirit is
identified as “the Spirit of truth” (John 15:26) and called “truth” itself (1 John
5:6).184 The Spirit also has divine life, inasmuch as he is the one who vivifies
our mortal bodies (1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 8:11).185
So also, does the Spirit have “economic attributes” or relative attributes
belonging specifically to his office: he is “holy,” as his name itself indicates;
“good” as taught in Psalm 143:10; a Spirit of “grace” (Heb. 10:29; Zech
12:10); powerful (Luke 1:35); and a Spirit of “glory,” inasmuch as he is the
one who leads the faithful to their eternal glory (1 Pet. 4:14).186 In each case,
these are attributes and/or powers that belong only to God.
4. The divine works performed by the Spirit. The Spirit performs
specific works that can only be attributed to God, namely, creation,
providence, regeneration, sanctification, and various miracles. Thus, Scripture
ascribes to the Spirit the works of God: creation (Job 26:13; Psalm 33:6), the
preservation and sustenance of the created order (Gen. 1:2; Zech. 4:6).187 The
“brooding” or “hovering” over the deep attributed to the Spirit in Genesis 1:2
is variously explained by the Reformed orthodox. Witsius argues that this is
the creative power being exercised on unformed matter, whereas Wollebius
holds that this is the providential preservation of the world as initially created
out of nothing—yielding a providential aspect to the creative work of the
Spirit.188
Following the Statenvertaling annotations, Witsius argues that the
metaphor in Genesis 1:2 of the Spirit moving or hovering over the face of the
waters
is taken from birds, which brood upon their nests, and hatch their young
by the genial heat they communicate. The Spirit of God thus brooded
on the shapeless mass, and by his influence rendered it productive of so
vast a multitude of beautiful creatures.189
Witsius points out that this interpretation is not only justified by a collation
with Deuteronomy 32:11, where similar language described the nesting
mother eagle, but also by various Jewish exegetes. He adds, echoing the
arguments of various philosophers and historians of the era, that all ancient
wisdom was rooted in the contact of ancient peoples with Israel, that “the
symbolical theology of the Egyptians, which represents the world as coming
from God, like an egg, perhaps took its rise from this metaphor.190 The basic
exegetical point is replicated in numerous exegetical works of the era which
interpret the Spirit’s “brooding” as a metaphorical expression drawn from the
image of birds hatching eggs—thus, the Spirit “quickens and disposes” the
unfinished matter of the world “to the production” of the manifold things of
the world order.191 Wollebius had the strong precedent of Calvin’s exegesis
for his interpretation,192 nor were the two readings mutually exclusive:
He became to that rude dead mass, a quickening, comforting Spirit. He
kept it together which else would have shattered. And so he doth still,
or else all would soon fall asunder (Heb. 1:3; Ps. 104:29), were not his
conserving mercy still over, or upon, all his works (Ps. 145:9).193
Other texts, such as Psalm 104:29–30, also indicate the office of the Spirit in
the conservation and government of the world.194
Similarly, Scripture attributes other “divine works” to the Spirit, such as
“the conception of Christ (Luke 1:35), the working of miracles (Matt. 12:28; 1
Cor. 12:4–5), the governing of the church, and the sending of ministers (Acts
13:2; 20:28).” The working of miracles is of particular importance, given the
orthodox assumption, based on Psalm 72:18 (“Praised be the Lord God, the
God of Israel, which alone doth wonders”), that only God can perform
miracles. The apostle writes of “mighty signs, and wonders,” performed “by
the power of the Spirit of God” (Rom. 15:19; cf. 1 Cor. 12:9, 10) and Christ
himself testified that he performed miracles by the power of the Spirit (Matt.
12:28). Thus, the Holy Spirit must truly be God.195 The Spirit, moreover, is
the one who anoints Christ to his work as Mediator, which is clearly a divine
work.196
The Spirit is the one who accomplishes the redemption, illumination, and
sanctification of believers, and the resurrection of the flesh (1 Cor. 2:10 and
Rom. 8:11).197 The Spirit also distributes graces “according to his pleasure”
(1 Cor. 12:4, 11), instructed the prophets (2 Pet. 1:21), and called or made
apostles (Acts 13:2; 20:28).198 The Spirit is termed “the Spirit of truth” (John
14:26), “the Spirit of Adoption” (Rom. 8:15), “the Spirit of sanctification”
(Rom. 1:4), and “the Spirit of renewing” (Titus 3:5).199 In such passages, the
Spirit is identified as the active effector of regeneration, adoption, and
sanctification, not merely as the instrument by which these blessings are
accomplished. Indeed, sanctification is attributed both to the Spirit and to the
Word, but in different respects, inasmuch as “the moral efficacy of the word
depends entirely on the supernatural and efficacious operation of the
Spirit”—“the Spirit is joined with the Word, and yet distinguished from the
word.”200
5. The divine honor and worship accorded to the Spirit. Both Scripture
and the church’s tradition indicate that the Spirit is to be honored and
worshiped as divine. We are enjoined by Scripture to “worship the Holy
Ghost, as the source of all blessings” and taught also that we must worship
only the Lord God.201 Brakel makes the point a matter of logical argument:
the one
 in whose name we ought to be baptized, from whom we ought to
beseech all gifts, whom we must obey, he is the true God. But we must
needs be baptized in the name of the Holy Spirit, and from him must all
gifts be sought: therefore the Holy Spirit is the true God.202
He then lines out each part of the argument biblically. That we must be
baptized in the name of the Spirit is clear from the baptismal formula itself,
that we baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.” Baptism expresses our covenant with the three persons of the Trinity
and explicitly refers to all three persons because “the Father works through
the Son and the Holy Spirit in the faithful” and indicates that “the Holy Spirit
is granted the same dignity as the Father and the Son: thus the Holy Spirit is
the same God with the Father and the Son.”203 Even so, the spirit is the source
of God’s gifts to us and ought to be petitioned—and that the Spirit should be
served is clear from the biblical warnings that we ought not to sin against the
Spirit or vex the Spirit as the Israelites did.204 Turretin adds that the Apostle’s
Creed accords equality in reverence to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and
that “the early church always invoked him” in its hymns, notably, the Gloria
and the Veni, Creator Spiritus.205
“Add to this that we are consecrated as a Temple to the Holy Spirit …
‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in
you.’ ”206 Scripture here also identifies the Spirit as an object of worship—
one to whom a temple may be rightly consecrated—and, therefore, as divine.
There is, moreover, no force in the objection, leveled by Socinians and others,
that the believer is only called a “temple” metaphorically for, as Witsius
comments, “the analogy must be preserved” even in the metaphor.207 As
Augustine commented, if it is sacrilege to build a temple to a creature, how
much more sacrilegious would it be to identify ourselves as temples of one
who is not God!208
Witsius offers another argument, based on the collation of texts: the Gospel
of Matthew enjoins believers, “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that
he will send forth laborers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:38). Acts 13:2 offers an
“instance of the precept,” the sending forth of laborers into the divine harvest:
“As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” The
conclusion is that the Spirit is the Lord of the harvest and the divine object of
“religious adoration.”209 A similar reverencing of the Spirit with the Father
and the Son is found in the Pauline benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14, where
divine communication or communion is promised from the Spirit.210
Witsius also argues the divinity of the Spirit from the salutation to the
seven churches of Asia found in the Apocalypse, a point that we have already
noted in passing in the discussion of trinitarian exegesis of Revelation 1:4.211
The text reads, “John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto
you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and
from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.” Testimony to the divinity
of the Holy Spirit arises from the passage once it is shown “what the seven
Spirits denote” and “in what manner John calls upon them.”212 The “seven
Spirits” are not created spirits, but the Holy Spirit, the “third person of the
Godhead,” as is evident both from the symbolic language of the text and from
other usages throughout the Apocalypse. “The number seven is a symbol of
multitude and of perfection” just as the grace of the Holy Spirit is “most
abundant and most perfect.”213 This interpretation coheres with the imagery
in the Apocalypse of “the golden candlestick with its seven lamps in the
tabernacle of Moses” as implied in the reference to “seven lamps of fire
burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God” (Rev. 4:5)—
the tabernacle, Witsius continues, was a symbol of the church and the golden
candlestick a symbol of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates the church. The
candlestick “though one in itself, had seven distinct lamps” which belong to
the candlestick and proceed from it, symbolizing the multitude of graces that
belong essentially to the Spirit and that proceed from him in his work.214 This
reading of the symbolic language is born out by the text itself: the seven
Spirits are called “the Spirit of God” (Rev. 4:5), and they are placed (Rev.
1:4–5) between the Father and the Son “as of the same dignity.” So also is the
Holy Spirit identified as the seven horns and seven eyes of the Lamb (Rev.
5:6). Nor does the Apocalypse speak of these seven Spirits as worshiping
God, although it does say this of the “living creatures” and the “elders” before
the throne. Rather, these Spirits are invoked by John in the same breath that
he invokes the Father and the Son.215
Finally, there is the issue of the obedience that is due to the Holy Spirit.
Witsius returns to the text of Hebrews 3:7–12—
Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation
in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw
my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation,
and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known
my ways. So I swear in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief,
in departing from the living God.
The text, which had been referenced earlier, in conjunction with Isaiah 63:10
and Psalm 95:1, 8–9, as showing by necessary conclusions that the Holy
Spirit is God, can also be used as an independent basis for arguing the divinity
of the Spirit: here, “the Spirit of God was justly offended, because that sacred
obedience which was an honor due to his Majesty, had not been rendered to
him.”216 Similarly, Scripture speaks of the “sin against the Holy Spirit” as a
sin “so heinous in the sight of God” that it is unpardonable: if the Spirit were
not God, Witsius argues, how could a sin against him be of such magnitude?
Indeed, once this proof is noted, one might ask whether the Spirit ranks higher
as God than either the Father or the Son, given that sins against them can be
forgiven! The resolution of the problem, however, lies not in a difference in
rank or status, given that the “infinity of the Godhead excludes all disparity”
among the persons, but in the fact that the Spirit is the one who works
redemption and who bestows the grace without which there can be no
salvation: the rejection of the Spirit places a person outside of his work.217
Turretin adds that blasphemy is, quite specifically and restrictively, a sin
against God—and Scripture specifies that there is a blasphemy against the
Holy Spirit, distinct from blasphemies against the Father or the Son. Thus, the
Spirit must be a distinct divine person.218
6. The placement of the Spirit at the same divine “rank and order,”
with the Father and the Son. The Spirit is identified as equal in divine rank
and essential (as distinct from personal) order with the Father and the Son in
such places as the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 and the apostolic
benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14. Scripture would not place “the name of a
mere power or virtue” on an equal level with the Father and the Son.219 Nor
could we “grieve the Spirit” (Eph. 4:30) or sin against the Holy Ghost (Matt.
12:31–32) if he were not a person, indeed, a divine person.220 1 Cor. 12:4ff.
distinguishes between the Spirit and the gifts or operations of the Spirit just as
it distinguishes between God and his operations or the Lord and his
ministrations (vv. 5 and 6);
to which we may add those passages, in which the Spirit is represented
as descending in the shape of a dove, or of divided tongues. For only
persons, and not virtues or accidents, can assume visible appearances or
forms of this kind. We conclude, therefore, that the Holy Spirit is a
person subsisting distinctly from the Father and the Son.221
As a fourth argument Pictet returned to the baptismal formula of Matthew
28:19—
for not only does this passage prove the Spirit to be a person, but also a
divine person. For he, in whose name we are baptized, is considered as
the author of the covenant of grace, who has authority to institute
sacraments for the sealing of that covenant; who can promise and give
grace; and whom those that are admitted into the covenant are bound to
worship and serve; none of which can be said of any created thing.222
The baptismal formula also demonstrates the equality in power and authority
of Father, Son, and Spirit—particularly inasmuch as it indicates that the
ratification of the “ceremony” is referred to the persons as distinct,
accomplished by “each one by the special property of its operation.”223
Nor do the various objections to the deity of the Spirit hold. For example,
some object that the Spirit cannot be truly God because he is called “the Spirit
of God”—but surely this is said of the Spirit just as it is said of the Son that
he is the Son of God: that is, it is spoken of God personaliter as Father. The
similar objection that the Spirit is called the “finger of God” (Luke 11:20) is
solved by recognizing that “the finger of God” denotes not the Spirit but “the
finger of the Spirit,” which is to say, the power of the Spirit.224 From John
7:39 it is argued that the Spirit was not in existence prior to the glorification
of Christ: but the text is not stated absolutely, of the existence of the Spirit,
but only of the gift of the Spirit.225
7.4 Operations of the Spirit Ad intra and Ad extra
A. The Ad intra Operation or “Procession” of the Spirit
1. Processio or ἐκπόρευσις defined. Once the full divinity and
independent subsistence of the Spirit have been acknowledged, the procession
of the Spirit becomes the crucial point of differentiation between the Spirit
and the other persons of the Trinity. Vermigli writes, “And that this third
person proceedeth from the Father and the Son, it is evident enough in the
same Gospel of John, where it is written; When the Comforter shall come,
whom I will send unto you: even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the
Father.”226
The incommunicable property of the Holy Ghost is his “proceeding,”
which neither the Scriptures nor the church can precisely distinguish from
“begetting.” Still, the term “procession” is to be accepted and to be
understood as specific to the Spirit: just as “generation” or “begetting” is
argued of the Son, so is “procession” argued of the Spirit—nor is the meaning
of the term “procession” to be taken in the broadest sense, of having “origin
from some one” or as coming forth from some one, given that in this sense
the term might as well be applied to the Son (cf. John 16:28; Mic. 5:2). Rather
it is to be understood strictly as denoting “an emanation from the Father and
the Son, distinct from the generation of the Son.”227 This distinct emanation
of the Holy Ghost corresponds, moreover, to his “proper manner of working
[which] is, to finish an action, effecting it, as from the Father and the Son.”228
As far as this “manner of working” is a description of the divine economy, it
must be further clarified by the dictum that all works of God ad extra are
performed “out of his divine essence” and “are common to the Trinity, the
peculiar manner of working always reserved to every person.”229
 Turretin notes that the debate of his time does not concern the latter point,
the “temporal and external procession,” but only the “eternal and internal
procession”—not the ad extra activity according to which the divine work,
appropriated to the Spirit, terminates on God’s creatures, but the ad intra
activity that is “terminated inwardly,” namely, the “mode of communication
of the divine essence … by which the third person of the Trinity has from the
Father and the Son the same numerical essence which the Father and the Son
have.”230
Given the fact that the Spirit is a different person from the Son, it is clear
that his procession must differ from the generation of the Son: were the
emanations identical, the persons would be also, but the Spirit and the Son are
“different persons who stand related to each other in origin” from the
Father.231 The Reformed orthodox, however, typically take the path of the
later fathers as opposed to that of the medieval scholastics: they recognize
that there is a difference but refrain from speculation concerning the nature of
the difference between the procession of the Spirit and the generation of the
Son. They also cite both Augustine and John of Damascus to this effect.232
The sending of the Spirit is not a sign of his inferiority to the Father and
the Son: his being sent is not a matter of being ordered, but by his consent
and, even so, it indicates a “diversity of work, but not of essence.” Similarly,
the statement that “the Spirit searcheth … the deep things of God” (1 Cor.
2:10) does not imply a subordination of the Spirit, as is seen when the text is
conferred with Romans 8:27, “he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit”: as Rijssen points out, searching does not mean
“investigation,” implying lack of knowledge and discursive thinking, but an
“intimate penetration.”233 Nor does Romans 8:26, where the Spirit is said to
pray for us, make the Spirit subordinate as a mediator between men and God,
for the Spirit does “not pray for us as Christ, the mediator, did, presenting to
the heavenly Father his merits, but the Spirit prays in our place and in us,
raising up our infirmities when we are unable to pray.”234
2. The demonstration of the filioque: “double procession.” The
traditionally Western trinitarian concept of the double procession of the Holy
Spirit was consistently upheld by the Reformers and argued with some vigor
against the Greek Orthodox view. The Reformed exegetes, moreover,
understood the issue to be one of exegesis, not merely an issue of the form of
the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and found the biblical text to be
entirely of one accord in favor of double procession. Vermigli writes, with
reference to John 15:26,
Seeing the Son saith, that he will send the Spirit, and (as we said before)
affirmeth him to receive of his; no man doubteth, but that he proceedeth
 from the Son. And now he expressly addeth; Who proceedeth from the
Father.235
Calvin took the point with equal seriousness, noting in his commentary on the
same text,
When he says that he will send him from the Father, and, again, that he
proceedeth from the Father, he does so in order to increase the weight
of his authority; for the testimony of the Spirit would not be sufficient
against attacks so powerful, and against efforts so numerous and fierce,
if we were not convinced that he proceedeth from God. So then it is
Christ who sends the Spirit, but it is from the heavenly glory, that we
may know that it is not a gift of men, but a sure pledge of Divine grace.
Hence it appears how idle was the subtlety of the Greeks, when they
argued, on the ground of these words, that the Spirit does not proceed
from the Son; for here Christ, according to his custom, mentions the
Father in order to raise our eyes to the contemplation of his Divinity.236
As in Vermigli’s comment, Calvin’s analysis of the text assumes the sending
of the Spirit by Christ and therefore the procession of the Spirit from the Son
and views the further statement of the Gospel that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father not restrictively but as an expansion of the meaning to include the
Father.
Calvin rather emphatically takes the words “he proceeds from the Father”
as an indication of the authority of the Spirit, not of the sole origin of his
eternal procession: Christ here sends the Spirit, but manifests the Spirit as a
“sure pledge of divine grace.” It is, he concludes, an “idle subtlety of the
Greeks” to claim this text as warrant for their denial of double procession.237
Calvin points out in his comment on Romans 8:9,
But let readers observe here, that the Spirit is, without any distinction,
called sometimes the Spirit of God the Father, and sometimes the Spirit
of Christ; and thus called, not only because his whole fulness was
poured on Christ as our Mediator and head, so that from him a portion
might descend on each of us, but also because he is equally the Spirit of
the Father and of the Son, who have one essence, and the same eternal
divinity.238
The orthodox follow the Reformers in upholding the Western doctrine of
the filioque. The orthodox Reformed writers not only argue the Augustinian
doctrine of double procession they insist on it as a biblical point held over
against the teachings of the Greek Orthodox:
The property of the Son in respect of the Holy Ghost is to send him out,
John 15:26. Hence arose the Schism between the Western and the
 Eastern Churches, they affirming the procession from the Father and the
Son, these from the Father alone.239
Among the Reformed orthodox theologians, Pictet notes the clear distinction
of persons in John 15:26:
Here the Comforter, or Spirit, is plainly distinct from the Father and the
Son. Again, they are so distinguished, that some things are said of the
Father which cannot be said of the Son, and some things of the Son
which are no where said of the Spirit. The Father is said to have
begotten the Son … the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, and to
be sent by the Son; but nowhere is the Father said to proceed from nor
the Son to be sent by the Spirit. Yet are these persons distinct in such a
manner, that they are not three Gods but one God; for the scripture
everywhere proves and reason confirms, the unity of the Godhead.240
Similar statements are found among the Reformed exegetes of the era. Poole
notes that the text has been read variously: some exegetes understand the
Spirit’s procession from the Father merely as his coming forth or being
poured out at Pentecost, whereas others—“the generality of the best
interpreters”—understand the text as a reference to “the Holy Spirit’s eternal
proceeding.”241 Owen, by way of contrast, argues the primary meaning of the
text to be that the Spirit “goeth forth or proceedeth” in order to “put into
execution” the salvific counsel of God in the application of grace and views
the immanent procession of the Spirit as a secondary meaning, a conclusion to
be drawn from the text.242
As Pictet notes, the Reformed orthodox uniformly follow the Western
doctrine:
That the Spirit proceeds from the Son, is proved by those passages in
which he is represented as being sent no less by the Son than by the
Father; nor is he any less the Spirit of the Son than of the Father: Rom.
8:9, “any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ …; Gal. 4:6, “God
has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts”; John 16:7, “If I do not go
away, Comforter will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to
you.”243
Nor is this a minor point in theology that can be dismissed:
To deny the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, is a grievous
error of Divinity, and would have grated the foundation, if the Greek
Church had so denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as
that they had made an inequality between the Persons. But since their
form of speech is, that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father by
the Son, and is the Spirit of the Son, without making any difference in
 the consubstantiality of the Persons it is a true though erroneous Church
in this particular; divers learned men think that à Filio & per Filium in
the sense of the Greek Church, was but a question in modo loquendi, in
manner of speech, and not fundamental.244
The problem of the filioque was, therefore, not something that the Reformed
orthodox could ignore: they refused to go so far as to claim that the Greek
church was a false church, but they still insisted that it ensconced an error in
its doctrinal explanations of the creed.
From the Reformed perspective, moreover, the Greek critique of the
filioque, that it implied two ultimate principia or archai in the Godhead, did
not hold—for there could only be two archai if the Father and the Son
separately and equally were the sources of the Spirit’s procession. The
orthodox conception of the filioque, however, insisted on the unity of the act
of the Father and the Son, so that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and
Son by “one and the same breathing” and does so from both equally, the
Father and the Son acting in communion with one another. Thus, the Holy
Ghost, the third person, proceeds from the Father and the Son: “and albeit the
Father and the Son are distinct persons, yet they are both but one beginning of
the holy Ghost.”245 At the same time, following the Western pattern, the
Reformed orthodox insisted on the begetting of the Son as placing the Son
second in order, thus maintaining the Father as ultimate source of the personal
distinctions and the Father and the Son together as the source of the Spirit.246
Thus, when addressing the question of the procession of the Spirit, Owen
indicates that the “fountain” or “source” of the Spirit’s procession is the
Father, as indicated by John 15:26. There is, moreover, he adds, a “twofold
ekporeusis or ‘procession’ of the Spirit: 1. physike or hypostatike, in
respect substance and personality; 2. oikonomike or dispensatory, in respect
of the work of grace.”247 The hypostatic procession, furthermore, must be
understood in terms of the filioque: “he is the Spirit of the Father and the Son,
proceeding from both eternally, so receiving his substance and personality.”
Once stated, however, the point cannot, indeed, may not be elaborated, but
rather accepted as “the bare acquiescence of faith in the mystery revealed.”248
It is only of the economic procession of the Spirit ad extra in the work of
grace that Owen feels capable of speaking.
3. Procession and the scholastic tradition: Reformed reservations. The
distinction between procession and begetting is also clear, albeit indefinable
by finite creatures:
That procession may be distinguished from generation can be
demonstrated from the fact that the Holy Spirit is always said to
proceed from, and never to have been begotten by, the Father; nor is he
 ever called the image of God—but we must not curiously inquire into
the nature of the difference. Let us guard against the unbridled and
unsuccessful boldness of the schoolmen, who attempt to explain it: I
certainly do not grasp the distinction between generation and
procession, I am not desirous of this, nor am I able.249
The usual unwillingness of the Protestant scholastics to enter into a lengthy
discussion of the way in which the emanations of the second and third persons
of the Trinity differ represents a rather significant example of the difference
between medieval and Protestant scholasticism: the Protestants revert to the
caveat of Gregory of Nazianzen against excessive inquiry into the mystery
and emulate the Reformers in their somewhat reserved acceptance of the
tradition without further explanation. The extensive and frequently cogent
speculation of the medieval doctors concerning the relation of the emanations
to the divine nature, intellect, and will (itself an extension of the Augustinian
metaphors) is simply ignored by most of the Reformed orthodox.
Keckermann’s early orthodox discussion of the procession of the Spirit as a
volitional act of love in the Godhead, framed as part of a logical argument for
the Trinity as three modes of existing in the one God, is quite unique in the
era of orthodoxy.250
A few writers note the problem and reflect on the medieval solutions, some
with a high degree of distaste for the Augustinian metaphors and for
speculative elaboration of the doctrine.251 Thus, Turretin, Heidegger, Pictet,
and Rijssen indicate that the procession of the Spirit denotes a relation to the
other persons of the Godhead different from the relation of the Son to the
Father by generation. Both comment that what this difference is remains a
mystery—we cannot explain it nor ought we to inquire into it as did the
medieval scholastics. Turretin and Rijssen note, without any angry polemic,
that the scholastics compared the operations of intellect and will to generation
and procession, as if the Son, the Wisdom of God, were generated in an
intellective manner (per modum intellectus) and the Spirit, identified with the
divine love, proceeded in a volitional manner (per modum voluntatis). These
arguments were posed, however, he continues, without the express
corroboration of Scripture—and they serve to confuse even as they attempt to
explain.252 Heidegger similarly rejects these distinctions as alogon, having
no basis in Scripture or reason: after all, he notes, the correct doctrine of the
divine attributes understands them as equally belonging to each of the
persons, so that the intellectus Dei cannot pertain differently to the Father and
the Son or the voluntas Dei differently by the Father and the Spirit.253 The
relative gentleness of the criticism derives, perhaps, from Rijssen’s,
Heidegger’s, and Turretin’s recognition that some of their Reformed
predecessors had adopted the medieval solutions on this point.
 Still, it is clear that the Spirit is different from the Son, related to the Son in
origin, but a distinct person. It is also permissible to note three grounds of this
distinction: first, in principio or foundation, for the Son emanates from the
Father alone, the Spirit from both the Father and the Son. Thus, the Father
alone is the principium of the Son, whereas the Father and the Son together
are the principium of the Spirit. Second, in modo, since “the way of
generation” terminates not only in the personalitas of the Son but also in a
“similitude,” according to which the Son is called “the image of the Father”
and according to which “the Son receives the property of communicating the
same essence to another person.” In contrast, the Spirit “does not receive the
property of communicating that essence to another person,” inasmuch as “the
way of spiration” terminates “only in the personalitas” of the Spirit and not in
a similitude of the Father.254 Third, there is a difference in ordine according to
“our mode of perception,” insofar as the generation of the Son is somehow
prior to the operation or procession of the Spirit, although, of course, the
persons are coeternal—the spiration or procession of the Spirit presumes the
generation of the Son, given the procession of the Spirit from the Son as well
as from the Father.255
Whereas most of the orthodox follow this line of argument and define the
procession of the Spirit as a “spiration,” which is to say analogically, a
“breathing forth,” some of the later writers, perhaps because of the confusion
of “spirit” and “thought” in debates over Cartesianism, find the usage less
than satisfactory, despite the patristic and medieval precedent: “Some think he
is so called, because he proceeds from God in a way of breathing, but this is
to explain what is obscure by what is still more obscure,”256 or, in the words
of another later orthodox writer, if “spiration” is a “mere metaphorical
expression,” it is unsuitable to the identification of distinct subsistence or
personhood. “Since we are much in the dark about this mode of speaking, it
would be better to lay it aside, as many modern writers have done.”257
Ridgley notes that “some” have “pretended” to define the difference
between the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit as
identified by the power to communicate essence—a power communicated by
the Father to the Son, but not communicated by the Father and the Son to the
Spirit. The Spirit, therefore, does not have a power “to communicate the
divine essence to any other as a fourth Person in the Godhead.” For Ridgley,
this is an excessive speculation into an “unsearchable mystery.”258 All that
can be said is that the various biblical texts that refer to the relationship of the
Spirit to the Father and the Son “evince the truth” of the “communication of
his divine essence or, at least, his personality, and that his being ‘sent by the
Son,’ implies that this communication is from him as well as from the
Father”—and, in Ridgley’s view, the question remains as to whether the
biblical texts refer to an ad intra procession or merely to an ad extra
sending.259
B. The Ad extra “Sending” and the Office of the Spirit
1. The “sending” of the Spirit. The ad intra procession of the Spirit is
mirrored and followed by the ad extra procession or “mission” of the Spirit.
Indeed, the ad intra procession, or, in Greek, ἑκπόρευσις, of the Spirit takes
its name from the identification of the Spirit as “sent” or “sent forth” (John
15:26). The commentators often indicate, moreover, that the Johannine text
can be subject to two interpretations.
What proceeding from the Father is here meant, is questioned among
the divines: some understand it only of his coming out from the Father,
and being poured out upon the disciples in the days of Pentecost: others
understand it of the Holy Spirit’s eternal proceeding.260
In any case, the term “procession” or sending is drawn from this text as
descriptive both of the eternal, ad intra life and of the temporal, ad extra
activity of the Spirit. Of course, whatever the interpretation of this particular
text, the ad extra sending or procession of the Spirit was never in question: it
is clearly taught in John 14:26, “the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost,
whom the Father will send in my name”; Joel 2:28–29, as cited in Acts 2:16–
17, “It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my Spirit
upon all flesh”; Luke 24:49, “behold I send the promise of my Father upon
you” (usually interpreted as referring to the Spirit at Pentecost, given Acts 1:4
and 2:33); and Galatians 4:6, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into
your hearts.”261
This outward sending of the Spirit, moreover, observes the pattern
described in general in the discussion of works of the Godhead ad extra: there
is an undivided work of the Godhead in which the persons have “appropriate”
tasks, manifesting not only the unity of God’s work but the distinction of
persons and the exercise of their personal properties.262 In the case of the
Spirit, as in the earthly work of Christ, these tasks can be distinguished into
the “ordinary” and the “extraordinary,” namely, the work that the Spirit
performs broadly and generally, according to the general biblical revelation of
his proper work, and discrete works, particularly miracles, that are performed
but once for a very specific purpose. In no case ought the Spirit to be regarded
as a mere instrument of God, as an “instrumental cause” or a “servant,” but
rather as one working together with the Father and the Son, without any
inferiority of station.263
In the controversies of the seventeenth century, argument over the sending
of the Spirit proceeded in several directions. Among the Socinians, Biddle
understood John 15:26 and related texts not only as an ad extra description of
the divine mandate to the Spirit; he also argued that they disproved the
omnipresence of the Spirit, given that “sending” refers to a movement from
place to place.264 Nye, who held the more usual Socinian doctrine of the
Spirit, focused his reading of the text on the Spirit as testifying or witnessing,
and, as he had argued of John 16:13, where the “Spirit of Truth” is promised
as the apostles’ guide “into all truth,” he claimed that John 15:26 identifies the
Spirit not as a divine person but as the power or inspiration of God.265
Against the more typical Socinian argument, the Reformed emphasize the
“sending” of the Spirit: the language applies to a person, not to a power or an
inspiration. As noted above of the person of the Spirit, in such biblical
passages as Matthew 3:16, Luke 3:22, and John 1:32, the descent of the Spirit
in the form of a dove indicates his independent subsistence, as do the powers
attributed to him: one who has subsistence, understanding, will, and power is
not a mere power or inspiration, but a person.266 Against arguments like those
of Biddle, Reformed orthodox writers insisted that care should be taken so as
not to use the language of procession or sending ad extra in such a way as to
imply either a local motion of the Spirit or a change in the Godhead. When
the Spirit is identified as “sent,” this ought to be understood as God’s “eternal
will and decree to accomplish something by the … Holy Ghost, and of the
execution and manifestation of his will through the working of the … Holy
Ghost.”267 Thus the sending of the Spirit on Pentecost does not indicate the
absence of the omnipresent Spirit before Pentecost: the Spirit is understood as
“sent into the world, not because [he] began to exist where [he] did not exist
before; but because [he] accomplished in the world what was the will of the
Father, and showed [himself] present and efficacious according to the will of
the Father.”268
2. The “office” of the Spirit. This sending of the Spirit points directly
toward what can be called the officium oeconomicum, the office or work of
the Spirit in the economy or administration of the world order and, especially,
of salvation.269 As indicated previously in discussion the identification of the
third person of the Trinity as “Spirit,” he is, as Spirit in the personal sense, the
“immediate agent of divine works,” the person “through whom the Father and
Son immediately influence the hearts of the elect.”270 The Spirit is both the
emissarius Trinitatis and the advocatus Trinitatis in the fulfillment of the
decree, the former in the work of creation, the latter in the work of salvation:
for the Father “delineates” or “designates” the work; the Son, in his office,
“obtains” or “accomplishes” the objective result; the Spirit “completes” or
“finishes” the work.271
The “office” or “work” of the Holy Spirit, then, follows from this
definition of the Spirit’s relation to the Father and the Son and from the nature
of the work performed through him: in creation, the Spirit is said to brood or
hover over the waters (Gen. 1:2) in the same terms that a hen is said to gather
and protect her chicks (Deut. 32:11)—as, in the same sense, the Spirit is
called the “finger of God” (Luke 11:20) and the “power of God” (Luke 1:35;
Rom. 15:13) or the one who works miracles (Matt. 12:28), all of which
identify him as the “emissary of the Trinity,” perfecting and completing the
work that he shares with the Father and the Son.272
The Spirit is also called the “paraclete”—manifesting him as advocatus
Trinitatis in the work of perfecting the salvation of human beings, again,
completing what the Father designs and the Son accomplishes objectively.273
In the work of salvation,
the office of the Holy Ghost is to produce sanctification in the people of
God. This he performs immediately from the Father and the Son. It is
for this reason that he is called the Spirit of holiness. The office of the
Holy Ghost may be said to embrace the following things: to instruct, to
regenerate, to unite to Christ and God, to rule, to comfort and
strengthen us.274
To this definition, it may be objected that all of the works performed belong
to the Father and the Son and, therefore, do not constitute a distinct office in
any way specific to the Spirit. The office of the Spirit appears, however, in the
distinction of the manner of working—for in all of these activities, although
they are included in the willing and effecting of the work or gift, the Father
and the Son do not work immediately, but through the Spirit, while the Spirit
works immediately in believers. Thus, there is a distinct office that belongs to
the immediate agent of the work.275 In the words of Goodwin,
whereas both God and Christ, those other two persons, are also in
Scripture said to be in us, and to dwell in us, yet this indwelling is more
special, and immediationi suppositi, attributed to the Holy ghost; which,
as it serves to give an honor peculiar to him, so when set in such a
comparison, even with them, must be meant and understood of this
person immediately, and not by his graces only. Yes, the other two
persons are said to dwell in us, and the Godhead itself, because the
Holy Ghost dwells in us, he being the person that makes entry, and
takes possession first, in the name and for the use of the other two, and
bringeth them in.276
The Spirit specifically performs the work of God among human beings,
leading them toward faith in Christ the Mediator, thereby confirming with
sanctification what the Father decrees and the Son has accomplished. In this
context, the Spirit is said to teach (John 14:26), to send forth the teachers of
the church (Acts 13:2), to give them the requisite gifts (Acts 2:4), to inspire
the authors of Scripture (2 Pet. 1:21), and in all this, to be the “Spirit of truth”
(John 14:17).277

1 Calvin, Institutio (1536), ii (p. 135); cf. Melanchthon, Loci communes

(1521), p. 21. On Calvin’s doctrine of the Spirit, see Niesel, Theology of
Calvin, pp. 58–60, 120–124; Wendel, Calvin, pp. 165–169, 233, 238–242;
Parker, Calvin: An Introduction, pp. 31–34, 78–84; Butin, Revelation,
Redemption, and Response, pp. 52–53, 65–67, 76–94 et passim; Torrance,
“Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” pp. 174–175. The most extensive study of
Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit remains Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des
Hl. Geistes nach Calvin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957).
2 Bullinger, Decades, I.vii (I, p. 155).
3 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.5, 14.
4 Calvin, Against the Libertines, xi, xiii (pp. 230–233, 238–241).
5 Hutchinson, Image of God, p. 135. N.B., these are probably different
“Libertines” than those of Calvin’s treatise. For a summary of the scholarship
on the identity and teachings of Calvin’s Libertine adversaries, see Farley’s
introduction in Calvin, Against the Libertines, pp. 162–173.
6 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
7Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xviii.1; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii: “De Spiritu S.
quinque credi debent. 1. Quod sit persona. 2. Divina. 3. Distincta a Patre &
Filio. 4. Ab iisdem procedens. 5. Tertia ordine.”
8See Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, pp. 115–116, 118, 120 (Adoptionists,
Paul of Samosata, patripassians); 256, 259 (Arians); 259–260 (Macedonians,
Pneumatomachians); Seeberg, History of Doctrines, I, pp. 164 (Adoptionists);
231–232 (Arians); 227 (Macedonians).
9Cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.17–19; Ridgley, Body of
Divinity (1855), I, pp. 153–154, 230.
10 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.9–19.
11 Musculus, Loci communes, i (Commonplaces, p. 16, cols. 1–2).
12 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6–18.
13 Hutchinson, Image of God, xxiv (pp. 134–139).
14 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 298).
15 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6.
16 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 298), citing Ps. 104:4, Heb. 1:14.
17 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6.
18 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 298).
19 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6.
20 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 299).
21 Calvin, Commentary on John, 4:24 (CTS John, I, p. 164).
22 Cf. Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.ii–v; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica
theol., II.xxvii.1–4; Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 47–64;
Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 230–241.
23 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 47.
24 See the discussion in PRRD, II, 5.4 (B.4); 7.4 (C).
25 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 48.
26 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 52.
27 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 270.
28 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 52.
29 Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, in loc.; Trapp, Commentary, in
loc. (I, p. 590).
30 Gouge, Commentary on Hebrewes, XII, §110 (p. 347).
31 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
32 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 52.
33 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 51; cf. Calvin, Harmony of
the Evangelists, in loc. (CTS Harmony, III, p 148).
34 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 51.
35 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 52.
36 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271; Downame, Summe, i (p. 30).
37 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 53.
38 Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 270–271.
39 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 55.
40 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.ii, in Works, III, p. 59–60; Downame, Summe, i
(p. 32).
41 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.iii; cf. Alsted, Theologia didactica, I.xxxiv.
42 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
43 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.iv.
44 Alsted, Theologia didactica, I.xxxiv.
45 Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, p. 274, col. 2B; cf. Ursinus, Commentary,
p. 271; Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, IV.i–ii.
46 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
47 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
48 See J. A. van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality Causality: Voetius and
Descartes on God, Nature, and Change (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), pp. 177–
187, 95–198, 201–205, 255–259, et passim; and cf. Richard A. Watson, The
Downfall of Cartesianism, 1673–1712: A Study of Epistemological Issues in
Late 17th Century Catresianism (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 31–39.
49 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.5.
50 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.6.
51
Perkins, Exposition of the Creed, p. 274, col. 2A; cf. Witsius, Exercitations,
XXIII.v.
52 Witsius, Exercitations, XXIII.v.
53 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.6.
54 Witsius, Exercitations, XXIII.v; similarly, Perkins, Exposition of the Creed,
in Workes, I, p. 274, col. 2A–B.
55 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
56 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.vi.
57 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6.
58 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.6.
59 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing Matt. 28:19.
60 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing Luke 3:21 and Matt. 3:16.
61 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing John 14:16.
62 Calvin, Commentary on John, 14:16 (CTS John, II, p. 93); cf. Institutes,
I.xiii.17.
63 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing John 16:14.
64 Calvin, Commentary on John, 16:13 (CTS John, II, p. 144).
65 Calvin, Commentary on John, 16:13 (CTS John, II, p. 144).
66 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing John 14:26; 16:13; 15:26.
67 Hutchinson, Image of God, pp. 136–137, citing 2 Peter 1:21.
68 Cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.1–2.
69 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.vii–x.
70 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 118, col. 1; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.3.
71 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxii.
72Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxii, citing the talmudic lexica of Levita and
Buxtorf.
73 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 255); Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xiii.
74 Cf. PRRD, II, 5.4 (B.4); 7.4 (C).
75 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.5.
76 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (pp. 255–256), and cf. PRRD, II, 7.3 (B.1–3) and
7.4 (B.2) on the interpretation of figurative language in Scripture.
77 Venema, Inst. theol., xiv (p. 256).
78 Downame, Summe, i (p. 30).
79 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xiii.
80 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xiv.
81 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xiv.
82 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 118, col. 2.
83 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 272.
84 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 272.
85 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.vii, xii; Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 119,
col. 1.
86 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.vii.
87 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.iii, in Works, III, p. 78.
88 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xii.
89 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xxiii.1
90 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 118, col. 2.
91 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. I, arg. 5; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae, III.xxx.9.
92 Biddle, XII Arguments (1691), p. 11.
93 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 120, col. 1.
94 Ridgley, Body of Divinity, pp. 120–121.
95Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.x; cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V, p.
309.
96 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.x.
97 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.x.
98 Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 272–273.
99 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.6.
100 Diodati, Pious and Learned Anotations, in loc.; similarly, Poole,
Commentary, John 14:16 in loc. (III, p. 355); Hutcheson, Exposition of the
Gospel of John, 14:16 in loc. (p. 303); cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis, V,
p. 247.
101 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. I, arg. 2.
102 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xii.
103 Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 271–272; cf. Witsius, Exercitationes,
XXIII.viii; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.8.
104 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.iii, in Works, III, pp. 77–78.
105 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.viii.
106 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.8.
107 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14.
108Musculus, Loci communes (1573), I, II, III: note that the Commonplaces
(1578) merges these chapters into one and thereby conceals the trinitarian
beginning of the Loci communes.
109 Musculus, Commonplaces, I (p. 16, cols. 1–2).
110Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.15, citing Augustine, Letter clxx.2 (PL 33, col.
749); cf. Musculus, Commonplaces, I (p. 16, col. 2).
111 Calvin, Commentary on Acts, 5:4 in loc. (CTS Acts, I, p. 198).
112 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 302); Vermigli, Loci communes, I.xii.8.
113 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14.
114 Calvin, Harmony of the Evangelists, Matt. 3:16 in loc. (CTS Harmony, I,
p. 205).
115Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, pp. 303–304); cf. Vermigli, Loci
communes, I.xii.9.
116 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.8.
117 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.9.
118 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 301).
119 Vermigli, Loci communes, I.xii.8, 9.
120Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14; cf. Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 1:2 (CTS
Genesis, I, pp. 73–74).
121 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 301).
122 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14.
123 Hutchinson, Image of God, p. 135, citing Isaiah 63:14 and John 14:16.
124 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.15; Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 302).
125 Bullinger, Decades, I.viii (I, pp. 155–156).
126 Bullinger, Decades, IV.viii (III, p. 301).
127 Musculus, Commonplaces, I (p. 16, col. 2)
128 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14.
129 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.8, citing 1 Cor. 12:4, 6.
130 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.8.
131 Calvin, Institutes, I.xiii.14.
132 E.g., Ainsworth, Orthodox Foundation, p. 14.
133 Marckius, Compendium theologiae, V.xxvi; cf. Owen, Brief Vindication of
the Trinity, in Works, vol. 2, pp. 401–3; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.12–15; Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.1; Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xv;
Wollebius, Compendium, I.ii (also cited in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp.
129–30). Marckius, Turretin, Pictet, Witsius, and Wollebius give the first four
arguments; the fifth is added from Owen and from Witsius brief note at
Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxiv. Also note Ursinus, Commentary, pp. 274–277.
134 Cf. Biddle, Confession of Faith, article VI with Owen, Vindiciae
Evangelicae, in Works, vol. 12, particularly p. 334 and Ridgley, Body of
Divinity, p. 118, col. 1–2.
135 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xvi.
136 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xvi.
137 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 277; Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.28; Van
der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 405; Witsius,
Exercitationes, XXIII.xvii–xviii; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.12;
Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.2.
138 Poole, Commentary, Heb. 9:8, in loc. (III, p. 847).
139 Dutch Annotations, Heb. 9:8, in loc.
140 Cf. Ursinus, Commentary, p. 277, with Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.12.
141 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xvii.
142 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xviii.
143Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.2; cf. Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.28; Van
der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 405; Turretin, Inst.
theol. elencticae, III.xxx.12.
144 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.28; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.12.
145 Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 12.
146Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.4; cf. Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 119, col. 1;
Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.12.
147 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 232.
148 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxi; cf. Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.3;
Ursinus, Commentary, p. 277; Ridgley, Body of Divinity, p. 119, col. 1;
Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.28; Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the
Property of Christ, I, p. 405.
149 Cf. Calvin, Commentary on Acts, 5:3 in loc. (CTS Acts, I, pp. 196–197).
150 Biddle, XII Arguments, pp. 9–10.
151 Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 9.
152 Nye, Brief History, p. 107.
153 Piscator, Analysis Acta Apostolorum, 5:3, scholia, in loc. (p. 56).
154 Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 10; cf. Calvin, Commentary on the Acts, 5:3
(CTS Acts, I, pp. 196–197); cf. similarly, Rudolph Gualther, An Hundred,
Threescore and Fiftene Homelyes or Sermons uppon the Actes of the Apostles,
written by Saint Luke (London: Henrie Denham, 1572), 5:3–4 in loc. (pp.
231–232), noting two possible meanings for verse 3, namely, that Ananias
“falsely fayned [that] he was ledde by the holye ghost” or that he in fact lied
to or “went about to beguyle the Church,” both of which demonstrate his evil
and are to be considered lies to God, who searches all hearts.
155 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxi.
156Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxi; similarly, at length, Ridgley, Body of
Divinity (1855), I, pp. 231–232.
157 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxi; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.10.
158 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxii; cf. Mastricht, Theoretico-practica
theol., II.xxvii.8; Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I,
p. 405.
159 E.g., Poole, Commentary, Heb. 9:14 in loc.; Dutch Annotations, Heb. 9:14
in loc.
160 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 233.
161 Owen, Exposition of Hebrews, 9:13–14 in loc. (VI, pp. 303–304).
162 Owen, Exposition of Hebrews, 9:13–14 in loc. (VI, pp. 306).
163 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 274; Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.28;
Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, arg. 2; also cf. Ridgley, Body of
Divinity, pp. 192–201; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.13.
164 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 234.
165 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 233.
166 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.6; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.13;
Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.8; Van der Kemp, Christian
Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 405.
167 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxiii; and see above 6.2 (C.4) on the
exegesis of the “Angel of the Lord” passages.
168 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxiii.
169 Biddle, XII Arguments, pp. 14–16.
170 Biddle, XII Arguments, pp. 14–15.
171 Biddle, Confession of Faith, VI, pp. 44, 56–58; cf. Biddle, Letter written
to Sir H. V., in Faith of One God, pp. 12–13.
172 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.29; cf. Ursinus, Commentary, p. 274,
citing 1 Cor. 3:16; and note Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 14.
173 Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 16.
174 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.13.
175 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 274.
176 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxv, citing 1 Cor. 12:11; cf. Van der Kemp,
Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 406; Wollebius, Compendium,
I.ii (in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 129) and Henry, Exposition, 1 Cor.
12:11 in loc.
177
Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 406; cf.
Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.8.
178 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.13.
179 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxiv; cf. Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.6;
Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.29; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.13; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.8; Venema, Inst.
theol., xii (p. 241); Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, 1 Cor. 2:10 in
loc.; Poole, Commentary, 1 Cor. 2:10 in loc.; Henry, Exposition, 1 Cor. 2:10
in loc.
180 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 273; cf. Poole, Commentary, 1 Cor. 2:11 in loc.
181 Henry, Exposition, 1 Cor. 2:11 in loc.
182 Dutch Annotations, 1 Cor. 2:11 in loc.
183 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 274, citing Acts 1:16.
184 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 274.
185 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.13.
186 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.15.
187Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 136); Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.30; cf.
Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.14.
188 Cf. Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxv, with Wollebius, Compendium, I.ii
(in Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 129).
189 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxv; cf. Dutch Annotations, Gen. 1:2 in
loc.; Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.9, 11.
190 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxv; cf. Gale, Court of the Gentiles, I,
III.ii.7, for various classical parallels to Gen. 1:2.
191 Poole, Commentary, Gen. 1:2 in loc.; cf. Ainsworth, Pentateuch, Gen. 1:2
in loc.; Henry, Exposition, Gen. 1:2 in loc.
192 Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, Gen. 1:2 (CTS Genesis, I, p. 73–4).
193 Trapp, Commentary, Gen. 1:2 in loc. (I, p. 3).
194 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.14.
195 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxviii; cf. Amyraut, De mysterio trinitatis,
V, pp. 310–311 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.9.
196Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.9, citing Isa. 61:1 and Luke
4:18.
197 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.6; Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, arg. 2 &
3; Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxvi–xxviii; Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst,
I.iv.30; Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 136).
198 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 136).
199 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 136).
200 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxvii.
201 Van der Kemp, Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, I, p. 406; cf.
Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.7; Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, arg. 2 & 3.
202 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.31.
203 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.31; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.15; Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxi.
204 Brakel, Redelijke Godsdienst, I.iv.31.
205 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.15.
206Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxii, citing 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; cf. Poole,
Commentary, 1 Cor. 3:16, in loc., “from this text may be fetched an evident
proof of the Divine nature of the Third Person in the blessed Trinity.”
207 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxii.
208 Augustine, Collatio cum Maximo, as cited in Turretin, Inst. theol.
elencticae. III.xxx.12 (cf. PL 42, col. 722).
209 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxix; cf. Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.6.
210 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxx.
211 See above, 4.2 (C.4).
212 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxx; cf. Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxx.15.
213 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxx; cf. Junius, Exposition of the
Apocalyps, 1:4 in loc.; Gill, Exposition of Revelation, 1:4, in loc.
214 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxx.
215 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxx; cf. Junius, Exposition of the
Apocalyps, 1:4 in loc. on the reading of the seven horns and seven eyes of
Rev. 5:6; also note Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.15.
216 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxiii.
217 Witsius, Exercitationes, XXIII.xxxiii.
218 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.9.
219 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xviii.1; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. I, arg.
1; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxx.7.
220 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xviii.1; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. I, arg.
1.
221Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xviii.1; Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, controversia 1,
arg. 4.
222 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xix.5.
223 Cf. Diodati, Pious and Learned Annotations, Matt. 28:19 in loc., with
Rijssen, Summa. theol., IV.xii, cont. I, arg. 3; cont. II, arg. 6, citing also 2 Cor.
13:13 and 1 John 5:7.
224 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, obj. 1 & 2 & resp.
225 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, obj. 3.
226 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing John 14:26; 16:13; 15:26.
227 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.1.
228 Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 15, col. 1).
229 Perkins, Golden Chaine, VI (p. 15, col. 1).
230 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.2.
231 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.3.
232 Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.3; see further below 7.4 (A.3).
233 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, obj. 4 & 5 & resp.
234 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xii, cont. II, obj. 6 & resp.
235 Vermigli, Commonplaces, I.xii.7, citing John 14:26; 16:13; 15:26.
236 Calvin, Commentary on John, 15:26 (CTS John, II, p. 131).
237Calvin, Commentary on John, 15:26 (CTS John, II, p. 131); cf. Second
Helvetic Confession, III.4 (Schaff, Creeds, III, p. 241).
238 Calvin, Commentary on Romans, 8:9 (CTS Romans, p. 290).
239 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 138); Downame, Summe, i (p. 35).
240Pictet, Theol. chr., II.ix (p. 99); cf. Rijssen, Summa, IV.ix, cont. 1, arg. 4
(N.T.); and note Westminster Confession, II.iii.
241 Poole, Commentary, John 15:26 in loc. (III, p. 362): among those who can
be included here are Grotius, Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, in loc.
242 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.v, in Works, III, p. 117.
243 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.3.
244 Leigh, Treatise, II.xvi (p. 138).
245Perkins, Golden Chaine, V (p. 15, col. 1); cf. Amyraut, De mysteria trin.,
VII (p. 533).
246 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiii.
247 Owen, Communion with the Holy Ghost, in Works, II, p. 226.
248 Owen, Communion with the Holy Ghost, in Works, II, p. 227.
249 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.4; cf. Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiii.
250Keckermann, Systema theologiae, I.iii (pp. 28–33); see further, above, 3.1
(C.3).
251
Heidegger, Corpus theol., IV.4; cf. the partial citation in Heppe, Reformed
Dogmatics, p. 130.
252 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiv; identically, Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae,
III.xxxi.3; cf. Marckius, Compendium, V.xii.
253 Heidegger, Corpus theol., IV.4.
254 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiv; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.3.
255 Rijssen, Summa theol., IV.xiv; Turretin, Inst. theol. elencticae, III.xxxi.3.
256 Pictet, Theol. chr., II.xx.5.
257 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 157.
258 Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, p. 158.
259Ridgley, Body of Divinity (1855), I, pp. 166–167, citing Owen, Vindiciae
evangelicae, in Works, XII, p. 342.
260 Poole, Commentary, John 15:26 in loc. (III, p. 362); cf. Calvin,
Commentary on John, 15:26 (CTS John, II, p. 131) who here understands the
eternal procession.
261 Cf. Goodwin, Work of the Holy Ghost, I.ii (pp. 8–9); Owen,
ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.v (pp. 110–111).
262 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, IV.iv.
263 Beza et al., Propositions and Principles, IV.v–vi.
264 Biddle, XII Arguments, p. 31.
265 Nye, Brief History of the Unitarians, p. 101.
266 Owen, ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ, I.iii (pp. 74–75, 77–78, 80–81).
267 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 137.
268 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 137.
269 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.11.
270 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 271.
271 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.11.
272 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.11.
273 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.11.
274Ursinus, Commentary, p. 277; cf. Beza et al., Propositions and Principles,
IV.vii.
275 Ursinus, Commentary, p. 279.
276 Goodwin, Work of the Holy Ghost, in Works, VI, p. 64.
277 Mastricht, Theoretico-practica theol., II.xxvii.12.
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation reformed dogmatics: The rise and
development of reformed orthodoxy; volume 4: The triunity of God (380).
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
 8
Conclusion: The Character of Reformed Orthodoxy
8.1 The Problem of Continuity in the Protestant Theological Tradition
A. The Historical Assessment of Reformed Orthodoxy
1. Patterns and paradigms of analysis. At the outset of the first volume
of this study, some attention was given to the various paradigms that have
been used to understand the development of post-Reformation Reformed
theology.1 Both in the course of this study and in the work of other historians
written during the course of the last several decades, the problems inherent in
those paradigms have become clearer—and, arguably, the burden of proof as
to the nature and character of the developing Protestant tradition has shifted
from the shoulders of reappraisal to the back of the older theories.2 In other
words, it is the hypothesis of a radical discontinuity between Reformation and
orthodoxy, of a christocentric Calvin against a “Bezan” predestinarian
metaphysic, of a “biblical humanism” against “Aristotelian scholasticism,” or
of a “dynamic” preaching of reform against a “cold rationalism” that has little
scholarly support and even less documentary evidence behind it.
Given both the variety within the older paradigms and the shifts in
emphasis that have occurred during the course of the current reappraisal of
the materials, some review is in order. First, from the perspective of the
concentrated interest of the older scholarship on the Reformed doctrine of
predestination, at least two readings of the material can be identified. An
earlier model, associated with the work of Alexander Schweizer, Heinrich
Heppe, Paul Althaus, Hans Emil Weber, and Ernst Bizer, saw predestination
(whether for good or for ill) as the central pivot of Reformed thought from the
Reformation onward and that, accordingly, argued the development of a
largely deductive, synthetic theology among the Reformed, based on the
central predestinarian focus of Calvin. A more recent approach has taken the
predestinarian central-dogma model of Schweizer and the others as a correct
reading of the later Reformed, but as incorrect for Calvin, and has argued that
the development of a predestinarian model, now seen as characteristic of the
later Reformed, arose because of the rise of an Aristotelian scholasticism
within the Reformed faith, as engineered by Theodore Beza. In this
understanding, the later theology represents a “distortion” of Calvin’s thought,
grounded in a recrudescence of things medieval (notably, scholasticism,
Aristotelianism, and dogmatism) and a loss of Calvin’s more humanistic and
exegetical approach.
 Characteristic of both these approaches is their fundamentally dogmatic
interest and their concentration on particular dogmatic readings of the thought
of Calvin as a legitimate beginning point for the Reformed tradition. Neither
approach typically looks to Calvin as a second-generation codifier of a reform
movement—and neither approach typically sets Calvin into the historical
context of his predecessors and contemporaries in order to analyze his
theology. Perhaps even more importantly, neither approach has paid particular
attention to the medieval and Renaissance background of the Reformation as
a broader historical context for understanding the thought both of the
Reformers and of their “orthodox” or “scholastic” successors. There is, of
course, in some of the versions of this older approach, an appeal to Calvin as
biblical or even christocentric “humanist” over against his successors as
dogmatic, predestinarian, and “scholastic,”3 but this is much less an appeal to
historical trajectories of logic, rhetoric, method, doctrine, and doctrinal
emphases that carry through the era of the Reformation into the era of
orthodoxy than it is an appeal to purportedly mutually exclusive camps or
categories of thought that enables proponents of the older approach to pose
neat oppositions between persons—for example, Calvin the humanist, Beza
the scholastic.
At the heart of the older paradigms is the assumption that the development
of Reformed thought was largely the logical or organic development of
doctrinal or what might be called (in the case of the “humanist” motif)
ideological foci. Such approaches are often characterized by stark
dichotomies—humanist versus scholastic; Calvin versus the Calvinists—and
by overly simplistic and often value-laden accounts of historical development.
By way of illustration of the latter problem, Calvin’s thought, read out of its
historical context, becomes the index for assessing the theological value of
the thought of a later Reformed writer: the later thinker is praised for identity
of expression or for the fuller realization of something implicit in Calvin or,
alternatively, condemned as a deviant for not mimicking the Reformer.
Both versions of these dogmatic-development theories, moreover, have
had highly presentized dogmatic motivations and results. In the approach that
argued the organic development of a predestinarian focus of Calvin’s thought
toward the full realization of a theology focused on the central motif of God’s
determination of all things, the end product of the development is a
Schleiermacherian theology. In the approach that offered a humanistic,
christocentric Calvin clearly set apart from an increasingly scholastic,
rationalistic, and predestinarian orthodoxy, the proposed end product of a
doctrinal return to Calvin’s Reformation has often been neoorthodoxy. Of
course, a neoorthodox Calvin stands in discontinuity with later sixteenth-
century and with seventeenth-century Reformed thought: but the neoorthodox
Calvin also stands in discontinuity with the historical Calvin. Calvin’s thought
differed from that of the seventeenth-century Reformed—as it did from the
thought of his Reformed contemporaries—but the large dogmatic categories
used by the older scholarship do not offer an adequate analysis of those
differences (or, indeed, of the continuities that also exist). A proper analysis of
the relationship of Reformation and orthodoxy entails reading the thought of
Calvin and other Reformers in its sixteenth-century context and then tracing
out the ongoing dialogue that accompanied the entry of Reformed thought
into various later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contexts. In short, such
an analysis entails setting aside the agendas of neoorthodox and other
dogmatically laden historiographies as intellectually bankrupt.4
In an era such as ours, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when
the discipline of intellectual history has been roundly critiqued by social
historians for its tendency to trace out ideas apart from a clear grasp of the
historical context out of which those ideas have arisen, the methodological
problems inherent in the older approaches ought to be self-evident. Hopefully,
the scholastic maxim still holds: abusus non tollit usum. Scholars of
intellectual history have in fact critiqued their own discipline and provided
methodological foundations for moving it forward, often with recognition of
the advances made by social historians.5 Conversely, many social historians
have recognized that the documents, contextually understood, do not permit
an easy distinction between popular religion and a doctrinal theology of the
elite,6 and that the documents, whether popular or technical, demand a
religious reading and not a sociological or ideological reinterpretation.7 And
to the present point, without a reasonably rigorous reconstruction of the
intellectual history of the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy, a
reconstruction conscious of the need to set the doctrines into their proper
historical context, the dogmatic reading of the Reformation for the sake of
modern theological projects is freed of critique and bidden bon voyage on its
deconstructionist tour of the past. Some distinction must be made between the
historically contexualized discussion of theological ideas and the dogmatic
reading of the Reformation.8
An intellectual history of Protestantism must, among other things,
contextualize Calvin—not only socially, politically, and culturally, but also
intellectually. Calvin’s thought (and, similarly, the thought of a myriad of
Reformation-era and later Protestant writers) must be read in the context of
his contemporaries, not in the context of a later era, whether seventeenth,
nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century. The history of Reformed
thought, then, needs to be read forward, not backward, and read as the history
of a tradition that is represented by a wide variety of writers in a series of
diverse historical contexts. The context of ideas ought to be addressed from at
least two perspectives—first, the perspective of the broad similarities of
expression shared by diverse thinkers at various times and in various
historical contexts; second, that of the peculiarities of the forms of expression
found in the writings of specific individuals. In the first instance, the context
is traditionary, belonging to trajectories of theology, philosophy, exegesis,
rhetoric, academic, or what might be called parish culture. In the second
instance, the context is the immediate intellectual, social, political, or cultural
circumstance of the writer. From the former, the study of Reformed thought
draws much of its sense of the continuities between Reformation and
orthodoxy as well as a sense of broadly cultural developmental changes,
including large-scale discontinuities that become visible over the course, not
of years, but of decades. From the latter, the study gains both a sense of
particularized discontinuities and a sense of the more inclusive character of
the tradition, given the coexistence of the various forms of expression within
ecclesial or confessional boundaries.
Given this more contextualized approach, study of the course and varieties
of Reformed thought from the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy
recognizes, among other things, that the dogmatic questions of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century theologians are rarely answered in the materials of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are certainly never answered in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century terms. It has taken several decades of work
in reappraisal first to discern and then to jettison those questions—and then to
refocus inquiry with the assumption that the theological issues raised in those
materials are rooted in trajectories of debate that run through the later Middle
Ages and Renaissance into the eras of the Reformation and of orthodoxy and
that were modified and reread in particularized sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century contexts.
The arguments found in various essays in reappraisal to the effect that
“continuities and discontinuities” must be examined, whether between the
Middle Ages or Renaissance and the Reformation, or between the
Reformation and post-Reformation eras are usually efforts to deal with both
the trajectories of thought and the particularities of specific contexts.
Reference to continuity and discontinuity as an issue, therefore, indicates the
understanding of the reappraisal that examination of the historical materials
must not continue to oblige the dogmatic standard, that continuity is
demonstrated by mimicry and discontinuity by any change: just as the
Reformation produced theological definitions and arguments that differed
from those of the later Middle Ages, so did the rise of Protestant orthodoxy
produce theological formulae and methods that differed from those of the
Reformers. Let it be said (as if the foregoing volumes did not demonstrate it!),
that Reformed orthodoxy was, in many ways, different from the Reformation.
But let it also be said (again, as demonstrated in the foregoing volumes) that
difference does not necessarily indicate discontinuity. It may only indicate
development and adaptation in a new context, whether chronologically,
geographically, or socioculturally defined.
2. Reforming and the Reformed: trajectories from the later Middle
Ages to the close of the era of orthodoxy. Students of the Reformation have
learned, from several generations of scholars in the second half of the
twentieth century, that the Reformation cannot be understood apart from an
examination of its intellectual and spiritual roots in the later Middle Ages and
Renaissance. These roots, moreover, have been shown to be positive as well
as negative, with the result that the Reformation of the sixteenth century is
now recognized as standing on major trajectories of theological, exegetical,
linguistic, and pedagogical development that run with remarkable continuity
from the medieval through the early modern era.9 This scholarly revision has
resulted in a far more nuanced understanding of the continuities and
discontinuities between the Reformation and the preceding eras, as well as a
fundamentally altered perspective on the so-called medieval “forerunners” of
the Reformation. In Heiko Oberman’s words,
Forerunners of the Reformation are … not primarily to be regarded as
individual thinkers who express particular ideas which “point beyond”
themselves to a century to come, but participants in an ongoing
dialogue—not necessarily friendly—that is continued in the sixteenth
century. It is then not the identity of the answers but the similarity of the
questions which makes the categorizing of Forerunners valid and
necessary … the idea of a limited number of theologians foreshadowing
Luther’s theological ideas is abandoned in favor of the concept of a
history of the confrontation of a series of central ideas as the common
point of reference … 10
Oberman’s understanding of this crucial issue does not necessarily remove
such famous names as Wyclif, Hus, and Savonarola from the list of
forerunners—rather it removes the traditional reasons for their inclusion, and
it adds a host of other thinkers, such as Thomas Bradwardine, Gregory of
Rimini, Wessel Gansfort, Rudolf Agricola, who were not notable for their
attempts to reform ecclesiastical abuses or for their condemnations, whether
of or by, the medieval papacy.11
If acknowledgment of the medieval roots of the Reformation yields a
clearer picture of the fundamental continuity of the Reformers with the earlier
tradition—their fundamental catholicity!—and of their unique or individual
contributions to the history of Christianity, so also does the application of a
similar method and perspective to the development of Protestantism yield a
clearer picture of the fundamental continuity of the late Reformation, the so-
called Second Reformation and the era of Protestant orthodoxy, with the
preceding eras, both later Middle Ages and Reformation, and of the
differences between Protestant thought in the era of orthodoxy and the time of
the Reformers. The methodological point, drawn from Oberman’s comment is
simple: in moving from the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy and
Protestant scholasticism the historians task is not to determine continuity on
the basis of an exact “identity of the answers” given by theologians, but on
the basis of “the similarity of the questions” within a developing tradition.
Identification of “participants in an ongoing dialogue—not necessarily
friendly”—becomes the primary feature of the analysis rather than an attempt
to find “a limited number of theologians” whose teachings are precisely
foreshadowed by a Luther or a Calvin or, indeed, by a Thomas Aquinas or a
Duns Scotus.
3. Reformed orthodoxy in its confessional breadth and theological
diversity: restating issues of continuity and discontinuity. The Reformed
orthodox prolegomena and principia, the theological loci in which the
definition of theology, together with such topics as natural and supernatural
revelation, the relation of theology to philosophy, and the concept of
fundamental doctrines, and the doctrines of Scripture and God as the
fundamental or foundational topics in Christian theology, provide, of course,
only a partial index to the character of Reformed orthodoxy. As indicated,
moreover, in the introductory chapters to each of these subjects, the
trajectories of different arguments and different topics as they move from the
late medieval period into the era of the Reformation and of Protestant
orthodoxy witness rather different aspects of the problem of intellectual
continuity and discontinuity.
The basic point made in the introduction to volume 1, concerning the
international and the relative confessional breadth of the Reformed
development has been documented at some length throughout the study, albeit
not noted repeatedly.12 Suffice it to say by way of conclusion that the
apparatus of all four volumes has consistently cited British, Dutch, Swiss,
German, and French Reformed, federalist and non-federalist, Salmurian and
anti-Salmurian, and so forth. Connections between the British divines and
their continental counterparts have been identified as has, by way of cross-
citation of sources, the general agreement of the British divines with their
orthodox continental counterparts. Perhaps more interestingly, the
perspectives shared by the various trajectories within orthodoxy, including the
federalist and the Salmurian, on the definition and meaning of theology, the
authority and interpretation of Scripture, and the divine essence, attributes,
and Trinity have been noted. Thus, neither confessionally nor on the
particulars of prolegomenal and principial matters can a rigid contrast of
“Salmurian” and “orthodox” or “federalist” and “orthodox” theology be
maintained—and, by extension, the claim of a “rigid orthodoxy,” made
(ironically) by modern theological students of hypothetical universalism and
federalism at the expense of the identification of the Salmurian and federalist
theologians as “orthodox,” must also be jettisoned.
One of the lessons learned in the examination of these trajectories is
certainly that there is often as much difference between contemporary
formulators on a particular point as there is between earlier and later
formulators of the same point. In the concrete, this observation undercuts the
entire methodology of the “Calvin against the Calvinists” approach to the
development and history of Reformed orthodoxy. The “Calvin against the
Calvinists” model, like the older identification of rebellious and persecuted
teachers of the Middle Ages as forerunners of the Reformation, rests on
untenable premisses and asks an ill-framed and unsuitable question. Marking
out Calvin as the norm for the Reformed theology of the Reformation era (to
the exclusion of Bucer, Bullinger, Musculus, or Vermigli) and identifying
Beza, Gomarus, or Turretin as the norm for understanding the later Reformed
thought (to the exclusion of Junius, Walaeus, Davenant, Cocceius, Voetius,
Burman, or even Amyraut) biases the discussion and mistakes the nature,
breadth, and boundaries of confessional orthodoxy. Flat, one-for-one
comparisons of documents like Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis and
Turretin’s Institutio theologiae elencticae ignore not only significant
differences in historical context but also significant differences in literary
genre (despite the similarity of title)—not to mention the problem of claiming
a hypothetical developmental trajectory that leads from Calvin, abstracted
from his context and viewed as sole arbiter, to Turretin, equally alone and
abstracted from the theological currents of his time.
A significant example of the problem is found in Rohls’ study of the
theology of the Reformed confessions, where the section on the history of the
Reformed confessions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appears, on
closer examination, not to be a history of confessional development but a
history of dogmatic controversies. Rohls’ focus on such issues as the Bolsec
Controversy, Beza’s predestinarianism, Ramism, Aristotelianism, Cocceius,
and the federal theology takes him into narrowly defined issues of doctrinal
formulation not addressed in the confessions and not at issue in confessional
debates. Indeed, the work is so entrenched in an out-dated dogmatic analysis
of the history of Reformed doctrine that it lacks reliability as a historical
analysis: thus we read of Beza and the central dogma theory, of “formal” and
“material principles” of the Reformation, of the predestinarian “particularism”
of Dort over against the “christocentric universalism” of the Arminians, of the
salvation-historical and a posteriori tendencies of Ramism over against a
priori predestinarianism, and of the Cocceian covenant theology that “made
an essential contribution to dissolving the doctrine of predestination.”13
Among other points that could be made here, “christocentric universalism” is
hardly a useful characterization of the Arminian position, and it is
fundamentally inaccurate to understand Cocceian federalism as running
counter to the predestinarian definitions of the Synod of Dort! In addition,
several of these issues (notably, Ramism and the Cocceian controversy) are
not part of the confessional history, strictly defined: properly to understand
the history, whether of the confessions or of orthodoxy in general, distinction
needs to be made between the debates concerning confessional boundaries
and doctrinal polemics either beyond or within the confessional boundaries.
In addition, greater variety of formulation and, therefore, a greater sense of
difference or, indeed, discontinuity, between particular theologians of the
Reformation era and particular theologians of the era of orthodoxy would
certainly appear in the examination of other theological loci: there is certainly
as much diversity of formulation among the Reformed orthodox on such
topics as predestination and the Lord’s Supper as there is in the prolegomena,
doctrine of Scripture, and doctrine of God—and certainly far more diversity
in the eschatological formulation of the seventeenth-century writers. This
kind of discontinuity must, of course, be understood in a rather different way
than large-scale discontinuities between the thought of one branch of a
confessional family and another or, indeed, between one era and another.14
Thus, a discussion of covenant would reveal a greater spectrum of opinion
than a discussion of the doctrine of the divine attributes: after all, already in
the Reformation, some theologians—notably Zwingli, Bullinger, and
Musculus—manifested a topical interest in the concept of covenant greater
than that manifested in the thought of Calvin or Vermigli and, indeed,
presented dimensions of the doctrine not as easily identified in Calvin’s or
Vermigli’s teaching. The contrast is, perhaps, clearest between Bullinger and
Calvin, although it is certainly not so great as to indicate two distinct
Reformed traditions.15 Similar differences appear in later Reformed thought,
particularly in view of the development of the so-called covenant theology—
which itself was subject to considerable variety of formulation within the
Reformed tradition.16
So too, there was a variety of sacramental theology within the Reformed
tradition itself from its beginnings. The debates between Calvin and Bullinger
that led to the Consensus Tigurinus in 1551 were clearly enough presaged in
the rather different eucharistic theologies of Bucer and Zwingli—and it is
clear also that the Consensus Tigurinus, albeit intentionally a bridge-
document, did not succeed in obliterating the differences, particularly in
conceptions of sacramental presence and in the language of instrumentality,
that obtained between Calvin and Bullinger.17 (Arguably, the obliteration of
differences was never the intention of the document.) There were also
differences in ecclesiology and eschatology, particularly in later Reformed
thought—with the result that, in the seventeenth century, neither the
“presbyterian” church structure nor the so-called Augustinian “amillennial”
view of the last things were universally held. These variations in doctrine
within the Reformed tradition point to patterns of continuity and discontinuity
not only between the Reformation and the era of orthodoxy but also between
individual Reformers and between Protestantism and various trajectories of
thought throughout the history of Christianity.
These variations within the Reformed tradition also point toward a
significant element in the identification of Reformed orthodoxy that has often
been overlooked by those who have examined it. The “orthodoxy” of the
Reformed was not defined either by one or another of the methodological
variants of scholasticism present in the Reformed tradition or by any one of
the various strands of Reformed thought on such topics as predestination
(infralapsarian, supralapsarian, or hypothetical universalist), covenant
(unilateral and bilateral definition, two- or three-covenant schemas, etc.), the
Lord’s supper (Bucerian, Zwinglian, or Calvinian), but by the broad lines of
the Reformed confessions. As noted in the beginning of the analysis of
Reformed prolegomena and in the discussion of fundamental doctrines, we
misunderstand the phenomenon of Reformed orthodoxy if we make no
distinction between extra-confessional and intra-confessional controversies.
The Arminian or Remonstrant theology after the Synod of Dort and the
Socinian theology of the seventeenth century were considered by the
Reformed as heterodox, indeed, heretical—whereas the Amyraldian theory of
hypothetical universalism was considered by a large number of Reformed
writers as useful and by others, perhaps the majority, as unacceptable, but not
as heretical. A similar generalization needs to be made concerning the federal
theology: its contours were heatedly debated by the Reformed of the
seventeenth century, but it was never understood as a heresy or as outside of
the boundaries of the confessions. So also can similar variety be found in the
Reformed understanding of issues in the prolegomena and the principia of
theology.
Once these qualifications have been made, however, we can also point to
the fact that the discontinuities or, more precisely, the varieties of formulation,
appear within the Reformed confessional tradition on those issues and topics
that do not belong either to the category of broad ecumenical standards or the
somewhat less broad category of the confessions. Reformed theologians do
not differ on the issue of the identity of the Godhead as one indivisible or
simple essence distinguished into three persons or hypostases: they did differ
on precisely how that doctrine ought to be elaborated exegetically and with
what metaphors and patterns of explanation. Again, they did not differ on the
point that human beings are saved by grace alone and that this understanding
of grace assumed a divine predestination of some to salvation: they did differ
over the shape of the definition—whether a single or double decree and, if
double, whether infra- or supralapsarian. In the explicit cases of the
prolegomena, the doctrine of Scripture, and the doctrine of God, there are a
host of nuances that belie any attempt to argue precise continuity or large-
scale discontinuity between Reformation and orthodoxy, and the development
of thought does not follow in neat, straight lines of succession from one
generation to the next.
B. Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, and the Trajectories of Late
Renaissance Philosophy, Logic, and Rhetoric
1. Central dogmas, scholasticism, Aristotelianism, and rationalism:
toward closure on an old debate. From the perspective of a detailed analysis
of the Reformation and post-Reformation prolegomena and doctrines of
Scripture and God, we are also in a position to state quite categorically that
the older theories of the rise of Reformed orthodoxy, either as the
development of a predestinarian system based on a single “central dogma” or
as the result of rationalism, are not only wrong but also reductionistic and
simplistic in the extreme. At what remains a very superficial level, we are in a
position to declare that the historical evidence does not indicate any interest
on the part of the Reformed orthodox in creating a deductive theological
system based on a single doctrine. The Reformed orthodox theologians were
not philosophical determinists interested in creating a deterministic system of
Christian doctrine. At the same level, we can also declare categorically that
philosophical rationalism, which understands human reason as the
fundamental principle of knowledge (evident in the seventeenth century in the
writings of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and their followers), was not
determinative of the formulation of the norms and principia of Reformed
orthodox theology, even among those Reformed who were open to Cartesian
philosophy. The definitions of theology and the theological task that we have
encountered in the Reformed prolegomena, the hermeneutical criteria found
in the doctrine of Scripture, and the actual working-out of formulation in the
doctrine of God, all evidence an attempt to balance revelation and reason,
exegetical foundations and philosophical usages, leaving philosophy in an
ancillary role.
The Protestant orthodox theological enterprise was both fundamentally
exegetical and profoundly traditional. The intention of the orthodox
dogmaticians was to produce, not a modern, logically cohesive, system of
theology on the pattern of Schleiermacher or Tillich, but a body of doctrine in
which the topics of biblical teaching were gathered into a coherent and
defensible whole for the sake of the life and salvation of the church. The
movement of theological argumentation was from Scripture and exegesis to
traditional theological topic, by way of the examination of the teachings of the
fathers and the great theologians of the history of the church and by way of
the refutation of heresies: each and every text examined had both a history of
interpretation and a traditional relationship to one or more doctrinal loci. To
claim that the Reformed orthodox took a single doctrine (i.e., predestination)
or a particular philosophical perspective (i.e., rationalism or even
Aristotelianism) as the key to understanding all biblical passages and their
relationships to the larger body of Christian doctrine is to ignore the very way
in which they understood the theological task—in other words, to ignore the
way in which they defined theology and its principia in their theological
prolegomena, to ignore the implications of the locus method, both in terms of
the relationship of dogmatics to exegesis and in terms of the way in which the
series or order of topics was conceived and organized.
Underlying this misunderstanding is a misreading of scholasticism as well
as a dogmatic misreading of historical materials. Against those modern
readers of scholastic Protestant materials who conclude that Beza, Polanus,
Voetius, Turretin, Pictet, Rijssen, and the other orthodox have simply ignored
or set aside without notice their declared scriptural foundation and, on the
grounds of philosophical reason, interspersed with a few biblical quotations
wrenched out of context, have argued such doctrines as the simplicity,
eternity, and immutability of God, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
sources argue a different conclusion. The claim of a shift from biblical to
philosophical thinking (like the parallel and equally mistaken notion of a
movement from “Hebrew” to “Greek” thinking) does not do justice to the
complexity of the materials and arguments that it pretends to critique. We do
not find a pure Aristotelianism even in the thought of Albert the Great or
Thomas Aquinas: there was, already, at this initial stage of the appropriation
of Aristotelian metaphysics a sense of the usefulness of Aristotelian concepts
to Christianity linked to a sense of the difference and of the inapplicability of
some elements of Aristotle’s thought. And, in addition to Aristotle, the
medieval doctors also incorporated elements of Platonic and Neoplatonic
philosophy as appropriated and adapted by the church fathers. So, too, was
Aristotle capable of being filtered through the thought of Avicenna, Averroes,
and Maimonides, who had given a “biblical” turn to Aristotelian theism even
before Albert and Thomas. By the time of the Reformation and post-
Reformation eras, the tradition of a Christian Aristotelianism or, more
precisely, the tradition of a Christian philosophy that had incorporated
elements of Aristotelianism and had consistently modified those elements,
turning them to a Christian use, was so rich and variegated that it followed its
own patterns rather than a neatly Aristotelian pattern of argument. Its
definitions, when understood through the glass of pure Aristotelianism, are
typically misunderstood.18
So, too, must the term “scholasticism” and the other “isms” of the
medieval schools—Thomism, Scotism, nominalism—be applied with care
and caution to the Protestant theologies of the seventeenth century. This
caution is particularly necessary given the diverse patterns of the mediation of
scholastic method and medieval theological approaches to Reformation and
post-Reformation Protestantism. First, we must distinguish between the forms
of medieval theology mediated to the Protestant orthodox by the Reformers
themselves and the forms of medieval thought appropriated by the Protestant
orthodox either through their direct reading of medieval materials or through
their encounter with the Roman Catholic scholasticism of the late
Renaissance. Second, equally importantly, we must recognize the presence of
Thomistic, Scotistic, nominalistic, and other patterns in Reformed orthodoxy
based on the streams of intellectual inheritance—whether via the Reformers
or via the direct reappropriation of medieval tradition or via encounter with
late Renaissance Roman Catholicism.
In other words, there are a series of paths by which scholastic models came
into later Protestant thought—and, equally so, there was a very diverse
reappropriation of those models. Here, too, the context of the appropriation
can be identified, in some cases, with relative precision. Given the training of
the first several generations of Protestant teachers in the forms of late
medieval and Renaissance thought, specific elements of the medieval and
Renaissance background can be identified in the thought of individual
Reformers. Similarly, we are able to identify academic contexts, whether of
the training or of the eventual work of a large number of later Reformed
thinkers—and, fortunately, the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers
offer clearer references to their medieval sources than did the Reformers.
Similar strictures can be placed on the all-too-neat association of Reformed
orthodoxy and scholasticism with the rise and development of rationalism.19
The evidence gathered throughout this study has shown that there are certain
common antecedents of Protestant thought in the eras of the Reformation and
orthodoxy and the rationalist philosophy that rose and developed in the same
centuries; namely, alterations in the teaching of logic and rhetoric in the later
Middle Ages and Renaissance, the accompanying interest in method, the
revival of interest in ancient learning, both linguistic and philosophical. Both
Reformed orthodoxy and the rationalist philosophies opposed the
philosophical skepticism of the late sixteenth century and argued that there
were self-evident and irrefutable principia on which knowledge could be
based. But the evidence has also demonstrated a series of profound
differences over the reception and use of those antecedents, to the point of
showing rather different histories for scholastic Protestantism and the various
forms of rationalist philosophy characteristic of the seventeenth century.
Understandings of method differed widely, rationalist philosophies did not
understand principia in the same way as the Reformed orthodox, and,
certainly in the case of the French rationalists, pagan Stoicism and
Epicureanism figured as largely positive antecedents—the Reformed
orthodox debated against both. The eighteenth-century result of these
developments, moreover, was not a theological orthodoxy that merged into
the stream of rationalist thought: with the partial exception of the Wolffian
theologians, the remaining orthodox of the eighteenth century did not imbibe
any of the newer philosophies with equanimity. Rather than evidence an
ongoing alliance with philosophy, the late orthodox tended not to enter the
philosophical mainstream and, given the demise of the traditional Christian
Aristotelianism, tended to assert the older assumptions concerning the
necessity of a special revelation and personal regeneration for the
development of Christian theology without also providing a model for the
coordination of theology and philosophy such as had been characteristic of
the seventeenth-century orthodox.
2. Patterns and trajectories in the Reformed reception of scholastic
models. Once these cautions have been acknowledged, some tentative
conclusions can be drawn concerning the Reformed orthodox appropriation of
scholastic models. First and foremost, that appropriation was eclectic. Among
the second-generation Reformers, Musculus cited various medievals
positively, notably Scotus and Ockham. Calvin, of course, has been argued to
evidence Scotist inclinations, but the problem of documenting their source
and extent is notorious. Vermigli, by contrast, leaned more clearly on Thomist
models, typically with a strong Augustinian accent. Among the early
orthodox, Polanus cited both Aquinas and Scotus. In the case of Lambert
Daneau’s use of Durandus of Sancto Porciano or of Richard Baxter’s citations
of Gregory of Rimini, initial interest may have arisen because of such a
mundane reason as the availability of the medieval author’s work in a
sixteenth-century printing. As we move into the seventeenth century, a
broader pattern of citation appears, notably a recognition of the medieval
writers as a source of paradigms, especially the paradigm for identifying
theology as a speculative or practical discipline, where, typically, Henry of
Ghent, Durandus, Johannes Rada, Scotus, Bonaventure, Albert the Great,
Giles of Rome, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas of Strasbourg are cited as
illustrative of the various possible definitions. The exact relationship of
Reformed orthodoxy to these older sources is difficult to map, given that there
was no motive for most Protestant thinkers of the late sixteenth and the
seventeenth century to follow out the theology of a particular thinker or,
certainly, a particular order—as there presumably was for their Dominican,
Augustinian, or Jesuit contemporaries. Some necessarily preliminary
conclusions can, nonetheless, be drawn from the Reformed usage found in the
prolegomena and the doctrines of Scripture and God.
The various categories of definition offered by the Reformed orthodox in
their prolegomena, beginning with Junius’ De vera theologia, point toward an
eclectic use of the medievals based on a set of rather particular concerns,
themselves traceable in large part to the Reformation or to the roots of the
Reformation in the concerns of late medieval theology. The typical
identifications of theology by the Reformed as either a mixed theoretical-
practical but primarily practical or as a purely practical discipline point
toward the Augustinian and the Scotist definitions, respectively, and away
from both the Thomist (theoretical-practical but primarily theoretical) and the
Durandist (purely speculative) forms of definition. A minority opinion,
represented by Du Moulin, followed the Thomist definition. This practical
emphasis of the majority, moreover, coincided with the fundamentally
voluntarist set of assumptions held by the Reformed, both concerning the
divine will and the problem of human salvation—pointing again in the
doctrine of God to an Augustinian or Scotist background and in the doctrine
of salvation to an Augustinian background. Similarly, the identification of the
object of theology as God revealed and the basic division of that topic into
revelation as Creator and revelation as Redeemer, echo the definitions
presented by medieval Augustinians like Giles of Rome and Gregory of
Rimini.
On other topics, however, the Reformed do not typically follow out the
Scotist line—rather they may, in these issues, look to Aquinas or to various
Augustinians like Thomas of Strasbourg and Giles of Rome for a via antiqua
model or Gregory of Rimini for a via moderna model. Specifically, on the
question of the distinction of attributes in the Godhead, the greater number of
Reformed avoid a strictly Scotist view of formally distinct attributes and
gravitate either toward a Thomistic or via antiqua definition of the attributes
as conceptually or rationally distinct in God or toward a nominalist or via
moderna view that denies distinction of attributes in the Godhead and regards
them as distinct only in their ad extra manifestation. In the case of the former
option, Keckermann offers the clue that it was derived (at least by him) from
the chronologically proximate Thomism of Cajetan. In either case, the options
chosen by the Reformed stand in the way of an easy conclusion (on the basis
of the identification of theology as practical and the voluntaristic conception
of God) for a largely Scotist influence. The Reformed response to Molina’s
notion of scientia media, moreover, allies the Reformed with a later Thomist
model as well, in particular the views of such late sixteenth-century Thomists
as Baius and Bañez, who followed out the more Augustinian reading of
Aquinas found in a late medieval follower like Capreolus rather than the
reading of Cajetan or, indeed, of the Jesuits Molina and Suárez.
Although an enormous amount of study needs still to be done before the
shape, the specific sources, or the rationale for this eclecticism can be fully
identified, several observations can be made. If there is an internal logic to the
majority of choices made, it points in the direction of a model that is
epistemologically critical, but not skeptical, and a view of God and world,
particularly of soteriological issues, that is highly Augustinian. The ontology
of the Reformed, which often can identify the created order as having being
“by participation,” has via antiqua, probably Thomistic origin—albeit in
those thinkers who argue the univocity of being, a decidedly Suárezian
accent. The rhetorical restructuring of the proofs of the existence of God and
the correlation between the self-evident and indemonstrable nature of
principia with the identification of God as principium essendi, taken together
with the assumption of a rational distinction of attributes in God, is neither
nominalist nor Scotist in perspective. Nor, given its denial of demonstrability
of the principium essendi, is it strictly a Thomistic model. As already noted,
the voluntarism of the theology also points away from a purely Thomistic
model.
At the same time, the Scotist resemblances can be accounted for as
Augustinian tendencies—namely, the sense of theology as largely or wholly
practical and the voluntaristic understanding of God and salvation. When the
voluntarism is coupled with a very specific construction of the radical
contingency of the world order, identified by Vos as “synchronic
contingency,” this may be a Scotist accent in Reformed theology, or it may be
the result of the transmission of a teaching found in Scotus through a series of
other thinkers, including such diverse figures as Thomas Bradwardine,
Gregory of Rimini, and (contemporary with the Reformed orthodox) Diego
Alvarez and Dominic Bañez. The trajectory of the transmission is unclear:
there is more to the issue than the decision on the part of various seventeenth-
century thinkers to rest an aspect of their thought on a distinction derivable
from Scotus—nor given the strict soteriological monergism of the Reformed
is it probable that this synchronic contingency works itself out in the
Reformed model in precisely the same way in which it would operate in
Scotus’ thought. The parallel with Gregory of Rimini is significant inasmuch
as it points toward an Augustinian, via moderna background; the potential
connection with Alvarez and Bañez is also of interest, given the kinship of the
Dominican and the Reformed oppositions to Molinism; and the linkage of the
synchronic contingency construction with a notion of ultimate possibility,
rooted by the Reformed of the era in the divine potentia rather than the divine
intellect (as Scotus had argued), points perhaps toward an Ockhamist line of
argument.20 The question of background remains complex.
If, then, the Reformed patterns of reception and usage of scholastic models
could be identified clearly as Thomist or Scotist, one would still need to use a
qualifier—such as “modified Thomism” or “modified Scotism”—to describe
them. Such usage, however, fails to represent the variety of the appropriation
and also tends to depict one or another of the appropriated elements as a
center around which the eclecticism coalesces and from which it gains a
coherence not afforded by elements drawn from other sources. The quest for a
single point of origin, a neat trajectory leading back to one thinker or even to
a medieval “school” of thought, or to a center, either theological or
philosophical, will fail here, just as it did in the case of the central dogma
theory. The late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reception of medieval
materials and methods, whether of individual themes that have Thomist,
Scotist, Augustinian, or nominalist accents or of the broader patterns of
scholastic method, was after all a late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
reception: these accents are not a throwback to an earlier era but elements of
an ongoing discourse. Both the general scholastic method of the Reformed
orthodox and the specific appropriations of medieval materials had a specified
late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century context, having been filtered through
the lenses of the Reformation and the late Renaissance. The Reformed
reception of these elements of older tradition was not a return to the Middle
Ages, but a historical development of academic or scholastic style and of
theological and philosophical content in the wake of the Reformation and
Renaissance. Here especially the continuities and discontinuities of the
Protestant orthodox methods and teachings must be measured against both the
medieval and the Renaissance-Reformation background and, as we have seen
throughout this study, the impact of new contexts reckoned with: thus, the
scholasticism of the seventeenth century, including the appropriations of
Thomistic, Scotistic, Augustinian, and nominalist patterns, evidences
elements of continuity (and discontinuity), not only with the Middle Ages but
also with the Renaissance and Reformation, just as it evidences the immediate
academic, cultural, and polemical context of Protestant orthodoxy.
8.2 The Character of Protestant Scholasticism: Prolegomena and
Principia as Indices of Post-Reformation Orthodoxy
 A. Theological Prolegomena
1. The rise of theological prolegomena and the question of continuity,
discontinuity, and development. The Reformers did not typically write
theological prolegomena. Just as they did not base their theological systems
directly on the model of scholastic summas and sentence commentaries, but
tended to follow catechetical and creedal models, so also did they not see the
need to preface their theologies with the preliminary exercises that became
typical of later medieval theological systems. It was only in the wake of the
solidification of the Protestant theological system and the success of the
Reformation in establishing itself as an institutional church, with its own
universities and faculties, that the academic experience itself generated essays
on the nature of theological system like Junius’ De vera theologia. Here is,
certainly, a point of difference between the forms of Reformation theology
and the forms of post-Reformation orthodoxy. It is, moreover, a difference
rooted quite identifiably in the altered context of post-Reformation theology,
namely, the context of a movement in the process of institutionalization or
confessionalization, in the case of the prolegomena, specifically with
reference to the institutionalization of a Protestant academic culture.
Nonetheless, even here, we can trace the gradual development of
Protestant thinking on the nature and character of theology, the manner and
method of teaching theology, and the method for constructing theological
system from its beginnings in the work of Melanchthon, to the essays on
theological study by Bullinger and Hyperius, to the consideration of problems
of knowledge of God and of systematic organization by Calvin and Musculus,
and to the extended essay on theological method, also by Hyperius.21 The
choices made in the definition of such issues by Melanchthon, Calvin,
Musculus, and Hyperius reflect both their own churchly and institutional
contexts and the manner in which, in those contexts, they appropriated and
transmitted elements of earlier theological conceptuality. If the identification
of specific prolegomena and their placement as a prior locus in scholastic
system came rather late in the sixteenth century (ca. 1580), the issues
addressed by those prolegomena were already addressed in various writings
of the Reformers extending back toward the beginnings of the Reformation,
and those early Reformation writings themselves reflect choices made not
merely over against but also, consistently, with reference to late medieval and
Renaissance academic or educational culture.
Nowhere is this transmission and its various contexts clearer than in the
discussion of “method” found in rhetorical, philosophical, and theological
materials of the entire history running from the later Middle Ages through the
seventeenth century. The issue of “method,” literally the meta / hodos or
“way through” a topic or topics, was raised for the earliest Reformers, most
notably, Melanchthon, in their work of appropriating the topical or place-logic
of the fifteenth century to the use of Reformation theological education. The
impact of the method and of variations on it is seen in Melanchthon’s own
biblical commentaries and in his more or less systematic essay, the Loci
communes theologici, in Calvin’s commentaries and Institutes, and in the
efforts of contemporary writers like Musculus and Vermigli. This locus
method, in what can be called a Renaissance modification of scholastic
approaches, carried over, with modification, into the thought of the early
orthodox writers. Specific modification came to the method by way of Ramist
logic and the methodological theories of Zabarella, both of which belong to
the late Renaissance recovery and modification of classical and late medieval
logical and rhetorical tools. These models in turn carry over into the
“scholastic” methods of the seventeenth-century Protestants.22 This
transmission of method or approach underlines the academic or educational
location of much of the codifying effort of the Reformers and their
successors, and it also evidences the character of the continuity as well as of
the difference between the work of the Reformers and that of their successors:
it becomes impossible, for one thing, to label the former “humanist” and the
latter “scholastic,” as if the one drew on Renaissance methods and the other
returned to medieval ways of thinking.
The idea of principia theologiae itself offers evidence of the continuities of
theology in its development from the medieval to the post-Reformation era,
together with the impact of the Reformation on Protestant theological system,
as, also, it manifests certain elements of discontinuity or, at least, difference
between the various theologians and between the patterns of exposition in the
various eras examined. The medieval doctors offered a carefully conceived
analysis of the concept of principia in theology in relation to their discussion
of the genus theology—given that the three primary forms of knowing,
intelligentia, scientia, and sapientia, all represent a knowledge of principles.
Intelligentia is a pure knowledge of first principles, scientia a knowledge of
first principles and the conclusions that can be drawn from them, and
sapientia a knowledge of first principles and the goals or end toward which
they point. Once theology was identified as either a scientia or a sapientia,
but in a subalternate sense, its principia could be identified as the revealed
truths given in Scripture, on the basis of which theology could draw
conclusions and indicate goals or ends.
This understanding of principia carried over into Protestantism,
particularly in its assumption that Scripture provides the church with revealed
truths from which conclusions can be drawn: from Luther’s demand at Worms
that he be convinced by Scripture and right reason to the Westminster
Confession’s claim that “the whole counsel of God, concerning all things
necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly
set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced
from Scripture,”23 Protestant theology held to the traditional view of
principia. Indeed, at the beginnings of the development of theological
prolegomena, Lubbertus and Chandieu both discussed the use of principia or
axiomata in precisely this manner.24
Lubbertus, however, in debate with Bellarmine over the identity of the
normative canon of Scripture, moves on to identify the prophetic and
apostolic books of Scripture as the principium in theology.25 Here, the
emphasis in the identification of principia passes over from the issue of the
basic axioms of a science or wisdom from which conclusions may be drawn
to the issue of the foundation or knowing that serves as the source of all
authoritative axioms or principia. This line of argument led, in the decade
following Lubbertus’ De principiis Christianorum dogmatum, to the
enunciation of two ultimate principia in Reformed theology by writers like
Polanus and Trelcatius—the Scripture, or Word of God, as the principium
cognoscendi, or cognitive foundation, of theology and God Himself as the
principium essendi, or essential foundation, of theology. Biblical texts remain
understood, however, as principia in the sense of axiomata or as sources of
axiomata for the drawing of theological conclusions.26 At this point, arguably,
the traditionary language of principia theologiae has been modified, albeit in
scholastic terms, by the Reformation sola Scriptura—the Protestant orthodox
formulation evidences a continuity both with medieval scholastic theology
and with the fundamental emphasis of the Reformers on the biblical norm of
doctrine.
In sum, the rise of prolegomena containing a discussion of the definitions
of theology and of its principia marks a shift in the patterns of theologizing
between the eras of the Reformation and orthodoxy. Although we have seen
elements of prolegomena in the thought of the Reformers, including
significant discussions of true and false religion, none of the Reformers either
of the first or second generations offered a full theological prolegomenon
analogous to the development after Junius’ De theologia vera. Large-scale
definition of the architectonics of theology was new to Protestantism.
Arguably it drew together elements of medieval definitions of theology with
elements of the thought of the Reformers to produce a perspective on the
detailed work of academic theology, a perspective that stood in positive
relationship with the Reformers’ assumptions concerning the limitation of
human knowledge, the necessity of revelation, the historical series and/or
Pauline order of theological topics, and the relationship of exegesis to
theology. But the exercise itself and a large portion of its terminology were
different from the forms of argument present during the Reformation. In fact,
like the issues we have already noted concerning scholasticism and the
reception of the tradition by the Reformed orthodox, the development of
prolegomena presses the analysis of Reformed orthodoxy past the simple
registration of continuities and discontinuities to the more subtle issue of the
development of increasingly variegated patterns of expression within a
confessional and exegetical tradition. By way of example, the archetypal-
ectypal distinction and the resulting identification of “our theology,”
theologia nostra as an ectypal theology of revelation, construed after the Fall
in a fallible individual subject, does not appear, formally, like anything argued
by the Reformers—yet, in substance one would be hard put to argue (to
borrow words from the older scholarship) that these definitions either stood in
“tension” with the theology of the Reformation or represented either
“antitheses” or “antinomies” to the original thought patterns of the
Reformers.
2. The example of Ramism. The primary issues addressed in the
discussion of Ramism,27 concerned its identity and impact over against many
of the claims of the older scholarship. In brief, Ramism, as utilized by several
generations of Reformed orthodox writers, was neither a thoroughly anti-
Aristotelian development nor a humanistic, salvation-historical, a posteriori
pattern of thought posed against a scholastic, predestinarian, a priori pattern:
it served as a method of exposition and organization in nearly all of the
academic disciplines; it had little impact on the content of those disciplines;
and it served the development of a late Renaissance modification of scholastic
method. Ramism, therefore, exemplifies the historiographical issues at stake
in the attempt to examine continuities and discontinuities as aspects of
broader patterns of development and change within certain traditionary and
confessional boundaries. In the first place, its origins in the late Renaissance
modification of logic and rhetoric identify it as an academic, in the broadest
sense, scholastic, tool, the use of which belonged to the process of
institutionalization undergone by Protestantism in the late sixteenth century.
That it belonged to this process and that it was a logical tool not available to
the Reformers marks a point of discontinuity with the Reformation—that it
had roots in the earlier Agricolan logic and served the locus method of
exposition marks a point of continuity as well as change, a continuity in the
context of development.
3. The prolegomena and the problem of rationalism. We are also in a
position to draw some conclusions concerning the question of “rationalism”
and the use of reason in theology. It was certainly the express rule of the
Reformed orthodox theology that reason could never have principial status
and was consistently to be used as an instrument in the formulation of
theological conclusions. Still, some differences can be identified among the
Reformed orthodox or scholastic theologians, particularly during the course
of the seventeenth century. Thus, the theological argumentation in Pictet’s
discussion of the divine attributes evidences a more rationalistic approach
than Polanus’ argumentation a century earlier, and, as often noted in the
discussion of the divine attributes, Polanus’ argumentation, together with that
of a large number of his contemporaries, marks a point of differentiation
between the early orthodox theology and that of some writings of the
codifiers of the Reformation, namely, a point of differentiation from Calvin’s
Institutes, but not from Musculus’ Loci communes or Hyperius’ Methodus
theologiae, and certainly not from the broader exegetical tradition, including
the exegesis of Calvin, or from the broad background of philosophical
language used to exposit and explain the doctrine. Given the traditionary and
exegetical root of so much of the discussion of the attributes, the development
of discussion on this issue cannot be explained simplistically as a product of
rationalism.
The problem of rationalism, then, does not coincide (contrary to the claims
of much of the older scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy) either with the
scholastic character of the dogmatics of the seventeenth century or with the
tradition of Christian Aristotelianism that provided the orthodox theologians
with a philosophical viewpoint for most of the era of orthodoxy. The specific
points that we have noted as rationalist alterations of theology in the late
seventeenth century are due not to the older Aristotelianism but to the newer
rationalism, principally of the Cartesian variety. It is the Cartesian model that,
in its more extreme forms, elevated reason over revelation, that produced (in
the case of Poiret) the one truly deductive and “decretal” theology of the age,
and that introduced untenable substance language (in the case of Sherlock)
into the late orthodox trinitarian theology. It was the Cartesian model that, in
some cases, led to a departure from the balance of revelation and reason
characteristic of the theology allied to the traditional Christian
Aristotelianism.
Of course, the Cartesian model, sometimes echoed and sometimes
modified and adopted by various of the Reformed orthodox—notably
Burman, Heidanus, Tronchin, and Pictet—did not necessarily lead to these
problematic conclusions any more than did the older Christian
Aristotelianism. Even more important historically is the fact that modified
Cartesianism, like modified Aristotelianism in the Christian tradition, could
be brought to the service of a Reformed orthodox theology and adapted to
operate largely within the bounds assigned to philosophy in the orthodox
prolegomena. This adaptation stands as fair proof that so-called scholastic
orthodoxy in the post-Reformation era was not intrinsically “Aristotelian.”
What is more, the often restricted appropriation of elements of Cartesianism
by various of the Reformed orthodox also serves to illustrate that, even in this
instance, the orthodox theology of the seventeenth century was not driven by
rationalism.
The distinction between Reformed orthodox theology and philosophical
rationalism, as well as elements of continuity and discontinuity between
Reformation and orthodoxy, can be illustrated by the Reformed approach to
natural theology and metaphysics. There was no discussion of natural
theology per se among the Reformers, although there were definite views
expressed by them concerning the character and usefulness of natural
revelation. From one perspective, therefore, the increased interest in the
content of natural revelation and the appearance of works on the subject of
natural theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries marks an
element of discontinuity between the thought of the Reformers and that of
their orthodox successors. It is equally clear, however, that the development
of natural theology by a writer like Alsted did not mark the intrusion of a
category of rational theology or philosophy into the system or body of
Reformed doctrine, but rather the elaboration of the body of teaching
concerning God and world in addition to the theology grounded primarily on
the salvific or distinctly “supernatural” revelation in Scripture. One may
identify the discontinuity between Alsted’s eclectic philosophy and rather
optimistic natural theology and the discussion of the limits of natural
revelation at the beginning of Calvin’s Institutes—or one may, with equal
warrant, consider the continuity between the philosophically eclectic Calvin’s
highly positive and expansive presentation of natural revelation in his
commentary on the Psalter and Alsted’s development of a theologia
naturalis.
Various writers of the era, like Ames, viewed natural theology and rational
metaphysics with some suspicion—while others, like Keckermann and
Maccovius, drew a rather sharp line between rational metaphysics and
theology, to the point of refusing to discuss the divine essence and attributes
under the topic of metaphysics. The Reformed orthodox discussions of proofs
of God’s existence and of the divine essence and attributes, therefore, ought
not to be viewed simplistically as evidence of either large-scale natural
theology or rationalist philosophy nor, indeed, as evidence of an assumption
that supernatural theology must be grounded in natural theology. More
important, perhaps, than the specific points just made is the general
impression—that the Reformed orthodox were not products of a recrudescent
philosophical and theological movement, but that their philosophical language
was in direct dialogue with the current of the day. The continuities that we
note are not static reproductions but developments within a fairly broad
intellectual and confessional tradition. Where we can, finally, point to a clear
discontinuity between the Reformers’ views on natural revelation and altered
approaches in the Reformed tradition is in the waning of orthodoxy in the
eighteenth century, when natural theology does indeed become, in thinkers
like Wyttenbach and Stapfer, a prologue to supernatural theology, preceding
any consideration of scriptural revelation. This is, indeed, a shift—but, on
purely historiographical grounds, it would be a mistake to claim that Alsted’s
version of natural theology stands on a path leading directly toward the
Wolffian model or even that it contains the seed or germ of the later
development.
B. The Doctrine of Scripture and the Continuity of the Interpretive
Tradition in Orthodox Protestantism
1. Continuity, discontinuity, and the problem of perspective. Our study
of the Reformed orthodox doctrine of Scripture has shown a clear continuity
in the development of both doctrine and practice from the Reformation into
the era of orthodoxy—although it is certainly a variegated development in
which continuities and discontinuities have to be indexed to changing
contexts in philosophy, historical understanding, textual criticism, and so
forth. The historical trajectory of the Reformed doctrine of Scripture,
moreover, evidences one version of the pattern of continuities and
discontinuities that we have noted in the movement from the later Middle
Ages and Renaissance, through the Reformation, into the era of orthodoxy.
Identification of Scripture as the prior norm and sole ultimate authority in
Christian doctrine, with tradition not absent but clearly subordinate, unites the
Protestant orthodoxy not only with the Reformation but with the clear
testimony of the major medieval scholastic teachers, including Aquinas and
Scotus. Given that this “Tradition I” understanding of the structure of
authority has medieval scholastic roots and that its debate with “Tradition II”
(the coequal balance of Scripture and tradition) was also a late medieval
development, we can identify a continuous development of the model from
the Middle Ages to the era of orthodoxy—with the Reformers, the Protestant
confessions, and the Protestant orthodoxy occupying the ground of Tradition
I, and the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent occupying the
ground of Tradition II.
There is also an element of discontinuity: the medieval founders of
Tradition I did not envision the crisis of church and traditionary authority that
confronted the Reformers—with the result that the Reformation and post-
Reformation descendants of Tradition I recognized a separation between
Scripture and tradition that the major medieval teachers did not and, without
jettisoning tradition entirely, identified its subordination to Scripture in terms
of the disagreements and errors of the fathers (and medievals) in contrast to
the harmony and truth of Scripture. The tradition remains strong in Protestant
circles, not as an easily wielded churchly authority, but as a variegated
dialogue partner in the exegesis of the text of Scripture. On this point of
discontinuity with the Middle Ages, there is continuity between the
Reformation and the Protestant orthodoxy—a continuity in development,
measured by the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reception of the
fathers and of the diverse exegetical tradition, including the use of Judaica.
The demonstration of continuity between Reformation and orthodoxy has
shown that much of what once passed for scholarship on this subject was little
better than undocumented allegation. Specifically, J. K. S. Reid’s claim that
the Protestant orthodox ignored the concept of revelation falls before
abundant evidence to the contrary: what we can say is that, unlike Reid and
unlike Reid’s caricature of the Reformation and the seventeenth century,
neither the Reformers nor the Reformed orthodox had a restrictive concept of
revelation that identified it as taking place only in the person of Jesus Christ
or that identified it as an event or an encounter in our present.28 Both the
Reformers and the Reformed orthodox recognized revelation (natural and
supernatural) as the only mode of the knowledge of God in this life and
recognized the necessity of the biblical revelation for salvation: that teaching
is patently evident both in their prolegomena to theology and in their doctrine
of Scripture.
So, too, have we set aside the claim made by Rogers and others that the
Reformed orthodox doctrine of Scripture can be reduced to a rigid notion of
verbal inspiration coupled to an empirical concept of inerrancy and then set in
contrast with the rich, dynamic, view of Scripture taught by the Reformers.29
The Reformers’ doctrine was not nearly as “dynamic” as claimed, nor the
orthodox teaching as “rigid.” There is a general continuity of definition
running from the later Middle Ages through the Reformation into the era of
orthodoxy: the divine origin of Scripture is described on the analogy of
dictation, God is identified as the primary author and the human writers of the
text as secondary authors or amanuenses. At the same time, both the
Reformers and the Reformed orthodox insist on the individual character of the
biblical books, the unique stylistic characteristics of individual authors, and
the authors’ use of their own vocabulary and historical or cultural knowledge.
The process of inspiration is never likened to an oracular trance—and
nowhere is an empirical standard of inerrancy used as the basis for
establishing the authority of the text. Like Calvin and other Reformers, the
orthodox writers of the seventeenth century continue to affirm—contrary to
Rogers’ unsubstantiated assertions—the accommodated nature of the biblical
text and to argue the necessity of the internal testimony of the Spirit for the
reception of the text as authoritative by individual Christians. If anything, the
orthodox are clearer than the Reformers concerning the necessity of the work
of the Spirit in biblical interpretation and the identity of the exegete as a
faithful member of the church.
In addition, we have been able to recognize clear relationships and
doctrinal continuities between the British and the continental divines during
the era of orthodoxy. Rogers’ theory of a pre-scholastic form of Reformed
theology, embodied in the Westminster Confession and quite dramatically
opposed to the scholastic theology of either the Dutch Reformed after Dort or
of the Swiss Reformed in the mid- and late seventeenth century, simply does
not stand up before the evidence.30 The development of scholastic orthodox
forms of Protestantism, as evidenced by British thinkers like Perkins, Ames,
Scharpius, Rollock, and Cameron, coincided in time with the continental
developments found in such writers as Junius, Polanus, Bucanus,
Keckermann, Paraeus, the elder and younger Trelcatius, Gomarus, and
Maccovius—in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century. There
was, in other words, a form of scholastic orthodoxy in place in English
Puritan thought long before the convocation of the Westminster Assembly.
Beyond that, the confluence and interrelationship of the British and
continental forms was apparent from the beginning. All of the British thinkers
just noted were well known, respected, and read widely on the continent,
while all of the continental writers just noted, Trelcatius the Elder excepted,
were published in England. This mutual interrelationship continued into the
time of the Westminster Assembly, perhaps most notably in the cases of
Twisse and Rutherford, many of whose major works were first published in
the Netherlands.31
2. Exegetical continuities and developments. In the most general sense
of exegetical or interpretive continuities, the post-Reformation orthodox era
remained within the historical boundaries of what has come to be called “pre-
critical” exegesis. Despite the significant differences between medieval
exegesis and the biblical interpretation of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, the exegetical efforts of the Reformers and later orthodox writers
continued to operate on the assumption that the historical sense of the text
was the literal, grammatical sense and not something to be reconstructed
underneath the text. In addition, the Reformation and post-Reformation
exegetes assumed a fundamental unity of the entire text of Scripture,
discernible through various patterns of promise and fulfillment, messianic
typology, and figurative meaning.32
Beyond this broader developmental continuity that unites the exegetical
patterns of the Middle Ages and the Reformation and post-Reformation eras,
there are the continuities in more specific exegetical intent and in linguistic
and philological methods that identify a more finely grained interpretive
continuity between the Reformation and post-Reformation Protestantism.
Orthodox Protestantism retained the Reformation-era stress on the literal
sense of the text, on the scope of individual passages and the scope of the
whole, and on the ability of the exegete to derive doctrinal loci from the text.
In addition, the humanistic methods of textual analysis, involving linguistic
mastery and philological analysis, remained a constant in Protestant biblical
study in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In the discussion of dicta probantia33 and throughout the discussions of the
various subtopics in the Reformed doctrine of the divine essence, attributes,
and Trinity, we have consistently found an intimate, positive relationship
between the Reformed orthodox dogmatics and the Protestant exegetical
tradition. This generalization holds not only for the commentaries written
during the period of orthodoxy but also for Reformation-era commentaries as
well. Indeed, one of the great theological continuities between the
Reformation and orthodoxy lies in the interpretation of biblical texts
containing or implying theological issues and problems. A text like Genesis
22:12, where God says to Abraham, after Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice
Isaac, “now I know that you fear God,” raised consistently, from the time of
the Reformation to the era of high orthodoxy, the problem of divine eternity
and omniscience. Similarly, Exodus 3:14, “And God said to Moses, I AM that
I AM,” consistently raised the issue of the divine eternity, changelessness, and
essential necessity. In many instances, the exegetical tradition had carried
over from the patristic and medieval commentators into the work of the
Reformers and their successors.
These continuities indicate not only that the Protestant orthodox ought not
to be faulted for a tendency to “proof-text” their theology without reference to
exegesis, but also that the exegesis of the Reformers stood in considerable
continuity not only with the exegesis but also with the dogmatics of the
Protestant scholastics. The orthodox-era theologians, therefore, did not
substitute a purely dogmatic exegesis for an earlier, humanistic, philological
model used by the Reformers: the evidences do not point to a simplistic
answer such as this. Both the Reformers and their orthodox successors
followed out trajectories of literal, grammatical, philological study of the text
—both, in short, drew on the results of Renaissance humanism. Both the
Reformers and their orthodox successors also followed out established
trajectories of doctrinal interpretation of text, resting on typological exegesis
and on a method of drawing theological conclusions from the juxtaposition of
texts.
 The existence of these trajectories of interpretation of specific biblical
texts, moreover, consistently points the discussion of the rise of orthodoxy
away from an over-simplified continuity-discontinuity model. Differences in
exegetical result obtain not only between individual Reformers and individual
seventeenth-century thinkers, they also obtain among the Reformers
themselves, and among the orthodox writers of any given epoch. The point
can be illustrated in the mixed reception of Calvin’s limitation of
christological readings in the Old Testament: not all of his Reformed
contemporaries followed this pattern, nor did all of the Reformed orthodox.34
Of course, if it becomes impossible to drive a wedge between the
Reformers and the orthodox on such exegetical issues, it remains possible to
claim that the entire older exegetical tradition—including the Reformers and
the orthodox—was guilty of a dogmatizing exegesis. This conclusion
acknowledges the continuities in the theology and exegesis between
Reformation and orthodoxy, but it leaves the modern critic of orthodoxy
without a tractable Reformation.35 There is, of course, an element of truth
here: identification of the exegesis of the Reformers as well as that of the later
orthodox writers as belonging to the tradition of pre-critical exegesis and as
having, in common with the whole of that tradition, the assumption that
doctrine can and must be drawn out of Scripture as an exegetical result,
separates both the Reformers and the Reformed orthodox from modern,
critical exegesis and, by extension, also from the theology that rests (or find
itself incapable of resting) on so-called critical exegesis.
Even this claim of a dogmatizing exegesis, however, can be shown to miss
the point: the Reformers and the orthodox shared, with the fathers and the
medieval doctors, the assumption that the text of Scripture ought to be
interpreted in and by the believing community and that the Word of God in
Scripture spoke as a living Word to the ongoing people of God. The
identification, by commentator after commentator, in Genesis 22:12 of a
theological problem concerning divine knowledge and eternity, or in Exodus
3:14 of a doctrinal indication of the essential nature of God, arose out of the
faithful encounter with the text in terms of the larger scopus of Scripture and
the analogia fidei. This is not a matter of reading a text apart from its context
—instead it is a matter of identifying the large context of belief to which the
text speaks. Typically, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century commentators
do identify textual and linguistic problems, and they do, with some
consistency, recognize the root meaning of the text in its textual and
grammatical context; but they also recognize the larger context of theological
significance within which the text resides and within which it is found to
contribute to a larger biblical and churchly framework of meaning.
 These reflections also point us toward the profound hermeneutical
discussion and debate that can be fairly easily seen in the interpretive essays,
the commentaries, and the text-critical efforts of the late Renaissance and the
seventeenth century, but which also underlie many of the doctrinal debates of
the era. The roots of this hermeneutical discussion take us back before the
Renaissance and Reformation into the heart of medieval exegesis and its
increasing concern to ground all meanings in the literal sense of the text.
Given that the text at issue was Scripture, this insight tended to draw the
doctrinal, moral, and eschatological (i.e., allegorical, tropological, and
anagogical) meanings into the syntax of the biblical text and press exegetes
away from a relatively loosely employed fourfold sense to various expanded
forms of the literal sense. If this shift can be documented as in progress in the
exegesis of Nicolas of Lyra and Denys the Carthusian, it can also be
documented as largely accomplished in the exegesis of second-generation
Reformers like Calvin.36 In the historical progress of Reformed orthodoxy,
the difficulties of maintaining the patterns of churchly exegesis that had, in
the patristic and medieval eras, so successfully generated orthodox Christian
doctrine, became evident in the face of Socinian exegesis and in the face of
the beginnings of historical criticism, both of which tended to isolate the
meaning of the text in its dead past, or at least to remove the text from
dialogue with the church’s theology.
In its root form, this hermeneutical problem is nothing more or less than
the question of the nature of the movement from the sacred text to the
church’s doctrine. In the patristic period this movement was achieved through
the use of an interpretive method that included a fair amount of allegorical
interpretation—and in the larger part of the Middle Ages, this approach was
carried forward and then codified into what came to be called the quadriga. In
the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation era, this
interpretive movement was increasingly grounded in the literal sense of the
text, although the allegorizing of the Old Testament (in the strict sense of
identifying credenda) hardly disappeared. With the codification of
Reformation doctrine toward the mid-sixteenth century, this use of the literal
sense was supported by the rhetorical practice of gathering loci out of the text
and out of a variety of traditionary sources. In a very real sense, the use of the
locus method relieved the potential hermeneutical strain of moving from text
to church doctrine without the aid of a broader spectrum of meanings than the
literal. At the same time, late sixteenth-century Protestant writers on
interpretive method (like Whitaker) found that many of the results of the
quadriga were in fact available by the identification of a sensus compositivus,
a broader range of meaning within the letter, given the nature of the biblical
language itself. The burden of high and late orthodoxy was the continuance of
this approach under the increased pressure of philological, text-critical, and
eventually historical-critical examinations of the Bible.37
A final point can be made concerning the relationship between the
interpretive tradition and orthodoxy, one that functions also as a transition to
the consideration of the Reformed orthodox treatment of the doctrine of God
and, by extension, of other doctrinal topics. Not only does the interpretive
tradition illustrate the major continuities between the Reformation and
orthodoxy as well as the varieties and differences of approach and result
within the Reformed tradition itself, it also illustrates, by way of the variety of
literary genres that fall under the general rubric of “commentary,” the
relationship of theory to practice, academic theology to religion, that
prevailed during the eras of the Reformation and orthodoxy. Here too, there is
found a broad continuity of assumption coupled to differences in practical
application, whether among the Reformers or among the orthodox.
Specifically, given the fact that many of the more expanded commentaries,
from those of Bullinger and Gualther in the mid-sixteenth century to those of
writers like Durham and Jenkyn in the seventeenth, were initially delivered as
sermons, they mark out the transition from a more academic or scholastic
expression of doctrine, suited to the university, and a more popular form of
expression intended for consumption by the laity.
The lesson that is learned from these homiletical commentaries is that the
scholastic orthodoxy of the era did indeed connect with the broader religious
context. The sermons of the Reformed orthodox communicated a less-
complex, vernacular version of the orthodox theology, a version quite overtly
grounded in the exegesis and dogmatics of the era. Homiletical commentaries,
moreover, evidence the movement from text to doctrine, the impact of the
locus method, and a sense of the usefulness of Christian doctrine that mirrors
the insistence of the more academic theological systems of the era that
doctrine is either entirely or partially practical in implication and that all of
the doctrinal topics spring from Scripture and have a “use” in the church and
in Christian life.
C. The Doctrine of God in Its Protestant Development
1. The Reformed orthodox doctrine of God: rethinking the question.
Very much as we saw in the discussion of the Reformed orthodox doctrine of
Scripture, but in considerably more variety, we have identified a series of
continuities and discontinuities between medieval scholastic theology, the
Reformation, and the era of orthodoxy. In general, the scholasticism of the
seventeenth-century Protestants was not the scholasticism of the Middle
Ages. The differences between this later Protestant scholasticism and its
medieval predecessor can be accounted for, moreover, only in part by the
changes that took place in scholastic method itself as it moved through the
later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. Nor can the differences be
wholly accounted for if alterations in philosophical perspective, notably the
revival and reappraisal of Aristotle in the Renaissance, are added to the
picture. Significantly, the Protestant scholastics of the seventeenth century are
not as ready to engage in philosophical or theological speculation about the
divine essence and attributes or about the internal workings of the Trinity as
were their medieval forbears: here the clear influence of the Reformation is
felt. More subtle continuities in developing lines of argument are also evident
—as in the case of the grounding of Reformed theology in Scripture and God,
understood as principia: the usage itself marks a development and change, but
the pattern of argument, under both topics, where the principial understanding
is posed against skepticism, reflects the ongoing debate over certainty and the
rising concern over deism and forms of atheism. And the historiographical
issue remains the charting of the debate and its impact on the development of
the older theology: of course there are differences between the thought of the
Reformers and that of the orthodox—and these differences relate to the ways
in which the orthodox both appropriated and rejected elements of the
medieval tradition and aspects of seventeenth-century thought in their
attempts to carry the Reformed perspective forward into the uncharted waters
of debate with skeptical philosophy, developing rationalism, Socinianism, and
a host of other adversaries, at the same time that they attempted to produce an
institutional theology for all levels in the church, from the academy or
university course in theology to the tasks of preaching and catechizing.
Acceptance of scholastic method by Protestants also did not lead to an
acceptance of such speculative discussions as were characteristic the late
medieval dialectic of the potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata: these
distinctions were recognized and used, but with very little speculative interest
in the possible extent and application of God’s absolute power. Similarly, the
Protestant scholastics, particularly the Reformed, generally refrained from
drawing on the medieval discussion of intra-trinitarian activity, specifically
from discussion of the nature and character of the personal relations of
begetting and proceeding. Indeed, the Reformed often note that even
Augustine’s more speculative psychological analogies were excessive. With
specific reference to the doctrine of the divine attributes and the various
distinctions made by the Reformed orthodox, the claim of excessive
“speculation” also falls rather flat—the scholastic theology of the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did bring with it significant elaboration of
doctrinal points, including the doctrine of the divine attributes. This
elaboration did not, however, alter the basic meaning of the doctrine in
general or of the particular attributes from the meaning held by the
Reformers, notably the second-generation codifiers. What is more, this
elaboration did not take the discussion out of the doctrinal framework in
which the Reformers had been trained, namely, that of the latter Middle Ages
—nor did this elaboration follow out those late medieval patterns of argument
to which the Reformers had objected. Indeed, it can be argued that if late
medieval discussions of the divine will and permission that led to various
forms of soteriological synergism were at the center of the Reformation
polemic against excessive speculation, then the development of the doctrine
by the post-Reformation orthodox, albeit elaborated against various refined
forms of synergism (such as represented by the Molinist scientia media),
remained in continuity with the doctrinal intention of the Reformers.
2. Exegetical continuities and the issue of dicta probantia. Continuity
with the Reformers and, particularly, with the codifiers and exegetes of the
second generation of the Reformation is evidenced both in the restraint of the
Protestant orthodox doctrine and in its highly biblical and exegetical content.
Reformed scholastic discussion of the divine attributes, for example, although
not paralleled precisely in the systematic essays of the Reformers and their
immediate successors, does find firm rootage in the Reformation-era exegesis
of passages in Scripture that deal with the attributes. It is quite common for
points raised exegetically by the Reformers in the context of passages like
Exodus 3:14 to carry over directly into the more systematic efforts of the
scholastics.
With these exegetical continuities in mind, we return briefly to the issue of
the dicta probantia, or “proof-texts,” raised in the discussion of the Reformed
orthodox doctrine of Scripture. Both in our analysis of the Reformed
prolegomena and in our discussion of the divine essence, attributes, and
Trinity, we have seen a consistent recourse to the text of Scripture even in the
most dogmatic of sixteenth and seventeenth-century theological works and, in
that context, a consistent reflection of the Protestant exegetical tradition. In
other words, the so-called proof-texts in the older dogmatics do not stand as
isolated texts wrenched out of their biblical and exegetical context, as is often
alleged—rather they function as pointers from the dogmatic statement toward
its exegetical roots as clearly identifiable in the commentaries of the day and
in the older exegetical tradition generally. We have been able to trace,
moreover, continuities of interpretation extending from the Reformers to the
orthodox Reformed exegetes of the seventeenth century, often from the
patristic period to the end of the seventeenth century. In addition, examination
of the Reformed exegetical models also demonstrates continuity between the
British and the continental thinkers.
The patterns of continuity were evident in the Reformed orthodox
grounding of the doctrine of God in the biblical names of God: the dogmatic
systems were constructed with consistent reference to biblical texts and to the
meaning of the divine names in the original languages of the Bible, often with
attention to etymology. What appears in relative brevity, moreover, in the
theological systems, can be found at great length in the commentaries and the
exegetical treatises of the era. These conclusions are also particularly apparent
in the examination of specific texts related to the doctrine of the Trinity.38 The
brief citations found in the dogmatic systems of the era lead the reader back to
the commentators, who, at great length, and often with considerable
examination of the grammar and syntax of the passages in their original
languages, consistently provide an exegetical foundation for the theological
conclusions found in the more systematic works.
Of course, one response to this finding is the simple reiteration of Farrar’s
well-known condemnation (whether in its original form or in one of its more
recent reiterations) of the era of orthodoxy as an era of dogmatizing eisegesis
rather than exegesis. Given the continuity of the seventeenth-century
orthodox reading of the text with the exegesis of the Reformers, including
Calvin, the modern proponent of Farrar’s view must also reject the
Reformation as an era of dogmatic exegesis as well—and then, by extension,
the exegesis of the church in all ages.
The evidence from the time, however, points away from eisegesis. The
fundamental assumption of the so-called precritical exegesis was that the text
of Scripture is the Word of God for the church in all time and therefore the
vehicle of the highest and most perfect form both of God’s revelation to his
people and of holy teaching, sacra doctrina. The locus method of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century exegesis and the interpreters’ insistence on
identifying the “scope” of texts and books were designed to draw on the
interpretation of the text in its original languages, including careful
philological and text-critical work, in order to elicit the basic issues or topics
addressed in each book of the Bible and in Scripture as a whole. We are not
dealing with a dogmatic theological form imposed on the Bible, but with the
result of centuries of meditation on the text in the context of a living Christian
tradition. These are not, of course, the results of a modern, historical-critical
method; but that method tends to cut against not only the dogmatic
conclusions of the era of orthodoxy but also against the work of the
Reformers themselves—not to mention the medieval tradition and the ancient
fathers of the church. Comparison of the text of Scripture and its exegetically
elicited meaning with the doctrinal claims of the Reformation and orthodoxy
does not so much document the claim of proof-texting as it reveals the great
divide in the history of exegesis between the precritical method shared by the
Reformers and the Protestant orthodox and the historical-critical models of
post-Enlightenment exegesis and theology. Let it be said simply: the
precritical exegesis of the church both yields and supports traditional
orthodoxy; the historical-critical method typically does not.
A case in point of the historical divide and of the exegetical and
theological problem can be seen in contemporary reactions to the doctrine of
divine immutability. The doctrine, it is said, has no basis in Scripture,
inasmuch as it rationalizes away texts that indicate divine change and
repentance as merely figurative and inasmuch as its identifies texts that deny
divine change as having an ontological significance. The modern proponent
of this argument rests his or her case on the assumption that the human
biblical authors could never have understood God as ultimately changeless
given that divine immutability is a Greek philosophical concept that cannot be
found in the historically reconstructed ancient Israelite Sitz im Leben. This
somewhat circular argument then permits the modern interpreter not merely to
set aside a traditional (purportedly “Greek”) ontology but also to substitute for
it an alternative ontology: the texts referring to divine changelessness are now
understood as figurative, while those referring to divine change and
repentance are the supports of an alternative ontology. What separates the
modern writer from the older orthodoxy is, among other things, the modern
refusal of traditional assumptions about the authorship of the Bible and the
ways in which its meaning is governed. The divide is not a matter of an
unsupportable dogmatism on the side of divine immutability and a proper
exegetical method on the side of divine change—rather the divide is a matter
of two exegetical methods, the one churchly and at the foundation of the
tradition of Christian doctrine and the other fundamentally non-churchly and
purportedly “scientific.”
3. The issue of natural theology and metaphysics in relation to the
doctrine of God. In surveying the Reformed orthodox approach to the
doctrine of God, we have seen a strong association of traditional metaphysics
and various forms of natural theology with the discussion of divine essence
and attributes. That certainly is a given. However, the point, frequently made
by the older scholarship, that this association was a result of the
reintroduction of scholasticism and, therefore, a sign of fairly radical
discontinuity with the Reformation must be reformulated and nuanced:
certainly, the theologians of the era of orthodoxy differed from the Reformers
in the mere fact of having written natural theologies and treatises on
metaphysics. None of the Reformers did so. Still, we have seen that the views
of Calvin, Viret, Vermigli, Musculus, and others of their generation did not
exclude, but instead pointed toward the possibility of a natural theology of the
regenerate—and it is precisely such a natural theology that we find written by
the likes of Alsted in the early seventeenth century. Alsted’s model not only
respects the concept of duplex cognitio Dei found in Calvin’s Institutes, it also
assumes the two-part understanding of the knowledge of God the Creator—
revealed both in nature and Scripture—as the starting point of a Christian
natural theology.
Beyond this, the contrast between Calvin’s lack of a developed view and
the orthodox development of natural theology must also consider Calvin’s
intellectual context, which includes Viret’s fairly extensive recourse to natural
theology as a apologetic tool against irreligion and deism. Here we have the
case of a close colleague of Calvin, against whose work Calvin uttered no
protest, whose thought stands in strong continuity with the use of natural
theology not only in Alsted but also in the apologist Mornay. In addition, the
Reformed orthodox were clear about the limits of natural theology and
metaphysics: they did not insert entire natural theologies or metaphysics into
their systems of theology but, instead, used the results of these disciplines
under the rubric of the ancillary use of reason. Thus, even in the doctrine of
divine essence and attributes, the theological system does not reduce to
metaphysics or natural theology: rather there is a movement in the locus from
biblical exposition to rational argumentation, with the biblical exposition
occupying the initial place and the rational argumentation following in
support and elaboration. The locus de Deo does not, in other words, move
from natural theology to supernatural theology or from metaphysics to
biblical doctrine; rather, it moves from a biblical and rational/metaphysical
presentation of the divine essence and attributes to a biblical and
rational/metaphysical discussion of the Trinity, with the rational function and
the metaphysical content operating from an ancillary position. In short, the
doctrine of God observes the guidelines set forth in the prolegomena and
understands the natural revelation as standing within the framework of a
“true” and “ectypal theology,” namely, within the framework of Christian
meditation, given not only the fact of natural revelation but the biblical
testimony to it.
In addition, just as there is a movement from the Reformers’ indication of
the possibility of a Christian natural theology to the Reformed orthodox
writing of the natural theology, there is also a movement from the Reformers’
often briefer discussion of particular divine attributes to the Reformed
orthodox extended discussion. Even in the case of a Reformer like Calvin,
whose Institutes does not contain lengthy statement of the divine attributes,
the attributes are mentioned; they rest on an exegetical foundation that is
virtually identical to the exegetical foundation offered by the orthodox, and
their meaning is no different. The discontinuity on such issues as divine
eternity, immutability, simplicity, and the divine affections is not one of
content but one of elaboration and emphasis. What is shared by the Reformers
and their orthodox successors is a common set of theological and
philosophical assumptions, indeed, a common ontology.
In addition, the Reformed writers of the late sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries were not unwary metaphysicians who simply reintroduced the
categories and issues of medieval scholastic philosophy and theology. Rather,
their understanding of metaphysics in general and, in particular, of the
metaphysical issues related to the formulation of the doctrine of God evidence
a critical appropriation of various elements of medieval scholastic thought
and of late Renaissance philosophy with a view to the maintenance of the
basic assumptions of their Reformation predecessors and with a view, equally,
to the crafting of a suitable philosophical model for use in their own times. By
way of example, the lengthy discussions of divine simplicity and of the divine
intellect and will found in the Reformed orthodox theologies evidence a
doctrinal continuity with the thought of the Reformers on those topics and,
arguably, a use of elements of the medieval trajectories that lay behind the
Reformers’ understanding of those topics, plus an ongoing dialogue and
debate with related late Renaissance or early modern developments.
4. Essence, attributes, and Trinity—issues of development,
discontinuity, and continuity. When we raise the issue of continuity and
discontinuity in the development of the Reformed understanding of God from
the era of the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy, the stage is set for a
discussion of a highly variegated and complex historical development, framed
by a set of fairly stable basic exegetical and doctrinal assumptions on the one
hand and a series of shifts in emphasis, alterations in approach to detail,
changes in method, and differences in historical context on the other. Thus, on
the side of change and what might be counted toward discontinuity, the
expositions of the earlier Reformers, with several notable exceptions (viz.,
Musculus, Hyperius, and Hutchinson), tended toward rather brief expositions
of the doctrine of God in which the language of essence and attributes was
stated and a lengthy discussion avoided, whereas the expositions of the
Reformed orthodox, beginning with the generation of Ursinus and Zanchi
became increasingly lengthy and began, rather quickly, to draw overtly on the
definitions and distinctions employed by the medieval scholastics. The
methodological discontinuities are relativized to a certain extent by the
presence of scholastic elements in the thought of the Reformers themselves
and by the development of method throughout the later Middle Ages and late
Renaissance, with the result that, if the methods of the Reformed scholastics
were not identical with those of the Reformers, neither were they identical
with those of the medieval scholastics.
On the side of continuity, there are the trajectories of biblical interpretation
that pass through the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy, the notable
respect for the results of the Reformers’ work of biblical interpretation, and
the issue already alluded to at the beginning of this paragraph, namely, the
stable doctrinal assumptions held by Reformers and orthodox alike, in accord
with the churchly theological tradition. If, moreover, the orthodox theologians
tended to develop concepts like simplicity and immutability or, in the case of
the Trinity, personal properties and relations, in more detail than the
Reformers had done, there remains, nonetheless, the continuity of the concept
itself—a continuity running through the Middle Ages, into the Reformation,
and into the era of orthodoxy. In the doctrine of the Trinity, there is a striking
continuity of an Augustinian or Western line of argument, mediated through
the medieval scholastics, codified at the Fourth Lateran Council and the
Council of Florence, respected by the Reformers, and developed as well by
the Reformed orthodox. Nor, indeed, on this point, is Calvin and exception:
his trinitarianism does not read out as following a “Greek” rather than
Western, Latin model.39 Despite, therefore, the changes in method of
presentation and in density of argument brought on by the institutionalization
of Protestant theology and by the debates of the late sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, basic assumptions concerning the simplicity of God, the meanings
of various attributes, and the patterns of definition of the Trinity remained
constant.
Given this fairly constant set of basic assumptions, we conclude, therefore,
that those scholars who have argued that the doctrine of the attributes
provides, together with the doctrine of the eternal decree, the initial point of
departure for a purely deductive system of theology have thoroughly
misunderstood the Protestant orthodox system. Neither the doctrine of God
nor any other locus in Reformed orthodox theology was logically deduced—
rather all the loci were elicited from Scripture in the context of a long
tradition of biblical interpretation that had, for centuries, worked in alliance
with theological formulation. One is struck, not by a newness of logic in the
Reformed systems, but by a massively traditionary pattern and substance that
stands in the line of patristic orthodoxy, with the Augustinian tradition of the
Middle Ages nuanced in various Thomistic, Scotistic, and sometimes
nominalistic ways, and with the teachings of the Reformers. One is also
struck by contextualization of these patterns in the seventeenth century, where
the background for use of the traditionary materials is the shifting ground of
early modern philosophy and the problems of deism, skepticism, and the new
rationalism.
An example of this contextualization is found in the proofs of God’s
existence, where elements of the Thomistic “five ways” are used in rhetorical
rather than in formally demonstrative arguments. Given, moreover, that God
has been identified as the principium essendi of theology, the nominally
Thomist a posteriori arguments no longer assume that God is not per se nota,
not self-evident: rather, in a structure of argument that is profoundly anti-
Thomistic, the arguments assume that God, as principium, is both self-evident
and indemonstrable. In the Protestant orthodox model, the “five ways” (or
remnants of them) serve, along with purely rhetorical arguments like the
argument from universal consent, to confute the deist and the “practical
atheist.” Similarly, the modified forms of the ontological argument—which
can be understood against a distantly Scotist background—have been
mediated to a few of the Reformed by Descartes and belong to the quest for
indubitable principia as well.
In the doctrine of God itself, we have seen an emphatic biblicism in the
foundational use of divine names and a pronounced a posteriori element in the
doctrine of the divine attributes. Thus, the orthodox Protestant emphasis on
the will of God derives as much from the importance of the will of God in the
temporal economy as from any abstract consideration of the being of God.
What is more, the character of God’s will as just toward all mankind but
merciful toward those elect in Christ represents as much a reflection founded
on the scriptural revelation of an ordo salutis—and then applied to the
discussion of how God must be granting his revelation—as it does a
preliminary speculation concerning the divine essence. As such, the doctrine
of the divine attributes, as governed by the discussion of the distinction
between the attributes, is concerned primarily to show that the nature of God
is consistent with the pattern of divine revelation without ever being
restrictively confined within it. There is also little or no evidence in the
subsequent loci of the orthodox system that their place in the system or their
doctrinal content rests on a process of deduction: like the doctrine of the
essence and attributes itself, the primary reason for the presence of these other
doctrines in the orthodox system is that they were received from the tradition
as elicited from the text of Scripture.
Similarly, Gründler’s assertion that the “christocentric orientation of
Calvin’s thinking” gave way to a “metaphysics of causality” and,
consequently, Reformed theology “ceased to be a theology of revelation,”
simply does not fit the evidence.40 Had he presented Zanchi’s doctrine of God
in full, Gründler would have found far more exegesis than his study indicates
and, more to the point, far more interest in the Trinity and far less in
metaphysics and causality per se—and had he offered a genuinely
representative discussion of Zanchi’s De natura Dei, he would have found far
more interest in Trinity and Christology within Zanchi’s doctrine of the divine
essence and attributes than his conclusion admits. And, of course, Zanchi did
write extensive treatises on the Trinity and the Incarnation.
 As for the simple contrast between, for example, Calvin’s Institutes of the
Christian Religion and Zanchi’s De natura Dei or Turretin’s Institutio
theologiae elencticae, the former having no extended discussion of divine
attributes, the latter offering a lengthy and detailed discussion, we note that
there is a contrast but that it can be (and has been) much overdrawn. It is not
the case that Calvin’s omission of the attributes was utterly characteristic of
the Reformed theology of his day: his contemporaries Musculus and Hyperius
offered extended discussion of the topic. There is also no correlation between
what might be called a purely metaphysical interest and the expansion of
discussion of various attributes: thus, the Reformers confessed but did not
elaborate greatly on the concept of divine simplicity, and the Reformed
orthodox did elaborate on the concept at length—but it is also the case that
the divine holiness received little attention from the Reformers and a good
deal from the orthodox. If discussion of simplicity is viewed as primarily
metaphysical or speculative (a debatable point), it is clear that the discussion
of holiness is primarily exegetical. In addition, as we have seen, the Reformed
orthodox discussion of the attributes stands in broad exegetical continuity
with the exegesis of the Reformation. Nor is it the case that the Reformed
scholastic presentation of the attributes marks the only point at which the
scholastics offered more extensive discussions than Calvin: they also
discussed the covenant of grace and Christology more extensively. The
orthodox discussions are more detailed; they are clarified and developed
through use of scholastic method—but the doctrinal content of such topics as
divine simplicity, eternity, omnipotence, and the divine affections in fact
changed little. Indeed, the diversity of the later orthodox formulations reflects
the diversity of the medieval background and, insofar as the Reformers
themselves offer clarity on these issues, the diversity of the Reformation-era
teaching as well.
The Reformed doctrine of the divine will offers an instructive example of
continuity and development, a highly significant one given the emphasis
placed on the orthodox doctrine of the divine will in the attempts of an older
scholarship to argue discontinuity with the Reformers and a highly
“speculative” or “metaphysical” interest among the orthodox.41 We have seen,
in general, that the use of term “speculative” in this manner is not at all
supported by the view of some of the Reformed that theology is a partially
speculative discipline, given that the traditional usage theologia speculativa
did not indicate speculation in the sense implied by the modern scholarship.42
We have also noted the major a posteriori component of the Reformed
doctrine of the divine essence and attributes. Even so, with specific reference
to the divine will, examination of the teaching of the Reformers and of the
Reformed orthodox reveals significant continuities. Both the Reformation and
the post-Reformation writers taught a doctrine of the absolute, inalterable, and
utterly free will of God apart from which nothing can exist. In addition, they
also argued a series of distinctions such as those between the ultimate
voluntas beneplaciti and the voluntas signi, the effective and permissive
willing of God, the antecedent and the consequent will. It is not as if the
Reformers did not use such distinctions and the orthodox retrieved them from
the medieval scholastics in discontinuity with the thought of the Reformation:
rather, we have been able to indicate a continuous tradition of recourse to
such distinctions extending from the Middle Ages, through the Reformation,
into the era of orthodoxy. That tradition, moreover, contained various
trajectories of understanding—such as one according to which God
antecedently wills one thing and consequently, given his foreknowledge of
human choice, wills another; and another according to which God does not
alter his will but rather antecedently wills the grounds and conditions of
salvation and consequent on his own determination wills to save some people
only. Both the Reformers and their orthodox successors allowed the latter
form of the distinction, not the former.43
There is a similar trajectory of development in the doctrine of the Trinity:
except for the very early Reformation tendency to refrain from the use of
traditionary terminology, there is a consistency of terminological use in the
movement from Reformation to orthodoxy, a continuity of doctrinal interest,
and a constant recourse to traditionary exegesis on the part of both Reformers
and later orthodox. When, moreover, one examines the second-generation
codifiers as a group, the potential contrast between an emblematically
employed Calvin and various later writers like Keckermann and Burman on
such issues as trinitarian metaphors disappears and a rather different picture
emerges: rather than a movement from an antimetaphorical, antispeculative
beginning to a metaphorical and speculative development of the doctrine, we
can document the use of the metaphors by a minority of the writers, whether
among the Reformers (notably Viret) or among the orthodox (Keckermann,
Ainsworth, Burman). We also note that differences over this issue within the
trajectory of Reformed orthodoxy were not a matter of great controversy.
There is also the issue of the relative uniformity of the doctrine of God in
the Reformed orthodox systems: we have examined a large series of minor
variations within the Reformed tradition, stemming from different trajectories
of argumentation mediated through the eras of the Renaissance and the
Reformation, but we have also registered a confessional consensus on such
issues as middle knowledge and the relationship of the divine will to the
contingent order. This relative uniformity must be measured against the
diversity of the other loci in the system, whether the variety of covenant
formulations found among the seventeenth-century divines or the great
diversity of Reformed eschatology in the era of orthodoxy. Quite simply, there
was no neat deductive process by which the Reformed determined the shape
or content of the remainder of their theological systems.
Finally, it is to be hoped that the detail and extent of the analysis of the
whole Reformed doctrine of God—essence, attributes, and Trinity—has not
obscured the initial and fundamental point that this is a single doctrinal locus,
not a series of loci in which priority is given to reason, natural theology, and
metaphysical speculation at the expense of an emphasis on the “personal”
God who is the Trinity. That is a typical modern caricature of the older
theology. We have seen that the Reformed orthodox were highly attentive to
trinitarian issues in their discussions of the divine essence and attributes, just
as they were highly attentive to the issues raised by discussion of essence and
attributes in their analyses of the doctrine of the Trinity. The progress of the
locus was determined both by the movement of discussion from the truth of
the existence of the subject of discussion (An sit?), to the question of what the
subject of discussion is (Quid sit?), to the question of what sort of being is
under discussion (Qualis sit?). Nor does this order of discussion avoid what
moderns have called the issue of personal identity, “Who,” as opposed to
“What.” The issue of personal identity was, in fact, raised immediately with
the initial discussion of essence, so typically introduced by a lengthy analysis
of the biblical names of God. In addition, it is not only arguable that the older
order of system does justice to the way in which the doctrine God connects
with the remainder of the theological topics—namely by way of the
discussion of the Trinity—it is also arguable that the oneness, soleness, and
numerical singularity of the God who creates, sustains, and redeems the world
is the fundamental datum of the biblical narrative and that the Trinity of this
Godhead is the deeper truth that the church labored to construct out of the
christological witness of the New Testament. The order of discussion in the
older dogmatics, therefore, has a cogency that is lacking in the modern
critique.
D. Reformation and Orthodoxy: Final Assessments and Directions
This study of the prolegomena and principia of Reformed theology from
the Reformation to the end of the era of orthodoxy (ca. 1520 to ca. 1725) has
argued a variegated continuity in a context of development and change
between the thought of Calvin and his contemporaries and the thought of their
orthodox and scholastic successors. In its shortest form, the thesis describes a
fundamental continuity of doctrinal interest, accompanied by an alteration
both of method and of contexts. The detailed and methodologically scholastic
works of various later Reformed writers remained in substantive continuity
with the teaching of the Reformers—while at the same time adapting and
expanding the models of Reformed teaching to accommodate new academic,
cultural, philosophical, and polemical issues. This adaptation, expansion, and
development certainly did produce theologies that did not, in the most
externalized and formal sense, look like the theologies of the Reformers and
that often dealt with issues that were not discussed in the era of the
Reformation (for example, the larger part of the prolegomena and the problem
of a divine middle knowledge), that had been discussed in shorter form (viz.,
divine simplicity, infinity, omniscience, the relation of the persons in the
Trinity, and so forth), or that intensified and altered over the course of the
sixteenth century (e.g., the rise of skeptical philosophy and the problem of
certainty). The development also brought an interest in the larger tradition,
both patristic and medieval, with the Reformed orthodox demonstrating the
catholicity of their own tradition by a critical reappropriation of the past.
Given the detail of the subject; the variety and complexity of patterns of
discussion and debate both among the Reformers themselves and among the
Reformed orthodox; the often subtle ways in which elements of the medieval
tradition, whether methodological, philosophical, doctrinal, or exegetical,
were mediated through the Reformation and modified by the Renaissance;
and the altered contexts of later Reformed thought, the relation between
Reformation and orthodoxy is complex—too complex for the old “Calvin
against the Calvinists” model and its associated theories and too complex also
for a simple claim of either continuity or discontinuity. The model adopted
here describes a developing tradition having continuity within a confessional
perspective, defined in its breadth through different contexts rather than by
emblematic documents or purportedly dominant thinkers. The patterns of
continuity and development shown on the subjects of prolegomena, Scripture,
and God, albeit sufficient to refute the claims of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century proponents of the “Calvin against the Calvinists” and “central
dogma” models, do not yet offer a complete portrait of the development from
Reformation to orthodoxy. We can certainly say, in brief, that scholastic
orthodoxy represented a development and institutionalization of the
Reformation that brought about certain discontinuities in method, expression,
and detail of statement, discontinuities related to the altered contexts of
formulation, but that, in the cases of the doctrines examined here, also stood
in fundamental continuity of meaning and intention with both the theology of
the Reformers and its confessional definition.
Just as the trajectory of the topics included in prolegomena moved in a
different way from the trajectories of the doctrine of Scripture and the
doctrine of God—not to mention the variety of subthemes and developments
within these larger topics—so do other topics and issues follow rather
different paths between Reformation and orthodoxy. Historiographical models
akin to the one developed have been applied to the development of covenant
theology by such authors as Bierma, Woolsey, and Van Asselt, with a very
similar result. Similar approaches need still to be applied to such major
doctrinal topics as predestination, the order of salvation, Christology, the
church, and eschatology before a fuller picture of the development of
Reformed orthodoxy can appear out of the shambles left of the older
dogmatic approaches. In each case, the trajectories of thought will develop
differently and the relationship of later orthodoxy to the work of particular
Reformers will vary. Just as Calvin did not provide the primary model for the
later development of covenant thought, so also will it be seen that he was not
at all the primary model for Reformed eschatology—which, perhaps of all of
the doctrinal loci, was the most varied both in formulation and in trajectories
of interpretation in the seventeenth century.
Study has shown and further study will illuminate the identification of the
Protestant orthodoxy and scholasticism that followed the Reformation, not as
“dry,” or “rigid” recrudescences of medieval thought and method, but as
aspects of a living and variegated movement situated and contextualized,
culturally and intellectually, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The confessional and exegetical continuities of this later Protestant theology
with the thought of the Reformers are clear, as is the variety of the movement,
the diversity of its roots in the diverse traditions of the later Middle Ages,
Renaissance, and Reformation, and the multiplicity of its own intellectual
trajectories. By setting aside an older, itself rather dry and rigid dogmatic
model for addressing (I hesitate to say, for understanding!) this era and its
relationship to the Reformation, I hope that the vast reservoir of its materials
will be increasingly opened to detailed and duly contextualized study.
1See PRRD, I, 2.5–2.6; cf. the somewhat differently focused discussion in
Muller, Christ and the Decree, pp. 1–13.
2 Martin I. Klauber, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Post-Reformation
Reformed Theology: An Evaluation of the Muller Thesis,” in Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society, 33 (1990), pp. 467–475; Willem J. van
Asselt, “Protestantse scholastiek: Methodologische kwesties bij de
bestudering van haar ontwikkeling,” in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse
Kerkgeschiedenis, 4/3 (Sept. 2001), pp. 64–69; Willem J. Van Asselt, P. L.
Rouwendal, et al., Inleiding in de Gereformeerde Scholastiek (Zoetermeer:
Boekencentrum, 1998), pp. 18–28; Protestant Scholasticism, ed. Trueman and
Clark, pp. 11–19; and Reformation and Scholasticism, ed. Van Asselt and
Dekker, pp. 11–43.
3See the critique of this view in David C. Steinmetz, “The Scholastic
Calvin,” in Protestant Scholasticism, ed. Trueman and Clark, pp. 16–30.
4 Cf. the discussion in Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, pp. 3–14, 188.
5 E.g., Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of
Ideas,” in History and Theory, 8 (1969), pp. 3–53.
6 Cf. Thomas Lambert, “Daily Religion in Early Reformed Geneva,” in
Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation: Bulletin Annuel, 21 (1999–2000), pp.
33–54.
7 Thus, e.g., Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),
note particularly pp. 99–105.
8 Cf. Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, pp. 3–17, 185–188.
9 Cf. e.g., Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel
Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1967); idem, Masters of the Reformation: Emergence of a New Intellectual
Climate in Europe, trans. Dennis Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981); idem, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval
and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986); idem, The
Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, trans. Andrew C. Gow (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1994); Stephen Ozment, ed., The Reformation in Medieval
Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Stephen Ozment,
The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late
Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1980); idem, “Luther and the Late Middle Ages: The Formation of
Reformation Thought,” in Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of
European Renaissance and Reformation History, ed. Robert M. Kingdon
(Minneapolis: Burgess, 1974), pp. 109–129; Lewis W. Spitz, The Religious
Renaissance of the German Humanists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1963); idem, The Renaissance and Reformation Movements,
rev. ed., 2 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1987); idem, Luther and German
Humanism (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate-Variorum, 1996); idem, The
Reformation: Education and History (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate-Variorum,
1997); David C. Steinmetz, Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual
Origins of the Protestant Reformation (Durham: Duke University Press,
1980); idem, Calvin in Context (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995). Also note E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture
(New York: Vintage, 1942), pp. 3–8.
10 Heiko A. Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation (New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1966), pp. 42–43.
11For the older approach, see, e.g., Herbert B. Workman, The Dawn of the
Reformation, 2 vols. (London: Charles Kelley, 1901–2); Philip Schaff,
History of the Christian Church, 3 ed., revised, 8 vols. (New York: Scribners,
1910; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), VI, pp. 314–399.
12 See the discussion in PRRD, I, 1.3 (A.3, B.2–3).
13Jan Rohls, Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen, trans.
John Hoffmeyer, intro. by Jack Stotts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1998), pp. 23–25, 293.
14See further in Muller, “Calvin and the Calvinists: Assessing Continuities
and Discontinuities Between Reformation and Orthodoxy,” in After Calvin,
pp. 63–102.
15 Cf. the scholarly discussion represented in such essays as Leonard
Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism,” in Church History, 20 (1951), pp. 37–
57; Jens Moeller,”The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology,” in Journal
of Ecclesiastical History, 14 (1963), pp. 46–67; Richard Greaves, “The
Origins and Early Development of English Covenant Thought,” in The
Historian, 21 (1968), pp. 21–35; J. Wayne Baker, Heinrich Bullinger and the
Covenant: The Other Reformed Tradition (Athens, Ohio: University of Ohio
Press, 1980); Lyle D. Bierma, “The Covenant Theology of Caspar Olevian.”
(Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1980); idem, “Federal Theology in the
Sixteenth Century: Two Traditions?” in Westminster Theological Journal, 45
(1983), pp. 304–321; idem, “Covenant or Covenants in the Theology of
Olevianus,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 22 (1987), pp. 228–250; and
idem, “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,” in
Sixteenth Century Journal, 21/3 (1990), pp. 453–462; John Von Rohr, The
Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).
16 Cf. Van Asselt, “Doctrine of the Abrogations,” pp. 101–116 with Muller,
After Calvin, chap. 11, on “The Covenant of Works and the Stability of
Divine Law in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Orthodoxy.”
17See Paul Rorem, “Calvin and Bullinger on the Lord’s Supper,” in Lutheran
Quarterly, NS 2 (1988), pp. 155–184, 357–389.
18 See the discussion in PRRD, I, 8.1.
19 Cf. the preliminary statement of the historiographical problem in PRRD, I,
2.5 (A.1), 2.6 (A–C).
20 See further PRRD, III, 5.3 (F.1); 5.4 (C.2–3).
21Cf. the discussion in PRRD, I, 2.3 (B.3) and 4.1 (A.2) with the analysis of
Hyperius in Preus, Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, I, pp. 82–88
and Willem van ‘t Spijker, Principe, methode en functie van de theologie bij
Andreas Hyperius, Apeldoornse Studies, 26 (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1990).
22 See PRRD, I, 4.1.
23 Westminster Confession, I.6, in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, III, p. 603.
24 Cf. Sibrandus Lubbertus, De principiis Christianorum dogmatum libri VII
(Franecker, 1591), I.i, with Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, De verbo Dei
scripto in Opera theologica (Geneva, 1593), pp. 7–10, and with Donald W.
Sinnema, “Antoine De Chandieu’s Call for a Scholastic Reformed Theology
(1580),” in Later Calvinism: International Perspectives, ed. W. Fred Graham
(Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994), pp. 176–179,
and PRRD, I, 9.3 (A.1; B.1).
25 Lubbertus, De principiis Christianorum dogmatum, I.iii.
26 Polanus, Syntagma theol., I.xiv; Trelcatius, Schol. meth., I.i; cf. PRRD, I,
9.3; II, 7.4 (C.5).
27 See PRRD, I, 4.1 (B.1).
28 See J. K. S. Reid, The Authority of Scripture: A Study of Reformation and
Post-Reformation Understanding of the Bible (London: Methuen, 1962), and
the discussion in PRRD, II, 2.2 (A.1–2).
29 Most notably in Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, The Authority and
Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1979).
30Jack B. Rogers, Scripture in the Westminster Confession: A Problem of
Historical Interpretation for American Presbyterianism (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1967).
31 See also Richard A. Muller, “ ‘The Only Way of Man’s Salvation’:
Scripture in the Westminster Confession,” in Calvin Studies VIII (Proceedings
of the Eighth Colloquium on Calvin Studies, Davidson College, Davidson,
NC, January 26, 1996), pp. 14–34.
32Cf. my comments in “Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation:
The View From the Middle Ages,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the
Reformation, ed. Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 3–22 with the argument in David C. Steinmetz, “The
Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in Theology Today, 37 (1980), pp. 27–
38, and Brevard S. Childs, “The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and
Modern Problem,” in Beiträge zur alttestamentlichen Theologie, ed. Donner,
Hanhart and Smend (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 80–93.
33 PRRD, II, 7.5.
34 See the discussion in Muller, After Calvin, pp. 164–169.
35 Cf. Muller, Unaccommodated Calvin, pp. 10–11, 188.
36Cf. Richard A. Muller, “The Hermeneutic of Promise and Fulfillment in
Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament Prophecies of the Kingdom,” in The
Bible in the Sixteenth Century, ed., with an intro. by David C. Steinmetz
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 68–82.
37 I owe this paragraph, with its synoptic view of the argument of PRRD II, to
discussions with my colleague, Willem van Asselt, in Utrecht.
38 Cf. PRRD IV, 4.2.
39 See above 2.1 (A.3).
40 Gründler, “Thomism and Calvinism,” p. 159.
41Cf., for example, the often cited definition of Brian Armstrong, which notes
among other things that Protestant scholasticism “will comprehend a
pronounced interest in metaphysical matters, in abstract, speculative thought,
particularly with reference to the doctrine of God. This distinctive Protestant
scholastic position is made to rest on a speculative formulation of the will of
God,” in Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, p. 32.
42 See PRRD, I, 7.3 (B).
43 See PRRD, III, 5.4 (E.5–6).
 Bibliography
I. Primary Sources1
1. Ancient, and Medieval Sources
Alanus ab Insulis. Regulae de sacra theologia, in Patrologia Latina Cursus
Completus [PL], ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris: Vives, 1844–55), vol.
210, cols. 621–84.
Albert the Great. Opera omnia. Edited by Borgnet. 38 vols. Paris, 1890–99.
________. Super IV sententiarum, in Opera, vols. 25–30.
________. Summa theologiae, in Opera, vols. 31–33.
Alexander of Hales. Summa theologica. 4 vols. Quaracchi: Collegium S.
Bonaventurae, 1924–48.
Anselm of Canterbury. Saint Anselm: Basic Writings. Translated by S. N.
Deane. LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1962.
The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to
A.D. 325. Edited by Roberts and Donaldson. 10 vols. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1950–51.
Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by Richard McKeon. New
York: Random House, 1941.
Augustine. De civitate Dei, in PL, 41.
________. De doctrina christiana, in PL, 34.
________. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Translated by John Hammond
Taylor. 2 vols. New York: Newman Press, 1982.
Bernard of Clairvaux, Libellus contra capitulum Gilberti, in PL, 185.
Biel, Gabriel. Collectorium circa quattuor libros sententiarum. Tübingen,
1501.
Bonaventure. Breviloquium in Opera omnia, vol. 5.
________. Commentarius in IV libros sententiarum, in Opera omnia, vols. 1–
4.
________. Opera omnia. 11 vols. Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae,
1882–1902.
________. Saint Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the
Trinity. Introduction and translation by Zachary Hayes. St Bonaventure,
 New York: Franciscan Institute, 1979.
________. The Works of Bonaventure. Translated by José de Vinck. 5 vols.
Paterson, N.J.: St. Antony Guild, 1960–70.
Capreolus, Johannes. Defensiones theologiae Thomae Aquinatis in libros
Sententiarum. 4 vols. in 3. Venice, 1483–84.
D’Ailly, Pierre. Quaestiones super libros sententiarum cum quibusdam in fine
adjunctis. Strasbourg, 1490; repr. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1968.
Duns Scotus, Johannes. Contingency and Freedom. Lectura I 39. Translated,
with introduction and commentary by Antonie Vos, et al. Dordrecht,
Boston, and London: Kluwer, 1994.
________. God and Creatures: the Quodlibetal Questions. Translated, with
an introduction, notes and glossary by Felix Alluntis and Alan B. Wolter.
Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981.
________. Opera omnia. Edito nova iuxta editonem Waddingi. 26 vols. Paris:
Vives, 1891–95.
________. Opera omnia, jussu et auctoritate … totius Ordinis Fratrum
Minorum ministri generalis studio et cura Commissionis Scotisticae ad
fidem codicum edita. Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950-.
________. Ordinatio (Scotus’ Oxford commentary on Lombard’s Sentences),
in Opera (Wadding), vols. VIII–XXI; Opera (Vatican), vols. I–XV.
Durandus of Sancto Porciano. In Petri Lombardi sententias theologicas
commentariorum libri IV. Venice, 1571.
Eusebius Pamphilius. The Theophaneia or Divine Manifestation of Our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. Translated by Samuel Lee. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1843.
Gerard of Bologna. Summa, qq. i–xii: Quaestiones de ipsa sacra doctrina.
Edited by Paul de Vooght. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1954. [Printed as an
appendix in Paul De Vooght, Les Sources de la doctrine Chrétienne
d’aprés les théologiens du XIVe siécle et du début du XVe siécle.]
Giles of Rome. Errores philosophorum. Critical text with notes and
introduction by Josef Koch, translated by John O. Riedl. Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1944.
________. Primum sententiarum. Venice, 1521.
________. Theorems on Existence and Essence (Theoremata de esse et
essentia). Translated,, with an introduction by Michael V. Murray.
Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1952.
Gregory of Rimini. Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum. Edited
by A. Damasus Trapp and Venicio Marcolino. 6 vols. Berlin and New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1979–81.
________. Super Primum et secundum sententiarum. Venice, 1521. Reprint,
St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1955.
Henry of Ghent. Summa quaestionum ordinariarum theologi recepto
praeconio solennis Henrici a Gandavo, cum duplici repertorio, tomos
prior-posterior. Paris, 1520. Reprint, 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, N. Y.:
Franciscan Institute, 1953.
Hermes Trismegistus. Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, his Divine Pymander,
in Seventeen Books. Translated by Everard. London: J. S. for Thomas
Brewster, 1657.
Hugh of St. Victor. De sacramentis christianae fidei, in PL 176, cols. 173–
618.
________. The Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the
Arts. Translated,, with an introduction by Jerome Taylor. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1961.
________. Eruditionis didascalicae libri vii, in PL 176, cols. 739–838.
________. Summa sententiarum septem tractatibus distincta, in PL 176, cols.
41–174.
Hus, John. Super iv sententiarum. Nach Handschriften zum Erstenmal
herausgegeben von Wenzel Flajshans & Dr. Marie Kominkova. Prague,
1905. Reprint, Osnabrück: Biblio-Verlag, 1966.
John of Paris (Quidort). Commentaire sur les Sentences. Reportation. Édition
critique par Jean-Pierre Muller. 2 vols. Rome: Pontifical Institute of S.
Anselm, 1961–64.
John Pecham. Questions concerning the Eternity of the World. Translated by
Vincent G. Potter. New York: Fordham University Press, 1993.
Lactantius. Divinae institutiones, in PL, 6.
Marsilius of Inghien. Questiones Marsilii super quattour libros sententiarum.
Strasbourg, 1501.
Migne, J. P., ed. Patrologia Graeca Cursus Completus. 161 vols. Paris: Vives,
1857–66.
Migne, J. P., ed. Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus. 221 vols. Paris: Vives,
1844–55.
Moses Maimonides. The Guide for the Perplexed. Translated by M.
Friedlaender. London: George Routledge, 1956.
Nicolaus of Lyra. Biblia sacra cum Glossa interlineari, ordinaria, et Nicolai
Lyrani Postilla. 7 vols. Venice, 1588.
Origen. On First Principles. Translated by G. W. Butterworth. New York:
Harper & Row, 1966.
Peter Abelard, Theologia christiana, in PL, vol. 187.
Peter Aureole. Scriptum super primum sententiarum. Rome, 1596.
________. Scriptum super primum sententiarum. Edited by Eligius M.
Buytaert. 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1952.
Peter Lombard. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae. Editio tertia. 2 vols.
Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1971–81.
Richard of Middleton. In IV libros sententiarum. Venice, 1507–9.
Richard of St. Victor. La Trinité. Texte latin, introduction, traduction et notes
de Gaston Salet. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1959.
Robert Kilwardby, De natura theologiae. Edited by F. Stegmüller. Münster,
Aschendorff, 1935.
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 2 series in 28 vols.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956.
Thomas Aquinas. Compendium of Theology. Translated by Cyril Vollert. St.
Louis and London: B. Herder, 1947.
________. In IV libri sententiarum, in Opera omnia, vol. 1.
________. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles.
Translated by Anton C. Pegis, et al. 4 vols. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday
Image Books, 1955.
________. Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, in Opera omnia, vol. 3.
________. S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera omnia, ut sunt in indice thomistico:
additis 61 scriptis ex aliis medii aevi auctoribus, curante Roberto Busa. [I.
In quattuor libros sententiarum. II. Summa contra gentiles. Autographi
deleta. Summa theologiae. III. Quaestiones disputatae. Quaestiones
quodlibetales. Opuscula. IV. Commentaria in Aristotelem et alios. V.
Commentaria in scripturas. VI. Reportationes. Opuscula dubiae
authenticitatis. VII. Aliorum Medii Aevi auctorum scripta.] Stuttgart-Bad
Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980.
________. St. Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts. Selected and translated,
with notes by Thomas Gilby. Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1982.
________. Summa theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province. 5 vols. 1911; repr. Westminster, MD: Christian
Classics, 1981.
________. Summa theologiae cura fratrum in eiusdem ordinis. 5 vols.
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1962–65. [Also in Opera omnia,
vol. 2.]
Thomas of Strasbourg. Commentaria in IIII libros Sententiarum Petri
Lombardi, cura Fr. Simonis Brazzolati edita una cum auctoris vita ex
variis scriptoribus collecta per Sebastianum Fanensem. Venetiis, ex
officina J. Ziletti, 1564. Reprint, Ridgewood, N.J., Gregg Press, 1965.
Thomas of Sutton. Contra Quodlibet Iohannis Duns Scoti. Edited by
Johannes Schneider. Munich: Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1978.
Totting, Henry, of Oyta. Quaestio de sacra scriptura et de veritatibus
catholicis. Edited by Albert Lang. Münster: Aschendorff, 1953.
Vollert, Cyril (ed.). St. Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, St. Bonaventure:
On the Eternity of the World. Translated, with an introduction by Cyril
Vollert, Lottie Kendierski and Paul Byrne. Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1964.
William of Auvergne. De trinitate. Edited, with an introduction by Bruno
Switalski. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1976.
________. The Trinity, or the First Principle. Translated by Roland J. Teske
and Francis C. Wade. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1989.
William of Auxerre. Summa aurea. Paris, 1500.
William of Ockham. Centiloquium, edited by P. Boehner, in Franciscan
Studies, 1 (1941), pt. 1, p. 58ff; pt. 2, p. 35ff; pt. 3, p.62ff; 2 (1942), pp.
49ff, 146ff, 251ff. [Traditionally attributed to Ockham, no longer viewed
as his work.]
________. Opera philosophica et theologica. St. Bonaventure, New York:
The Franciscan Institute, 1967–86.
________. Predestination, God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents.
Second edition. Translated,, with introduction, notes and appendices by
Marylin McCord Adams and Norman Kretzman. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1983.
________. Scriptum in librum primum sententiarum, in Opera, vol. 1–4.
2. Protestant and Other Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Sources
Adams, Thomas. A Commentary on the Second Epistle General of St. Peter.
London, 1633; reissued, Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1839. Reprint,
Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990.
Ainsworth, Henry. Annotations upon the Fifth Book of Moses, called
Deuteronomie … [Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1619.
________. Annotations upon the First Book of Moses, called Genesis.
Wherein the Hebrew words and sentences, are compared with, &
explayned by the ancient Greek and Chaldee versions: but chiefly by
conference with the holy Scriptures. [Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1616.
________. Annotations upon the Five Books of Moses, the Book of Psalms,
and the Song of Songs. 7 vols. London: Miles Flesher, 1626–27; 2 vols.
Edinburgh: Blackie & Sons, 1843. Reprint, Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria
Publications, 1991.
________. Annotations upon the Fourth Book of Moses, called Numbers …
[Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1619.
________. Annotations upon the Second Book of Moses, called Exodus …
[Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1617.
________. Annotations upon the Third Book of Moses, called Leviticus …
[Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1618.
________. The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre. With
Annotations, opening the Words and Sentences, by Conference with Other
Scriptures. Amsterdam: Giles Thorp, 1612; 2nd ed., 1617.
________. A Defense of the Holy Scriptures, Worship and Ministrie.
Amsterdam: Giles Thorp, 1609.
________. The Orthodox Foundation of Religion, long since collected by that
judicious and elegant man Mr. Henry Ainsworth, for the benefit of his
private company: and now divulged for the publike good of all that desire
to know that Cornerstone Christ Jesus Crucified. [Edited] by Samuel
White. London: R. C. for M. Sparke, 1641.
________. Solomons Song of Songs. In English Metre: with Annotations and
References to other Scriptures, for the easiaer understanding of it.
[Amsterdam: Giles Thorp], 1623.
________. The Trying Out of the Truth: Begunn and Prosequuted in Certayn
Letters or Passages between Iohn Aynsworth and Henry Aynsworth; the
 one pleading for, the other against the present religion of the Church of
Rome. [London]: E.P., 1615.
Allix, Pierre. A Dissertation concerning the Angel who is called the
Redeemer, Gen. XLVIII. London: R. Chiswell, 1699. [Printed as an
appendix to The Judgment of the Ancient Jewish Church.]
________. The judgement of the ancient Jewish church, against the
Unitarians: in the controversy upon the holy Trinity, and the divinity of our
Blessed Saviour. London: R. Chiswell, 1699.
Alsted, Johann Heinrich. Definitiones theologicae secundum ordinem
locorum communium tradita. Hanau, 1631.
________. Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis. Frankfurt: Conrad Eifrid,
1627.
________. Distinctiones per universam theologiam; sumtae ex canone
sacrarum literarum, et classicic theologis. Frankfurt, 1626.
________. Metaphysica [Methodus metaphysicae], tribus libris tractata: per
praecepta methodica: theoremata selecta: & commentariola dilucida.
Herborn, 1613.
________. Methodus sacrosanctae theologiae octo libri tradita. Hanau,
1614.
________. Praecognita theologiae, I–II, in Methodus, as books I and II.
________. Scientiarum omnium encyclopaediae. 4 vols. Leiden, 1649.
________. Theologia catechetica, exhibens sacratiaaimam novitiolorum
christianorum scholam, in qua summa fidei et operum … exponitur.
Hanau, 1622.
________. Theologia didactica, exhibens locos communes theologicos
methodo scholastica. Hanau, 1618; 2nd ed., 1627. [Heppe #23]
________. Theologia naturalis, exhibens augustissimam naturae scholam, in
qua creaturi Dei communi sermone ad omnes pariter docendos utuntur:
adversus Atheos, Epicureos et Sophistas huius temporis. Hanau, 1623.
________. Theologia polemica, exhibens praecipuas huius aevi in religione
negotio controversias Hanau, 1627.
Altenstaig, Johannes. Lexicon theologicum quo tanquam clave theologiae
fores aperiuntur, et omnium fere terminorum, et obscuriorum vocum, quae
s. theologicae studios facile remorantur. Köln, 1619.
Alting, Jacob. Analysis exegetica catecheseos Palatinae, in Opera, vol. 5.
________. Dissertationes de sacrae scripturae perfectione, in Opera, vol. 5.
________. Methodus theologiae didacticae, in Opera, vol. 5. [Heppe #41]
________. Opera omnia theologica: analytica exegetica, practica,
problematica: & philogogica. 5 vols. Amsterdam, 1687.
Ames, William. An Analytical Exposition of both the Epistles of the Apostle
Peter, illustrated by doctrines out of every text. London: John Rothwell,
1641. [Also in Workes, vol. III.]
________. Bellarminus enervatus, sive disputationes anti-Bellarminianae. 3rd
ed. Oxford: William Turner, 1629.
________. Disputatio theologica de perfectione ss. Scripturae. Cambridge:
Roger Daniels, 1646.
________. The Marrow of Theology. Translated, with introduction by John
Dykstra Eusden. Boston: Pilgrim, 1966. Reprint, Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth
Press, 1984.
________. Medulla ss. theologiae. Amsterdam, 1623; London, 1630. [Heppe
#31]
________. The Workes of the Reverend and Faithfull Minister of Christ
William Ames, Doctor and Professor in that Famous University of
Franecker in Friesland. 3 vols. London: Iohn Rothwell, 1643.
Amyraut, Moyse. Brief traitté de la predestination et de ses principales
dependances. Saumur: Lesnier & Desbordes, 1634.
________. De mysterio trinitatis, deque vocibus ac Phrasibus quibus tam
Scriptura quam apud Patres explicatur, Dissertatio, septem partibus
absoluta. Saumur: Isaac Desbordes, 1661.
________. The Evidence of Things not Seen, or, Diverse Scriptural, and
Philosophical Discourses. London: Thomas Cockerill, n.d.
________. A Treatise Concerning Religions, in Refutation of the Opinion
which accounts all Indifferent. Wherein is also evinc’d the Necessity of a
particular Revelation and the Verity and preeminence of the Christian
Religion. London: M. Simons, 1660.
Amyraut, Moyse, Louis Cappel, and Josue La Place. Syntagma thesium
theologicarum in Academia Salmuriensi variis temporibus disputatarum.
2nd ed. 4 parts. Saumur: Joannes Lesner, 1664; 2nd printing, 1665.
Annotations upon all the Books of the Old and New Testament, wherein the
Text is Explained, Doubts Resolved, Scriptures Parallelled, and Various
Readings observed. By the Joynt-Labour of certain Learned Divines.
 London, 1645 [Also known as the Westminster Annotations].
Anonymous Works:
ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΥΤΟ ΘΕΟΣ or an Historical Account of the Heresie Denying the
Godhead of Christ. London: Thomas Hodgkin, 1696.
A Defence of the Brief History of The Unitarians, Against Dr. Sherlock’s
Answer in his Vindication of the Holy Trinity. London: s.n., 1691.
[Sometimes attributed to Pierre Allix.]
The faith of one God, who is only the Father; and of one mediator between
God and men, who is only the man Christ Jesus; and of one Holy Spirit,
the gift (and sent) of God; asserted and defended, in several tracts
contained in this volume; the titles whereof the reader will find in the
following leaf. And after that a preface to the whole, or an exhortation
to an impartial and free enquiry into doctrines of religion. London: s.n.,
1691. [Edited and published by Thomas Firmin.]
Gods glory vindicated and blasphemy confuted: being a brief and plain
answer to that blasphemous book intituled, Twelve arguments against
the deity of the Holy Ghost, written by Tho. Bidle, Master of Arts …:
wherein the arguments of the said book are set down together with
proper answers thereto, and twelve anti-arguments proving the deity of
the Holy Ghost. London: William Ley, 1647.
The judgment of the fathers concerning the doctrine of the Trinity opposed
to Dr. G. Bull’s Defence of the Nicene faith: Part I. The doctrine of the
Catholick Church, during the first 150 years of Christianity, and the
explication of the unity of God (in a Trinity of Divine Persons) by some
of the following fathers, considered. London: s.n., 1695. [Attributed to
Thomas Smalbroke. Also found in Thomas Firmin, ed., A Third
Collection of Tracts.]
The Scriptures and the Athanasians compared in their accounts of God the
Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ. London: S. Billingsley, 1722.
A Second Collection of tracts proving the God and father of our Lord Jesus
Christ the only true God, and Jesus Christ the son of God, him whom
the father sanctified and sent, raised from the dead and exalted, and
disproving the doctrine of three almighty and equal persons, spirits,
modes, subsistences, or somewhats in God, and of the incarnation.
London?: s.n., 1693?. [Edited and published by Thomas Firmin.]
A Third Collection of tracts: proving the God and father of our Lord Jesus
Christ the only true God, and Jesus Christ the Son of God, him whom
the Father sanctified and sent, raised from the dead and exalted, and
 disproving the doctrine of three almighty, real, subsisting persons,
minds, or spirits: giving also an account of the nominal Trinity, that is,
three modes, subsistences, or somewhats in God, called by schoolmen
Persons, and of the judgment of the Fathers and Catholick Church for
the first 150 years. London?: s.n., 1695. [Edited and published by
Thomas Firmin.]
Two letters on the subject of the divinity of the Son of God: one to the Right
Honourable the Earl of Nottingham, and one to the Reverend Mr.
William Whiston: shewing that in the present method of that
controversy, they are both mistaken: with a preface and a postscript,
wherein somthing farther is offer’d from the Scriptures on that
important question. London: Tho. Edlin, 1721.
Aretius, Benedictus. Examen theologicum, brevi et perspicua methodo
conscriptum. Lausanne, 1579.
________. A Short History of Valentinus Gentilis the Tritheist. London, 1696.
[Original Latin edition, Bern, 1567.]
________. S. S. theologiae problemata, seu loci communes, et miscellaneae
quaestiones. Editio quarta. Geneva, 1589. [Heppe #7]
Arminius, Jacobus. Amica cum Francisco Iunio de praedestinatione per
literas habita collatio: ciusque ad theses Iunii de praedestinatione notae,
in Opera, pp. 445–619.
________. Apologia adversus articulos XXXI, in vulgas sparsos, in Opera,
pp. 134–183.
________. Articuli nonnulli diligenti examine perpendendi, de praecipuis
doctrinae Christianae capitibus sententiam plenius declarantes, in Opera
pp. 948–966.
________. The Auction Catalogue of the Library of J. Arminius. A facsimile
edition with an introduction by C. O. Bangs. Utrecht: HES Publishers,
1985.
________. Catalogus librorum viri D.D. Jocobi Arminii quondam in
Academia Lugudensi theolog. professoris. Leiden, 1610.
________. Declaratio sententiae I. Arminii de praedestinatione, providentia
Dei, libero arbitrio, gratia Dei, divinitate Filii Dei, & de iustificatione
hominis coram Deo, in Opera, pp. 91–133.
________. De vero et genuino sensu cap. VII. epistolae ad Romanos
dissertatio, in Opera, pp. 809–934.
________. Disputationes privatae, in Opera, pp. 339–444.
________. Disputationes publicae, in Opera, pp. 197–338.
________. Epistola ad Hippolytum à Collibus, in Opera, pp. 935–947.
________. Examen modestum praedestinationis Perkinsianae, in Opera, pp.
621–777.
________. Examen thesium D. Francisci Gomari de praedestinatione.
Amsterdam, 1645.
________. Opera theologica. Leiden, 1629.
________. Oratio de componendo religionis inter Christianos dissidio, in
Opera, pp. 71–91.
________. Orationes tres: I. De obiecto theologiae. II. De auctore & fine
theologiae. III. De certitudine ss. theologiae, in Opera, pp. 26–41; 41–55;
56–71.
________. The Works of James Arminius. London Edition. Translated by
James Nichols and William Nichols, with an introduction by Carl Bangs. 3
vols. London, 1825, 1828, 1875. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1986.
Arnauld, Antoine. Logic, or, The art of thinking: in which, besides the
common, are contain’d many excellent new rules, very profitable for
directing of reason and acquiring of judgment in things … London: T.B.
for H. Sawbridge, 1685.
Arnold, Nicolaus. Atheismus Socinianvs â Johanne Bidello Anglo, nuper sub
specioso Scripturæ titulo orbi obtrusus. Jam assertâ ubique Scripturarum
Sacrarum veritate detectus atque refutatus. Franeker: Johannes Wellens,
1659.
________. Religio Sociniana seu Catechesis Racoviana maior publicis
disputationibus (inserto ubique formali ipsius catecheseos contextu)
refutata. Franequeræ: Idzardus Albertus & Joannes Jansonus, 1654.
Arrowsmith, John. Armilla Catechetica; A Chain of Principles: Or, an
Orderly Concatenation of Theological Aphorisms and Exercitations.
Cambridge, 1659.
________. Theanthropos, or, God-Man: being an Exposition upon the First
Eighteen Verses of the First Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John,
wherein is most accurately and divinely handled, the divinity and humanity
of Jesus Christ, proving him to be God and Man, coequall and coeternall
with the Father. London: Humphrey Moseley and William Wilson, 1660.
Artopoeus, Petrus. The Divisyon of the Places of the Law and of the Gospell.
 London, 1548.
Ascham, Roger. The Scholemaster, or Plaine and Perfite Way of Teaching
Children. London: Iohn Day, 1570.
Ashwell, George. De Socino et socinianismo dissertatio. Oxford: H. Hall,
1680.
Attersoll, William. A commentarie upon the fourth booke of Moses, called
Numbers; containing the foundation of the church and common-wealth of
the Israelites, while they walked and wandered in the wildernesse …
Wherein the whole body of divinity is handled touching matters dogmatical
… ceremoniall … [and] polemicall … Heerein also the reader shall finde
more then five hundred theological questions decided and determined.
London: William Jaggard, 1618.
Austin, Benjamin. Scripture Manifestation of the Equality of the Father,
Sonne, and Holy Ghost. Wherein … this truth is clearely confirmed,
namely that the Scriptures manifest the Sonne, and the Holy Ghost to be
equall with the Father, by ascribing to them such Names, Attributes,
Works, and Worship, as are proper to God alone. London: P. W. and John
Wright, 1650.
Bagshaw, Henry. Diatribae; or, Discourses upon select texts: wherein several
weighty truths are handled and applyed against the Papist and the
Socinian. London: R. Chiswell, 1680.
Baier, Johann Wilhelm. Compendium theologiae positivae, adjectis notis
amplioribus … denuo edendum curavit C. F. G. Walther. 3 vols. in 4. St.
Louis, 1879.
Ball, John. A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace. London, 1645.
Barlow, Thomas. Exercitationes aliquot metaphysicale, de Deo: quod sit
objectum metaphysicae. London, 1637.
Baron, Robert. Metaphysica generalis. Cambridge: John Hayes, 1685.
________. Philosophia theologiae ancillans. Oxford: Leonard Lichfield,
1641.
Basset, William. An answer to the Brief history of the Unitarians, called also
Socinians. London: Randal Taylor, 1693.
Bastingius, Jeremias. An Exposition or Commentarie upon the Catechism
taught in the Lowe Countryes. Cambridge, 1589.
________. In catechesin religionis christianae. Heidelberg, 1590.
Bates, William. Considerations of the existence of God and of the immortality
 of the soul, with the recompences of the future state: for the cure of
infidelity, the hectick evil of the times. London: Brabazon Aylmer, 1676.
________. The harmony of the divine attributes in the contrivance and
accomplishment of man’s redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ, or,
Discourses: wherein is shewed how the wisdom, mercy, justice, holiness,
power, and truth of God are glorified in that great and blessed work.
London: J. Darby, 1674.
Baumgarten, Sigmund Jacob. Theses dogmaticae. Halle, 1767.
Baxter, Richard. Catholike Theologie: Plain, Pure, Peaceable; for
Pacification of the Dogmatical Word-Warriours. London: Robert White,
1675.
________. The Divine Life in Three Treatises: first, The Knowledge of God,
and the Impression it Must make upon the Heart … second, The
Description, Reasons, and Reward of the Believer’s Walking with God …
third, The Christian’s Converse with God. London, 1664.
________. Methodus theologiae christianae. London, 1681.
________. The Reasons of the Christian Religion. London, 1667.
________. The Saints’ Everlasting Rest. London, 1660.
Beck, Johann Christoph. Fundamenta theologiae naturalis et revelatae. Basel,
1757.
Bellarmine, Robert. Disputationes de controversis christianae fidei adversus
sui temporis haereticos. 4 vols. Rome, 1581–93.
Bengel, Johann Albert. Gnomon Novi Testamenti, in quo ex nativa verborum
vi simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubrita sensum coelestium
indicatur. Tübingen, 1742. 3rd ed., edited by Johann Steudel. London:
Williams and Norgate, 1855.
Bennet, Thomas. A Discourse of the Everblessed Trinity in Unity, with an
Examination of Dr. Clarke’s Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. London,
1718.
Bentley, Richard. Remarks on a late Discourse of Free-Thinking. London,
1713.
Bergius, Johannes, Apostolische Regell: Wie man in Religionssachen recht
righten solle. Elbing, 1641.
Bernsau, Henricus Gulielmus. Compendium theologiae dogmaticae.
Franecker, 1755. [Heppe #51]
Berriman, William. An Historical Account of the Controversies that have been
in the Church, concerning the Doctrine of the Holy and Everblessed
Trinity. In Eight Sermons preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul,
London, in the years 1723 and 1724. London: T. Ward and C. Rivington,
1725.
Beverley, Thomas. The grand apocalyptical vision of the witnesses slain,
dated to its periods of prophesie and history. London: John Salusbury,
1689.
________. The Thousand Years Kingdom of Christ in its full Scripture-state,
answering Mr. Baxters new treatise. London: s.n., 1691.
Beza, Theodore. A Booke of Christian Questions and Answers. London,
1572.
________. Confessio christianae fidei, et eiusdem collatio cum Papisticis
Haeresibus … adjecta est altera brevis eiusdem Bezae fidei Confessio.
Geneva, 1560; London, 1575.
________. Confession de la foy chrestienne. Geneva, 1558.
________. Epistolarum theologicarum Theodori Bezae Vezelii, liber unus.
2nd ed. Geneva, 1575.
________. Iob Expounded … Cambridge, 1589 (?).
________. Jesu Christi Nostri Novum Testamentum, sine Novum Foedus,
cuius Graeco contextui respondent interpretationes duae.… Eiusdem
Theod. Bezae Annotationes. Cambridge, 1642.
________. The Other Parte of Christian Questions and answeres, which is
Concerning the Sacraments. London, 1580.
________. Propositions and Principles of Divinitie Propounded and Disputed
in the University of Geneva.under M. Theod. Beza and M. Anthonie Faius.
Translated by John Penry. Edinburgh, 1595.
________. The Psalmes of David, truly Opened and Explained by
Paraphrasis … London, 1590.
________. Quaestionum et responsionum christianarum libellus, in quo
praecipua christianae religionis capita kat epitome proponunter. Geneva,
1570; second part, Geneva, 1576.
________. Response de M. Th. de Bèze aux Actes de la conférence de
Montbéliard imprimées a Tubingue. Geneva, 1587.
________. Tractationes theologicae. 3 vols. Geneva, 1570–82. [Heppe #8]
Bible:
Das Alt Testament dütsch der ursprünglichen Ebreischen waarheytnach uff
das aller trüwlichest verdütschet. Zürich: Froschauer, 1524–29.
The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament.
Translated according to the Ebrue and Greke, and conferred with the
best translations in diuers languages. With moste profitable annotations
upon all the hard places. Geneva, 1560; 1561. Facsimile edition,
Madison, Milwaukee, and London: University of Wisconsin Press,
1969.
The Bible of John Calvin: Reconstructed from the Text of his
Commentaries. Compiled by Richard F. Wevers. Grand Rapids:
Digamma Publications, 1994.
Biblia Rabbinica. Edited by Johannes Buxtorf. 4 vols. Basel: L. König,
1618–19.
Biblia sacra polyglotta, complectentia textus originales Hebraicum, cum
Pentateucho Samaritano, Cbaldaicum, Graecum. 6 vols. London,
1653–57.
Biblia sacra, sive libri canonici priscae Iudaeorum ecclesiae à Deo tradit,
Latini recens ex Hebraeo facta … ab Emanuele Tremmelio & Francisco
Iunio, accesserunt libri qui vulgo dicuntur Apocryphi, Latine reddite …
à Francisco Iunio … quibus etiam adjunximus Novi Testamenti libros ex
sermone Syro ab Tremellio, et ex Graeco à Theodore Beza in Latinum
versos. Secunda cura Francisci Iunii. London: G. B., 1593.
The Geneva Bible (The Annotated New Testament, 1602 Edition). Edited
by Gerald T. Sheppard, with introductory essays by Gerald T. Sheppard,
Marvin W. Anderson, John H. Augustine, Nicholas W. S. Cranfield.
New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989.
The Greek New Testament. Edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo
Martini, Bruce Metzger, and Allen Wikgren. 2 ed. New York, London,
Amsterdam, Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1968.
The Holy Bible, conteyning the Olde Testament and the Newe. Authorized
and appointed to be read in churches. London, 1591. [Also known as
the “Bishops’ Bible]
The Holy Scriptures of the Olde and Newe Testamente; with the
Apocrypha: faithfully Translated from the Hebrue and Greke by Miles
Coverdale, sometime Lord Bishop of Exeter. Zürich, 1535. Reprint,
London: Samuel Bagster, 1838.
 The Nevv Testament of Iesus Christ, translated faithfully into English, out
of the authentical Latin … in the English College of Rhemes …
Rheims, 1582.
The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ, translated out of Greeke by
Theod. Beza: With briefe summaries and expositions upon the hard
places by the said Author, Ioac. Camer. and P. Loseler. Villerius.
Englished by L. Tomson. Together with the Annotations of Fr. Junius
upon the Revelation by S. John. Imprinted at London by the Deputies of
Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queens most Excellent Majestie,
1599.
Novum testamentum graecum, cum lectionibus variantibus mss.
exemplarium, versionum, editionum, ss. patrum et scriptorum
ecclesiasticorum; et in easdem notis. Accedunt loca scripturae
parallela, aliaque exegetica. Praemittitur dissertatio de libris N.T.
canonis constitutione, et s. textus n. foederis ad nostra usque tempora
historia. Studio et labore Joannis Millii S.T.P. Collectionem millianam
recensuit, meliori ordine disposuit, novisque accessionibus locupletavit
Ludolphus Kusterus. Editio secunda. Amstelodami: Apud Jacobum
Westenium, 1746.
Testamentis Veteris Biblia Sacra sive libri canonici priscae Iudaeorum
Ecclesiae a Deo traditi, Latini recens ex Hebraeo facti … ab Immanuele
Tremellio & Francisco Iunio. London, 1585.
Bibliotheca fratrum polonorum quos Unitarios vocant. 6 vols. Eleutheropolis
[Amsterdam]: s.n., 1656.
Biddle, John. The apostolical and true opinion concerning the Holy Trinity
revived and asserted: partly by twelve arguments levied against the
traditional and false opinion about the Godhead of the Holy Spirit: partly
by a confession of faith touching the three Persons: both which having
been formerly set forth, in those yeers which the respective titles bear, are
now so altered, so augumented, what with explications of the Scripture,
what with reasons, what finally with testimonies of the Fathers and of
others, together with observations thereupon, that they may justly seem
new. London: s.n., 1653.
________. The apostolical and true opinion concerning the Holy Trinity,
revived and asserted: partly by twelve arguments levied against the
traditional and false opinion about the Godhead of the Holy Spirit, partly
by a confession of faith touching the three persons …: with testimonies of
the fathers, and of others all reprinted, anno 1653 by John Bidle … and
now again with the life of the author prefixed. London: s.n., 1691.
________. A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity, According to the
Scriptures. London: s.n., 1648.
________. Duae catecheses: quarum prior simpliciter vocari potest
catechesis scripturalis posterior, brevis catechesis scripturalis pro parvulis
… primum quidem a Johanne Biddello; in Latinam linguam translatæ per
Nathanaelem Stuckey. London: s.n., 1664.
________. In sacra Biblia Græca ex versione LXX. interpretum scholia: simul
et interpretum cæterorum lectiones variantes. London: Joannes Martin &
Jacobus Allestrye, 1653.
________. A Twofold Catechism: the one simply called A Scripture-
catechism; the other, A brief Scripture-catechism for children … Composed
for their sakes that would fain be meer Christians, and not of this or that
sect. London: J. Cottrel, for R. Moone, 1654.
________. XII arguments drawn out of the Scripture: wherein the commonly-
received opinion touching deity of the Holy Spirit is clearly and fully
refuted: to which is prefixed a letter tending to the same purpose, written
to a member of the Parliament. London: s.n., 1647. [Also found in Thomas
Firmin, The faith of one God. London: s.n., 1691.]
Biggs, Noah. Mataeotechnica medicinae praxeos. The Vanity of the Craft of
Physick. Or, a New Dispensatory. Wherein is dissected the Errors,
Ignorance, Impostures and Supinities of the Schools. London, 1651.
Bingham, Joseph. Origines Ecclesiasticae, or the Antiquities of the Christian
Church. 8 vols. London, 1708–22.
________. Origines Ecclesiasticae, or the Antiquities of the Christian
Church, and other Works. 9 vols. London: William Straker, 1840. [Cited as
Works.]
________. A Sermon on the Trinity, in Works, vol. 9, pp. 326–48.
________. Sermon II. On the Divinity of Christ, in Works, vol. 9, pp. 359–82.
________. To the Reverend Clergy of the Deaneries of Winchester and
Somborn Regis, in Works, vol. 9, pp. 349–38.
Binning, Hugh. The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning, M. A. Collected and
edited by M. Leishman. Edinburgh, 1858. Reprint, Ligonier, Pa.: Soli Deo
Gloria, 1992.
Blundeville, Thomas. The art of logike: Plainely taught in the English tongue
… as well according to the doctrine of Aristotle, as of all other moderne
and best accounted authors thereof. A very necessarie booke for all young
students in any profession to find out thereby the truth in any doubtfull
 speech, but specially for such zealous ministers as haue not beene brought
vp in any Vniuersity, and yet are desirous to know how to defend by sound
argumentes the true Christian doctrine, against all subtill sophisters, and
cauelling schismatikes, how to confute their false sillogismes, [and]
captious arguments. London: Iohn Windet, 1599.
Bodin, Jean. Colloque entre sept scavans qui sont de differens sentimens des
secrets cachez des choses relevees. Texte presente et etabli par Francois
Berriot avec la collaboration de Katharine Davies, Jean Larmat, et Jacques
Roger. Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance, 204. Geneve: Librairie Droz,
1984.
________. Colloquium of the seven about secrets of the sublime [Colloquium
heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis]. Translated, with
introduction, annotations, and critical readings, by Marion Leathers
Daniels Kuntz. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975.
________. Vniversae naturae theatrum: in quo rerum omnium effectrices
causae & fines quinque libris discutiuntur. Lugduni: Apud Iacobum
Roussin, 1596.
Boderherus, Nicolaus. Sociniano-Remonstratismus: Hoc est, Evidens
demonstratio qua Remonstrantes cum Socinianis siue reipsa, siue verbis,
sive etiam methodo, in pluribus confessionis suae partibus consentire
ostenditur. Leiden: Iacobus Marcus, 1624.
Bogerman, Johannes. Spieghel der Jesuiten, ofte catech. Van der Jesuyten
secte ende leere. Amsterdam: J. Cloppenburch, 1608.
Boquinus, Petrus. Exegesis divinae atque humanae koinonias. Heidelberg,
1561. [Heppe #14]
Bold, Samuel. A brief account of the first rise of the name Protestant and
what Protestantism is … by a professed enemy to persecution. London:
s.n., 1688.
________. A reply to Mr. Edwards’s brief reflections on A short discourse of
the true knowledge of Christ Jesus, &c. to which is prefixed a preface
wherein something is said concerning reason and antiquity in the chief
controversies with the Socinians. London: A. and J. Churchill, 1697.
________. A short discourse of the true knowledge of Christ Jesus to which
are added some passages in the reasonableness of Christianity &c. and its
vindication: with some animadversions on Mr. Edward’s reflections on the
reasonableness of Christianity and on his book entituled Socinianism
unmask’d. London: A. and J. Churchil, 1697.
________. Some passages in the Reasonableness of Christianity, &c. and its
vindication, with some animadversions on Mr. Edwards’s reflections on the
Reasonableness of Christianity, and on his book, entitled, Socinianism
unmask’d. London: A. and J. Churchil, 1697.
Boston, Thomas. An illustration of the doctrines of the Christian religion,
with respect to faith and practice, upon the plan of the assembly’s shorter
catechism. Comprehending a complete body of divinity. Now first
published from the manuscripts of … Thomas Boston. 2 vols. Edinburgh:
John Reid, 1773; reissued, 1853.
Boyle, Robert. A Discourse of Things Above Reason, Inquiring whether a
Philosopher should admit that there are any such. London: F. T. & R. H.,
1681.
________. Of the High Veneration Man’s Intellect Owes to God; Peculiarly
His Wisdeom and Power. London: M.F., 1685.
Brakel, Wilhelmus à. De Bedeeling des Verbonds en de Handelingen Gods
met zijne Kerk in het O. T. onder de Schaduwen, en in het N. T. onder de
Vervulling. [In ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst, as part 3/1.]
________. The Christian’s Reasonable Service in which Divine Truths
concerning the Covenant of Grace are Expounded, Defended against
Opposing Parties, and their Practice Advocated. 4 vols. Translated by
Bartel Elshout, with a biographical sketch by W. Fieret and an essay on the
“Dutch Second Reformation” by Joel Beeke. Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria
Publications, 1992–95.
________. ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst in welken de
goddelijke Waarheden van het Genade-Verbond worden verklaard …
alsmede de Bedeeling des Verbonds in het O. en N.T. en de Ontmoeting der
Kerk in het N. T. vertoond in eene Verklaring van de Openbaringen aan
Johannes. 3 parts. Dordrecht, 1700; second printing, Leiden: D. Donner,
1893–94.
________. Verklaring van de Openbaringen aan Johannes. [In ΛΟΓΙΚΗ
ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ, dat is Redelijke Godsdienst, as part 3/2].
Braunius, Johannes. Doctrina foederum sive systema theologiae didacticae et
elencticae. Amsterdam, 1688. [Heppe #40]
________. Leere der verbonden: ofte kort begryp der onderwysige en
wederleggige godgeleerdheid. 3rd ed. Amsterdam: Isaac Stokmans, 1723.
Brès, Guido de. Confession de foy … Auec vne Remonstrance aux Magistrats,
de Flandres, Braban, Hainault, Artois, Chastelenie de l’lsle, & autres
 regions circonuoisines. Lyon: S. Barbier pour J. Frellon, 1561.
________. Confession de foy. Faicte d’vn commun accord par les fideles qui
côuersent és pays bas, lesquels desirent viure selon la pureté de l’Euangile
de nostre Seigneur Iesus Christ. Rouen: Abel Clémence, 1561.
Brightman, Thomas. The Revelation of St. John, illustrated with analysis and
scholions: wherein the fence is opened by the scripture, and the events of
things foretold, shewed by histories. Amsterdam: Thomas Stafford, 1644.
________. A Revelation of the Apocalyps, that is the Apocalyps of S. Iohn,
illustrated with an Analysis & Scolions. Amsterdam: Hondius & Laurensz,
1611.
Broughton, Hugh. The Works of the Great Albionian Divine, renown’d in
many nations for rare skill in Salems and Athens Tongues, and familiar
Acquaintance with all Rabbinical Learning, Mr. Hugh Broughton.
Collected into one Volume and Digested into Four Tomes. London: Nathan
Ekins, 1662.
Brown, John, of Haddington. A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed
Religion. In seven books. Glasgow: John Bryce for J. Matthews, 1782. 2nd
ed. revised, Edinburgh: Murray and Cochrane, 1796. Reissued,
Philadelphia: David Hogan, Griggs & Co., 1819. Reprint, Grand Rapids,
Reformation Heritage Books, 2002.
Bucanus, Gulielmus. Institutiones theologicae seu locorum communium
christianae religionis. Geneva, 1602. [Heppe #9]
________. Institutions of the Christian Religion, framed out of God’s Word.
Translated by R. Hill. London: G. Snowdon, 1606. London: Daniel
Pakeman, 1659.
Bucer, Martin. Defensio adversus axioma catholicum id est criminationem R.
P. Roberti episcopi Abrincensis (1534). Edited by William Ian P. Hazlitt.
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000. [Opera Latina, V]
________. Deutsche Schriften. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1960-.
________. Enarratio in Evangelion Iohannis (1528, 1530, 1536). Edited by
Irena Backus. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988. [Opera Latina, II]
________. Opera Omnia. Series II, Opera Latina. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986-.
________. Quomodo S. Literae pro Concionibus tractandae sint Instructio.
Text, with introduction and translation by François Wendel and Pierre
Scherding, in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 26 (1946), pp.
32–75.
________. Summarischer Vergriff der Christlichen Lehre und Religion.
Strasbourg, 1548. Published under the title, Résumé sommaire de la
doctrine chrétienne. With an introduction, text and translation by François
Wendel, in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 31 (1951), pp. 1–
101.
Buchius, Paulus. The Divine Being and its Attributes Philosophically
Demonstrated from the Holy Scriptures and the Original Nature of Things.
According to the Philosophical Principles of F. M. B. of Helmont. London:
Randal Taylor, 1693.
Buddeus, Johannes Franciscus. Isagoge historico-theologica ad theologiam
universam. Jena, 1727.
Bull, George. The Consubstantiality and Coeternity of the Son of God with
God the Father, Asserted; or, some few Animadversions on a treatise of Mr.
Gilbert Clerke, entitled, AnteNicenismus, in English Theological Works,
pp. 409–44.
________. Defensio fidei nicaenae. Defence of the Nicene Creed, out of the
Extant Writings of the Catholick Doctors, who Flourished during the First
Three Centuries of the Christian Church [1685]. A new translation. 2 vols.
Oxford: Parker, 1851.
________. The Doctrine of the Catholic Church for the First Three Ages of
Christianity, concerning the Blessed Trinity, considered, in opposition to
Sabellianism and Tritheism [1697], in English Theological Works, pp.
371–82.
________. The English Theological Works of George Bull, D.D., sometime
Bishop of St. David’s. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1844.
________. Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ trium primorum seculorum, de
necessitate credendi quod Dominus noster Jesus Christus sit verus Deus,
assertum contra M. Simonem Episcopium aliosque. Oxford: George West,
1694.
________. The Works of George Bull, D. D., lord bishop of St. David’s
collected and rev. by Edward Burton. To which is prefixed the life of
Bishop Bull, by Robert Nelson. 7 vols. in 8. Oxford: Oxford, University
Press, 1846.
Bullinger, Heinrich. Compendium christianae religionis. Zürich, 1556.
[Heppe #2]
________. Confessio et expositio simplex orthodoxae fidei … Zurich, 1566;
text in Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, III, pp. 233–306.
________. The Decades of Henry Bullinger. Translated by H.I., edited by
Thomas Harding. 4 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1849–52.
________. De scripturae sanctae authoritate. Zürich, 1538.
________. The Old Faith, an Evident Probacion out of the Holy Scripture,
that the Christen Fayth … hath Endured sens the Beginning of the Worlde
(1547). Translated by Myles Coverdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1844.
________. Sermonum decades quinque. Zürich, 1552.
Bunyan, John. The Whole Works of John Bunyan, Accurately Reprinted from
the Author’s Own Editions. With editorial prefaces, notes, and life of
Bunyan by George Offor, esq. 3 vols. 1875. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1977.
Burgersdijk, Franco. Idea philosophiæ, tum moralis, tum natvralis, sive,
Epitome compendiosa utriusque ex Aristotele excerpta & methodicè
disposita. Leiden, 1622. Oxford: Henricus Curteyne, 1641. Oxford: R.
Blagrave, 1654. Oxford: R. Davis, 1667, 1675.
________. Institutionum logicarum, libri duo. Leiden, 1626.
________. Institvtionvm metaphysicarum, lib. II. Leiden: 1640. London: J.
Crook & J. Baker, 1653; also Oxford: R. Davis, 1675.
Burman, Franz. Consilium de studio theologico feliciter instituendo, in
Synopsis theologiae (Geneva, 1678), pt. II, pp. 653–690.
________. De Kooningen Israels. Amsterdam: J. van Someren, 1682.
[exposition of I Kings-Esther]
________. Orationes. I. De collegiis theologicis et philosophicis; II. De
doctrina Christiana; III. De Belgica afflicta; IV. De causis Belgicae
afflictae. 4 parts. Utrecht, 1700.
________. De Rigteren Israels. Urecht: C. Noenaart, 1675. [exposition of
Joshua, Judges, Ruth]
________. Samuel. Utrecht: C. Noenaart, 1678. [exposition of I–II Samuel]
________. Synopsis theologiae et speciatim oeconomiae foederum Dei. 2
parts. Geneva, 1678; Den Haag, 1687. [Heppe #38]
________. See also: Descartes, René.
Burnet, Gilbert. An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of
England. London, 1699. Revised and corrected, with notes by James R.
Page. New York: Appleton, 1852.
________. A Modest Survey of the most considerable things in a Discourse
lately published entitled the Naked Truth. London: Moses Pitt, 1676.
Burnet, Thomas. The Scripture Trinity Intelligibly Explained: or, an Essay
toward the Demonstration of a Trinity in Unity, from Reasons an Scripture.
In a Chain of Consequences from Certain Principles. Which … may serve
as an answer to Dr. Waterland and Dr. Clarke and all Others … whether
Arians, Socinians, or whatever other Denomination … London: J. Roberts,
1720.
Burroughs, Jeremiah. An Exposition of the Prophecy of Hosea. 4 vols.
London, 1643–51. Reissued in 1 vol. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1865.
________. Irenicum to the Lovers of Truth and Peace. Heart-divisions opened
in the causes and evils of them. London, 1653.
Bury, Arthur. A defence of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and incarnation
placed in their due light in answer to a letter, written to the clergy of both
universities. London?: s.n., 1694.
________ [attrib.]. The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity placed in its due light by
an answer to a late book, entituled, Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s
book, &c. [by Dr. Robert South]: also the doctrine of the incarnation of
our Lord asserted and explain’d. London: s.n., 1694. [Also attributed to
William Sherlock.]
________. The judgment of a disinterested person concerning the controversy
about the B. Trinity, depending between Dr. S—th and Dr. Sherlock.
London: E. Whitlock, 1696.
________. Latitudinarius orthodoxus accesserunt vindiciae, libertatis
Christianae, Ecclesiae Anglicanae, & Arthur Bury, contra ineptias &
calumnias P. Jurieu … [I. In genere, de fide in religione naturali, Mosaica
& Christiana, II. In particulari, de Christianae religionis mysteriis, Sancra
Trinitate, Christi incarnatione, corporis resurrectione, coena Dominica].
Londini: Sam. Buckley, 1697.
________. The naked gospel discovering I. What was the gospel which our
Lord and his apostles preached, II. What additions and alterations latter
ages have made in it, III. What advantages and damages have thereupon
ensued: Part I. Of Faith, and therein, of the Holy Trinity, the incarnation of
our Blessed Saviour, and the resurrection of the body. London?: s.n., 1690;
London: Nathanael Ranew, 1691.
Buxtorf, Johannes I. Tiberias sive commentarius Masorethicus triplex:
historicus, didacticus, criticus. Recognitus … à Johanne Buxtorfio Fil.
Basel, 1665.
Buxtorf, Johannes II. Anticritica seu vindiciae veritatis hebraica adversus
Ludovici Cappelli criticam quam vocat sacram eiusque defensionem.
Basel, 1653.
________. Dissertationes philologico-theologicae. I. De linguae hebraeae
origine, antiquitate et sanctitate. II. De linguae hebraeae confusione et
plurium linguarum originae. III. De linguae hebraeae conservatione,
propagatione et duratione. IV. De litterarum hebraicarum genuina
antiquitate. V. De nominibus Dei hebraicis. VI. De Decalogo. VII. De
primae coena Dominicae ritibus et forma. Basel, 1645.
________. Tractatus de punctorum vocalium, et accentum, in libris Veteris
Testamenti hebraicis, origine, antiquitate, et authoritate: oppositus arcano
punctationis revelato Ludovici Cappelli. Basel, 1648.
Cajetan, Thomas de Vio, Cardinal. Commentary on Being and Essence (In De
ente et Essentia d. Thomas Aquinatis). Translated, with and introduction by
Lottie H. Kendzierski and Francis C. Wade. Milwaukee, Marquette
University Press, 1964.
Calov, Abraham. Socinismus profligatus, hoc est, Errorum Socinianorum
luculenta confutatio: è S. literis, propriisq[ue] ipsorum testimoniis, per
universam theologiam, trecentis quaestionibus methodo concinna,
brevitate nervosa, ita instituta … operâ & studio Abraham Calovii.
Wittenberg: Joh. Borckard, 1668.
Calvin, John. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: with the Antidote,
in Selected Works, vol. 3.
________. Calvin’s Calvinism: Treatises on the Eternal Predestination of God
and the Secret Providence of God. Translated by Henry Cole. London,
1856. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, n.d.
________. Commentaries of John Calvin. 46 vols. Edinburgh: Calvin
Translation Society, 1844–55. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1979.
________. Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God. Translated, with an
introduction by J.K.S. Reid. London: James Clarke, 1961.
________. “Four Letters from the Socinus-Calvin Correspondence (1549),” in
Italian Reformation Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus, edited by John
Tedeschi (Florence, 1965), pp. 215–230.
________. Institutes of the Christian Religion [1536]. Translated and
annotated by Ford Lewis Battles. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986.
________. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Translated by Henry
 Beveridge. Edinburgh, 1845. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.
________. Institutes of Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill,
translated by F. L. Battles. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950.
________. Institutio christianae religionis, in libris quatuor nunc primum
digesta, certisque distincta capitibus, ad aptissimam methodum: aucta
etiam tam magna accessione ut propemodum opus novum haberi possit
Geneva: Robertus Stephanus, 1559. [Heppe #1]
________. Institution de la Religion chrestienne [1541]. Edited by J. Pannier.
Paris, 1936–39.
________. Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia. Edited by G. Baum,
E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss. Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1863–1900.
________. Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters. Edited by
Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet. 7 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1983.
________. Sermons of Maister Iohn Calvin, upon the Book of Iob. Translated
by Arthur Golding. London: George Bishop, 1574. Reprint, Edinburgh:
Banner of Truth, 1993.
________. Sermons of M. John Calvin, on the Epistles of S. Paule to Timothie
and Titus. Translated by L. T. London: G. Bishop, 1579. Reprint,
Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1983.
________. The Sermons of M. Iohn Calvin upon the Fifth Booke of Moses
called Deuteronomie. London: Henry Middleton, 1583. Reprint,
Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987.
________. Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines.
Translated and edited by Benjamin Wirt Farley. Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1982.
Camerarius, Joachim. Commentarius in Novum Foedus: in quo figurae
sermonis, et verborum significatio, et orationis sententia, ad illius
Foederis intelligentiam certiorem, tractentur. Cambridge, 1642.
Cameron, John. An Examination of those Plausible Appearances which seeme
most to commend the Romish Church, and to prejudice the Reformed.
Oxford: John Lichfield and William Turner, 1626.
________. A Tract of the Soveraigne Iudge of Controversies in Matters of
Religion. Translated by John Verneuil. Oxford: William Turner, 1648.
Campanella, Tommaso. Universalis philosophiae, seu metaphysicarum rerum,
iuxta propria dogmata, patres tres. Paris, 1638. Reprint with an
 introduction by Luigi Firpo. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1961.
Cano, Melchior. De locis theologicis (1564), in J.-P. Migne, ed., Theologiae
cursus completus, 10 vols. (Paris: Vives, 1837), vol. 1.
Cappel, Louis. Arcanum punctationis revelatum, sive de punctorum vocalium
et accentum apud Hebraeos vera et germanae antiquitate, libri duo.
Leiden: J. Maire, 1624.
________. Commentarii et notae criticae in Vetus Testamentum. Amsterdam:
P. & J. Blaeu, 1689.
________. Critica sacra, sive de variis quae in sacris veteri Testamenti libris
occurunt lectionibus, libri sex. Paris, 1650.
________. The Hinge of Faith and Religion; or, A Proof of the Deity against
Atheists and Profane Persons, by Reason, and the Testimony of Scripture:
the Divinity of which is Demonstrated. Translated by Philip Marinel.
London: Thomas Dring, 1660.
Caroli, Petrus. Brevis explicatio orthodoxae fidei de uno Deo et Spiritu Sancto
adversos blasphemos G. Blandratae et F. Davidis errores. Wittenberg,
1571.
Cartwright, Christopher. Electa thargumico-rabbinica; sive Annotationes in
Exodum. London, 1658.
________. Electa thargumico-rabbinica; sive Annotationes in Genesin.
London, 1648.
Cartwright, Thomas. An Answere to the Preface of the Rhemish Testament.
London, 1602.
________. Christian Religion: substantially, methodicallie, plainlie, and
profitablie treated. London, 1611.
________. A Confutation of the Rhemists Translation, Glosses, and
Annotations on the New Testament, so farre as they containe Manifest
Impieties, Heresies, Idolatries … . Leiden, 1618.
________. A Dilucidation, or Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Colossians, Deliuered in Sundry Sermons. Edited by A. B. Grosart.
Edinburgh, 1864.
________. A Treatise of the Christian Religion, or the Whole Bodie and
Substance of Divinitie. London: Felix Kyngston, 1616.
Caryl, Joseph. An Exposition with Practicall Observations upon … the Booke
of Iob. 12 vols. London: G. Miller and M. Simmons, 1644–66.
Cave, William. Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria a Christo
[nato] usque ad saec. XIV facili methodo digesto …, authore Guilielo
Cave, accedunt scriptores gentiles … et cujusvis saeculi breviarium.
London: Richardi Chiswell, 1688.
________. Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum historia literaria, a Christo Nato
usque ad saeculum XIV, facili methodo digesta, qua, de vita illorum ac
rebus gestis, de secta, dogmatibus, elogio, stylo; de scriptis genuinis,
dubiis, supposititiis, ineditis, deperditis, fragmentis; deque variis operum
editionibus perspicue agitur, accedunt scriptores gentiles, christianae
religionis oppugnatores; et cujusvis saeculi Breviarium; additur ad finem
cujusque saeculi Conciliorum omnium, tum generalium tum particularium,
historica notitia; … accedunt ab aliis manibus appendices duae, ab
ineunte saeculo XIV. ad annum usque MDXVII. nunc in unam congestae;
ad calcem vero operis ejusdem Cavei dissertationes tres, I. De Scriptoribus
Eccl. incertae Aetatis, II. De Libris et Officiis Eccl. Graecorum, III. De
Eusebii Caesariensis Arianismo; adversus Johannem Clericum, una cum
Epistola Apologetica adversus iniquas ejusdem Clerici criminationes.
Basel: Johann Rudolph Im-Hoff, 1741–45.
Chandieu, Antoine de la Roche. De vera methodo theologice simul et
scholastice disputandi, preface to De verbo Dei scripto, in Opera
theologica.
________. Disputationes accurate theologice et scholastice tractate.
Cambridge: Thomas Thomas, 1584.
________. Opera theologica. Geneva, 1593.
________. A Treatise Touching the Word of God Written, against the
Traditions of Men. Handled both Schoolelike and Divinelike. London: John
Harison, 1583.
Charnock, Stephen. The Works of the late learned Divine Stephen Charnock,
B.D. 2 vols. London: Printed for Ben Griffin, and Tho. Cockeril, 1684.
________. Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God. With his life
and character, by William Symington, D.D. 2 vols. New York: Robert
Carter, 1853.
Chemnitz, Martin. Examination of the Council of Trent. 4 vols. Translated by
Fred Kramer. St. Louis: Concordia, 1971–86.
________. Loci theologici. 3 vols. Frankfurt and Wittenberg, 1653.
________. Loci theologici. 2 vols. Translated by J. A. O. Preus. St. Louis:
Concordia, 1989.
Cheynell, Francis. The Divine Triunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
and Holy Spirit: or, the blessed Doctrine of three Coessential Subsistents
in the Eternall Godhead. London: T. R. & E. M., 1650.
________. The Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianisme together with a
plaine discovery of a desperate designe of corrupting the Protestant
religion, whereby it appeares that the religion which hath been so violently
contended for (by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his adherents) is not
the true pure Protestant religion, but an hotchpotch of Arminianisme,
Socinianisme and popery. London: Samuel Gellibrand, 1643.
Chillingworth, William. The Religion of Protestants, a safe way to salvation,
or, An answer to a booke entitles Mercy and truth, or, Charity maintain’d
by Catholiques, which pretends to prove the contrary. Oxford: Leonard
Lichfield, 1638.
Clarke, Samuel. A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. More
Particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbes, Spinoza, and their followers. Being
the substance of eight sermons preached in the year 1704 at the lecture
founded by the honourable Robert Boyle, Esquire. Edited by Ezio Vailati.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
________. A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the
Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of Christian
Revelation. In Answer to Mr Hobbes, Spinoza, the Author of the Oracles of
Religion, and Other Deniers of Natural and Revealed Religion, in Works,
vol. II.
________. Observations on Dr. Waterland’s Second Defense of Some Queries,
in Works, IV, pp. 483–530.
________. A Reply to the Objections of Robert Nelson, and of an anonymous
author against Dr. Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity. To which is
added, An answer to the remarks of the author of Some considerations
concerning the Trinity. London: James Knapton, 1714.
________. The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, in Works, vol. IV.
________. Several Letters to the Reverend Dr. Clarke from a Gentleman in
Gloucestershire, relating to the Discourse Concerning the Being and
Attributes of God; with the Doctor’s Answers Thereunto, in Works, vol. II.
________. The Works of Samuel Clarke. 4 vols. London, 1738. Reprint, New
York: Garland, 1978.
Clerke, Gilbert. Tractatus tres: quorum qui prior ante-Nicenismus dicitur, is
exhibet testimonia patrum ante-Nicenorum, in quibus eluct sensus ecclesiæ
 primævo-catholicæ, quoad articulum de Trinitate: in secondo, Brevis
responsio ordinatur ad D. G. Bulli defensionem synodi Nicenæ / authore
Gilberto Clerke …; Argumentum postremi, vera & antiqua fides de
divinitate Christi, explicata & asserta, contra D. Bulli, judicium ecclesiæ
catholicæ &c. per anonymum. London?: s.n., 1695.
Cloppenburg, Johannes. Anti-Smalcius, de divinitate Jesu Christi: Pars prior,
De munere Christi prophetico. Pars posterior, De munere Christi regio.
Franeker: Idzardus Balck, 1652.
________. Aphorismi theologiae christianae, ex scriptura prophetica et
apostolica demonsrtati, in Opera, vol. I.
________. Compendiolum Socinianismi. Franekeræ: Idzardus Balck, 1651.
________. Disputationes XV. de canone theologiae et iudicio controversiarum
secundum canonem, in Opera, vol. II.
________. Exercitationes super locos communes theologicos, in Opera, vol.
I.
________. Gangrena theologiae Anabaptisticae, Dat is, Cancker v. d. Leere
der Weder-dooperen. Amsterdam: Hans Walschaert, 1625.
________. Kort begrijp van de opkomste ende leere der Socinianen, kortelick
vervat in 11 capittelen, by een gebracht ende grontelick wederleyt in de
Nederlantsche tale. Dordrecht, Vincent Caimax, 1652.
________. Opera theologica. 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1684.
________. Protheoria theologiae christianae; quo agitur de theologiae &
religionis definitione, partitione & distributione, in Opera, I.
________. Vindiciae pro deitate Spiritus Sancti adversus Pneumatomachum
Johannem Biddellum Anglum. Franecker, 1652. [also in Opera, II.]
Cocceius, Johannes. Aphorismi per universam theologiam breviores, in
Opera, vol. 7, pp. 3–16.
________. Aphorismi per universam theologiam prolixiores, in Opera, vol. 7,
pp. 17–38.
________. Disputationes selectae, in Opera, vol. 7, second pagination, pp.
73–202.
________. Explicatio catecheseos Heidelbergensis, in Opera, vol. 7, second
pagination, pp. 1–72.
________. De Heydelbergse Catechismus der Chr. Religie. Translated by
Abraham van Poot. Amsterdam: J. van Someren, 1679.
________. Ondersoek van der aert ende natuyre des Sabbaths en der Ruste
des Nieuwen Testaments. Leiden: J. Elsevier, 1659.
________. Ondersoek van der aert ende natuyre van der Kerk en Babylon.
Translated by Abraham van Poot. Amsterdam: J. van Someren, 1691.
________. Opera omnia theologica, exegetica, didactica, polemica,
philologica. 12 vols. Amsterdam, 1701–1706.
________. De prophetie van Exechiël met de uitleggingen van Johannes
Coccejus. Amsterdam, 1691.
________. Summa theologiae ex Scriptura repetita. Geneva, 1665.
Amsterdam, 1669. Also, in Opera, vol. 7, pp. 131–403. [Heppe #37a]
________. Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento Dei. Amsterdam, 1648.
Also, in Opera, vol. 7, pp. 39–130. [Heppe #37b]
________. Van den Antichrist. Translated by Abraham van Poot. Amsterdam:
J. van Someren, 1679.
Concordia Triglotta … Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev.
Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English. St. Louis: Concordia, 1921.
Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London:
Adam Islip, 1611.
Coton, Pierre. Geneue plagiaire ou verification des deprauations de la Parole
de Dieu qui trouuent és Bibles de Geneue. Paris, 1618.
Crell, Johann. The Expiation of a Sinner in a Commentary upon the Epistle to
the Hebrewes. London, 1646.
________. The Two Books of John Crellius Francus, touching one God the
Father wherein many things also concerning the nature of the Son of God
and the Holy Spirit are discoursed of. Kosmoburg [London]: s.n., 1665.
________. The Unity of God Asserted and Defended, &c. London, 1691. [A
reissuing of the preceding work.]
Crocius, Ludovicus. Dyodecas dissertationum exegeticarum et
apologeticarum syntagmatis sacrae theologiae. Bremen: Berthold Villier,
1642.
________. Paraeneticus de theologia cryptica. Bremen, 1615.
________. Syntagma sacrae theologiae quatuor libris adornatum. Bremen:
Berthold Villier, 1635. [Heppe #25]
Croft, Herbert [Bishop of Hereford]. The Naked Truth. London?: s.n., 1675.
Cudworth, Ralph. The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part;
wherein, all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted; and its
impossibility demonstrated. London: Printed for Richard Royston, 1678
________. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. 2 vols. Andover,
Mass., 1837–38.
Curcellaeus, Stephanus [Etienne de Courcelles]. Opera theologica, quorum
pars praecipua Institutio religionis Christianae. Amsterdam: Daniel
Elsevir, 1675.
_______. Quaternio dissertationm theologicarum adversus Samuelem
Maresium … opus posthumum. Amsterdam: Ioannes Henricus, 1659.
Daillé, Jean. Apologia pro ecclesiis reformatis: in qua demonstratur eas falso
& inique schismatis idcirco accusari, quod a PapaeRomani communione
secesserint, cum appendice. Item De fidei ex scripturis demonstratione,
adversus novam methodum. 2 vols. Geneva: Samuel de Tournes, 1677.
________. Apologia pro duabus ecclesiarum in Gallia protestantium synodis
nationalibus; altera alensone, anno [MD]CXXXVII: altera vero
Carentone, anno [MD]CXLV habitis: adversus Friderici Spanhemii
Exercitationes de gratia universali. Amsterdam: Joannes Ravesteyn, 1655.
________. An Apologie for the Reformed Chruches, wherein is shew’d the
necessitie of their separation from the Church of Rome: against those who
accuse them of making a schisme in Christendome. Cambridge: Thomas
Buck, 1653.
________. Exposition de Jean Daillé sur la divine épître de l’apôtre S. Paul
aux Filippiens en vingt-neuf sermons. 2 pts. Geneva: J. Antoine & S. de
Tournes, 1659–1660.
________. An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians.
Translated by James Sherman. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863.
________. An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Philippians.
Translated by James Sherman. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863.
________. Faith Grounded upon the Holy Scriptures; against the New
Methodists. Translated by M. M. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1675.
________. Sermons sur le Catéchisme. 3 vols. Geneva, 1701.
________. A Treatise of the Right Use of the Fathers, in the Decision of the
Controversies Existing at this Day in Religion. Translated by T. Smith.
London: John Martin, 1651. 2nd ed., with a preface by G. Jekyll. London:
Henry Bohn, 1843.
Daneau, Lambert. Christianae isagoges ad christianorum theologorum locos
communes, libri II. Geneva, 1583. [Heppe #5]
________. Compendium sacrae theologiae seu erotemata theologica, in
quibus totius verae theologiae christianae summa breviter comprehense
est. Montpellier, 1595.
________. A Fruitfull Commentarie upon the Twelve Small Prophets.
Cambridge, 1594.
________. In Petri Lombardi Episcopi Parisiensis (qui Magister Sentiarum
appellatur) librum primum Sententiarum, qui est de vero Deo, essentia
quidem uno, personis autem trino, Lamberti Danaei commentarius triplex.
Geneva, 1580.
________. Isagoges christianae. Pars altera, seu secunda. Geneva, 1584.
________. Isagoges christianae. Pars quarta. Geneva, 1586.
________. Isagoges christianae. Pars quinta. Geneva, 1588.
________. Methodus sacrae scripturae in publicis tum praelectionibus, tum
concionibus utiliter atque intelligenter tractandae. Geneva, 1570.
________. Opuscula omnia theologica. Geneva: E. Vignon, 1583.
Davenant, John. Animadversions written by the Right Reverend Father in
God, John, Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon a treatise intitled, Gods love to
mankind. Cambridge: R. Daniel, 1641.
________. The Determinationes; or Resolutions of Certain Theological
Questions, publicly discussed in the University of Cambridge. Translated
from the corrected and enlarged edition of 1639 by Josiah Allport. London:
Hamilton, Adams, 1846. [In A Treatise on Justification, vol. 2.]
________. A Dissertation on the Death of Christ, as to the Extent of its
Benefits. Translated by, Josiah Allport as volume 2 of the Exposition of the
Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co.,
1832.
________. Expositio epistolae ad Colossenses. Cambridge, 1627.
________. An Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians … to
which is added a translation of Dissertatio de morte Christi, by the same
prelate. Translated, with a life of the author and notes illustrative of the
writers and authorities referred to in the work, by Josiah Allport. 2 vols.
London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1831–32.
________. On the Controversy among the French Divines of the Reformed
Church, concerning the Gracious and Saving Will of God toward Men.
 Translated by Josiah Allport, in Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Colossians, vol. 2, pp. 561–569.
________. A Treatise on Justification or the Disputatio de justitia habituali et
actuali, of the right Rev. John Davenant … together with translations of
the “Determinationes” of the same prelate. Translated by Josiah Allport. 2
vols. London: Hamilton, Adams, 1844–46.
Dávid, Francis. Defensio Francisci Davidis; and, De dualitate tractatus
Francisci Davidis, Cracoviae, 1582. Introduction by Mihály Balázs.
Bibliotheca Unitariorum, vol. 1. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1983.
Dávid, Francis, et al. De falsa et vera unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti
cognitione libri duo (1568). Introduced by Antal Pirnát, edited by Robert
Dán. Bibliotheca Unitariorum, vol. 2. Utrecht: Foundation Bibilotheca
Unitariorum/Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988.
Day, William. An Exposition of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. London: G.D.
and S.G. for Ioshua Kirton, 1654.
Deacon, J. The fathers vindicated, or, Animadversions on a late Socinian book
entitul’d The judgment of the Fathers touching the Trinity, against Doctor
Bull’s Defence of the Nicene faith by a presbyter of the Church of England.
London: R. Chiswell, 1697.
De Dieu, Ludovicus. Critica sacra sive animadversiones in loca quaedam
difficiliora Veteris et Novi Testamenti. Amsterdam, 1693.
De Laune, Thomas. Tropologia, or, A key to open Scripture metaphors: the
first book containing sacred philology, or the tropes in Scripture, reduc’d
under their proper heads, with a brief explication of each partly translated
and partly compil’d from the works of the learned by T.D. The second and
third books containing a practical improvement (parallel-wise) of several
of the most frequent and useful metaphors, allegories, and express
similitudes of the Old and New Testament by B[enjamin]. K[each].
London: John Richardson and John Darby, 1681.
De Luzancy, H. C. [Hippolyte du Chastelet]. Remarks on several late writings
publish’d in English by the Socinians wherein is show’d the insufficiency
and weakness of their answers to the texts brought against them by the
orthodox: in four letters, written at the request of a Socinian gentleman.
London: Tho. Warren, 1696.
De Moor, Bernhardus. Commentarius perpetuus in Joh. Marckii compendium
theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum. 7 vols. in 6. Leiden, 1761–
1771.
Descartes, René. Descartes’ Conversation with Burman. Translated, with an
introduction and commentary by John Cottingham. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1976.
________. Philosophical Letters. Translated by Anthony Kenny.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.
________. The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Translated by Elizabeth S.
Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. 2 vols. London: Cambridge University Press,
1931.
________. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny. 3
vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985–91.
Dickson, David. A Brief Exposition of the Evangel of Jesus Christ according
to Matthew. London: Ralph Smith, 1647.
________. A Brief Exposition of the Psalms. 3 vols. London, 1653–55.
Reissued as A Commentary on the Psalms. 2 vols. London: Banner of
Truth, 1965.
________. An Exposition of all St. Pauls Epistles together with … St. James,
Peter, John, and Jude. London: R. I. for Francis Eglesfield, 1659.
________. A Short Explanation of the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. Dublin:
Society of Stationers, 1637.
________. The Summe of Saving Knowledge, with the Practical Use Thereof.
Edinburgh: George Swintoun, 1671.
________. Truths Victory over Error. Or, an Abridgement of the Chief
Controversies in Religion … between those of the Orthodox Faith, and all
Adversaries whatsoever. Edinburgh: John Reid, 1684.
Diodati, Jean. Pious and Learned Annotations upon the Holy Bible, plainly
Expounding the Most Difficult Places Thereof. Third edition. London:
James Flesher, 1651.
Doederlein, Johann Christoph. Institutio theologi christiani. 2 vols. Altdorf,
1780. Nürnberg, 1787.
Downame, John [alias Downham]. The Christian Warfare. 4th edition.
London, 1634.
________. Lectures upon the Foure First Chapters of Hosea. London, 1608.
________. The Summe of Sacred Divinitie briefly and methodically
propounded: and then more largely and cleerly handled and explaned.
London: W. Stansby, 1625, 1628.
Du Moulin, Pierre. The Anatomy of Arminianisme: or the Opening of the
Controversies lately handled in the Low Countries, concerning the
Doctrine of Predestination, of the Death of Christ, of the Nature of Grace.
London: T. S. for Nathaniel Newbery, 1620.
________. The Buckler of the Faith, or, A Defence of the Confession of Faith
of the Reformed churches in France: against the obiections of M. Arnoux
the Iesuite. Third edition. London: Iohn Beale, 1631.
________. De cognitione Dei tractatus. London: John Bill, 1626.
________. A Defense of the Catholike Faith: Contained in the Booke of the
Most Mightie, and Most Gracious King James the first … against the
Answere of N. Cosseteau. London: W. Stansby, 1610.
________. A Learned Treatise of Traditions. London: August Mathewes,
1631.
________. Opera philosophica, logica, physica, ethica. Amsterdam, 1645.
________. Oration in the Praise of Divinitie. Spoken at Sedanum in an
Auditory of Divines, VIII of the Ides of December, 1628. Translated by J.
M. London: Henry Shephard, 1649.
________. A Treatise of the Knowledge of God. Translated by Robert
Codrington. London: A. M., 1634.
Du Plessis-Mornay, Philippe. A Worke concerning the Trunesse of the
Christian Religion … Against Atheists, Epicures, Paynims, Iewes,
Mahumetists, and other Infidels. Translated by Philip Sidney and Arthur
Golding. London: George Potter, 1604.
Durham, James. Clavis Cantici. A Key, Useful for Opening up the Song, in An
Exposition of the Song of Solomon, by J. Durham, pp. 23–61.
________. A Commentarie Upon the Book of Revelation. Wherein the Text is
explained … together with some practical Observations, and several
Digressions necessary for vindicating, clearing, and confirming weighty
and important Truths. London: Company of Stationers, 1658. Reissued,
Willow Street, Pa.: Old Paths Publications, 2000.
________. An Exposition of the Song of Solomon. 1669. Reissued, 1840.
Reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982.
Dury, John. A Seasonable Discourse … briefly shewing these Particulars. 1.
What the Grounds and Method of our Reformation ought to be in Religion
and Learning. 2. How even in these times of distraction, the Worke may be
advanced. London, 1649.
Eck, Johann. In primum librum sententiarum annotatiuculae D. Johanne
Eckio praelectore. Edited by Walter L. Moore. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976.
Edwards, John. Brief remarks upon Mr. Whiston’s New theory of the earth and
upon an other gentleman’s objections against some passages in a
discourse of the existence and providence of God, relating to the
Copernican hypothesis. London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697.
________. A brief vindication of the fundamental articles of the Christian
faith as also of the clergy, universities and publick schools, from Mr. Lock’s
reflections upon them in his Book of education, &c.: with some
animadversions on two other late pamphlets, viz., of Mr. Bold and a
nameless Socinian writer. London: J.Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697.
________. A demonstration of the existence and providence of God, from the
contemplation of the visible structure of the greater and the lesser world in
two parts, the first shewing the excellent contrivance of the heavens, earth,
sea, &c., the second the wonderful formation of the body of man. London:
Jonathan Robinson and John Wyat, 1696.
________. A discourse concerning the authority, stile, and perfection of the
books of the Old and New-Testament with a continued illustration of
several difficult texts of scripture throughout the whole work. London:
Richard Wilkin, 1693. 2nd ed. J. D. for Jonathan Robinson, 1696.
________. ΠΟΔΥΠΟΙΚΙΔΟΣ ΣΟΦΙΑ: A Compleat History or Survey of all the
Dispensations or Methods of Religion, from the Beginning of the World to
the Consummation of all Things, 2 vols. London: Daniel Brown et al.,
1699.
________. A preservative against Socinianism shewing the direct and plain
opposition between it, and the religion revealed by God in the Holy
Scriptures. Oxford: Henry Clements, 1693.
________. The Socinian creed, or, A brief account of the professed tenents
and doctrines of the foreign and English Socinians wherein is shew’d the
tendency of them to irreligion and atheism, with proper antidotes against
them. London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697.
________. Socinianism unmask’d: a discourse shewing the unreasonableness
of a late writer’s opinion concerning the necessity of only one article of
Christian faith, and of his other assertions in his late book, entituled, The
reasonableness of Christianity as deliver’d in the Scriptures, and in his
vindication of it: with a brief reply to another (professed) Socinian writer.
London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1696.
________. Some thoughts concerning the several causes and occasions of
 atheism, especially in the present age: with some brief reflections on
Socinianism, and on a late book entitled The reasonableness of
Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. London: J. Robinson and J.
Wyat, 1695.
________. Theologia Reformata: or, the Body and Substance of the Christian
Religion, comprised in distinct discourses or treatises upon the Apostles
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. 2 vols. London:
John Lawrence et al., 1713.
________. Theologia reformata, or, Discourses on those graces and duties
which are purely evangelical: and not contained in the moral law, and on
the helps, motives, and advantages of performing them, being an entire
treatise in four parts, and if added to the two former volumes, makes a
compleat body of divinity. London: T. Cox, 1726.
Edwards, Thomas. The First and Second Part of Gangraena: or A Catalogue
and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and
pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in
England in these four last yeers. Also a particular narration of divers
stories … an extract of many letters, all concerning the present sects;
together with some observations. London: Ralph Smith, 1646; 3rd ed.,
much enlarged, 1646.
________. The Third Part of Gangraena or, A new and higher Discovery of
the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and indolent Proceedings of the
Sectaries of these times; with some Animadversions by way of Confutation
upon many of the Errors and Heresies named. London: Ralph Smith,
1646.
Eglinus, Raphael. Tractatus theologicus de coena domini et foedere gratiae
quinis disputationibus interstinctus. Marburg, 1614. [Heppe #26]
Eilsheimus, Daniel Bernhard. Oestfriesslaendisch Kleinod des wahren
Glaubens. Emden, 1612. [Heppe #22]
Elys, Edmund. Dominus est Deus, Gloria æterna Domini nostri Jesu Christi
vindicata, contra egregiam errorum farraginem quæ inferibitur catechesis
Ecclesiarum Polonicarum. Oxford: s.n., 1690.
Emlyn, Thomas. A collection of tracts, relating to the deity, worship, and
satisfaction of the Lord Jesus Christ, &c.: in two volumes. London: J.
Darby and T. Browne, 1731.
________. An examination of Mr. Leslie’s last dialogue, relating to the
satisfaction of Jesus Christ. Together with some remarks on Dr.
Stillingfleet’s true reasons of Christ’s sufferings. London: s.n., 1708.
________. Extracts from An humble inquiry into the Scripture account of
Jesus Christ. Boston: Samuel Hall, 1790.
________. An humble enquiry into the Scripture account of Jesus Christ, or, A
short argument concerning his deity and glory, according to the gospel.
London, 1702.
Endemann, Samuel. Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae. 2 vols. Hanau,
1777–1778. [Heppe #55]
Episcopius, Simon. Institutiones theologicae, in Opera, vol. I.
________. Opera theologica. 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1650.
Erasmus, Desiderius. Inquisitio de fide: a Colloquy (1524). Edited with
Introduction and Commentary by Craig R. Thompson. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1950.
Espine, J. de l’. Opuscules théologiques. 2 vols. Geneva, 1598.
________. Traité de la providence de Dieu (1590), in Opuscules, vol. 2.
Essenius, Andreas. Christelike en een-voudige onderwyzing tegens de
Sociniaensche en zommige daer aen grenzende dwalingen, gesteld.
Amsterdam: Johannes van Waesberge, 1663.
________. Compendium theologiae dogmaticum. Utrecht: Meinardus à
Dreunen, 1669.
________. Synopsis controversiarum theologicarum, et index locorum totius
s. scripturae, quibus adversarii ad errores suos confirmandos, et veritatem
impugnandum vel declinandum, praecipue abuti solent: ubi tum
adversarii, qui iis abutuntur, tum singulae eorum collectiones brevi
methodo proponuntur. Utrecht: Meinardus a Dreunen, 1677.
________. Systematis theologici pars prior -tomus tertius: I. De natura
theologiae, de fide, de S. Scriptura, de Deo, de personis divinis, dedecreto
Dei, de creatione, de providentia, de foedere legali, & de peccato. II. De
foedere evangelico, de Christo mediatore, de salutis impetratione, de
vocatione & regeneratione, de justificatione, reconciliatione, & adoptione.
III. De sanctificatione, de conservatione & corroboratione, de
obsignatione, de glorificatione, & de Ecclesia. 3 vols. Amsterdam:
Johannes Ansonius, 1659–65.
Estwick, Nicolas. Pneumatologia: or, A Treatise of the Holy Ghost, in which
the Godhead of the third Person of the Trinitie is … defended against the
sophisticall subtleties of John Bidle. London, 1648.
Fenner, Dudley. The Arts of Logic and Rhetoric … for … the Resolution or
 Opening of certain Parts of Scripture. Middelburg, 1584.
________. Certaine Godly and Learned Treatises. Edinburgh, 1592.
________. The Groundes of Religion set Downe in Questions and Answers.
Middelburg, 1587.
________. Sacra theologia sive veritas qua est secundum pietatem ad unicae
et verae methodi leges descripta. London, 1585. Geneva 1589.
________. The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie. Middelburg, 1599. Revised ed.,
London, 1613. [Published anonymously and variously ascribed to Dudley
Fenner, John Gordon, and Sir Henry Finch.]
Fiddes, Richard. Theologia Practica: or, The Second Part of a Body of
Divinity … wherein are Explain’d the Duties of Natural and Revealed
Religion. London, 1720.
________. Theologia Speculativa: or, The First Part of a Body of Divinity …
wherein are Explain’d the Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion.
London, 1718.
Fisher, Edward. The Marrow of Modern Divinity. London, 1645.
________. The Scriptures Harmony. London, 1643.
Flacius Illyricus, Matthias. Clavis scripturae seu de sermone sacrorum
literarum, plurimas generales regulas continentis. Wittenberg, 1567.
Flavel, John. An Exposition of the Assembly’s Catechism, with Practical
Inferences from Each Question, in Works, vol. 6.
________. The Method of Grace in the Gospel of Redemption, in Works, vol.
2.
________. The Reasonableness of Personal Reformation, and the Necessity of
Conversion, in Works, vol. 6.
________. The Works of John Flavel. 6 vols. London: Baynes and Son, 1820.
Reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1968.
Forbes of Corse, John. Instructiones historico-theologicae de doctrina
christiana. Amsterdam, 1645.
Fotherby, Martin. Atheomastix: Clearing foure Truthes, Against Atheists and
Infidels: 1. That, There is a God. 2. That, There is but one God. 3. That,
Jehovah, our God, is that One God. 4. That, The Holy Scripture is the
Word of that God. London: Nicholas Okes, 1622.
Francken, Aegidius. Kern der Christelijke leer: dat is de waarheden van de
Hervormde godsdienst, eenvoudig ter nedergesteld, en met de oefening der
 ware Godzaligheid aangedrongen. Dordrecht: J. van Braam, 1713.
Groningen: O.L. Schildkamp, 1862.
________. Stellige god-geleertheyd: dat is, De waarheden van de hervormde
leer: eenvoudig ter nedergestelt, en met de oeffening der waare
Godsaligheyd aangedrongen. 3 vols. Dordrecht: J. van Braam, 1712.
Freylinghausen, Johannes Anastasius. Fundamenta theologiae christianae, in
doctrinis fidei ex verbo Dei perspicue traditis. Magdeburg, 1734.
Fulke, William. A Defense of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy
scriptures in the English Tongue, against the Cavils of Gregory Martin.
London, 1583. Reissued by the Parker Society, Cambridge, 1843.
Fuller, Nicholas. Miscellaneorum theologicorum … libri tres. Oxford: Joseph
Barnes, 1616. London: John Bill, 1617.
Gailhard, John. The Blasphemous Socinian heresie disproved and confuted
wherein the doctrinal and controversial parts of those points are handled,
and the adversaries scripture and school-arguments answered: with
animadversions upon a late book called, Christianity not mysterious,
humbly dedicated to both houses of parliament. London: R. Wellington
and J. Hartley, 1697.
________. Serious advice to a preservative against the blasphemous heresie
of Socinianism. London: Geo. Grafton, 1695.
Gale, Theophilus. The Court of the Gentiles, or, A discourse touching the
original of human literature, both philologie and philosophie, from the
Scriptures and Jewish church. Oxford: W. Hall for Tho. Gilbert, 1670. 2nd
ed., enlarged, 1672.
________. The Court of Gentiles. Part II. Of Barbaric and Grecianic
Philosophy. Oxford: W. Hall for Tho. Gilbert, 1671. 2nd ed., enlarged,
London: J. Macock for Thomas Gilbert, 1676.
________. The Court of Gentiles. Part III. The Vanity of Pagan Philosophy:
demonstrated from its causes, parts, proprieties, and effects, namely pagan
idolatrie, Judaic apostasie, gnostic infusions, errors among the Greek
fathers, specially Origen, Arianisme, Pelagianisme, and the whole systeme
of papisme or antichristianisme: distributed into three parts, mystic,
scholastic, and canonic theologie. London: A. Maxwell and R. Roberts for
T. Cockeril, 1677.
________. The Court of the Gentiles. Part IV. Of Reformed Philosophie.
Wherein Plato’s Moral and Metaphysic or Prime Philosophie is reduced to
an useful Forme and Method. London: J. Macock for Thomas Cockeril,
 1677.
________. The Court of the Gentiles. Part IV. Of Reformed Philosophie. Book
III. Of Divine Predetermination. Wherein the Nature of Divine
Predetermination is fully Explicated and Demonstrated, both in the
General and also more Particularly, as to the Substrate Matter or
Entitative Act of Sin: with a Vindication of Calvinists and others from that
Blasphemous Imputation of Making God the Author of Sin. London: John
Hill and Samuel Tidmarsh, 1678.
________. Idea theologiae, tam contemplative quam activae. Ad formam S.
Scripturae delineata. London: J. Robinson, 1673.
________. Philosophia generalis: in duas partes disterminata. Londini: J.M.
pro J. Robinson & J. Hancock, 1676.
Gassendi, Pierre. Disquisitio metaphysica; seu, Dubitationes et instantiae
adversus Renati Cartesii Metaphysicam et responsa. Texte établi, traduit et
annoté par Bernard Rochot. Paris: J. Vrin, 1962.
________. Institutio Logica (1658). Critical edition with translation and
introduction by Howard Jones. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981.
________. Opera omnia in sex tomos divisa … Hactenus edita auctor ante
obitum recensuit, auxit, illustrauit. Posthuma vero totius naturae
explicationem complectentia, in lucem nunc primum prodeunt, ex
bibliotheca illustris virHenrici Lvdovici Haberti Mon-Morii. 6 vols.
Lvgdvni: sumptibus Lavrentii Anisson & Ioan. Bapt. Devenet, 1658–75.
Gataker, Thomas. Antithesis, partim Gulielmi Amesii, partim Gisberti Voetii,
de sorte thesibus reposita. London, 1638.
________. De nomine tetragrammato dissertatio. London: R. Cotes, 1645.
________. De novi instrumenti stylo dissertatio. Qua viri doctissimi
Sebastiani Pfochenii, de linguae Gracae Novi Testamenti puritate; in qua
Hebraismus, quae vulgo finguntur, quam plurimis larva detrahi dicitur.
London: T. Harper, 1648.
________. Dissertatio de tetragrammato suae vindicatio adversus Capellum.
London: Roger Daniel, 1652.
________. Shadowes without Substance, or Pretended New Lights: Together
with the Impieties and Blasphemies that Lurk Under Them, further
Discovered in a Reply to I. Saltmarsh. London, 1646.
________. A Short Catechism. London, 1624.
Gerhard, Johann. Loci theologici. 9 vols. Edited by Preuss. Berlin, 1863–75.
Geulincx, Arnold. Metaphysics. Translated, with a preface and notes by
Martin Wilson. Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, U.K.: Christoffel Press, 1999.
________. Opera philosophica. Recognovit J. P. N. Land. 3 vols. Den Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1891–93.
Gibbens, Nicholas. Questions and Disputations Concerning the Holy
Scripture. London, 1601.
Gill, John. The Cause of God and Truth. In four parts, with a Vindication of
Part IV from the cavils, calumnies, and defamations, of Mr. Henry
Heywood. London, 1735–38. Reissued, London: W. Collinridge, 1855.
________. Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity: or A System
of Evangelical Truths Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, with A
Dissertation Concerning the Baptism of Jewish Proselytes. 2 vols. London,
1769–70. Reissued, London: Tegg & Company, 1839. Reprint, Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978.
________. A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew-language,
Letters, Vowel-points, and Accents. London: G. Keith, 1767.
________. An Exposition of the New Testament. 3 vols. London, 1746–8.
________. An Exposition of the Old Testament. 6 vols. London, 1748–63.
________. Sermons and Tracts. New edition. 3 vols. London: T. Smith, 1814.
________. A Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity. London, 1731. 2nd ed.
London: G. Keith, 1752.
Gillespie, George. A Treatise of Miscellany Questions, in Works, vol. 2.
________. The Works of Mr. George Gillespie. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Ogle,
Oliver, and Boyd, 1846.
Gillespie, Patrick. The Ark of the Testament Opened: or, the Secret of the
Lords Covenant Unsealed in a Treatise of the Covenant of Grace. London:
R.C., 1661.
Glassius, Salomon. Philologiae sacrae, qua totius sacrosanctae Veteris et
Novi Testamenti scripturae … stylus et literatura … expenditur, libri duo.
Jena, 1626.
________. Philologiae sacrae, liber tertius et quartus, quibus grammatica
sacra comprehensa. Jena, 1634.
________. Philologiae sacrae, liber quintus, quo rhetorica sacra
comprehensa. Jena, 1636.
Gomarus, Franciscus. Disputations theologicae, in Opera theologica, vol. 2.
________. Opera theologica omnia. 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1644.
Goodwin, Thomas. A Discourse of Christ the Mediator, in Works, vol. V.
________. The Work of the Holy Ghost in our Salvation, in Works, vol. VI.
________. The Works of Thomas Goodwin, D.D., sometime President of
Magdalen College, Oxford. Preface by John C. Miller, memoir by Robert
Halley. 12 vols. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1861–66.
Gouge, William. A Learned and very Useful Commentary on the Whole
Epistle to the Hebrews. London: A.M., T.W. and S.G., 1655.
Granger, Thomas. Syntagma logicum, or the Divine Logike. London, 1620.
Greenhill, William. An Exposition of Ezekiel. 5 vols. London, 1665–67.
Reissued in one volume, Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863. Reprint, Carlisle,
PA: Banner of Truth, 1994.
Groenewegen, Henricus. Oefeningen den Heidelbergschen Catechismus.
Gorinchem: Cornelis Lever, 1679.
Grotius, Hugo. Annotationes ad Vetus Testamentum, in Opera, vol. 1.
________. Annotationes in epistolas Apostolicas & Apocalypsin, in Opera,
vol. 2, part 2, pp. 669–1238.
________. Annotationes in quatuor Evangelia & Acta Apostolorum, in
Opera, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 1–668.
________. Opera omnia theologica. 3 vols. Amsterdam, 1679. London:
Moses Pitt, 1679.
_______. The Truth of the Christian Religion, in Six Books. Translated by
John Clarke. Cambridge: J. Hall, 1860.
Guild, William. Moses Unveiled: or, those Figures which served unto the
Pattern and Shadow of Heavenly Things, pointing out the Messiah Christ
Jesus. London, 1626. Reprint, Edinburgh, 1755.
Gualther, Rudolph. An Hundred, Threescore and Fiftene Homelyes or
Sermons uppon the Actes of the Apostles, written by Saint Luke. London:
Henrie Denham, 1572.
Gürtler, Nicholaus. Institutiones theologicae ordine maxime naturali
dispositae ac variis accessionibus auctae. Marburg: Müller, 1732. [Heppe
#52]
________. Synopsis theologiae reformatae. Marburg: Müller, 1731.
Haak, Theodore, trans. The Dutch Annotations upon the Whole Bible: Or, All
 the holy canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament … as …
appointed by the Synod of Dort, 1618, and published by authority, 1637. 2
vols. London, 1657.
Hall, John. A Humble Motion to the Parliament of England Concerning the
Advancement of Learning: and the Reformation of the Universities.
London, 1649.
Hall, Joseph. The Works of Joseph Hall, D.D … with some account of his life
and sufferings, written by himself. 12 vols. Oxford: Talboys, 1837–39.
________. Solomon’s Divine Arts. Edited by Gerald T. Sheppard. Pilgrim
Classic Commentaries, vol. IV. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1991.
Hammond, Henry. A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all of the Books of the
New Testament. 5th ed., corrected. London: J. Macock and M. Flesher,
1681.
An Harmony of the Confessions of the Faith of the Christian and Reformed
Churches. Cambridge, 1586.
Harris, John. The Atheistical Objections, against the Being of a God, and His
Attributes, Fairly Considered and Fully Refuted in Eight Sermons.
London: J. L., 1698.
Harvey, Gideon. Archeologia Philosophica Nova, or, New Principles of
Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in General. Metaphysicks or Ontology.
Dynamilogy, or a Discourse of Power. Religio Philosophi, or Natural
Theology. Physicks, or Natural Philosophy. London: J. H. for Samuel
Thomson, 1663.
Hearne, Thomas, An Account of all the Considerable Books and Pamphlets,
that have been wrote on either side, in the Controversy concerning the
Trinity, since the year 1712. London, 1720.
Heereboord, Adriaan. Meletemata philosophica in quibus pleraeque res
Metaphysicae ventilantur, tota Ethica κατασκευαστικως καὶ
ἀνασκευαστικως explicatur, universa Physica per theoremata &
commentarios exponitur, summa rerum Logicarum per Disputationes
traditur. Editio nova. Amsterdam: Henricus Wetstenius, 1680.
________. Philosophia naturalis, cum Commentariis Peripateticis anthaec
edita. London: Wilmot & Crosley, 1684.
Heidanus, Abraham. Corpus theologiae christianae in quindecim locos
digestum. 2 vols. Leiden, 1687. [Heppe #44]
________. De origine erroris libri octo. Amsterdam, 1678.
________. Disputationes theologicae ordinariae repetitiae. 2 parts. Leiden,
1654–59.
________. Fasciculus disputationum theologicarum de Socianismo. Leiden,
1659.
Heidegger, Johann Heinrich. Corpus theologiae christianae … adeoque sit
plenissimum theologiae didacticae, elenchticae, moralis et historicae
systema. 2 vols. Zurich: David Gessner, 1700. [Heppe #46]
________. De ratione studiorum theologiae. Zurich, 1690.
________. Medulla theologiae christianae. Zurich, 1696. [Heppe #46]
Hellenbroeck, Abraham. De Evangelische Jesaya, ofte deszelfs voorname
Evangelische prophetiën. 4 vols. Amsterdam: Hendrik Burgers,1702.
________. Het Hooglied van Salomo verklaart en vergeestelyk. 2 vols.
Amsterdam: Hendrik Burgers, 1718.
________. A Specimen of Divine Truths, for the Instruction of Youth. New
York: Board of Publication of the Reformed Church in America, n.d.
________. Vorbeeld der Goddelijke Waarheden voor eenvoudigen: die zig
bereiden tot de belijdenisse des geloofs; meest tot particulier gebruik
opgesteld. 1706. Amsterdam: Jacobus van Egmont, 1765.
Henry, Matthew. An Exposition of the Old and New Testament: wherein each
chapter is summed up in its contents: the sacred text inserted at large, in
distinct paragraphs; each paragraph reduced to its proper heads: the
sense given, and largely illustrated; with practical remarks and
observations. New edition, revised and corrected. 6 vols. London: James
Nisbet, n.d.
Herbert, Edward, Baron of Cherbury. De causis errorum. Pars prima.
London: Philemon Stephan, 1645.
________. De veritate. Translated by Meyrick H. Carré. Bristol: Arrowsmith,
1937.
________. De veritate, prout distinguitur a revelatione, a verisimili, a
possibili, et a falso. 2nd ed. London: Augustine Matthew, 1633.
________. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s De religione laici. Edited and
translated by Harold R. Hutcheson. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1944.
Hibbert, Henry. Exercitationes theologicae: or, Divine Discourses, carefully
extracted and orderly digested into XII sections. London: John Clark,
1662.
________. Syntagma theologicum: or, a Treatise, wherein is concisely
comprehended the Body of Divinity, and the Fundamentals of Religion,
orderly discussed. London: John Clark, 1662.
Hobbes, Thomas. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.
Edited by Sir William Molesworth, bart. 11 vols. Darmstadt: Scientia
Verlag Aalen, 1962.
________. The Metaphysical system of Hobbes in Twelve Chapters from
Elements of Philosophy concerning Body, together with breifer extracts
from Human Nature and Leviathan. Selected by Mary Whiton Calkins.
Chicago: Open Court, 1913.
________. Opera philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia in unum corpus
nunc primum collecta studio et labore Gulielmi Molesworth. 5 vols.
Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1961.
Holdsworth, Richard. Praelectiones theologicae. London: Jacob Flesher,
1661.
Holdsworth, Thomas. Impar Conatui: or, Mr. J. B. the Author of an Answer to
the Animadversions on the Dean of St. Paul’s Vindication of the Trinity,
Rebuk’d. London: William Keblewhite, 1695.
Hommius, Festus. Disputationes theologicae adversus pontificios. Leiden,
1614.
________. LXX disputationes theologicae. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1630.
Hoornbeeck, Johannes. Disputationes theologicae anti-Socinianae, de
Christo; ejus natura, officiis, beneficiis. Leiden: Johannes Elsevier, 1656.
________. Institutiones theologicos. Utrecht, 1653.
________. Orationes habitae in Academia Ultrajectina. Utrecht, 1658.
________. Socinianismus confutatus. 3 vols. Utrecht, 1650–64.
________. Summa controversiarum religionis, cum infidelibus, haereticis,
schismaticis. Utrecht, 1653.
________. Theologia practica. 2 vols. Utrecht, 1663–66.
Hopkins, Ezekiel. A Discourse on the Omnipresence of God, in Works, edited
by C. Quick, vol. 3, pp. 389–404.
________. A Discourse on the State and Way of Salvation, in Works, edited by
C. Quick, vol. 3, pp. 445–475.
________. The Excellence of Heavenly Treasures, in Works, edited by C.
Quick, vol. 2, pp. 411–55.
________. An Exposition upon the Ten Commandments, in Works, edited by
C. Quick, vol. 1, pp. 236–535.
________. On Glorifying God in His Attributes, in Works, edited by C. Quick,
vol. 2, pp. 590–708.
________. A Practical Exposition on the Lord’s Prayer, in Works, edited by
C. Quick, vol. 1, pp. 51–235.
________. The Works of Ezekiel Hopkins, successively Bishop of Raphoe and
Derry. Edited by Charles W. Quick. 3 vols. 1874. Reprint, Morgan, Pa.:
Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1995–1998.
________. The works of the Right Reverend and learned, Ezekiel Hopkins:
late Lord Bishop of London-Derry in Ireland, collected into one volume
containing: I. The vanity of the world. II. A practical exposition on the Ten
commandments. III. An exposition on the Lord’s prayer. IV. Several
sermons and discourses on divers important subjects. London: Printed for
Jonathan Robinson, 1701.
Hottinger, Johann Heinrich. Cursus theologicus methodo Altingiana
expositus. Duisburg: Adrian Wyngaerden, 1660. [Heppe #42]
Howe, John. A Calm and Sober Inquiry concerning the Possibility of a Trinity
in the Godhead, … together with Certain Letters formerly written to Dr.
Wallis on the same subject, in Works, vol. II, pp. 527–73.
________. A Letter to a Friend, concerning a Postscript to the Defense of Dr.
Sherlock’s Notion of the Trinity in Unity, in Works, vol. II, pp. 577–95.
________. The Living Temple, or, A Designed Improvement of that Notion,
that a Good Man is the Temple of God. Part I. Concerning God’s Existence
and His Conversableness with Man against Atheism, or the Epicurean
Deism (1676). Part II. Containing Animadversions on Spinoza, and a
French Writer Pretending to Refute Him (1702), in Works, vol. I, pp. 1–
344.
________. A Postscript to the Letter of the Reconcilableness of God’s
Prescience, &c., in Works, vol. II, pp. 514–26.
________. The Reconcilableness of God’s Prescience with the Sins of Men, in
Works, vol. II, pp. 474–513.
________. The Right Use of that Argument in Prayer, from the Name of God,
in Works, vol. III, pp. 207–79.
________. Summary Propositions Collected out of the Foregoing Discourses,
in Works, vol. II, pp. 574–76.
________. A Treatise of Delighting in God, in Works, vol. I, pp. 474–664.
________. A View of that Part of the Late Considerations addressed to H. H.
about the Trinity, in Works, vol. II, pp. 596–626.
________. The Works of the Rev. John Howe, M.A. 3 vols. London: William
Tegg, 1848. Reprint, Ligonier, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990.
Hulsius, Antonius. Non-ens prae-adamiticum, sive Confutatio vani &
sicinizantis cujusdam somnii, quo S. Scripturae praetextu incuatioribus
nuper imponere conatus est quidam anonymus, fingens ante Adamum
primum homines fuisse in mundo. Leiden, 1656.
Hutcheson, George. An Exposition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to
John. London: Ralph Smith, 1657. Reissued, Edinburgh, 1841. Reprint,
Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1972.
Hutchinson, Roger. The Image of God, or Laie Mans Book, in whych the
Right Knowledge of God is Disclosed. London: John Day, 1550. Also in
Works, pp. 1–208.
________. The Works of Roger Hutchinson. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1842.
Hyperius, Andreas Gerardus. De theologo, seu de ratione studii theologici,
libri III. Basel, 1556.
________. Elementa christianae religionis. Marburg, 1563; new edition,
Erlangen, 1901.
________. Methodus theologiae, sive praecipuorum christianae religionis
locorum communium, libri tres. Basel, 1568. [Heppe #13]
________. The Practis of Preaching, otherwise called the Pathway to the
Pulpit. Translated by I. Ludham. London, 1577.
Jackson, John. A Collection of Queries. Wherein the most material Objections
from Scripture, Reasons, and Antiquity, which have been alleged against
Dr. Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity, and the defenses of it, are
proposed and answered … by a Clergyman in the Country. London, 1716.
________. Remarks on Dr. Waterland’s Second Defense of Some Queries.
Being a brief consideration of his notion of the Trinity, as stated by himself
in Three Questions … by Philalethes Cantabridgiensis. London, 1723.
________. A Reply to Dr. Waterland’s Defense of his Queries; wherein is
contained a full state of the whole controversy; and every particular
alleged by that learned writer is distinctly considered by a Clergyman in
the Country. London: J. Knapton, 1722.
________. Three Letters to Dr. Clarke from a Clergyman, concerning his
Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity, with the Doctor’s Replies. London: John
Barker, 1714.
Jackson, Richard. A suddain essay with a sincere desire to vindicate
Christianity, or the common faith, from the superlative heresies or
phantasticall novelties of all selfe-particular Sciolists endeavouring the
subversion of the same by seven arguments used in opposition to Mr. John
Biddle. London: Thomas Harper, 1655.
Jackson, Thomas. A collection of the works of that holy man and profound
divine, Thomas Iackson … containing his comments upon the Apostles
Creed, &c.: with the life of the author and an index annexed. London: R.
Norton, 1653.
________. An exact collection of the works of Doctor Jackson … such as
were not published before: Christ exercising his everlasting priesthood …
or, a treatise of that knowledge of Christ which consists in the true estimate
or experimental valuation of his death, resurrection, and exercise of his
everlasting sacerdotal function …: this estimate cannot rightly be made
without a right understanding of the primeval state of Adam. London: R.
Norton, 1654.
________. A Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes, in Two Parts.
London, 1627.
________. The works of the reverend and learned divine, Thomas Jackson,
sometime president of Corpus Christi College in Oxon such as were, and
such as never before were printed: in three volumes: with the authors life,
and a large and useful table to the whole. 3 vols. London: Andrew Clark,
1673.
Jasz-Berenyi, Paul P. Examen doctrinæ ariano-socinianæ à quodam anonymo
sub hoc titulo evulgate, Doctrina de Deo, & Christo, & Spiritu Sancto,
ipsis scripturae verbis, ante paucos annos, à quodam divinæ veritatis
confessore, in sermone Germanico concinnata, nunc vero, in gratiam
exterorum, Latine edita. London: Samuel Brown, 1662.
Jenkyn, William. An Exposition upon the Epistle of Jude. Revised and
corrected by James Sherman. Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863.
Jewel, John. A View of a Seditious Bull sent into England from Pius Quintus
Bishop of Rome … whereunto is added A Short Treatise of the Holy
Scriptures, in Works, vol. 4.
_______. The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury. 4 vols. Cambridge,
1845–50.
Jones, Meredith. The doctrine of the Trinity as it stands deduced by the light
of reason from the data laid down in the Scriptures, to which is added
some remarks on the Arian controversy, also a Postscript, containing some
observations of the writings of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. London: B.
White, 1768.
Junius, Franciscus. The Apocalyps, or Revelation of S. John with a Brief
Exposition. Cambridge: John Legat, 1596.
________. De vera theologia, in Opuscula, edited by A. Kuyper, pp. 39–101.
________. Opuscula theologica selecta, edited by Abraham Kuyper.
Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1882.
________. Sacrorum parallelorum libri tres: id est comparatio locorum
Scripturae sacrae, qui ex testamento vetere in Novo adducuntur. Second
edition. London: G. Bishop, n.d.
________. Theses theologicae quae in inclyta academia Ludgunobatava ad
exercitia publicarum disputationum [Theses Leydenses], in Opuscula,
edited by A. Kuyper, pp. 103–289.
________. Theses aliquot theologicae in Heidelbergensi academia disputatae
[Theses Heidelbergenses], in Opuscula, edited by A. Kuyper, pp. 289–
327.
Junius, Isaacus. Anatapologia, sive Animadversiones in XVI. priora capita
Apologiae Remonstrantium. Delphi [Leiden]: Andreas Clouting, 1640.
Jurieu, Pierre. La Religion du Latitudinaire, acev apologie pour la Sainte
Trinité, appelle l’heresie des trois Dieux. Rotterdam, 1696.
________. Le Vray systeme de ‘église & la veritable analyse de la foy.
Dordrecht, 1686.
Keach, Benjamin. Tropologia; A Key to Open Scripture Metaphors, in Four
Books. To which are prefixed, Arguments to Prove the Divine Authority of
the Holy Bible. Together with Types of the Old Testament. London: City
Press, 1856. [Contains Keach’s Troposchemalogia and Tropologia.]
________. Tropologia, or, A key to open Scripture metaphors: the first book
containing sacred philology, or the tropes in Scripture, reduc’d under their
proper heads, with a brief explication of each partly translated and partly
compil’d from the works of the learned by T[homas] D[eLaune]. The
second and third books containing a practical improvement (parallel-wise)
of several of the most frequent and useful metaphors, allegories, and
express similitudes of the Old and New Testament by B.K. London: John
Richardson and John Darby, 1681.
________. Troposchemalogia, tropes and figures, or, A treatise of the
metaphors, allegories, and express similitudes, &c., contained in the Bible
of the Old and New Testament: to which is prefixed, divers arguments to
prove the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures: wherein also ‘tis largely
evinced, that by the great whore, (mystery Babylon) is meant the Papal
hierarchy, or present state and church of Rome: Philologia sacra, the
second part: wherein the schemes, or figures in scripture, are reduced
under their proper heads, with a brief explication of each: together with a
treatise of types, parables, &c, with an improvement of them parallel-wise.
London: John Darby, 1682.
Keckermann, Bartholomaeus. Brevis et simplex consideratio controversiae
hoc tempore … de pugna Philosophiae & Theologiae, in Opera, I, col.
69ff.
________. Opera omnia quae extant. 2 vols. Geneva, 1614.
________. Praecognita philosophica libri duo: naturam philosophiae
explicantes, et rationem eius tum docendae, tum discendae monstrantes, in
Opera, I, col. 1ff.
________. Scientiae metaphysicae brevissima synopsis et compendium, in
Opera, I, col. 2013ff.
________. Systema logicae minus: succincto praeceptorum compendium, in
Opera, I, col. 161ff.
________. Systema logicae tribus libris adornatum, in Opera, I, col. 542ff.
________. Systema sacrosanctae theologiae, tribus libris adornatum.
Heidelberg, 1602; Geneva, 1611. Also in Opera omnia quae extant,
appended to vol. II, separate pagination. [Heppe #21]
Kellet, Edward. Miscellanies of divinitie divided into three books, wherein is
explained at large the estate of the soul in her origination, separation,
particular judgement, and conduct to eternall blisse or torment.
Cambridge, 1635.
Kemp, Johannes van der. De Christen geheel en al het Eigendom van
Christus. Rotterdam: R. van Doesburg, 1717.
________. The Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, in Life and Death,
Exhibited in Fifty-three Sermons on the Heidelberg Catechism. Translated
by John M. Harlingen. 2 vols. New Brunswick: Abraham Blauvelt, 1810.
Reprint, Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1997.
________. De Heid. Catechismus kortelyk geopened en verklaard by wyze
van Vragen en Antwoorden. Edited by D. van der Kemp. Rotterdam: P.
 Losel & J. Bosch, 1746.
Klinkenberg, Jacob van Nuys. Onderwys in den godsdienst. 11 vols.
Amsterdam: J. Allart, 1780–94.
Klinkenberg, Jacob van Nuys, and Ger. Joh. Nahyus. De Bijbel, door
beknopte Uitbreidingen, en ophelderende Aenmerkingen, verklaerd. 27
vols. Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 1780–90.
Knapp, Georg Christian. Lectures on Christian Theology. Translated by
Leonard Woods. New York: Tibbals, 1859.
Lampe, Friedrich Adolf. Compendium theologiae naturalis. Utrecht, 1734.
________. Einleitung zu dem Geheimnis des Gnadenbundes. Marburg and
Frankfurt, 1785. [Heppe #54]
________. Het gouden kleinoot van de leere der waarheid die naar de
godsaligheid is, vervattet in den Heidelbergschen Catechismus.
Amsterdam, 1724.
________. Melk der waarheit volgens aanleydinge van den Heidelbergschen
Catechismus: ten nutte van de leer-begeerige jeugdt opgesteld … door
Frederik Adolf Lampe. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: Antony Schoonenburg, 1725.
________. De verborgentheit van het genade-verbondt: in de huyshoudingen
der zaligheit, en voornamentlyk in de huyshouding der belofte, ter eeren
van den verbondts-godt. 4 vols. Amsterdam: Antony Schoonenburg, 1726–
39.
La Peyrère, Isaac. Men Before Adam, or, a discourse upon the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth verses of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans.
London, 1656.
________. Prae-Adamitae. sive exercitaio super versibus duodecimus,
decimotertio, & decimoquarto, capitis quniti epistolae Pauli ad Romanos.
Quibus inducuntur primi homines ante Adamum conditi. Amsterdam,
1655.
________. Systema theologicum, ex Praeadamitarum hypothesi, Pars prima.
Amsterdam, 1655.
________. A Theological System upon that presupposition that men were
before Adam, Part I. London, 1656.
Lapide, Cornelius à. Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram R. P. Cornelii a
Lapide, e Societate Jesu … accurate recognovit. Editio nova. 27 vols.
Paris: Vives, 1866.
Lasco, Johannes à. Opera tam edita quam inedita. Edited by Abraham
Kuyper. 2 vols. Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1866.
Lathom, Paul. Christ crucified, or, The doctrine of the Gospel asserted
against Pelagian and Socinian errours revived under the notion of new
lights: wherein also the original, occasion and progress of errours are set
down: and admonitions directed both to them that stand fast in the faith
and to those that are fallen from it: unto which are added three sermons.
 London: Tho. Milbourn, 1666.
Law, Edmund. An enquiry into the ideas of space, time, immensity, and
eternity: as also the self-existence, necessary existence, and unity of the
divine nature: in answer to a book lately publish’d by Mr. Jackson,
entitled, The existence and unity of God proved from His nature and
attributes … to which is added, A dissertation upon the argument a priori
for proving the existence of a first cause by a learned hand. Cambridge: W.
Fenner and R. Beresford, 1734.
Lawson, George. An exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrewes wherein the
text is cleared, Theopolitica improved, the Socinian comment examined.
London: George Sawbridge, 1662.
Le Blanc, Ludovicus. Theses theologicae, variis temporibus in Academia
Sedanensi editae et ad disputandum propositae. London: Moses Pitt,
1675.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with
Arnauld, Monadology. Introduction by Paul Janet, translated by George R.
Montgomery. Lasalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1902, 1980.
________. Monadology and Other Philosophical Essays. Translated by Paul
Schrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1965.
________. Opera philosophiae quae extant. Edited by J. E. Erdmann. 2 vols.
Berlin, 1840.
________. Philosophical Papers and Letters. A selection translated and
edited, with an introduction by Leroy E. Loemker. 2 vols. Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1956.
________. The Philosophical Works of Leibniz. Translated by George Martin
Duncan. Second edition. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1908.
________. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man,
and the Origin of Evil. Introduction by Austin Farrer, translated by E. M.
Huggard. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951. Reprint, Chicago:
Open Court, 1985.
Leigh, Edward. Critica sacra: or Philologicall Observations upon all the
Greek Words of the New Testament. London, 1639.
________. A Systeme or Body of Divinity. London, 1662.
________. A Treatise of Divinity. London, 1646.
________. A Treatise of Religion and Learning. London, 1656.
Leslie, Charles. The charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered in
 examination of some sermons he has lately published on purpose to clear
himself from that imputation, by way of a dialogue betwixt F. a friend of
Dr. T’s and C. a Catholick Christian: to which is added some reflections
upon the second of Dr. Burnet’s four discourses, concerning the divinity
and death of Christ, printed 1694: to which is likewise annexed, A
supplement upon occasion of A history of religion, lately published …
Edinburgh?: s.n., 1695.
________. Five discourses by the author of The snake in the grass viz. On
water baptism, episcopacy, primitive heresie of the Quakers, reflections on
the Quakers, a brief account of the Socinian trinity; to which is added a
preface to the whole. London: C. Boone, W. Keblewhite, and G. Strahan,
1700.
Leydekker, Jacobus. Dr. Bekkers Philosophische Duyvel. Dordrecht: D. Goris,
1692.
________. De blyde Spinosist en de bedroefde Christenleeraar, over de
wysgeerige verhandelinge van de Natuure Gods. Rotterdam: R. van
Doesburg, 1719.
Leydekker, Melchior. Commentarius in Catecheseos Heidelberg. sive de
veritate et sanctitate fidei Reformatae. Utrecht, 1694.
________. De historia Jansenismi libri VI, quibus de Cornelii Jansennii vita
et morte, nec non de ipsius et sequacium dogmatibus differitur Utrecht:
Halma, 1695.
________. Demonstratio evangelica, Dat is, de Evangelische Waerheyd van
der Gereformeerde Godsdienst. Utrecht: W. Clerck, 1684.
________. De oeconomia trium personarum in negotio salutis humanae.
Utrecht, 1682.
________. De veritate religionis reformatae seu evangelicae, libri VII.
Utrecht, 1688. [Heppe #35]
________. Disputatio historico-theologica de Arianismo, octava et ultima,
quam … sub praesidio Melchioris Leydeckeri publice defendet Antonius
Arleboutius. Utrecht: Meinardus a Dreunen, 1679.
________. Exercitationes selectae historico-theologicae. 2 vols. Amsterdam,
1712.
________. Exercitationes theologicae qua praecipua quaedam dogmata
Neopelagiana ex independentia et infinita perfectione divina refutantur,
pars secunda, quam … sub praesidio Melchioris Leydeckeri publice
defendet Jacoe[b]us Hoog. Utrecht: Meinardus a Dreunen, 1682.
________. Filius Dei Sponsor. Of de Loff en Eere Jesu Christi, onse
Vredevorst en Borge. Amsterdam: J. van Hardenberg, 1708.
________. De Goddelykheid en Waarheid der H. Schriften … verdeedigt
tegen de Betooverde Wereld van Balth. Bekker. Utrecht: O. de Vries, 1692.
________. Synopsis controversiarum de Foedere et Testamento Dei. Utrecht,
1690.
Lightfoot, John. A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and
Hebraica: Matthew—I Corinthians. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1859. Reprint,, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979.
________. Horae hebraicae et talmudicae, or, Hebrew and Talmudical
Exercitations, in Works (1684), vol. II.
________. Some Genuine Remains of the Late Pious and Learned John
Lightfoot, D. D., consisting of Three Tracts. London: R. J. for J. Robinson,
1700.
________. The Temple Service as it Stood in the Days of Our Saviour.
London, 1649.
________. The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot, D. D. Master of
Catharine Halle, Cambridge. Edited by John Rogers Pitman. 13 vols.
London: J. F. Dove, 1825.
________. The Works of the Reverend and Learned D. John Lightfoot, D. D. 2
vols. London: W. R. for Robert Scott et al., 1684.
Limborch, Phillip van. Theologia christiana ad praxin pietatis ac
promotionem pacis christiana unice directa. Amsterdam, 1735. [In its first
edition, 1686, the work was entitled Institutiones theologiae christianae.]
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Collated and
annotated by Alexander Campbell Fraser. 2 vols. New York: Dover, 1959.
Long, Thomas. An answer to a Socinian treatise, call’d The naked Gospel,
which was decreed by the University of Oxford, in convocation, August 19,
Anno Dom. 1690 to be publickly burnt, as containing divers heretical
propositions with a postscript, in answer to what is added by Dr. Bury, in
the edition just published. London: Freeman Collins, 1691.
Lubbertus, Sibrandus. Commentarius in Catechesin Paltino-Belgicam.
Franecker, 1618.
________. De principiis Christianorum dogmatum libri VII. Franecker, 1591.
Lukin, Henry. An Introduction to the Holy Scripture, containing the several
Tropes, Fighres, Properties of Speech used therein: with other
 Observations, necessary for the right Understanding thereof. London,
1669.
Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 66 vols.
Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–1987.
________. Loci communes D. Martini Lutheri, viri Dei & Prophetae
Germanici, ex Scriptis ipsius Latinis forma gnomologica & aphoristica
collecti, & in qinque classis distributi, a M. Theodosio Fabrico, ecclesiae
Gorringensis pastore. London: R. H. & W. E., 1651.
________. Luther’s Works. 56 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut
Lehmann. St. Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–86.
Maccovius, Johannes. Collegia theologica quae extant omnia. Franecker,
1641.
________. Distinctiones et regulae theologicae et philosophicae. Amsterdam,
1656.
________. Loci communes theologici. Amsterdam, 1658.
________. Metaphysica, ad usum quaestionum in philosophia ac theologia
adornata & applicata. Leiden, 1658.
________. Opuscula philosophica omnia. Amsterdam, 1660.
Maimbourg, Louis. Histoire de l’Arianisme depuis sa naissance jusqu’à sa
sin: avec l’origine & le progrés de l’heresie des Sociniens. Paris: Sebastien
Mabre-Cramoisy, 1683.
________. The History of Arianism, by M. Maimbourg; shewing its influence
upon civil affairs: and the causes of the dissolution of the Roman empire.
To which are added, two introductory discourses. With an appendix
containing an account of the English writers in the Socinian and Arian
controversies by William Webster. London: W. Roberts, 1728–1729.
Malebranche, Nicholas. Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion. Edited by
Nicholas Jolley, translated by David Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
________. Elucidations of The Search after Truth. Translated and edited by
Thomas M. Lennon Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. [In
Malebranche, The Search, pp. 531–753.]
________. Oeuvres completes. 22 vols. in ll. Paris: J. Vrin, 1958-.
________. The Search after Truth. Translated and edited by Thomas M.
Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
________. Treatise on Nature and Grace. Translated, with an introduction
and notes by Patrick Riley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Manton, Thomas. The Complete Works of Thomas Manton. 22 vols. London:
J. Nisbet, 1870–75.
Marckius, Johannes. Analysis exegetica capitis LIII. Jesaiae in qua alia
complura vaticina de Messia illustrantur; accedit Mantissa observationum
textualium. Groningen, 1687.
________. Christianae theologiae medulla didactico elenctica. Amsterdam,
1690.
________. Compendium theologiae christianae didactico-elencticum.
Groningen, 1686. [Heppe #50]
________. In apocalypsin Johannis commentarius seu analysis exegetica
Amsterdam, 1689.
________. In canticum Salomonis commentarius, seu analysis exegetica …
annexa est etiam analysis exegetica Psalmi XLV. Amsterdam, 1703.
________. In Haggaeum, Zecharjam, & Malachiam commentarius seu
analysis exegetica. 2 vols. Amsterdam, 1701.
________. Scripturariae exercitationes ad quinque & viginti selecta loca
Novi Testamenti. Amsterdam, 1742.
________. Sylloge dissertationum philologico-theologicarum, ad selectos
quosdam textus Veteris Testamenti. Leiden, 1717.
Maresius, Samuel. Collegium theologicum sive systema breve universae
theologiae comprehensum octodecim disputationibus. Groningen, 1645;
1659. [Heppe #34]
________. De abusu philosophiae Cartesianae in rebus theologicis et fidei.
Groningen: T. Everts, 1670.
________. Refutatio fabulae prae-adamiticae, absoluta septem primariis
quaestionibus, cum praefatione apologetica pro authentia Scripturarum.
Groningen, 1656.
________. Theses theologicae de judice controversiarum. Paris, 1625.
Marlorat, Augustin. A Catholike and ecclesiasticall exposition of the Holy
Gospell after S. Iohn. London, 1575.
________. A Catholike and ecclesiasticall exposition of St. Marke and Luke.
2 parts. London, 1583.
________. A Catholike and ecclesiasticall exposition of the Holy Gospell
 after S. Matthew, gathered out of all the singular and approved divines.
London, 1570.
________. A Catholike exposition upon the Revelation of Sainct Iohn.
London, 1574.
________. A Catholike exposition uppon the last two Epistles of Iohn.
London, 1578?
________. Propheticae, et apostolicae, id est, totius divinae ac canonicae
Scripturae, thesaurus, in locos communes rerum, dogmatum suis exemplis
illustratum. London, 1574.
Martin, Gregory. A Discouerie of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy
Scriptures by the Heretickes of our Daies: especially the English Sectaries,
and of their foule dealing herein, by partial & false translations to the
aduantage of their heresies. Rheims: Iohn Fogny, 1582.
Martinius, Matthaeus. Christianae doctrinae summa capita. Herborn, 1603.
[Heppe #28]
________. Christiana et catholics fides, quam symbolum apostolicum
vocamus. Bremen: Thomas Viller, 1618.
________. De Deo, summo illo bono & cause omnis boni, libelli duo.
Bremen: Johannes Wessel, 1616.
________. Disputationes theologicae ad summulam s. theologiae
enarrandum publice habitarum decas prima. Bremen: Johannes Wessel,
1611.
________. Sylloge quaestionum theologicarum ad summulam theologiae
accomodatarum. Bremen: Johannes Wessel, 1610.
Mastricht, Petrus van. Methodus concionandi. Frankfurt-on-Oder: M. Hübner,
n.d.
________. Theologiae didactico-elenctico-practicae Prodromus tribus
speciminibus. Amsterdam: Johann van Sommern, 1666.
________. Theoretico-practica theologia, qua, per capita theologica, pars
dogmatica, elenchtica et practica, perpetua successione conjugantur,
praecedunt in usum operis, paraleipomena, seu sceleton de optima
concionandi methodo. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Henricus & Theodorus Boom,
1682–87.
________. Theoretico-practica theologia. Utrecht: van de Water, Poolsum,
Wagens & Paddenburg, 1714. Editio nova, 1724. [Heppe #43]
Mather, Samuel. The Figures or Types of the Old Testament, by which Christ
 and the Heavenly Things of the Gospel were Preached and Shadowed unto
the People of God of Old. Dublin, 1683. Reprint, New York: Johnson
Reprints, 1969.
Mayer, John. A Commentarie upon the New Testament. Representing the
divers expositions thereof, out of the workes of the most learned, both
ancient Fathers, and moderne Writers. 3 vols. London, 1631.
________. A Commentary upon all the Prophets both Great and Small:
wherein the divers Translations and Expositions both Literal and Mystical
of all the most famous Commentators both Ancient and Modern are
propounded. London, 1652.
Mede, Joseph. Clavis apocalyptica: ex innatis & insitis visionum
characteribus eruta & demonstrata: una cum commentario in
Apocalypsin: quibus accessit hac tertia editione conjectura de Gogo &
Magogo, ab eodem autore. Cambridge: Thomas Buck, 1632.
________. The Key of the Revelation, searched and demonstrated out of the
naturall and proper characters of the visions. Translated by Richard More,
with a preface by Dr. Twisse. London: Philip Stephens, 1643.
Meijer, Lodewijk. Philosophiae S. Scripturae interpres. Eleutheropolis: s.n.,
1666.
________. La philosophie interprète de l’Écriture Sainte. Translated,, with
notes, by Jacqueline Lagrée and Pierre François Moreau. Paris: Intertextes
1988.
Melanchthon, Philip. Brevis discendae theologiae ratio, in Opera, vol. 2, cols.
455–462.
________. Loci communes, in Opera, vol. 21.
________. Loci praeciupi theologici, in Opera, vol. 21.
________. Opera quae supersunt omnia. 28 vols. Edited by C. G.
Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil. Brunswick: Schwetschke, 1834–1860.
Mestrezat, Jean. Traité de l’Escriture Saincte. Geneva, 1633.
Milton, John. Artis logicae plenior institutio, ad Petri Rami methodum
concinnata: adjecta est Praxis annalytica & Petri Rami vita: libris duobus.
London: Spencer Hickman, 1672; also London: R. Boulter, 1673.
________. Complete Prose Works. Edited by Don M. Wolfe. 7 vols. in 10, to
date. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1953-.
Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Edited by
Alexander Mitchell and John Struthers. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1874.
Molina, Luis de. Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina
praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione (1588). Edited
by Johann Rabeneck. Onia and Madrid: Collegium Maximum Societatis
Jesu, 1953.
________. On Divine Foreknowledge. Translated, with an introduction and
notes by Alfred J. Freddoso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
More, Henry. Divine Dialogues, containing sundry Disquisitions &
Instructions concerning the Attributes of God and His Providence in the
World. 2 vols. London: James Flesher, 1668.
________. An Antidote against Atheisme. 2nd ed. London: J. Flesher, 1655.
Musculus, Wolfgang. Commonplaces of Christian Religion. London: R.
Wolfe, 1563. London: H. Bynneman, 1578.
________. Loci communes sacrae theologiae. Basel: Johann Herwagen, 1560.
3rd ed. Basel: Johann Herwagen, 1573. [Heppe #6]
Newton, Isaac. Theological Manuscripts. Edited, with an introduction by H.
McLachlan. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1980.
Nicholls, William. An answer to an heretical book called The naked Gospel
which was condemned and ordered to be publickly burnt by the
convocation of the University of Oxford, Aug. 19, 1690: with some
reflections on Dr. Bury’s new edition of that book: to which is added a
short history of Socinianism. London: Walter Kettilby, 1691.
Nichols, Thomas. An Abridgement of the Whole Body of Divinity, extracted
from the Learned Works of that ever-famous and reverend Divine, Mr.
William Perkins. London: W. B., for Will Hope, 1654.
Norton, John. The growth of error being an exercitation concerning the rise
and progress of Arminianism and more especially Socinianism, both
abroad and now of late, in England. London: John Salusbury, 1697.
Nye, Stephen. An account of Mr. Firmin’s religion, and of the present state of
the Unitarian controversy. London: s.n., 1698.
________. The agreement of the Unitarians with the Catholick Church: being
also a full answer to the infamations of Mr. Edwards and the needless
exceptions of my Lords the Bishops of Chichester, Worcester and Sarum,
and of Monsieur De Luzancy. London: s.n., 1697.
________. An answer to Dr. Wallis’s three letters concerning the Doctrine of
the Trinity. S.l.: s.n., 1691.
________. A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians. London:
 s.n., 1687.
________. Considerations on the explications of the doctrine of the Trinity by
Dr. Wallis, Dr. Sherlock, Dr. S-th, Dr. Cudworth, and Mr. Hooker: as also
on the account given by those that say the Trinity is an unconceivable and
inexplicable mystery written to a person of quality. London: s.n., 1693.
________. Considerations on the explications of the doctrine of the Trinity:
occasioned by four sermons preached by His Grace the Lord Arch-Bishop
of Canterbury: a sermon preached by the Lord-Bishop of Worchester: a
discourse by the Lord-Bishop of Salisbury: a sheet by a very learned hand
containing twenty eight propositions: a treatise by an eminent dissenting
minister, being a calm discourse concerning the possibility of a Trinity and
by a book in answer to the animadversions on Dr. Sherlock’s vindication of
the Trinity: in a letter to H.H. London: s.n., 1694.
________. A discourse concerning natural and revealed religion: evidencing
the truth and certainty of both, by considerations (for the most part) not
yet touched by any: recommended to the consideration of atheists, deists
and scepticks, and useful to confirm and nourish the faith and piety of
others. London: T.W. for Jonathan Robinson, 1696.
________. Doctor Wallis’s letter touching the doctrine of the blessed Trinity:
answer’d by his friend. Published in The faith of one God, edited by
Thomas Firmin. London: s.n., 1691.
________. The exceptions of Mr. Edwards in his Causes of atheism against
the Reasonableness of Christianity, as deliver’d in the Scriptures,
examin’d and found unreasonable, unscriptural, and injurious: also it’s
clearly proved by many testimonies of Holy Scripture, that the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only God and Father of Christians.
London: s.n., 1695.
________. The Explication of the Articles of the Divine Unity, the Trinity and
Incarnation, commonly received in the Catholick Church, Asserted and
Vindicated. By Occasion of the late Books of the Reverend Dr. Samuel
Clarke, and his Opposers; and of another Book, by a learned Socinian.
London: s.n., 1715.
________ [attrib.]. The grounds and occasions of the controversy concerning
the unity of God &c.: the methods by which it has been managed, and the
means to compose it, by a Divine of the Church of England. London: E.
Whitlock, 1698.
________. Observations on the four letters of Dr. John Wallis concerning the
Trinity and the Creed of Athanasius. London: s.n., 1691.
________. A reply to The second defence of the XXVIII propositions, said to
be wrote in answer to a Socinian manuscript by the author of that ms. no
Socinian, but a Christian and Unitarian. London: s.n., 1695.
________. Some thoughts upon Dr. Sherlock’s Vindication of the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity: in a letter. London: s.n., 1691.
Olevianus, Caspar. De substantia foederis gratiuti inter Deum et electos
itemque de mediis, quibus ea ipsa substantia nobis communicatur, libri
duo. Geneva, 1585. [Heppe #15]
________. Expositio symboli apostolici sive articulorum fidei: in qua summa
gratiuti foederis aeterni inter Deum et fideles breviter & perspicué
tractatur. Frankfurt, 1584.
________. An Exposition of the Symbole of the Apostles. London, 1581.
________. A Firm Foundation: An Aid to Interpreting the Heidelberg
Catechism. Translated and edited by Lyle D. Bierma. Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1995.
________. Vester Grundt, das ist, die artikel des alten, waren, ungezweifelten,
christlichen Glaubens. Heidelberg: Michel Schirat, 1567.
Oomius, Simon. Dissertatie van de Onderwijsingen in de Practycke der
Godgeleerdheid. Bolsward: van Haringhouk, 1672. Reprint, Geldermalsen:
De Schatkamer, 1997.
Owen, John. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the
Trinity: as also of the Person and Satisfaction of Christ (1669), in Works,
vol. 2, pp. 365–439.
________. The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God,
as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein. And a Declaraton of the
Perspicuity of the Scriptures, with the External Means of the Interpretation
of Them, in Works, vol. 4.
________. ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ: or, a Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the
Person of Christ (1679), in Works, vol. 1, pp. 2–272.
________. A Display of Arminianism: Being a Discovery of the Old Pelagian
Idol Free-Will (1642), in Works, vol. 10, pp. 2–137.
________. A Dissertation on Divine Justice (1653), in Works, vol. 10, pp.
481–642.
________. An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Edited by William H.
Goold. 7 vols. London and Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1855.
[Originally 5 vols. London, 1668–84.]
________. Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ (1684–1691),
in Works, vol. 1, pp. 274–461.
________. Of the Divine Original, Authority, Self-evidencing Light, and
Power of the Scriptures, in Works, vol. 16.
________. ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ or, a Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit
(1674–1693) in Works, vols. 3–4.
________. Pro sacris scripturis exercitationes adversus fanaticos, in Works,
vol. 16.
________. The Reason of Faith, in Works, vol. 4.
________. Review of the Annotations of Grotius, in Works, vol. 12.
________. The Testimony of the Church is not the only nor the chief Reason
for our Believing the Scripture to be the Word of God, in Works, vol. 8.
________. Theologoumena pantodapa sive, De natura, ortu, progressu, et
studio, verae theologiae, libri sex (1661), in Works, vol 17.
________. Two Short Catechisms (1645), in Works, vol. 1, pp. 463–494.
________. To the Christian Reader, in James Durham, Exposition of the Song
of Solomon, pp. 19–22.
________. A Vindication of the Purity and Integrity of the Hebrew and Greek
Texts of the Old and New Testament, in Works, vol. 16.
________. Vindiciae evangelicae; or, the Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated
and Socinianism Examined … in confutation of a Scripture Catechism
written by J. Biddle … with the Vindication of the Testimonies of Scripture
concerning the Deity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ from the perverse
Expositions and Interpretations of them by Hugo Grotius (1655), in Works,
vol. 12, pp. 2–590.
________. The Works of John Owen. Edited by William H. Goold. 17 vols.
London and Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–53. Reprint (lacking
vol. 17), Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967.
Quick, John. Synodicon in Gallia Reformata: or, the Acts, Decisions, Decrees,
and Canons of those famous National Councils of the Reformed Churches
in France. 2 vols. London: T. Parkhurst and J. Robinson, 1692.
Parker, Samuel. A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie.
Oxford: W. Hall, 1666.
Pearson, John. An Exposition of the Creed by John, Lord Bishop of Chester.
London, 1659; third edition, with additions, 1669; tenth edition, revised
 and corrected, 1715.
________. An Exposition of the Creed. With an analysis by Edward Walford,
M.A. [Bohn’s Theological Library] London: Bell and Sons, 1887.
________. Lectiones de Deo et attributis (ca. 1661), in Minor Works, vol. I.
________. The Minor Theological Works of John Pearson, D.D. Now first
collected, with a memoir of the author … by Edward Churton. 2 vols.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1844.
Pearson, John, et al. Critici Sacri: sive doctissimorum virorum in SS. Biblia
annotationes, & tractatus. 9 vols. London, 1660.
Pemble, William. The Workes of William Pemble. 3rd ed. London, 1631.
________. Tractatus de providentia Dei. London, 1631.
Perkins, William. The Art of Prophecying, in Workes, vol. II.
________. A Clowd of Faithfull Witnesses … a Commentarie Upon the
Eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews [and] A Commentarie Upon Part of the
Twelfth Chapter to the Hebrews, in Workes, vol. III.
________. A Commentary on Galatians. Edited by Gerald T. Sheppard.
Introductory essays by Brevard S. Childs, Gerald T. Sheppard, and John H.
Augustine. Pilgrim Classic Commentaries, vol. 2. New York: Pilgrim
Press, 1989.
________. A Commentary on Hebrews 11 (1609 Edition). Edited by John H.
Augustine. Introductory essays by John H. Augustine, Donald K. McKim,
Gerald T. Sheppard, and Richard A. Muller. Pilgrim Classic
Commentaries, vol. 3. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991.
________. De praedestinationis modo et ordine. Cantabrigiae: Iohannis
Legat, 1598.
________. An Exposition of the Five first Chapters of the Epistle to the
Galatians: With the Continuation of the Commentary Upon the Sixth
Chapter, in Workes, vol. II.
________. An Exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles, in Workes,
vol. I.
________. A Golden Chaine, in Workes, vol. I.
________. A Reformed Catholike in Works, vol. I.
________. A Treatise of the Manner and Order of Predestination, in Workes,
vol. II.
________. The Workes of … Mr. William Perkins. 3 vols. Cambridge: John
Legatt, 1612–1619.
Pezelius, Christophorus. Argumentorum et objectionum de praecipuis
articulis doctrinae christianae cum responsionibus, quae passim extant in
scriptis reverendi viri domini Philippi Melanchthonis. Pars. I–VII.
Neustadt, 1582–88. [Heppe #17a]
Pictet, Benedict. Christian Theology. Translated by Frederick Reyroux.
Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d.
________. Dissertationis de consensu et dissensu inter Reformatos et
Augustanae Confessionis fratres vindiciae adversus Animadversiones,
quas edidit Lutheranus. Geneva, 1700. [Heppe #47]
_______. Theologia christiana ex puris ss. literarum fontibus hausta. Geneva,
1696. [Heppe #47]
Piscator, Johannes. Analysis logica evangelii secundum Johannem: una cum
scholiis & observationibus locorum doctrinae. London: George Bishop,
1595.
________. Analysis logica evangelii secundum Lucam. London, 1596.
________. Analysis logica evangelii secundum Marcum. London, 1595.
________. Analysis logica evangelii secundum Mattheum. London, 1594.
________. Analysis logica libri S. Lucae qui inscribitur Acta Apostolorum.
London, 1597.
________. Analysis logica omnium epistolarum Pauli … una cum scholiis &
observationibus locorum doctrinae. London: George Bishop, 1608.
________. Analysis logica septem epistolarum apostolicarum. London, 1593.
________. Aphorismi doctrinae Christianae, maximam partem ex Institutione
Calvini exerpti, seu Loci communes theologici, brevibus sententiis expositi.
Herborn, 1589. [Heppe #20]
________. Commentarii in omnes libros Novi Testamenti. Herborn, 1613,
1658.
________. In P. Rami dialecticam animadversione. London, 1581.
Pococke, Edward. A Commentary on the Prophecy of Hosea. Oxford: Printed
at the Theater, 1685.
________. A Commentary on the Prophecy of Joel. Oxford: Printed at the
Theatre, 1691.
________. A Commentary on the Prophecy of Malachi. Oxford: Printed at the
Theatre, 1692.
________. A Commentary on the Prophecy of Micah. Oxford: Printed at the
Theatre, 1692.
________. The Theological Works of the Learned Dr. Pocock, sometime
professor of the Hebrew and Arabick tongues, in the University of Oxford,
and canon of Christ-Church: containing his Porta Mosis, and English
commentaries on Hosea, Joel, Micah, and Malachi. To which is prefixed,
an account of his life and writings [by Leonard Twells]. 2 vols. London:
Printed for the editor, and sold by R. Gosling, 1740.
Poiret, Pierre. Cogitationum rationalium de Deo, anima et Malo, libri
quatuor. In quibus quid de hisce Cartesius, eiusque sequaces, senserint,
continentur. Amsterdam, 1677.
________. L’oeconomie divine, ou système universel et démontré des Oeuvres
et des Desseins de Dieu envers les hommes. 7 vols. Amsterdam, 1687.
________. Fides et ratio collatae, ac suo utraque loco redditae, adversus
principia Joannis Lockii. Amsterdam, 1707.
Polanus von Polansdorf, Amandus. Analysis libelli Prophetae Malachiae.
Basel, 1597.
________. Analysis libri Hoseae Prophetae. Basel, 1601.
________. In Danielem Prophetam visionum amplitudine difficillimum …
commentarius. Basel, 1599.
________. In librum prophetiarum Ezechielis commentarii. Basel, 1608.
________. Partitiones theologiae christianae. Pars I–II. Basel, 1590–96.
________. The Substance of the Christian Religion. London, 1595. [A
translation of part I of the Partitiones.]
________. Syntagma theologiae christianae. Quarto ed., 2 parts. Hanau,
1609. Folio ed., Geneva, 1617. [Heppe #11]
Polyander à Kerckhoven, Johannes. Ancker der ghelovige siele. Leiden: van
Ilpendam, 1628.
Poole, Matthew. Annotations on the Holy Bible. 2 vols. London, 1683–85.
Reissued as A Commentary on the Whole Bible. 3 vols. London: Banner of
Truth, 1962.
________. Blasphemoktonia: The Blasphemer Slain; or, a Plea for the
Godhood of the Holy Ghost, vindicated from the Cavils of J. Bidle.
 London, 1648. 2nd ed. London, 1654.
________. Synopsis criticorum aliorumque sacrae scripturae interpretum et
commentatorum, summo studio et fide adornata. 5 vols. London, 1669–
76.
Preston, John. Life Eternall, or, A Treatise of the Knowledge of the Divine
Essence and Attributes. London, 1631.
Prideaux, John. Fasciculus controversiarum ad juniorum aut occupatorum
captum sic colligatus. 3rd ed. Oxford, 1664.
________. Hypomnemata: logica, rhetorica, physica, metaphysica,
pneumatica, ethica, politica, œconomica. Oxford: Leonard Lichfield,
1650.
________. Lectiones novem de totidem religionis capitibus praecipue hoc
tempore controversis prout publice hebebantum Oxoniae. Oxford, 1625.
________. Manductio ad theologiam polemicam. Oxford: 1657.
________. Orationes novem inaugurales de totidem theologiae capitibus.
Oxford, 1626.
________. Scholasticae theologiae syntagma mnemonicum. Oxford: Leonard
Litchfield, 1651.
Puritan Sermons, 1659–1689: Being the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate,
St. Giles in the Fields, and Southwark by Seventy-five Ministers of the
Gospel in or Near London. 6 vols. London, 1661–75. Republished, with
notes and translations by James Nichols, London: Tegg, 1844–45. Reprint,
Wheaton, Ill.: Richard Owen Roberts, 1981.
The Racovian catechisme: wherein you have the substance of the confession
of those churches, which in the kingdom of Poland and Great Dukedome of
Lithuania, and other provinces appertaining to that kingdom, do affirm,
that no other save the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that one God of
Israel, and that the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of the Virgin,
and no other besides, or before him, is the onely begotten Sonne of God.
Amsterdam: For Brooer Janz, 1652.
The Racovian Catechism. With notes and illustrations. Translated by Thomas
Rees. London, 1609. Reprint, London: Longman, Hurst, 1818.
Rainolds, John. Sex theses de sacra scriptura et ecclesia, publicis in Acad.
Oxoniensi disputationibus explicatae. London, 1580.
________. Six conclusions Touching the Holy Scripture and the Church.
London, 1598. [Appended to The Summe of the Conference, as pp. 593–
 675.]
________. The Summe of the Conference between Iohn Rainolds and Iohn
Hart: Touching the Head and Faith of the Church. Wherein are handled
sundry points, of the sufficiency and right expounding of the Scriptures, the
ministrie of the church. London, 1598.
Rambach, Johann Jacob. Dogmatische Theologie der Christliche Glaubens-
Lehre. 2 vols. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1744.
________. Schrifftmässige Erläuterung der Grundlegung der Theologie
Herrn Johann Anastasii Freylingshausens. Frankfurt, 1738.
Ramus, Petrus. The art of logick. Gathered out of Aristotle, and set in due
forme, according to his instructions, by Peter Ramus … With a short
exposition of the praecepts, by which any one of indifferent capacitie, may
with a little paines, attaine to some competent knowledge and vse of that
noble and necessary science. Pub. for the instruction of the vnlearned, by
Antony Wotton. London: I.D. for N. Bourne, 1626.
________. Commentariorum de religione christiana libri quatuor. Frankfurt:
Andreas Wechel, 1576. Reprint, Frankfurt, Minerva, 1969.
________. Dialectica in two bookes not only translated into English, but also
digested into questions and answers … by R. F[age]. London: W. J[ones],
1632.
________. Dialecticae institutiones: Aristotelicae animadversiones.
Faksimile-Neudruck der Ausgaben Paris 1543, mit einer Einleitung von
Wilhelm Risse. Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann, 1964.
________. Dialecticae, libri duo. London, 1576.
________. Dialecticae libri duo: quibus loco commentarii perpetui post certa
capita subjicitur, Guilielmi Amesii, demonstratio logicae verae, simul cum
synopsi ejusdem, qua uno intuiti exhibetur tota ars bene differendi.
Cambridge: G. Morden, 1672.
________. The logike of the most excellent philosopher P. Ramus martyr.
Newly translated, and in diuers places corrected after the mynde of the
author. London: Thomas Vautroullier, 1574.
________. The logike of the moste excellent philosopher P. Ramus, martyr.
Translated by Roland MacIlmaine (1574). Edited, with an introduction by
Catherine M. Dunn. Northridge, Ca., San Fernando Valley State College,
1969.
R., C. [Richard Smith?]. Of the Distinction of Fundamental and Not
Fundamental Points of Faith. N.p.: s.n., 1645.
Ravensperger, Hermann. Wegweiser, d. i. schlecte und rechte Erklärung aller
notwendigen Lehrpunkte christlicher Religion. Groningen, 1615. [Heppe
#27]
Reinbeck, Johann. Betrachtungen über die in der Augspurgischen Confession.
4 pts. Berlin, 1731–41.
Rennecherus, Hermann. The Golden Chaine of Salvation. London: Valentine
Simmes, 1604.
Rhegius, Urbanus. An Instruccyon of Christen Fayth howe to be Bolde upon
the Promyse of God. Translated by J. Foxe. London: Hugh Syngleton, n.d.
________. A Necessary Instruction of Christian Faith and Hope. Translated
by J. Foxe. London: Hugh Singleton, 1579.
Ridgley, Thomas. A Body of Divinity: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian
Religion are Explained and Defended, being the Substance of Several
Lectures on the Assembly’s Larger Catechism. 2 vols. London, 1731–33.
_________. Commentary on the Larger Catechism; Previously Entitled A
Body of Divinity … Revised, with notes by John M. Wilson. 1855. Reprint,
Edmonton: Still Waters Revival Books, 1993.
Rijssenius, Leonardus. Dootstuypen der Cartesianen en Coccejanen, Vertoont
in twee Boecken. Utrecht: W. Clerck, 1676.
________. De Oude Rechtsinnige Waerheyt verdonkert, en bedeckt door
DesCartes, Cocceijus, Wittich, Burman, Wolzogen, Perizon, Groenewegen,
Allinga, &c. En nu weder Op-geheldert, en ondeckt … Middelburgh:
Benedictus Smidt, 1674.
_________. Summa theologiae didactico-elencticae. Amsterdam, 1695;
Edinburgh, 1698; Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1731. [Heppe #49]
Rivetus, Andreas. Isagoge, seu introductio generalis ad Scripturam Sacram
Veteris et Novi Testamenti, in qua, eius natura, existentia, necessitas,
puritas, versionem et interpretationem rationes et modi indagnatur, in
Opera, vol. II.
________. Opera theologia. 3 vols. Rotterdam, 1651–60.
Roberts, Francis. Clavis Bibliorum. The Key of the Bible, Unlocking the
Richest Treasury of the Holy Scriptures, whereby the Order, Names, Times,
Penmen, Occasion, Scope, and Principal Parts, containing the Subject-
Matter of the Books of the Old and New Testament, are Familiarly and
Briefly Opened. London: T. R. & E. M. for George Calvert, 1649.
________. A Communicant Instructed; Or, Practicall Directions for Worthy
 Receiving of the Lords-Supper. 3rd ed. London, 1656.
________. Mysterium & medulla Bibliorum: the mysterie and marrow of the
Bible, viz. God’s covenants with man in the first Adam before the fall, and
in the last Adam, Iesvs Christ, after the fall, from the beginning to the end
of the world: unfolded & illustrated in positive aphorisms & their
explanation. London: Printed by R.W. for George Calvert, 1657.
Röell, Herman Alexander. Dissertatio de religione rationali … cui adjuncta
ext Oratio de theologia, et theologiae supernaturali prae naturali
praestantia. Franekcer: J. & F. Horreus, 1718.
Rollock, Robert. Select Works of Robert Rollock. Edited by William M. Gunn.
2 vols. Edinburgh, 1844–49.
________. A Treatise of Effectual Calling. Translated by Henry Holland.
London, 1603; also in Select Works., vol. I.
Russell, William. Blasphemoktonia: the Holy Ghost Vindicated. London,
1648.
Rutherford, Samuel. The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the
covenant of grace: containing something of the nature of the covenant of
works, the soveraignty of God, the extent of the death of Christ … the
covenant of grace … of surety or redemption between the Lord and the Son
Jesus Christ, infants right to Jesus Christ and the seal of baptisme: with
some practicall questions and observations. Edinburgh: Andro Anderson,
1655.
________. Disputatio scholastica de divina providentia, variis
praelectionibus, quod attinet ad summa rerum capita … Adjectae sunt
disquisitiones metaphysicae de ente, possibili, dominio Dei in entia & non
entia, & variae quaestiones. Edinburgh: George Anderson, 1649.
________. Exercitationes apologeticae pro divina gratia, in quibus vindicatur
doctrina orthodoxa de divinis decretis, & Dei tum aeterni decreti, tum
gratiae efficacis operationis, cum hominis libertate consociatione &
subordinatione amica. Franecker: Johannes Dhüiringh, 1651.
Sanderson, Robert. Logicæ artis compendium: In quo vniversiæ artis
synopsis, methodo ac forma ad scholarum vsum, quàm fieri potuit,
accommodatissimâ breviter proponitur. Oxford: Ioseph Barnes, 1615.
Sandius, Christophorus. Bibliotheca anti-trinitariorum, sive catalogus
scriptorum, et succincta narratio de vita eorum auctorum …, opus
posthumum Christophori Chr. Sandii; accedunt alia quaedam scripta,
quorum seriem pagina post praefationem dabit, quae omnia simul juncta
 compendium historiae ecclesiasticae Unitariorum, qui Sociniani vulgo
audiunt, exhibent. Freistad: Johannam Aconium, 1684.
________. Nucleus historiae ecclesiasticae, exhibitus in historia Arianorum,
tribus libris comprehensa. Cologne, 1668. 2nd ed., 1676.
Sarcerius, Erasmus. Common Places of Scripture orderly & after a
Compendious Forme of Teaching. Translated by Richard Taverner.
London: Thomas East, 1577.
Scharpius, Johannes. Cursus theologicus in quo controversia omnes de fide
dogmatibus hoc seculo exagitate. 2 vols. Geneva, 1620.
Schegk, Jacob. Hyperaspistes responsi, ad quatuor epistolas Petri Rami
contra se editas. Tübingen: n.p., 1570. Reprint, Frankfurt: Minerva, 1976.
Servetus, Michael. Christianismi restitutio. Totius eccelsiae apostolicae est ad
sua limina vocatio, in integrum restituta cognitione Dei, fidei Christi …
Vienne: n.p., 1553.
________. The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity. Translated by E. M.
Wilbur. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932.
Sherlock, William. An answer to a late Dialogue between a new Catholick
convert and a Protestant: to prove the mystery of the Trinity to be as
absurd a doctrine as transubstantiation: by way of short notes on the said
dialogue. London: Thomas Bassett, 1687.
________. An apology for writing against Socinians, in defence of the
doctrines of the Holy Trinity and incarnation: in answer to a late earnest
and compassionate suit for forbearance to the learned writers of some
controversies at present. London: William Rogers, 1693.
________. A defence of Dr. Sherlock’s notion of a Trinity in unity: in answer
to the animadversions upon his vindication of the doctrine of the holy and
ever Blessed Trinity: with a post-script relating to the calm discourse of a
Trinity in the Godhead: in a letter to a friend. London: William Rogers,
1694.
________. A defence of the Dean of St. Paul’s Apology for writing against the
Socinians: in answer to the antapologist. London: William Rogers, 1694.
________. A discourse concerning the divine providence. London: William
Rogers, 1694.
________. The distinction between real and nominal trinitarians examined:
and the doctrine of a real Trinity vindicated from the charge of Tritheism:
in answer to a late Socinian pamphlet, entituled, The judgment of a
disinterested person, concerning the controversie about the Blessed Trinity,
 depending between Dr. S—th, and Dr. Sherlock. London: William Rogers,
1696.
________. A Modest examination of the authority and reason of the late
decree of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford and some heads of colleges
concerning the heresy of three distinct and infinite persons in the Holy and
Ever-Blessed Trinity. London: William Rogers, 1695.
________. The present state of the Socinian controversy, and the doctrine of
the Catholick fathers concerning a trinity in unity. London: William
Rogers, 1698.
________. The protestant resolution of faith: being an answer to three
questions: I. How far we must depend on the authority of the church for the
true sense of Scripture? II. Whether a visible succession from Christ to this
day makes a church, which has this succession an infallible interpreter of
Scripture, and whether no church, which has not this succession, can teach
the true sense of Scripture? III. Whether the Church of England can make
out such a visible succession? London: F. Gardiner, 1683.
________. A vindication of the doctrine of the holy and ever blessed Trinity
and the incarnation of the son of God: occasioned by the brief notes on the
creed of St. Athanasius, and the brief history of the Vnitarians, or
Socinians, and containing an answer to both. London: William Rogers,
1690.
Simmler, Josias. De aeterno dei filio domino et seruatore nostro Iesu Christo,
& de Spiritu Sancto: aduersus veteres & nouos Antitrinitarios, id est,
Arianos, Tritheitas, Samosatenianos, & Pneumatomachos, libri quatuor.
Zurich: Froschauer, 1582.
Simon, Richard. Histoire critique du Vieux Testament. 1678.
Skelton, Bernard. Christus Deus The divinity of our Saviour: asserted and
vindicated from the exceptions of the Socinians and others: in a sermon
preached at St. Peter’s Hungate, in Norwich, upon the festival of St. Philip
and St. James, in the year 1673. London: Jonathan Robinson and Samuel
Oliver, 1692.
Smalbroke, Richard. The pretended authority of the Clementine constitutions
confuted: by their inconsistency with the inspired writings of the Old and
New Testament, in answer to Whiston. London: Printed for Timothy
Childe, 1714.
Smith, John. The designed end to the Socinian controversy, or, A rational and
plain discourse to prove, that no other person but the Father of Christ is
God most high. London: s.n., 1695.
Snecanus, Gellius. Methodica descriptio sive fundamentum praecipuorum
locorum aut dogmatum S. Scripturae de cognitione Dei & hominis.
Harlem: Theopjilus, 1591.
Sohnius, Georg. Opera. Tom. I–IV. Herborn, 1591, 1609.[Heppe #18 ]
South, Robert. Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s book, entituled A
vindication of the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, &c,: together with a more
necessary vindication of that sacred and prime article of the Christian
faith from his new notions, and false explications of it humbly offered to his
admirers, and to himself the chief of them, by a divine of the Church of
England. London: Randal Taylor, 1693.
________. Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. 5 vols. New York:
Hurd & Houghton, 1866–1871.
________. Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock’s new notion of the Trinity
and the charge made good: in an answer to the defense of the said notion
against the Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s book, entituled, A
vindication of the holy and ever-blessed Trinity, &c. by a divine of the
Church of England. London: John Whitlock, 1695.
Spangenberg, Johann. Margarita theologica continens praecipuos locos
doctrinae christianae. London: G. Dawes, 1566. London: H. Bynneman,
1569; 1573.
________. The Sum of Divinitie. London, 1548; 1560; 1561; 1570.
Spanheim, Friedrich, Sr. Disputatio de gratia universali. 3 vols. Leiden,
1644–48.
________. Disputationum theologicarum syntagma. Pars prima:
Disputationum theologicarum miscellanearum; Pars secunda: Anti-
Anabaptistica controversia. Geneva, 1652.
________. Vindici exercitationum de gratia universali adversus Amyraldum.
Amsterdam: Elzevier, 1649.
Spencer, Thomas. The Art of Logick delivered in the precepts of Aristotle and
Ramus. London: John Dawson, 1628.
Spinoza, Baruch. The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza. Translated, with an
introduction by R. H. M. Elwes. 2 vols. London: George Bell & Sons,
1883. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1955.
________. Earlier Philosophical Writings: The Cartesian Principles and
Thoughts on Metaphysics. Translated by Frank A. Hayes, introduction by
David Bidney. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.
________. Spinoza’s short Treatise on God, Man, and Human Welfare.
Translated by Lydia Robinson. Chicago: Open Court, 1909.
Stackhouse, Thomas. A Complete Body of Speculative and Practical Divinity.
3 vols. Dumfries: Robert Jackson and William Boyd, 1776.
Stapfer, Johann Friedrich. Auszug aus der Grundlegung zur Wahren Relgion.
2 vols. Zürich, 1754.
________. Grundlegung zur wahren Religion. 12 vols. Zürich, 1746–53.
________. Institutiones theologiae polemicae universae, ordine scientifico
dispositae. 4th ed. 5 vols. Zürich: Heidegger, 1756–57.
Stillingfleet, Edward. The Bishop of Worcester’s answer to Mr. Locke’s letter,
concerning some passages relating to his Essay of humane understanding,
mention’d in the late Discourse in vindication of the Trinity with a
postscript in answer to some reflections made on that treatise in a late
Socinian pamphlet. London: Henry Mortlock, 1697.
________. The Bishop of Worcester’s answer to Mr. Locke’s second letter
wherein his notion of ideas is prov’d to be inconsistent with itself, and with
the articles of the Christian faith. London: Henry Mortlock, 1698.
________. A discourse concerning the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction, or,
The true reasons of His sufferings with an answer to the Socinian
objections: to which is added, a sermon concerning the mysteries of the
Christian faith, preached, April 7, 1671: with a preface concerning the
true state of the controversie about Christ’s satisfaction. London: Henry
Mortlock, 1696.
________. A discourse concerning the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction.
wherein the Antinomian and Socianian controversies about it are truly
stated and explained: in answer to Mr. Lobb’s Appeal and to several letters
from the dissenting parties in London. London: Henry Mortlock, 1700.
________. A discourse in vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity with an
answer to the late Socinian objections against it from Scripture, antiquity
and reason, and a preface concerning the different explications of the
Trinity, and the tendency of the present Socinian controversie. London:
Henry Mortlock, 1697.
________. The doctrine of the Trinity and transubstantiation compared as to
Scripture, reason, and tradition in a new dialogue between a protestant
and a papist. London: W. Rogers, 1687.
________. Irenicum, a Weapon Salve for the Churches Wounds. London:
Henry Mortlock, 1662.
________. Origines sacræ, or, A rational account of the grounds of Christian
faith, as to the truth and divine authority of the Scriptures and the matters
therein contained. London: Henry Mortlock, 1662.
________. A Rational Account of the Ground of the Protestant Religion.
London: Henry Mortlock, 1665.
________. Six sermons with a discourse annexed, concerning the true reason
of the suffering of Christ, wherein Crellius his answer to Grotius is
considered. London: Henry Mortlock, 1669.
Stoughton, John. A Forme of Wholesome Words; or an Introduction to the
Body of Divinity: in three sermons preached on 2 Timothy 1:13. London: J.
R. for J. Bellamy, 1640.
________. A Learned Treatise in Three Parts: 1. The Definition; 2. The
Distribution of Divinity; 3. The Happinesse of Man: As it was
Scholastically Handled. London: Richard Hodgkinson, 1640.
Strigellus, Victorinus. Loci theologici Strigelli, quibus loci communes
Melanchthonis illustrantur. Neustadt, 1582–83. [Heppe #17b]
Suárez, Franciscus. De scientia Dei futurorum contingentia, in Opera omnia,
vol. 11.
________. Disputationes metaphysicae. Salamanca, 1597. [Also in Opera
omnia, vols. 25–26.]
________. On the Essence of Finite Being As Such, On the Existence of that
Essence and Their Distinction. Translated, with an introduction by Norman
J. Wells. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1983.
________. On the Various Kinds of Distinctions. Translated, with an
introduction by Cyril Vollert. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
1947.
________. Opera omnia. 26 vols. Paris: Vives, 1856–77.
Synopsis purioris theologiae, disputationibus quinquaginta duabus
comprehensa ac conscripta per Johannem Polyandrum, Andream Rivetum,
Antonium Walaeum, Antonium Thysium. Leiden, 1625. Editio sexta, curavit
et praefatus est Dr. H. Bavinck. Leiden: Donner, 1881. [Heppe #33]
Szegedinus, Stephanus. Confessio verae fidei de uno vero Deo Patre, Filio, et
Spiritu Sancto, libris duobus comprehensa, & perpetuis tabulis illustrata.
Basel, 1588. [In Szegedinus, Theologiae sincerae, pp. 507–665.]
________. Doctrinae papisticae summa, ex variis doctoribus scholasticis
excerpts, ac in tabulis per certum ordinem digesta. Basel, 1588. [In
 Szegedinus, Theologiae sincerae, pp. 468–506.]
________. Theologiae sincerae loci communes de Deo et Homine perpetuis
Tabulis explicati et scholasticorum dogmatis illustrati Basel, 1588. [Heppe
#10]
Taylor, Thomas. Christ Revealed: or, The Old Testament Explained. A
Treatise of the Types and shadows of our Saviour contained throughout the
whole Scripture: all Opened and Made Usefull for the benefit of Gods
Church. London, 1635. Reprint, Delmar: Scholar’s Facsimiles and
Reprints, 1979.
Temple, William. A Logicall Analysis of Twentie Select Psalms. London,
1605. Latin edition, 1611.
Theologorum Saxonicorum Consensus repetitus fidei verae Lutheranae
(1655/64). Edited by Ernst Ludwig Henke. Marburg: Elwert, 1846.
Til, Salomon van. Theologiae utriusque compendium cum naturalis tum
revelatae. Leiden, 1704. 3rd ed. Leiden: Samuel Luchtmans, 1719. [Heppe
#45]
Tilenus, Daniel. A Defense of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scripture. London:
L. S. for N. Butter, 1606.
________. Positions lately held by the L. du Perron against the Scriptures
verie learnedly answered. London: L. S. for N. Butter, 1606.
Tillotson, John. A seasonable vindication of the B. Trinity being an answer to
this question, why do you believe the doctrine of the Trinity? Collected
from the works of the most Reverend, Dr. John Tillotson, late Lord
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the right Reverend Dr. Edward Stillingfleet,
now Lord Bishop of Worcester. London: B. Aylmer, 1697.
Trapp, John. Annotations upon the Old and New Testaments in Five Distinct
Volumes. London: Robert White, 1662
________. A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments. 5 vols. London:
Richard Dickinson, 1856–1868. Reprint, Eureka, Ca.: Tanski Publications,
1997.
Trelcatius, Lucas, Jr. A Briefe Institution of the Commonplaces of Sacred
Divinitie. London: T. Purfoot, 1610.
________. Scholastica et methodica locorum communium institutio. London:
J. Bill, 1604. Hanau, 1610. [Heppe #29]
Trelcatius, Lucas, Sr. Opuscula theologia omnia. Leiden, 1614.
Trent, Council of. Canones et decreta dogmatica Concilii Tridentini. Rome,
 1564. [In Schaff, Creeds, vol. 2, pp. 77–206.]
________. Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests. Translated by
John A. McHugh and Charles J. Callan. New York, 1923. Reprint, South
Bend, Indiana: Marian Publications, 1976.
________. Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini Pii V jussu editus.
Rome, 1566.
________. Professio fidei Tridentinae. Rome, 1564. [In Schaff, Creeds, vol. 2,
pp. 207–212.]
Tossanus, Daniel. A Synopsis or Compendium of the Fathers, or of the most
Famous and Ancient Doctors of the Church, as also of the Schoolmen.
London: Daniel Frere, 1635.
Tossanus, Paulus. Biblia, das ist die gantze Heilige Schrifft durch D. Martin
Luther verteutscht: mit D. Pauli Tossani hiebevor ausgegangenen Glossen
und Auslegungen. 4 vols. Frankfurt, 1668.
Turnbull, Richard. An Exposition Upon the Canonicall Epistle of Saint James.
London, 1591.
Turretin, Benedict. Defense de la fidelité des traductions de la s. Bible faites à
Geneve: opposee au livre de P. Coton. Geneva, 1619.
Turretin, Francis. Disputatio theologica de Scripturae Sacrae auctoritate,
adversus pontificos, in Opera, vol. 4, pp. 233–268.
________. Institutio theologiae elencticae. 3 vols. Geneva, 1679–85; a new
edition, Edinburgh, 1847. [Heppe #48]
________. Opera. 4 vols. Edinburgh: Lowe, 1847.
Turretin, Jean-Alphonse. Cogitationes et dissertationes theologicae. Quibus
principia religionis, cum naturalis, tum revelatae, adstruuntur &
defenditur; animique ad veritatis, pietatis, & pacis studium excitantur. 2
vols. Geneva, 1737.
________. Cogitationes de variis theologiae capitibus, in Cogitationes et
dissertationes, vol. I.
________. De theologia naturali, in Cogitationes et dissertationes, vol. I.
________. De Veritate religionis judaicae et christianae, in Cogitationes et
dissertationes, vol. II.
________. Orationes academicae. Geneva, 1637.
Twisse, William. Ad Jacobi Arminii Collationem cum Francisco Junio; &
Johan. Arnoldi Corvini Defensionem sententiae Arminianae, de
 praedestinatione, gratia, & libero arbitrio, &c. Quam adversus Danielis
Tileni Considerationem edidit, Animadversiones. Amsterdam: Johannes
Janssonius, 1649.
________. A Brief Catecheticall Exposition of Christian Doctrine. London:
G> M> for Robert Bird, 1632.
________. A Discovery of D. Jacksons Vanitie. Or, a Perspective glasse,
whereby admirers of D. Jacksons profound discourses, may see the vanitie
and weaknesse of them … London, 1631.
________. Dissertatio de scientia media tribus libris absoluta. Arnhem:
Jacobus à Biesius, 1639.
________. The Doctrine of the Synod of Dort and Arles. London, 1650/1.
________. The Scriptures Sufficiency to Determine all Matters of Faith, made
good against the Papist. London: Matthew Keynton, 1656.
________. Vindiciae gratiae, potestatis, ac providentiae Dei hoc est, ad
examen libelli Perkinsiani de praedestinatione modo et ordine, institutum
a J. Arminio, responsio scholastica. Amsterdam, 1632.
Tyndale, William. An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1850.
________. Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the
Holy Scriptures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1848.
________. A Pathway Into the Holy Scripture (1525/32), in Doctrinal
Treatises, pp. 1–28.
Ursinus, Zacharias. A Collection of Certaine Learned Discourses. Oxford: J.
Barnes, 1600.
________. The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg
Catechism. Translated by G. W. Williard, introduction by John W. Nevin.
Columbus, Ohio, 1852. Reprint, Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Co., 1985.
________. Doctrinae christianae compendium. Leiden: Iohannes Paetsius,
1584. Cambridge: Thomas Thomasius, 1585. [The earliest, unedited
editions of the Explicationes catecheseos].
________. Explicationes catecheseos, in Opera, vol. 1. [Heppe #16.2–3]
________. Loci theologici, in Opera, vol. 1. [Heppe #16.1]
________. Opera theologica quibus orthodoxae religionis capita perspicue &
breviter explicantur. Edited by Quirinius Reuter. 3 vols. Heidelberg, 1612.
________. Schat-Boeck der Verklarigen over den Nederlandtschen
Catechismus, uyt de Latijnshe Lessen van Dr. Zacharias Ursinus, op-
gemaecht van Dr. David Paraeus, vertaelt, ende met Tafelen, &c. Verlicht,
door Dr. Festus Hommius, nu van nieuws oversien … door Johannes
Spiljardus. 2 parts. Amsterdam: Johannes van Revensteyn, 1664.
________. Scholastica materiis theologicis exercitationes, libri II. Neustadt:
Matthaeus Harnisch, 1589–90.
Ussher, James. A Body of Divinity, or the Sum and Substance of Christian
Religion. 6th ed., enlarged. London, 1670.
Venema, Herman. Commentarius ad librum prophetiarum Jeremiae quo
conciones rite distinguuntur, scopus, nexus et series, sermonis accurate
investigatur, perpetua paraphrasi exponitur, et selectis observatis voces et
phrases illustrantur, ac inplementi demonstratione, ubi opus fuerit,
confirmantur. Leeuwarden: H.A. de Chalmot, 1765.
________. Exercitationes de vera Christi Divinitate, ex locis Act. XX: 28, I
Tim. III:16, I Joh. V: 20 et Col. I:16, 17: quibus de vera lectione et genuio
sensu eorum accuratius disseritur. Leeuwarden: Gulielmus Coulon, 1755.
________. Institutes of Theology, part I. Translated by Alexander Brown.
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1850.
Vermigli, Peter Martyr. The Common Places of Peter Martyr. Translated by
Anthony Marten. London: H. Denham, et al., 1583.
________. Loci communes D. Petri Martyris Vermilii … ex variis ipsis autoris
scriptis, in unum librum collecti & in quatuor Classes distributi. London:
Kyngston, 1576. Editio secunda, London: Thomas Vautrollerius, 1583.
[Heppe #3]
________. Most fruitfull and learned commentaries … with a very profitable
tract of the matter and places. [Internal title: The Commentarie of Master
Peter Martyr upon the Booke of Iudges]. London: J. Daye, 1564.
________. Most learned and fruitfull commentaries … upon the Epistle of S.
Paul to the Romanes. London: J. Daye, 1568.
________. The Peter Martyr Reader. Edited by John Patrick Donnelly, Frank
A. James III, and Joseph C. McLelland. Kirksville, Mo.: Trumen State
University Press, 1999.
Vincent, Thomas. An Explanation of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism.
Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d.
________. An explicatory catechism, or, An explanation of the Assemblies
Shorter catechism: wherein all the answers in the Assemblies catechism
 are taken abroad in under questions and answers, the truths explained,
and proved by reason and scripture, several cases of conscience resolved,
some chief controversies in religion stated: with arguments against divers
errors, itself, for the more and clear and through understanding of what is
therein learned. London: George Calvert et al., 1673.
________. The foundation of God standeth sure, or, A defence of those
fundamental and so generally believed doctrines: of the Trinity of persons
in the unity of the divine essence, of the satisfaction of Christ, the second
person of the real and glorious Trinity, of the justification of the ungodly
by the imputed righteousness of Christ, against the cavils of W. P. J. a
Quaker in his pamphlet entituled The sandy foundation shaken &c.:
wherein his and the Quakers hideous blasphemies, Socinian and
damnably-heretical opinions are discovered and refuted. London: s.n.,
1668.
Virel, Matthew. Dialogue de la réligion Chrestienne, distingué en X chapitres.
ensemble un bref sommaire et conference d’icelle avec toutes les autres
religions. Geneva, 1582.
________. A Learned and Excellent Treatise Containing all the Principall
Grounds of Christian Religion. London, 1594.
________. Religionis christianae compendium. Geneva, 1582. [Heppe #4]
Viret, Pierre. Exposition de la doctrine de la foy chrestienne, touchant la
vraye cognoissance & le vraye service de Dieu. Geneva, 1564.
________. Exposition familière de l’oraison de nostre Seigneur Jésus Christ.
Geneva, 1548.
________. Exposition familière sur le Symbole des Apostres. Geneva, 1560.
________. Disputationes chrestiennes. Geneva: J. Gérard, 1552.
________. Instruction chrestienne en la doctrine de la Loy et de lÉvangile. 2
parts. Geneva, 1564.
________. Le Monde à l’empire et le monde démoniacle, fait par dialogues.
Geneva: J. Berthet, 1561.
________. Pierre Viret d’ après lui-même. Pages extraites des oeuvres du
Réformateur … par Charles Schnetzler, Henri Vuilleumier, et Alfred
Schroeder, avec la collaboration d’ Eugène Choisy et de Philippe Godet.
Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1911.
________. A Verie familiare Exposition of the Apostles Crede. London, n.d.
________. The Worlde Possessed with Devils. London: T. Dawson, 1583.
Vitringa, Campegius. Doctrina christianae religionis, per aphorismos
summatim descripta. 8 vols. Arnheim: Johannes Möeleman, 1761–86.
________. Korte stellingen: in welke vervat worden de grondstukken van de
christelyke leere. Amsterdam: Balthazar Lakeman, 1730.
Voetius, Gisbertus. Een Aenhangsel der Leere vande Voorsienigheyd Godes,
Praedestinatie, vrijen Wille … Utrecht: E. Snellaert, 1641.
________. Catechesatie over den Heidelbergschen Catechismus. Edited by
Abraham Kuyper, from the 1662 edition of Poudroyen. 2 vols. Rotterdam:
Huge, 1891.
________. Catechizatie over dem catechismus der Remonstranten, met de
Formulieren van den H. Doop en het H. Avonmal. Utrecht: E. Snellaert,
1641.
________. Exercitia et bibliotheca studiosi theologiae. Utrecht, 1651.
________. Disputatio philosophico-theologica, continens quaestiones duas de
distinctione attributorum divinorum, & libertate voluntatis. Utrecht:
Joannes à Waesberge, 1652.
________. Selectae disputationes theologicae. 5 vols. Utrecht, 1648–1669.
[Heppe #36]
________. Syllabus problematum theologicorum, quae pro re natâ proponi
aut perstringi solent in privatis publicisque disputationum, examinum,
collationum, consultationum exercitiis. Utrecht: Aegidius Romanus, 1643.
________. Ta asketika sive Exercitia pietatis in usum juventutis academicae
nunc edita. Addita est, ob materiam affinitatem, Oratio de pietate cum
scientia conjungenda habita anno 1634. Gorinchem, 1664.
________. Vraegen over den Catechismus …; Op-gheteeckent ende vergadert
uyt de Catechisatien van Gisb. Voetius … uytgegeven door C. Poudroyen.
Utrecht: E. Snellaert, 1640.
Vossius, Gerardus Johannes. Theses theologicae et historicae de variis
doctrinae christianae capitibus, quas olim disputandas proposuit in
Academia Leidensi. 3rd ed. Den Haag, 1658.
Vossius, Isaac. De Sibillinis aliisque quae Christi natalem praecessere
Oraculis. Oxford, 1679; Leiden, 1680.
Vorstius, Conrad. Tractatus theologicus de Deo, sive, de natura et attributis
Dei. Steinfurt, 1610.
Walaeus, Antonius. Enchiridion religionis reformatae, in Opera omnia.
________. Loci communes s. theologiae. Leiden, 1640. [Also in Opera
omnia.] [Heppe #30]
________. Opera omnia. Leiden, 1643.
Walker, George. Socinianisme in the fundamentall point of justification
discovered, and confuted, or, An answer to a written pamphlet maintaining
that faith is in a proper sense without a trope imputed to beleevers in
justification wherein the Socinian fallacies are discovered and confuted,
and the true Christian doctrine maintained, viz. that the righteousnesse by
which true beleevers are justified before God is the perfect righteousnesse
and obedience which the Lord Iesus Christ God and man did perform to
the Law of God. London: Iohn Bartlet, 1641.
Walker, John. No contradiction in the received doctrine of the Blessed Trinity:
but that imputation plainly chargeable on the Arian heresie. A sermon [on
I Cor.i.20] preach’d at the assizes held for the county of Devon, Aug. 14.
1723. in the cathedral church of St. Peter in Exeter. London: R. Wilkin,
1723.
Wallis, John. A brief and easie explanation of the Shorter catechism:
presented by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster to both Houses of
Parliament, and by them approved: wherein the meanest capacities may in
a speedy and easie way be brought to understand the principles of
religion: in imitation of a catechism. London: Jane Underhill, 1662.
________. The doctrine of the blessed Trinity, briefly explained in a letter to a
friend. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1690.
________. An eighth letter concerning the sacred Trinity: occasioned by some
letters to him on that subject. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1692.
________. An explication and vindication of the Athanasian Creed: in a third
letter, pursuant of two former, concerning the Sacred Trinity: together with
a postscript, in answer to another letter. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1691.
________. A fifth letter, concerning the sacred Trinity: in answer to what is
entituled, the Arians vindication of himself against Dr. Wallis’s fourth letter
on the Trinity. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1691.
________. A fourth letter concerning the sacred Trinity: in reply to what is
entituled An answer to Dr. Wallis’s three letters. London: Tho. Parkhurst,
1691.
________. A second letter concerning the Holy Trinity: pursuant to the
former from the same hand: occasioned by a letter there inserted from one
unknown. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1691.
________. A seventh letter, concerning the sacred Trinity: occasioned by a
second letter from W.J. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1691.
________. A sixth letter, concerning the sacred Trinity: in answer to a book
entituled, Observations on the four letters, &c. [by Stephen Nye]. London:
Tho. Parkhurst, 1691.
________. Theological discourses and sermons on several occasions. Part II.
London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1692.
________. Theological discourses: containing VIII letters and III sermons
concerning the blessed Trinity. London: Tho. Parkhurst, 1692.
________. Theological discourses, in two parts: the first containing VIII
letters and III sermons concerning the blessed Trinity: the second,
discourses & sermons on several occasions. London: Tho. Parkhurst,
1695.
________. Three sermons concerning the sacred Trinity. London: Tho.
Parkhurst, 1691.
Walton, Brian. The Considerator Considered: or, a Brief View of Certain
Considerations upon the Biblia Polyglotta, the Prolegomena, and the
Appendix Thereof. London: Thomas Roycroft, 1659. [Also as volume II of
Henry John Todd, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Brian
Walton, D.D. 2 vols. London: Rivington, 1821.]
Walton, Brian, ed. Biblia Sacra Polyglotta. 6 vols. London, 1657.
________ (ed.) Biblicus apparatus, chronologico-topographico-philologicus:
prout ille tomo praeliminari operis eximii polyglotti. London, 1658. [Also
found in Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, vol. 6 separately paginated.]
Ward, Richard. Theological questions, dogmatical observations, and
euangelical essays, upon the gospel of Iesus Christ according to St.
Matthew. London: Peter Cole, 1646.
Ward, Seth. A Philosophicall Essay towards an Eviction of the Being and
Attributes of God, the Immortality of the Souls of Men [and] the Truth and
Authority of Scripture. Oxford: Leonard Lichfield, 1652.
Waterland, Daniel. Dissertation upon the argument a priori for proving the
existence of a first cause. Cambridge, 1734. [Published in Edmund Law,
An enquiry into the ideas of space, time, immensity, and eternity.]
________. A Further Vindication of Christ’s Divinity. London, 1724.
________. The Scriptures and the Arians compar’d in their accounts of God
the Father and God the Son: by way of rejoinder to a pamphlet intitul’d
 The Scripture and the Athanasians compar’d, &c.: in two parts. London:
John Clark, 1722.
________. A Second Vindication of Christ’s Divinity, or a Second Defense of
some Queries relating to Dr. Clarke’s Scheme of the Holy Trinity. London,
1723.
________. A Vindication of Christ’s Divinity, being a Defense of some
Queries relating to Dr. Clarke’s Scheme of the Holy Trinity. London,
1719.
Watson, Thomas. A Body of Practical Divinity. London, 1692.
________. Discourses on Important and Interesting Subjects: Being the Select
Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1829. Reprint,
Ligonier, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990.
________. God’s Anatomy upon Man’s Heart, in Discourses, vol. 2, pp. 147–
170.
Weemse, John. The Christian Synagogue, wherein is contained the diverse
reading, the right poynting, translation and collation of Scripture with
Scripture. London, 1623. 2nd ed., 1633. [The second edition was published
as Workes, vol. 1.]
________. Exercitations Divine. Containing diverse Questions and Solutions
for the right understanding of the Scriptures. Proving the necessitie,
majestie, integritie, perspicuitie, and sense thereof. London, 1632.
________. The Workes of Mr. J. Weemes. 3 vols. London, 1633; 1636.
Weismann, Christian Eberhard. Institutiones theologiae exegetico-
dogmaticae, quibus praemissa plerorumque dictorum piobantium justa
exegesi: dogmatibus inde confirmatis: additisque porismatibus practicis …
Tubingen, 1739.
Welchman, Edward. Dr. Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity Examined.
To which are added some remarks on his sentiments, and a brief
explanation of his doctrine by way of question and answer. Oxford, 1714.
________. A Second Conference with an Arian, occasion’d by Mr. Whiston’s
reply to the … Earl of Nottingham. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1723.
Wendelin, Marcus Friedrich. Christianae theologiae libri duo. Amsterdam,
1657.
________. Christianae theologiae systema majus duobus libris
comprehensum. Cassel, 1656. [Heppe #24a]
________. Collatio doctrinae christianae Reformatorum et Lutheranorum.
 Cassel, 1660. [Heppe #24b]
________. Exercitationes theologicae vindices, pro theologia christiana
Marci Friderici Wendelini … oppositae Johannis Gerhardi … collegio
antiwendeliniano. 2nd ed. Cassel, 1669.
Whiston, William. Athanasius convicted of forgery: in a letter to Mr. Thirlby
of Jesus-College in Cambridge. London: A. Baldwin, 1712.
________. An essay upon the Epistles of Ignatius. London: Benjamin Tooke,
1710.
________. Mr. Whiston’s letter to the right honourable the Earl of
Nottingham, concerning the eternity of the Son of God and of the Holy
Spirit. London: J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1719.
________. Mr. Whiston’s Reply, to the Right Honourable the Earl of
Nottingham’s answer to his letter to him, concerning the eternity of the Son
of God, and of the Holy Spirit. Dublin: T. Hume, 1721.
________. Primitive Christianity reviv’d … 5 vols. London: Printed for the
author, 1711–12.
________. St. Clement’s and St. Irenaeus’s vindication of the apostolical
constitutions, from several objections made against them. As also an
account of the two antient rules thereunto belonging, for the celebration of
Easter. With a postscript on occasion of Mr. Turner’s Discourse of the
apostolical constitutions. London: J. Roberts, 1715.
________. Three essays, I. The council of Nice vindicated from the
Athanasian heresy. II. A collection of ancient monuments relating to the
Trinity and incarnation and to the history of the fourth century of the
church. III. The liturgy of the Church of England reduc’d nearer to the
primitive standard. London: Printed for the author, 1713.
________. A vindication of the Sibylline oracles: To which are added the
genuine oracles themselves; with the ancient citations from them; in their
originals, and in English: and a few brief notes. London: J. Roberts, 1715.
Whitaker, William. A Disputation on Holy Scripture, against the Papists,
especially Bellarmine and Stapleton. Translated and edited by William
Fitzgerald. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849.
Whitehead, George. The Divinity of Christ, and the Unity of the Three that
Bear Record in Heaven. London,1669.
Willet, Andrew. Hexapla in Danielem. Cambridge, 1610.
________. Hexapla in Exodum. London, 1608.
________. Hexapla in Genesin. Cambridge, 1605. 2nd ed., enlarged,
Cambridge, 1608.
________. Hexapla in Leviticum. London, 1631.
________. Hexapla: That is, a Six Fold Commentarie upon the Epistle to the
Romans. Cambridge, 1620.
Wilson, John. The Scriptures Genuine Interpreter Asserted: Or, a Discourse
concerning the Right Interpretation of Scripture, wherein a late
Exercitation entituled, Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres, is Examined,
and the Protestant Point in that Doctrine Vindicated. London: T. N. for R.
Boulter, 1678.
Wilson, Thomas. The Rule of Reason, Conteinyng the Arte of Logique.
Newely corrected. London: R. Grafton 1552.
Witsius, Herman. De oeconomia foederum Dei cum hominibus libri quattuor.
Leeuwarden, 1685. Utrecht, 1694. [Heppe #39]
________. Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum quod Apostolorum dicitur. Et
in Orationem dominicam. Amsterdam, 1697.
________. Miscellanea sacrorum libri IV. Utrecht, 1692.
________. Miscellanea sacrorum tomus alter continens XXII exercitationes.
Utrecht and Amsterdam, 1700.
________. The Oeconomy of the Covenants between God and Man.
Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity. 3 vols. London: Edward and
Charles Dilly, 1763. 2nd ed., revised and corrected, 1775.
________. On the Character of the True Divine: An Inaugural Oration,
Delivered at Franecker, April 16, 1675. Translated by John Donaldson,
preface by William Cunningham. Edinburgh: James Wood, 1855.
________. Sacred Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer. Translated, with notes,
by William Pringle. Edinburgh: Thomas Clarke, 1839.
________. Sacred Dissertations on what is commonly called the Apostles’
Creed. Translated by D. Fraser. 2 vols. Edinburgh: A. Fullarton; Glasgow:
Kull, Blackie & Co., 1823.
________. Theologus modestus. Leiden, 1698.
Witte, Petrus de. Catechizatie over den Heidelberghschen Catechismus der
gereformeerde christelicke religie. Amsterdam: Michiel de Groot, 1675.
________. Catechizing upon the Heidelbergh Catechisme of the Reformed
Christian religion. Amsterdam, 1664.
Wittichius, C. Exercitationes theologicae. Leiden, 1682.
________. Theologia pacifica. Leiden, 1671.
Wolff, Christian. Philosophia prima, sive ontologica, methodo scientifica
pertractata, qua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur. Editio
nova. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1736. Reprint, Hildesheim and New York:
George Olms, 1977.
________. Theologia naturalis methodo scientifica pertractata. 2 parts in 3.
Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1739–41. Reprint,, with introductions by Jean
École, Hildesheim and New York: George Olms, 1978–81.
Wollebius, Johannes. The Abridgement of Christian Divinitie. Translated,
with annotations by Alexander Ross. London: T. Mab and A. Coles, 1650.
________. Compendium theologiae christianae. Basel, 1626; Oxford, 1657.
[Heppe #12]
________. Compendium theologiae christianae. Edited by Ernst Bizer.
Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1935.
Wolzogen, Ludwig. De Scripturarum interprete. Utrecht, 1668.
Wren, Matthew. Increpatio Barjesu, sive, Polemicæ adsertiones locorum
aliquot S. Scripturæ, ab imposturis perversionum in catechesi Racoviana.
London: Jacob Flesher, 1660.
Wyttenbach, Daniel. Praelectio inauguralis de iis, quae observanda sunt
circa theologiam et dogmaticam et elenchticam docendam. Habita 17.
Novemb. 1746. Frankfurt: Joh. Benj. Andreae et Henr. Hort, 1749.
________. Tentamen theologiae dogmaticae methodo scientifico pertractatae.
3 vols. Frankfurt: Joh. Benj. Andreae et Henr. Hort, 1747–49. [Heppe
#53]
________. Theses theologicae praecipua christianae doctrinae capita ex
primis principiis deducta continentes … publicé defenderunt Isaacus
Sigfrid … & Daniel Wyttenbach … MDCCXLVII. Frankfurt: Joh. Benj.
Andreae et Henr. Hort, 1749.
Yates, John. A Modell of Divinitie, Catechetically Composed. Wherein is
delivered the matter and methode of religion, according to the Creed, tenne
Commandements, Lords Prayer, and the Sacraments. 2nd. Edition,
enlarged. London: John Legatt, 1623.
________. A Short Summe of Saving Knowledge; consisting of the Creed, ten
Commandements, Lords Prayer, and the Sacraments. And is made as a
profitable Intyroduction to the larger Art of Divinitie, composed by the
 methodicall tables of A[lexander] R[ichardson] and published by I[ohn]
Y[ates]. London: I. D., 1621.
Zanchi, Jerome. Commentarius in epistolam sancti Pauli ad Ephesios. Edited
by A. H. de Hartog. Amsterdam: Wormser, 1888–1889.
________. De natura Dei seu de divinis attributis. Heidelberg: Jacob Mylius,
1577. [Also in Operum theologicorum (1605; 1617–19), vol. II.]
________. De religione christiana fides. Neustadt: Matthaeus Harnisch, 1585;
1594. [Heppe #19; also in Operum theologicorum (1605; 1617–19), vol.
VIII.]
________. De scriptura sacra. Heidelberg: J. Harnisch, 1593. [Also in
Operum theologicorum (1605; 1617–19), vol. VIII, with the internal title,
Praefatiuncula in locos communes: cum priore loco de sacris Scripturis
agendum sit: & quae methodus servanda.]
________. De tribus Elohim, aeterno Patre, Filio. Et Spiritu Sancto.
Frankfurt am Main: Georgius Corvinus, 1573. [Also in Operum
theologicorum (1605; 1617–19), vol. I.]
________. Hieronymi Zanchii theologi celeberrimi Miscellaneorum. Pars
altera. Neustadt: Nischolas Schramm; London: John Bill, 1608.
________. Hier. Zanchii Miscellaneorum libri tres. London: Jacobus Rimeus,
1605.
________. H. Zanchius, his Confession of Christian Religion. London, 1559.
________. In Mosen et universa Biblia, Prolegomena, in Operum
theologicorum (1617–19), vol. VII/2.
________. Operum theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii. 8 vols. Heidelberg:
Stephanus Gamonetus (v. 1–4, 7–8); Matthaeus Berjon (v. 5–6), 1605.
[Vol. VII contains only the three books of Miscellaneorum, lacking the
pars altera.]
________. Operum theologicorum D. Hieronymi Zanchii. 10 vols. in 9.
Geneva: Samuel Crispin, 1617–19. [Volume VII, Zanchi’s Miscellanea, is
in two separate “tomes,” having added the pars altera as a separate
pagination; volume IX, new to the Geneva edition, is largely letters.]
Zwicker, Daniel. Irenicum irenicorum, seu, Reconciliatorus Christianorum
hodiernorum norma triplex: sanaomnium homnium ratio, scriptura sacra
& traditiones. London: s.n., 1658.
________. Irenicomastix iterato victus & constrictus, imo obmutescens, seu
Novum & memorabile exemplum infelicissimae pungnae J.A. Comenii
 contra Irenici irenicorum auctorem. Id ostendente Irenici irenicorum
auctore. Amsterodami: s.n., 1662.
Zwingli, Ulrich. Commentary on True and False Religion. Edited by Samuel
Macauley Jackson and Clarence Nevin Heller. Philadelphia, 1929. Reprint,
Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1981.
________. De vera et falsa religione commentarius, in Opera, vol. 3.
________. In catabaptistarum strophas elenchus, in Corpus Reformatorum,
vol. 93.
________. On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word, in Zwingli and
Bullinger, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1953), pp. 49–95.
________. On Providence and other Essays. Translated by William John
Hinke. Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1983.
________. Opera completa editio prima. Edited by Melchior Schuler and
Johann Schulthess. 8 vols. in 6. Zürich: Schulthess and Höhr, 1828–42.
________. Sämtliche Werke. Edited by Emil Egli and Georg Finsler, et al. 14
vols. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1905–83 [Vols. 88ff. of the Corpus
Reformatorum].
________. Sermon on the Providence of God, in On Providence and other
Essays, pp. 128–234.

___
1 N. B. several conventions have been observed in the following
bibliographies. Alphabetization of titles ignores initial articles, definite and
indefinite, in all languages, but uses prepositions. Latin works beginning with
the preposition “De” have been alphabetized under “D,” Dutch titles
beginning with the article “De” have been alphabetized according to the
initial letter of the following word. Alphabetization of Dutch names follows
the European practice of citing the actual last name as the primary reference
rather than listing all names with “van” or “van den” under “V”: e.g., Willem
J. van Asselt is found under “Asselt.” Anonymous works and Bibles have
been gathered into the primary source bibliography under the alphabetically
placed headings “Anonymous Works” and “Bibles” rather than alphabetizing
them separately by title. In references to works in which no place and/or
publisher have been ascertained, I have used the abbreviations “S.l.” and
“s.n.”—Sine locus indicating lack of place and sine nomine indicating lack of
a publisher’s or printer’s name.
PL Patrologia Latina Cursus Completus

II. Secondary Sources

Ackeren, G. F. van. Sacra Doctrina: The Subject of the First Question of the
Summa Theologiae. Rome: Gregorian University, 1952.
Adams, Marylin McCord. “Ockham on Identity and Distinction,” in
Franciscan Studies, 36 (1976), pp. 5–74.
________. William Ockham. 2 vols. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1987.
Adams, Robert Merrihew. “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” in
The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology by Robert
Merrihew Adams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 77–93.
Adamson, J. H. “Milton’s Arianism,” in Harvard Theological Review, 53
(1960), pp. 269–276.
Adler, Jacob. “Divine Attributes in Spinoza: Intrinsic and Relational,” in
Philosophy and Theology, 4 (1989), pp. 33–52.
Adrianyi, Gabriel. “Pelbart von Temesvar (ca. 1435–1504) und seine
trinitarischen Predigtvorlagen,” in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott,
edited by M. Boehnke and H. Heinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985),
pp. 276–284.
Albert, Karl. “Exodusmetaphysik und Metaphysische Erfahrung,” in Thomas
von Aquino: Interpretation und Rezeption, edited by Willehad Eckert
(Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1974), pp. 80–95.
Aldridge, John William. The Hermeneutic of Erasmus. Richmond: John
Knox, 1966.
Allen, Don Cameron. Doubt’s Boundless Sea: Skepticism and Faith in the
Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1964.
Allen, Joseph Henry. An Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement. New
York: Christian Literature Company, 1894.
Alluntis, Felix. “Demonstrability and Demonstration of the Existence of
God,” in John Duns Scotus, 1265–1965, edited by John Ryan and
Bernardine Bonansea (Washington: CUA Press, 1965), pp. 133–170.
Alluntis, Felix, and Allan B. Wolter. “Duns Scotus on the Omnipotence of
God,” in Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, 5 (1970),
pp. 178–222.
Althaus, Paul. Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im
Zeitalter er aristotelischen Scholastik. Leipzig: Deichert, 1914.
________. The Theology of Martin Luther. Translated by Robert C. Schultz.
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966.
Amann, É., and Paul Vignaux. “Occam, Guillaume d’,” in Dictionnaire de
théologie catholique, vol. II/1, col. 864–904.
Anderson, Marvin. The Battle for the Gospel: the Bible and the Reformation,
1444–1589. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978.
________. “Biblical Humanism and Catholic Reform (1510–1541): Contarini,
Pole and Giberti,” in Concordia Theological Monthly, 34 (1968), pp. 686–
707.
________. “The Geneva (Tomson/Junius) New Testament among Other
English Bibles of the Period,” in The Geneva Bible: The Annotated New
Testament, 1602 Edition, edited by Gerald T. Sheppard, (New York: The
Pilgrim Press, 1989), pp. 5–17.
________. Peter Martyr: A Reformer in Exile (1542–1562): A Chronology of
Biblical Writings in England and Europe. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975.
________. “Peter Martyr, Reformed Theologian (1542–1562),” in The
Sixteenth Century Journal, 4 (1973), pp. 41–64.
________. “Peter Martyr Vermigli: Protestant Humanist,” in Peter Martyr
Vermigli and Italian Reform, edited by Joseph C. McLelland (Waterloo:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), pp. 65–151.
Anonymous. “Richard Baxter’s ‘End of Controversy,’ ” in Bibliotheca Sacra
and American Biblical Repository, 12 (1855), pp. 348–385.
Antognazza, Maria Rosa. “Leibniz de Deo Trino: Philosophical Aspects of
Leibniz’s Conception of the Trinity,” in Religious Studies, 37 (2001), pp.
1–13.
________. Trinità e Incarnazione: Il rapporto tra filosofia e teologia rivelata
nel pensiero di Leibniz. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1999.
Antognazza, Maria Rosa, and Howard Hotson, Alsted and Leibniz on God, the
Magistrate and the Millennium. Texts edited with introduction and
commentary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.
Arias Reyero, Maximino. Thomas Aquinas als Exeget: Die Prinzipien seiner
Schriftdeutung und seine Lehre von den Schriftsinnen. Münster: Johannes
Verlag, 1971.
Ariew, Roger. Descartes and the Last Scholastics. Ithaca and London: Cornell
 University Press, 1999.
________. “Descartes and Scholasticism: the Intellectual Background to
Descartes’ Thought,” in Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by
John Cottingham, pp. 58–90.
Ariew, Roger, and Marjorie Grene, Descartes and His Contemporaries:
Meditations, Objections, and Replies. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
Armogathe, Jean-Robert. “Proofs for the Existence of God,” in Cambridge
History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Daniel Garber and
Michael Ayers, vol. I, pp. 305–330.
Armogathe, Jean-Robert, ed. Le Grand Siècle de la Bible. Vol. 6 of Bible de
tous les temps. Paris: Beauchesne, 1989.
Armstrong, Brian G. Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant
Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
Armstrong, Robert L. “Cambridge Platonists and Locke on Innate Ideas,” in
Journal of the History of Ideas, 30 (1969), pp. 187–202.
Asch, E. Dorothy. “Samuel Clarke’s Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity and the
Controversy it Aroused.” Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1951.
Ashley, Clinton M. “John Calvin’s Utilization of the Principle of
Accommodation and its Continuing Significance for an Understanding of
Biblical Language,” Ph.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary, 1972.
Ashley, Kathleen. “Divine Power in the Chester Cycle and Late Medieval
Thought,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978), pp. 387–404.
Asselt, Willem J. van. “Amicitia Dei as Ultimate Reality: An Outline of the
Covenant Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669),” in Ultimate
Reality and Meaning: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Philosophy of
Understanding, 21/1 (1988), pp. 37–47.
________. “Chiliasm and Reformed Eschatology in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, in Christian Hope in Context, edited by A. van
Egmond and D. van Keulen, 2 vols. (Zoetermeer: Meinema, 2001), I, pp.
11–29.
________. “The Doctrine of the Abrogations in the Federal Theology of
Johannes Cocceius,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 29/1 (1994), pp. 101–
116.
________. The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669).
Translated by Raymond A. Blacketer. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001.
________. “Johannes Cocceius Anti-Scholasticus?” in Reformation and
Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 227–251.
________. Johannes Coccejus: Portret van een zeventiende-eeuws theoloog
op oude en niewe wegen. Heerenveen: Groen en Zoon, 1997.
________. “Protestantse scholastiek. Methodologische kwesties bij de
bestudering van haar ontwikkeling,” in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse
Kerkgeschiedenis, 4/3 (Sept. 2001), pp. 64–69.
Asselt, Willem J. van, and Eef Dekker. Reformation and Scholasticism: An
Ecumenical Enterprise. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2001.
Asselt, Willem J. van, P. L. Rouwendal, et. al. Inleiding in de Gereformeerde
Scholastiek. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1998.
Augustine, John. “Authority and Interpretation in Perkins’ Commentary on
Galatians,” in A Commentary on Galatians by William Perkins, edited by
G. Sheppard, pp. 11–41.
Auvray, Paul. Richard Simon (1638–1712). Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1974.
Ayres, Lewis, and Michel R. Barnes. “God,” s.v., in Augustine Though the
Ages, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, pp. 384–390.
Bach, Josef. Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters vom christologischen
Standpunkte. 2 vols. Vienna, 1873. Reprint, Frankfurt: Minerva, 1966.
Backus, Irena. “ ‘Aristotelianism’ in Some of Calvin’s and Beza’s Expository
and Exegetical Writings on the Doctrine of the Trinity, with Particular
Reference to the Terms Ousia and Hypostasis,” in Histoire de l’exégèse as
XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1978), pp. 351–360.
________. “L’enseignement de la logique à l’Académie de Genève entre 1559
et 1565,” in Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, 111 (1979), pp. 153–
63.
________. “The Fathers in Calvinist Orthodoxy: Patristic Scholarship,” in
The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, edited by I. Backus, vol.
II, pp. 839–866.
Backus, Irena, ed. The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the
Carolingians to the Maurists. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Badcock, A. John. “Aspects of the Medieval Idea of God,” in London
Quarterly and Holborn Review, 177 (1952), pp. 86–97.
Bagchi, David. “Sic et Non: Luther and Scholasticism” in Protestant
Scholasticism, edited by Trueman and Clark, pp. 3–15.
Baillie, John. The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1956.
Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Nashville: Abingdon,
1950.
Baker, Herschel. The Image of Man: A Study of the Idea of Human Dignity in
Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947.
Baker, J. Wayne. Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant: The Other Reformed
Tradition. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980.
________. “Heinrich Bullinger, the Covenant, and the Reformed Tradition in
Retrospect,” in Calvin Studies VIII: The Westminster Confession in
Current Thought, papers presented at the Colloquium on Calvin Studies,
edited by John H. Leith (Davidson College, January 26–27, 1996), pp. 58–
75. Also published in Sixteenth Century Journal, 29/2 (1998), pp. 359–
376.
________. Also see: McCoy, Charles S.
Bakhuizen van den Brink, J. N. “Bible and Biblical Theology in the Early
Reformation,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 14 (1961), pp. 337–352; 15
(1962), pp. 50–65.
________. “La tradition dans l’Église primitive et au XVIe siècle,” in Revue
d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 36 (1956), pp. 271–281.
Balázs, Mihály. Early Transylvanian Antitrinitarianism (1566–1571): from
Servet to Palaeologus. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1996.
Balic, C., ed. De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti. Acta Congressus Scotistici
Internationalis. 4 vols. Rome: Congressus Scotisticus Internationalis,
1968.
Bangs, Carl. Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation. Nashville:
Abingdon, 1971.
________. “Arminius as a Reformed Theologian,” in The Heritage of John
Calvin, edited by John H. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), pp. 209–
222.
Barnaud, Jean. Pierre Viret, sa vie et son oeuvre. Saint-Amans, 1911. Reprint,
Niewkoop: De Graaf, 1973.
Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance. Rev. ed. 2 vols. in
 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance.
4 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1975.
________. The Knowledge of God and the Service of God According to the
Teaching of the Reformation. Translated by J. L. M. Haire and Ian
Henderson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938.
________. The Theology of John Calvin. Translated by Geoffrey W.
Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.
Barth, Karl, and Emil Brunner. Natural Theology, comprising Nature and
Grace by Emil Brunner, and the reply, No, by Karl Barth. Translated by
Peter Fraenkel. London: G. Bles, 1946.
Barth, P. Timotheus. “Die Notwendigkeit Gottes und seine Begründung bei
Duns Scotus,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol.
II, pp. 414–425.
Bass, W. W. “Platonic Influences on Seventeenth Century English Puritan
Theology as expressed in the thinking of John Owen, Richard Baxter, and
John Howe.” Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1958.
Battles, Ford Lewis. “God was Accommodating Himself to Human
Capacity,” in Interpretation, 31/1 (January, 1977), pp. 19–38.
Baudry, Léon. Lexique philosophique de Guillaume d’Ockham. Paris: P.
Lethielleux, 1949.
________. The Quarrel over Future Contingents (Louvain 1465–1475).
Unpublished texts collected by Léon Baudry, translated by Rita Guerlac.
Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1989.
Bauke, Hermann. Die Probleme der Theologie Calvins. Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs, 1922.
Bauman, Michael E. “Milton’s Arianism: ‘Following the way which is called
Heresy.’ ” Ph. D. diss., Fordham University, 1983.
Bavinck, Herman. Gereformeerde Dogmatiek. 4th ed. 4 vols. Kampen: J. H.
Kok, 1928.
Beardslee, John W., ed. Reformed Dogmatics. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1965.
________. “Theological Development at Geneva under Francis and Jean-
Alphonse Turretin.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1956.
Beck, Andreas. “Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676): Basic Features of His
 Doctrine of God,” in Reformation and Scholasticism, edited by W. van
Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 205–226.
Beck, L. J. The Method of Descartes: A Study of the Regulae. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1952.
Bedouelle, Guy. Lefèvre d’ Étaples et l’intelligence des Écritures. Geneva:
Droz, 1976.
Bedouelle, Guy, and Bernard Roussel, eds. Le temps des Réformes et la Bible.
Vol. 5 of Bible de tous les temps. Paris: Beauchesne, 1989.
Beeke, Joel R. “The Order of the Divine Decrees at the Genevan Academy:
From Bezan Supralapsarianism to Turretinian Infralapsarianism,” in The
Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, edited by
John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber, pp. 57–75.
Belaval, Yvon, and Dominique Bourel, eds. Le siècle des Lumiéres et la Bible.
Vol. 7 of Bible de tous les temps. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986.
Bell, Michael Daniel. “Propter Potestatem Scientiam, ac Beneplacitum Dei:
The Doctrine of Predestination in the Theology of Johannes Maccovius.”
Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1986.
Bellucci, Dino. Science de la Nature et Réformation: La physique au service
de la Réforme dans l’enseignement de Philippe Mélanchthon. Rome:
Edizioni Vivere, 1998.
Belmond, Séraphin. “La connaissance de Dieu d’après Duns Scot,” in Revue
de philosophie, 10, vol. XVII (1910), pp. 496–514.
________. Études sur la philosophie de Duns Scot. Dieu, existence et
cognoscibilité. Paris: Beauschesne, 1913.
________. “L’existence de Dieu d’après Duns Scot,” in Revue de philosophie,
8, vol. XIII (1908), pp. 241–268, 364–381.
Bennett, Jonathan. “Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” in Cambridge Companion to
Spinoza, edited by Don Garrett, pp. 61–88.
Benoit, Jean-David. “The History and Development of the Institutio: How
Calvin Worked,” in John Calvin, edited by G. E. Duffield (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1966), pp. 102–117.
Benoit, Pierre. “Revelation et inspiration selon la Bible, chez Saint Thomas et
dans les discussions modernes,” in Revue Biblique, 70/3 (July 1963), pp.
321–370.
Bente, F. Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord. St. Louis:
Concordia, 1921. Reprint, 1965.
Bentley, Jerry H. Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in
the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Berger, Samuel. La Bible an seizième siècle; étude sur les origines de la
critique. Paris: Sandoz & Fischbacher, 1879.
Bergerson, M. La Structure du concept latin de personne. Études d’histoire
littéraire et doctrinale du XIIIe siécle, first series, vol. II. Paris and Ottawa:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1932.
Bernus, Auguste. Richard Simon et son Historie critique du vieux testament:
la critique biblique au siècle de Louis XIV. 1869. Reprint, Geneva:
Slatkine Reprints, 1969.
Berthaud, Auguste. Gilbert de la Porrée, évêque de Poitiers, et sa
philosophie, 1070–1154. Poitiers, 1892; Frankfurt: Minerva Verlag, 1985.
Betts, C. J. Early Deism in France: From the So-Called ‘Déistes’ of Lyon
(1564) to Voltarie’s ‘Letres philosophiques’ (1734). Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1984.
Beumer, Johannes. Die Inspiration der Heiligen Schrift. Vol. 1/3b of
Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte. Freiburg: Herder, 1968.
________. “Das Katholische Schriftprinzip in der theologischen Literatur der
Scholastik bis zur Reformation,” in Scholastik, 16 (1941), pp. 24–52.
________. Die theologische Methode. Vol. 1/6 of Handbuch der
Dogmengeschichte. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1972.
Beyssade, Jean-Marie. “The Idea of God and the Proofs of His Existence,” in
Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by John Cottingham, pp. 174–
199.
Bible de tous les temps. 9 vols. Collection dirigée par Charles Kannengiesser.
Paris: Beauchesne, 1984-. [Also see: Riché, Pierre; Bedouelle, Guy;
Armogathe, Jean-Robert; and Belaval, Yvon.]
Bie, J. P., de and J. Loosjes. Biographisch Woordenboek van Prot.
Godgeleerden in Nederland. 6 vols. Den Haag, 1905–49.
Bierma, Lyle D. “Federal Theology in the Sixteenth Century: Two
Traditions?” in Westminster Theological Journal, 45 (1983), pp. 304–21.
________. German Calvinism in the Confessional Age: The Covenant
Theology of Caspar Olevian. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996.
________. “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy,”
in Sixteenth Century Journal, 21/3 (1990), pp. 453–462.
Bizer, Ernst. Frühorthodoxie und Rationalismus. Zurich: EVZ Verlag, 1963.
________. “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” in
Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche (1958), pp. 306–372.
Blench, J. W. Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries: A Study of English Sermons, 1450–c.1600. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1964.
Bloomfield, Morton W. “Joachim of Flora: A Critical Survey of his Canon,
Teachings, Sources, Biography, and Influence,” in Traditio, 13 (1957), pp.
249–311.
________. “Recent Scholarship on Joachim of Fiore and his Influence,” in
Prophecy and Millennarianism (Essex: Longman, 1980), pp. 23–52.
Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Translated by Robert
M. Wallace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.
Boehner, Philotheus. Collected Articles on Ockham. Edited by Eligius M.
Buytaert. St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1958.
Boersma, Hans. A Hot Peppercorn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine of Justification
in Its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy. Zoetermeer:
Boekencentrum, 1993.
Boh, Ivan. “Divine Omnipotence in the Early Sentences,” in Divine
Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, edited by T.
Rudavsky, pp. 185–211.
Bohatec, Josef. Budé und Calvin: Studien zur Gedankenwelt des
französischen Frühumanismus. Graz: Herman Böhlaus, 1950
________. Die cartesianische Scholastik in der Philosophie und reformierten
Dogmatik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Leipzig: Deichert, 1912.
________. “Gott und die Geschichte nach Calvin,” in Philosophia reformata
(1936), pp. 129–161.
________. “Die Methode der reformierten Dogmatik,” in Theologische
Studien und Kritiken, 81 (1908), pp. 272–302, 383–401.
Boisset, Jean. Calvin et la souverainéte de Dieu. Présentation, choix de
textes, bibliographie. Paris: Seghers, 1964.
Bolgar, R. R., ed. Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
________. Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676): His Life, Work, and Influence.
Leiden: Brill, 1987.
Bonansea, Bernardino M. “Duns Scotus and St. Anselm’s Ontological
Argument,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. II,
pp. 461–475.
________. God and Atheism: A Philosophical Approach to the Problem of
God. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1979.
________. Tomasso Campanella: Renaissance Pioneer of Modern Thought.
Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1969.
Bornkamm, Heinrich. Luther and the Old Testament. Translated by Eric W.
and Ruth C. Gritsch. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969.
________. Martin Bucers Bedeutung für die europäische
Reformationsgeschichte. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1952.
Bos, E. P., and H. A. Krop, eds. Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635): Neo-
Aristotelianism in Leiden. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993.
Botte, Petrus Chrysologus. “Ioannis duns Scoti doctrina de constitutivo
formali personae Patris,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C.
Balic, vol. III, pp. 85–104.
Bougerol, J. Guy. Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure. Translated by
José de Vinck. Paterson: St. Anthony Guild, 1964.
Boughton, Lynne Courter. “Supralapsarianism and the Role of Metaphysics in
Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology,” in Westminster Theological
Journal, 48 (1986), pp. 63–96.
Bouveresse, Jacques. “Leibniz et le problème de la ‘Science Moyenne,’ ” in
Revue Internationale de la Philosophie, 48 (1994), pp. 99–126.
Bouwsma, William J. “The Two Faces of Humanism: Stoicism and
Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought,” in Itinerarium Italicum: The
Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European
Transformations, edited by Thomas A. Brady and Heiko A. Oberman
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), pp. 3–60.
Bowman, John. “A Forgotten Controversy,” in Evangelical Quarterly, 20
(1948), pp. 46–68.
Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke. Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.
Brady, I. C., J. E. Gurr, and J. A. Weisheipl. “Scholasticism” in New Catholic
Encyclopedia, vol. 12, pp. 1153–1170.
Brampton, C. K. “Scotus and the Doctrine of the ‘potentia Dei absoluta,’ ” in
De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. II, pp. 567–574.
Brandmüller, W. “Traditio scripturae interpres. The Teaching of the Councils
on the Right Interpretation of Scripture up to the Council of Trent,” in
Catholic Historical Review, 73 (1987), pp. 523–540.
Bray, John S. Theodore Beza’s Doctrine of Predestination. Nieuwkoop:
DeGraaf, 1975.
Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483–1521.
Translated by James Schaaf. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.
Breen, Quirinus. Christianity and Humanism: Studies in the History of Ideas.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968.
________. “The Terms ‘Loci Communes’ and ‘Loci’ in Melanchthon,” in
Christianity and Humanism, pp. 93–105.
Bréhier, Émil. The History of Philosophy. Translated by Wade Baskin and
Joseph Thomas. 7 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Brémondy, François. “Affection,” in Encyclopédie philosophique universelle,
II/1, pp. 49–50.
Breward, Ian. “The Life and Theology of William Perkins, 1558–1602.”
Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1963.
________. “The Significance of William Perkins,” in The Journal of
Religious History. IV (1966–67). pp.113–128.
________. “William Perkins and the Origins of Reformed Casuistry,” in
Evangelical Quarterly, 20 (1968), pp. 3–20.
Bridges, Geoffrey G. Identity and Distinction in Petrus Thomae, O. F. M. St.
Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute, 1959.
Brink, Gijsbert van den. Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine
Omnipotence. Kampen: J. Kok, 1993.
Brink, Gijsbert van den, and Marcel Sarot, eds. Understanding the Attributes
of God [Contributions to Philosophical Theology, vol. 1]. Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 1999.
Broeyer, Frits G. M. “Traces of Reformed Scholasticism in the Polemical
Theologian William Whitaker (1548–1595),” in Reformation and
Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 141–154.
Brom, Luco Johan van den. Divine Presence in the World, a Critical Analysis
of the Notion of Divine Omnipresence. Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993.
Broglie, G. de. “La vraie notion thomiste des ‘praeambula fidei,’ ” in
Gregorianum, 34 (1953), pp. 341–389.
Brook, Benjamin. The Lives of the Puritans: Containing a Biographical
Account of those Divines who Distinguished Themselves in the Cause of
Religious Liberty, from the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth, to the Act
of Uniformity, in 1662. 3 vols. London: James Black, 1813. Reprint,
Pittsburgh: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994.
Brown, Raymond E. The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture. Baltimore, MD:
St. Mary’s University, 1955.
Brown, Stephen. “Scotus’ Univocity in the Early Fourteenth Century,” in De
Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. IV, pp. 35–41.
Brown, Stuart. “The Critical Reception of Malebranche, from His Own Time
to the End of the Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Malebranche, edited by Nadler, pp. 262–287.
________. “Locke as Secret ‘Spinozist’: the Perspective of William Carroll,”
in Disguised and Overt Spinozism, edited by W. van Bunge, pp. 213–234.
Brühls, Alfons. Die Entwicklung des Gotteslehre beim jungen Melanchthon,
1518–1535. Bielefeld: Luther Verlag, 1975.
Brunner, Emil. The Christian Doctrine of God. Dogmatics: Vol. I. Translated
by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1950.
________. Revelation and Reason: The Christian Doctrine of Faith and
Knowledge. Translated by Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946.
Bryar, William. St. Thomas and the Existence of God: Three Interpretations.
 Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1951.
Buckley, George T. Atheism in the English Renaissance. New York: Russell
and Russell, 1965.
Buckley, Michael J. At the Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987.
Bunge, Wiep van. “Balthasar Bekker’s Cartesian Hermeneutics and the
Challenge of Spinozism,” in The British Journal for the History of
Philosophy, 1 (1993), pp. 55–79.
Bunge, Wiep van, and Wim Klever, eds. Disguised and Overt Spinozism
Around 1700. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.
Burchill, Christopher. “Le dernier théologien réformé: Girolamo Zanchi, De
officio docentium et discernentium in scholis,” in Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 135 (1989), pp. 54–63.
Burnett, Stephen George. “The Christian Hebraism of Johann Buxtorf (1564–
1629).” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1990.
________. From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf
(1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century. Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1996.
Burrell, David B. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides,
Aquinas. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Burtt, Edwin A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. Revised
ed. New York: Humanities Press, 1951.
Busson, H. La pensée religieuse
Butin, Philip W. Revelation, Redemption, and Response: Calvin’s Trinitarian
Understanding of the Divine-Human Relationship. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Butterworth, Joseph. “The Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas and
St. Bonaventure.” Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1985.
Buytaert, Eligius M. “Abelard’s Trinitarian Doctrine,” in Peter Abelard,
edited by E. Buytaert (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 127–152.
Byrne, James M. Religion and Enlightenment: From Descartes to Kant.
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1997.
Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: the Legacy of
Deism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Cadix, Marcel. “Le Dieu de Calvin,” in Bulletin de la Société calviniste de
 France, November 1929, pp. 2–15.
Callan, Charles J. “The Bible in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas
Aquinas,” in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 9 (1947), pp. 33–47.
Calvinus Reformator: His Contribution to Theology, Church and Society.
Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University, Institute for Reformational
Studies, 1982.
The Cambridge History of the Bible. 3 vols. Edited by P. R. Ackroyd and C. F.
Evans (I), G. W. H. Lampe (II), and S. L. Greenslade (III). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1963–70.
Cameron, Richard. “The Attack on the Biblical Work of Lefèvre d’Etaples,
1514–1521,” in Church History, 38 (1969), pp. 13–24.
________. “The Charges of Lutheranism Brought Against Jacques Lefèvre
d’Etaples (1520–1529),” in Harvard Theological Review, 63 (1970), pp.
119–149.
Cannon, Charles K. “William Whitaker’s Disputatio de Sacra Scriptura: A
Sixteenth-Century Theory of Allegory,” in Huntington Library Quarterly,
25 (1962), pp. 129–138.
Caplan, Harry. “The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the
Medieval Theology of Preaching,” in Speculum, 4 (1929), pp. 282–290.
Carter, Charles S. The Reformers and Holy Scripture. London: C. J. Thymme
and Jarvis, 1928.
Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Translated by Fritz
Koelln and James Pettegrove. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951.
________. The Platonic Renaissance in England. Translated by James P.
Pettegrove. Edinburgh: Nelson, 1953.
Catania, F. L. “Divine Infinity in Albert the Great’s Commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard,” in Medieval Studies, 22 (1960), pp. 27–42.
Chalker, William H. “Calvin and Some Seventeenth-Century Calvinists: A
Comparison of their Thought through an Examination of their Doctrines of
the Knowledge of God, Faith and Assurance.” Ph.D. diss., Duke
University, 1961.
Chenu, Marie-Dominique. La théologie aux douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin,
1957.
________. “La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle,” in Archives
d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age, 2 (1927), pp. 31–71.
________. La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle. 3rd ed. Paris: Vrin,
1957.
Childs, Brevard S. “Hermeneutical Reflections on C. Vitringa, Eighteenth-
Century Interpreter of Isaiah,” in In Search of True Wisdom: Essays in Old
Testament Interpretation in Honour of Ronald E. Clements, edited by
Edward Ball, in Journal for the Old Testament, supplement Series, 300
(1999), pp. 89–98.
________. “The Sensus Literalis of Scripture: An Ancient and Modern
Problem,” in Beiträge zur alttestamentlichen Theologie, edited by Donner,
Hanhart, and Smend (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 80–
93.
Chollet, A. “Aristotélisme de la scolastique,” in Dictionaire de théologie
catholique, vol 1/2, cols. 1869–1887.
Chossat, M. “Dieu. Sa nature selon les scholastiques,” in Dictionnaire de
théologie catholique, vol. 4/1, cols. 1152–1243.
Clark, David W. “Voluntarism and Rationalism in the Ethics of Ockham,” in
Fransiscan Studies, 31 (1971), pp. 72–87.
Clark, Robert Scott. “The Authority of Reason in the Later Reformation:
Scholasticism in Caspar Olevian and Antoine de La Faye,” in Protestant
Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, edited by C. Trueman and R.
Clark, pp. 111–126.
________. “Duplex Beneficium: Caspar Olevian’s Trinitarian, Protestant,
Calvinist, Federal Theology.” Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1998.
Clausen, Sara Jean. “Calvinism in the Anglican Hierarchy, 1603–1643: Four
Episcopal Examples.” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1989.
Coffey, P. Ontology or the Theory of Being: An Introduction to General
Metaphysics. New York: Peter Smith, 1938.
Colie, Rosalie. Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the Cambridge Platonists
and the Dutch Arminians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
Colish, Marcia L. Peter Lombard. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994.
Colker, Marvin L. “The Trial of Gilbert of Poitiers, 1148: A Previously
Unknown Record,” in Medieval Studies, 27 (1965), pp. 152–183.
Colligan, J. H. The Arian Movement in England. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1913.
Cologny, L. L’antitrinitarisme a Genève au temps de Calvin: étude
historique. Geneva: Taponnier & Studer, 1873.
Congar, Yves M.-J. A History of Theology. Translated by Hunter Guthrie.
Garden City: Doubleday, 1968.
________. Tradition and Traditions: An Historical and a Theological Essay.
Translated by M. Naseby and T. Rainborough. New York: Macmillan,
1967.
Constantin, C. “Rationalisme,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol.
13/2, cols. 1688–1778.
Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. 9 vols. Westminster, Md.:
Newman Press, 1946–1974. Reprint, Garden City: Image Books, 1985.
Corbin, Michel. Le chemin de la théologie chez Thomas d’Aquin. Paris:
Beauschesne, 1974.
Costello, William T. The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century
Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Cottingham, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
________. “Cartesian Dualism: Theology, Metaphysics, and Science,” in
Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by J. Cottingham, pp. 236–
257.
________. “A New Start? Cartesian Metaphysics and the Emergence of
Modern Philosophy,” in The Rise of Modern Philosophy, edited by Tom
Sorrel, pp. 15–32.
Coughenour, Robert A. “The Shape and Vehicle of Puritan Hermeneutics,” in
Reformed Review, 30 (1976), pp. 23–34.
Courtenay, William J. Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of
Absolute and Ordained Power. Bergamo: P. Lubrina, 1990.
________. Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought: Studies in
Philosophy, Theology, and Economic Practice. London: Variorum
Reprints, 1984.
________. “The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle
Ages,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy,
edited by T. Rudavsky, pp. 243–269.
________. John of Mirecourt and Gregory of Rimini on whether God can
undo the Past,” in Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 39
(1972), pp. 244–56; 40 (1973), pp. 147–74.
________. “Necessity and Freedom in Anselm’s Conception of God,” in
Analecta Anselmiana, 4/2, edited by H. Kohlenberger (1975), pp. 39–64.
________. “Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century,” in
Lectionum Varietates: Hommage à Paul Vignaux (1904–1987), edited by
Jean Jolivet, et al. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991), pp. 11–48.
________. “Nominalism and Late Medieval Thought: A Bibliographical
Essay,” in Theological Studies, 33 (1972), pp. 716–734.
________. “Nominalism in Late Medieval Religion,” in The Pursuit of
Holiness, edited by Trinkaus and Oberman, pp. 26–59.
Courth, Franz. Trinität. In der Scholastik. Vol. 1/1b of Handbuch der
Dogmengeschichte. Freiburg: Herder, 1985.
________. Trinität. Von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart. Vol. 2/1c of
Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte. Freiburg: Herder, 1996.
Courthal, Pierre. “Karl Barth et quelques points des confessions de foi
Reformées,” in La Revue Reformée, 9 (1958), pp. 1–29.
Courtine, Jean-François. “Le projet suarézien de la métaphysique: pour une
étude de la thèse suarézienne du néant,” in Archives de Philosophie, 42
(1979), pp. 234–274.
Courvoisier, Jacques. Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian. Richmond: John
Knox Press, 1963.
Cousins, Ewert H. “St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, and the Movement of
Thought in the 13th Century,” in International Philosophical Quarterly, 14
(1974), pp. 393–409.
Craig, William L. The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Human
Freedom from Aristotle to Suárez. Leiden: Brill, 1980.
________. “Middle Knowledge: A Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement?” in
The Grace of God and the Will of Man, edited by Clark H. Pinnock (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 141–64.
Craigie, P. C. “The Influence of Spinoza in the Higher Criticism of the Old
Testament,” in The Evangleical Quarterly, 50 (1978), pp. 23–32.
Cremeans, Charles D. The Reception of Calvinistic Thought in England.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949.
Cress, Donald A. “Duns Scotus, Spinoza and the Ontological Argument,” in
Regnum Hominus et Regnum Dei (Rome: Societas Internationalis
Scotistica, 1978), pp. 389–399.
Crooks, George R. and Hurst, John F. Theological Encyclopedia and
Methodology on the Basis of Hagenbach. Rev. ed. New York: Hunt and
Eaton, 1894.
Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
________. “Duns Scotus on Eternity and Timelessness,” in Faith and
Philosophy, 14/1 (January 1997), pp. 3–25.
Cunningham, William. Historical Theology. 3rd ed … 2 vols. Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1870.
________. The Reformers; and the Theology of the Reformation. Edinburgh:
T. & T. Clark, 1862.
Curley, E. M. Descartes Against the Sceptics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1978.
________. “Spinoza as an Expositor of Descartes,” in Speculum Spinozanum,
1677–1977 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 133–142.
Curtis, Mark H. Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1959.
Curtius, E. R. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. New York:
Harper & Row, 1953.
Daane, James. The Freedom of God: A Study of Election and Pulpit. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973.
Dales, Richard C. Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World. Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1990.
D’Amico, John F. “Humanism and Pre-Reformation Theology,” in
Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, edited by
Albert Rabil, vol. 3, pp. 349–379.
Dán, Róbert. Matthias Vehe-Glirius: Life and Work of a Radical
Antitrinitarian, with his Collected Writings. Translated by Imre Gombos;
revised, L. S. Domonkos. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1982.
Dán, Róbert, and Antal Pirnát. Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the
16th Century. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982.
Dantine, Johannes. “Das christologische Problem in Rahmen der
Prädestinationslehre von Theodor Beza,” in Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, LXXVII (1966), pp. 81–96.
________. “Les Tabelles sur la doctrine de la prédestination par Théodore de
Bèze,” in Revue de théologie et de philosophie, XVI (1966), pp. 365–377
Dausch, P. Die Schriftinspiration, eine biblischgeschichtliche Studie. Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung, 1891.
Davies, Brian. “Classical Theism and the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity,” in
Language, Meaning and God: Essays in Honor of Herbert McCabe, OP,
edited by B. Davies (London: Cassell, 1987), pp. 51–74.
________. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Davies, Rupert E. The Problem of Authority in the Continental Reformers: A
Study in Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. London: Epworth, 1946.
Davis, Edward B. “God, Man and Nature: The Problem of Creation in
Cartesian Thought.” Scottish Journal of Theology 44, No. 3 (1991): 325–
348.
Dear, Peter. “Method and the Study of Nature,” in Cambridge History of
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Daniel Garber and Michael
Ayers, vol. I, pp. 147–177.
Deferrari, Roy Joseph, and Mary Inviolata Barry. A Lexicon of St. Thomas
Aquinas based on the Summa theologica and selected passages of his other
works, by Roy J. Deferrari and M. Inviolata Barry, with the collaboration
of Ignatius McGuiness. Washington: Catholic Univ. of America Press,
1948.
De Jong. Peter Y., ed. Crisis in the Reformed Churches: Essays in
commemoration of the Great Synod of Dort, 1618–1619. Grand Rapids:
Reformed Fellowship, 1968.
Dekker, Eef. “Does Duns Scotus Need Molina? On Divine Foreknowledge
and Co-causality,” in John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308): Renewal of
Philosophy, edited by E. P. Bos (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 101–111.
________. “Jacobus Arminius and his Logic: Analysis of a Letter,” in Journal
of Theological Studies, ns. 44 (1993), pp. 118–142.
________. “The Reception of Scotus’ Theory of Contingency in Molina and
Suárez,” in Via Scoti, edited by L. Sileo, pp. 445–54.
________. Rijker dan Midas: Vrijheid, genade en predestinatie in de
theologie van Jacobus Arminius, 1559–1609. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum,
1993.
________. “The Theory of Divine Permission According to Scotus’ Ordinatio
I 47,” in Vivarium, 37/2 (2000), pp. 231–242.
________. “Was Arminius a Molinist?” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 27/2
(1996), pp. 337–352.
DeLubac, Henri. Augustinianism and Modern Theology. Translated by
Lancelot Sheppard. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1969.
________. Exégèse mediaevale: les quatre sens de l’Ecriture. 4 vols. Paris:
Aubier, 1959–1964.
Dennison, James T. “The Twilight of Scholasticism: Francis Turretin at the
Dawn of the Enlightenment,” in Protestant Scholasticism, edited by C.
Trueman and R. Clark, pp. 244–255.
Denzinger, Heinrich. Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et
Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum. 32nd ed. Edited by Adolfus
Schönmetzer. Barcinone: Herder, 1963
De Rijk, Lambertus Marie. “Semantics and Metaphysics in Gilbert of
Poitiers: A Chapter of Twelfth Century Platonism,” 2 parts, in Vivarium, 26
(1988), pp. 73–112 and Vivarium, 27 (1989), pp. 11–35.
Desharnais, Richard P. “Reason and Faith, Nature and Grace: A Study of
Luther’s Commentaries on the Sentences of Lombard,” in Studia Int.
Filosof., 3 (1971), pp. 55–64.
________. “Reassessing Nominalism: A Note on the Epistemology and
Metaphysics of Pierre D’Ailly,” in Franciscan Studies, 34 (1974), pp. 296–
305.
DeWulf, Maurice. An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy, Medieval and
Modern. Translated by P. Coffey. New York: Dover, 1956.
Deyon, Solange. “Les Académies protestantes en France,” in Bulletin de la
Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 135 (1989), pp. 77–85.
Dibon, Paul. La philosophie Néerlandaise au siècle d’or. Tome I:
L’Enseignement philosophique dans les Universités néerlandaises à
l’époque précartesienne (1575–1650). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1954.
________. “L’influence de Ramus aux universités néerlandaises du 17e
siècle,” in Actes du XIème congrès Internationale de Philosophie, 14
(1953), pp. 307–311.
Dickson, Donald R. “The Complexities of Biblical Typology in the
Seventeenth Century,” in Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et
Réforme, n.s. 3 (1987), pp. 253–272.
Dictionnaire de la Bible, contenant tous les noms de personnes, de lieux, de
plantes, d’animaux mentionnés dans les Saintes Ëcritures, les questions
théologiques, archéologiques. Edited by F. Vigouroux et al. 5 vols. Paris:
Letouzey et Ané, 1907–12.
Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, contenant l’exposé des doctrines et de
la théologie catholique. Edited by A. Vacant et al. 23 vols. Paris: Letouzey
et Ané, 1923–50.
Diem, Hermann. Dogmatics. Translated by Harold Knight. Edinburgh and
London: Oliver and Boyd, 1959.
Diestel, Ludwig. Geschichte des Alten Testamentes in der christlichen Kirche.
Jena: Mauke’s Verlag, 1869.
________. “Studien zur Föderaltheologie,” in Jahrbücher für deutsche
Theologie, 10 (1865), pp. 209–276.
Dillenberger, John. Protestant Thought and Natural Science. New York and
Nashville: Abingdon, 1960.
Dockrill, D. W. “Authority of the Fathers in the Great Trinitarian Debates of
the Sixteen Nineties,” in Studia Patristica, 18/4 (1983), pp. 335–347.
Dodds, M. “St. Thomas and the Motion of Motionless God,” in New
Blackfriars, 68 (1987), pp. 233–42.
Dods, Marcus. Forerunners of Dante: An Account of Some of the More
Important Visions of the Unseen World, from the Earliest Times.
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1903.
Dogma in History and Thought: Studies by Various Writers. London: Nisbet,
1929.
Dolnikowski, Edith Wilks. Thomas Bradwardine, a View of Time and a Vision
of Eternity in Fourteenth-Century Thought. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Donnelly, John Patrick. Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of
Man and Grace. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975.
________. “Calvinist Thomism,” in Viator, 7 (1976), pp. 441–455.
________. “Italian Influences on the Development of Calvinist
Scholasticism,” in The Sixteenth Century Journal, 7/1 (1976), pp. 81–101.
Dorner, Isaac A. History of Protestant Theology Particularly in Germany.
Translated by George Robson and Sophia Taylor. 2 vols. Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1871.
Doumergue, Émile. “Calvin, an Epigone of the Middle Ages or an Initiator of
Modern Times?” in Princeton Theological Review, 7 (1909), pp. 52–104.
________. Jean Calvin, les hommes et les choses de son temps. 7 vols.
Lausanne: G. Bridel, 1899–1917.
Dourley, John P. “The Relationship between Knowledge of God and
Knowledge of the Trinity in Bonaventure’s De mysterio trinitatis,” in San
Bonaventura Maestro, edited by A. Pompei, vol. II, pp. 41–48.
Dowdell, Victor Lyle. Aristotle and Anglican Religious Thought. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1942.
Dowey, Edward A. The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1952.
Doyle, John P. “Suárez on the Analogy of Being,” in The Modern Schoolman,
46 (1969), pp. 219–249, 323–341.
________. “The Suárezian Proof for God’s Existence,” in History of
Philosophy in the Making: A Symposium of Essays to Honor Professor
James D. Collins on his 65th Birthday, edited by Linus J. Thro
(Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), pp. 105–117.
Duclow, Donald F. “Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa: Infinity,
Anthropology and the Viz Negativa,” in Downside Review, 92 (1974), pp.
102–108.
________. “Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa: An
Approach to the Hermeneutic of Divine Names,” in International
Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1972), pp. 260–278.
Dumont, Paul. Liberté humaine et concours divin d’après Suárez. Paris:
Beauchesne, 1936.
Dumont, Stephen D. “Theology as Science and Duns Scotus’s Distinction
between Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition,” in Speculum 64 (1989), pp.
579–599.
Ebeling, Gerhard. “The Hermeneutical Locus of the Doctrine of God in Peter
Lombard and Thomas Aquinas,” in Journal for Theology and the Church,
3 (1967), pp. 70–111.
________. “The Meaning of ‘Biblical Theology,’ ” in Word and Faith,
translated by J. Leitch (London: SCM, 1963), pp. 79–97.
________. The Study of Theology. Translated by Duane Priebe. Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1978.
________. “The Word of God and Hermeneutics,” in Word and Faith, pp.
305–332.
Echternach, Helmut. “The Lutheran Doctrine of the Autopistia of Holy
Scripture,” in Concordia Theological Monthly, (April, 1952), pp. 241–
271.
Eldredge, Laurence. “The Concept of God’s Absolute Power in the Later
Fourteenth Century,” in By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in
Medieval Thought, edited by David L. Jeffrey (Ottawa: University of
 Ottawa Press, 1979), pp. 211–226.
Elert, Werner. The Structure of Lutheranism: the Theology and Philosophy of
Life of Lutheranism Especially in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
Vol. I. Translated by Walter A. Hansen. St. Louis: Concordia, 1962.
Elorduy, Elutherius, “Duns Scoti influxus in Francisci Suárez doctrinam,” in
De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. IV, pp. 307–337.
Emerson, Roger L. “Latitudinarianism and the English Deists,” in Deism,
Masonry, and the Enlightenment, edited by J. A. Leo Lemay (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1987), pp. 19–48.
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by P. Edwards. 8 vols. New York:
Macmillan, 1972.
Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, publié sous la direction d’André
Jacob. 4 parts in 5 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989–98.
Engelbrecht, B. “Is Christ the Scopus of the Scriptures?” in Calvinus
Reformator, pp. 192–200.
________. “The Problem of the Concept of the ‘Personality’ of the Holy
Spirit according to Calvin,” in Calvinus Reformator, pp. 201–216.
Engelsma, David J. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Protestant Reformed
Theological Journal, 23 (1989), pp. 19–37.
Ermatinger, Charles J. “Richard Fishacre’s ‘Commentarium in librum I
Sententiarum’ (Dist. 2, Cap. 1), Text and Introduction,” in The Modern
Schoolman, 35 (1958), pp. 213–235.
Eschweiler, Karl. “Die Philosophie der spanischen Spätscholastik auf dem
deutschen Universitäten des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts,” in Gesammelte
Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens, vol. I, edited by H. Finke
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1928), pp. 251–325.
Esser, Hans, “Hat Calvin eine ‘leise modalisierende Trinitätalehre’?” in
Calvinus theologus, edited by W. Neuser, pp. 113–129.
Etzkorn, Girard J. “John Reading on the Existence and Unicity of God,
Efficient and Final Causality,” in Franciscan Studies, 41 (1981), pp. 110–
221.
Evans, Gillian R. Anselm and Talking About God. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1978.
________. The Language and Logic of the Bible: the Road to Reformation.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Faber, Jelle. “Nominalisme in Calvijns preken over Job,” in Een sprekend
Begin, edited by R. ter Beek, et al. (Kampen: Uitgeverij van den Berg,
1993), pp. 68–85.
Fallon, Stephen M. “ ‘To Act or Not’: Milton’s Conception of Divine
Freedom,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 49 (1988), pp. 425–453.
Farmer, Craig S. The Gospel of John in the Sixteenth Century: The Johannine
Exegesis of Wolfgang Musculus. New York: Oxford University Press,
1997.
Farrar, Frederic W. History of Interpretation. New York: Dutton, 1886.
Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1961.
Farthing, John L. “The Problem of Exemplarity in St. Thomas,” in The
Thomist, 49/2 (April, 1985), pp. 183–222.
Fatio, Olivier. Méthode et théologie. Lambert Daneau et les débuts de la
scholastique reformée. Geneva: Droz, 1976.
________. “Présence de Calvin à l’époque de l’orthodoxie réformée: Les
abrégées de Calvin à la fin du 16e et au 17e siècle,” in Calvinus Ecclesiae
Doctor, edited by W. Neuser, pp. 171–207.
Fatio, Olivier, and Pierre Fraenkel, eds. Histoire de l’exégèse an XVIe siècle:
textes du colloqui international tenu á Genève en 1976. Geneva: Droz,
1978.
Faulenbach, Heiner. “Johannes Cocceius,” in Orthodoxie und Pietismus,
edited by Martin Greschat (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1982), pp. 163–
176.
________. Die Struktur der Theologie des Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf.
Zurich: EVZ Verlag, 1967.
________. Weg und Ziel der erkenntnis Christi. Eine Untersuchung zur
Theologie des Johannes Cocceius. Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1973.
Faust, A. “Die Dialektik R. Agricolas: Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik des
deutschen Humanismus,” in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 34
(1922), pp. 118–135.
Fay, Thomas A. “Bonaventure and Aquinas on God’s Existence: Points of
Convergence,” in The Thomist, 41 (1977), pp. 585–595.
Febvre, Lucien. The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The
Religion of Rabelais. Translated by Beatrice Gottlieb. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1982.
Feckes, Carl. Die Rechtfertigungslehre des Gabriel Biel und ihre stellung
 innerhalb der nominalistischen Schule. Münster: Aschendorff, 1925.
Félice, Paul de. Lambert Daneau de Baugency-sur-Loire. Pasteur et
professeur en théologie (1530–1595). Paris: G. Fischbacher. 1882.
Fernàndez Garcèa, Mariano. Lexicon scholasticum philosophico-theologicum
in quo termini, definitiones, distinctiones et effata a Joanne Duns Scoto.
Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1910. Reprint, Hildesheim: Olms,
1974.
Fey, Thomas A. “Bonaventure and Aquinas on God’s Existence: Points of
Convergence,” in The Thomist, 41 (1977), pp. 585–595.
Fienberg, Stanley P. “Thomas Goodwin’s Scriptural Hermeneutics and the
Dissolution of Puritan Unity,” in The Journal of Religious History, 10
(1978–79), pp. 32–49.
Finkenzeller, Josef. Offenbarung und Theologie nach der Lehre des Johannes
Duns Skotus. Vol. 38/5 of Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und
Theologie des Mittelalters. Münster: Aschendorff, 1961.
Firth, Katharine R. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britian, 1530–
1645. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Fischer, Konrad. De Deo Trino et Uno: das Verhältnis von productio und
reductio in seiner Bedeutung für der Gotteslehre Bonaventuras. Göttingen:
Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978.
________. “Hinweise zur Gotteslehre Bonaventuras,” in San Bonaventura
Maestro, edited by Alphonso Pompei, vol. I, pp. 513–525.
Fisher, George Park. “The Theology of Richard Baxter,” in Bibliotheca Sacra
and American Biblical Repository, 9 (1852), pp. 135–169.
________. “The Writings of Richard Baxter,” in Bibliotheca Sacra and
American Biblical Repository, 9 (1852), pp. 300–329.
Fitzgerald, Allan D., ed. Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
Fitzpatrick, Noel A. “Walter Chatton on the Univocity of Being: A Reaction
to Peter Aureoli and William Ockham,” in Fransiscan Studies, 31 (1971),
pp. 88–177.
Fix, Andrew. “Angels, Devils, and Evil Spirits in Seventeenth-Century
Thought: Balthasar Bekker and the Collegiants,” in Journal of the History
of Ideas, 50 (1989), pp. 527–547.
Flage, Daniel E. “The Essences of Spinoza’s God,” in History of Philosophy
Quarterly, 6 (1989), pp. 147–160.
Flesseman-van Leer, E. “The Controversy about Scripture and Tradition
between Thomas more and William Tyndale,” in Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 43 (1959), pp. 143–164.
Flier, Albertus van der. Specimen historico-theologicum de Johanne Cocceijo
anti-scholastico. Utrecht: Kemink en Zoon, 1859.
Floor, L. “The Hermeneutics of Calvin,” in Calvinus Reformator, pp.181–
191.
Fontan, P. “Dieu, premier ou dernier connu, de Spinoza á St. Thomas
d’Aquin,” in The Thomist, 74 (1974), pp. 244–278.
Force, James E. “Biblical interpretation, Newton and English Deism,” in
Scepticism and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin and A. Vanderjagt, pp. 282–
305.
________. Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s
Theology. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1990.
________. Newton and Religion: Context, Nature, and Influence. Dordrecht
and Boston: Kluwer, 1999.
Force, James E., and Richard H Popkin, eds. The Books of Nature and
Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical
Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of
Newton’s Time. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1994.
Forstman, H. J. Word and Spirit: Calvin’s Doctrine of Biblical Authority.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.
Fortman, Edmund J., ed. The Theology of God: Commentary. Milwaukee:
Bruce, 1967.
________. The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
New York: Hutchinson/Corpus, 1972. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1982.
The Foundation of Biblical Authority. Edited by James Montgomery Boice.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978.
Fraenkel, Peter. De l’Ecriture à la dispute: le cas de l’Académie de Genève
sous Théodore de Bèze. Cahiers de la Revue de théologie et de
philosophie, 1. Lausanne: Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 1977.
________. Testimonia Patrum: The Function of Patristic Argument in the
Theology of Philip Melanchthon. Geneva: Droz, 1961.
Franks, R. S. The Doctrine of the Trinity. London: Duckworth, 1953.
________. “Dogma in Protestant Scholasticism,” in Dogma in History and
Thought, pp. 111–141.
Freedman, Joseph S. “Aristotle and the Content of Philosophy Instruction at
Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era
(1500–1650),” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
137/2 (1993), pp. 213–53.
________. “The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann,” in
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 141 (1997), pp. 305–
364.
________. European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early
Seventeenth Centuries: The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens
Timpler (1563/4–1624). 2 vols. Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1988.
________. “Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of
Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era,”
in History of Universities, 5 (1985), pp. 117–66.
Frei, Hans W. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1974.
Freiday, Dean. The Bible, its Criticism, Interpretation and Use in 16th and
17th Century England. Manasquan, N.J.: Catholic and Quaker Studies,
1979.
Freitas, Emmanuel. “De argumentatione Duns Scoti pro infinitate Dei,” in De
Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. II, pp. 427–433.
Friedman, Jerome. Michael Servetus: A Case-Study in Total Heresy. Geneva:
Droz, 1978.
________. The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian-
Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia. Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Press, 1983.
________. “Servetus and Anti-trinitarianism: à propos Antonio Rotondo,” in
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 35 (1973), pp. 543–545.
Friedmann, R. “The Encounter of Anabaptists and Mennonites with Anti-
Trinitarians,” in Mennonite Quarterly Review, XXII (1948), pp. 139–162.
Fritz, G., and A. Michel. “Scholastique,” in Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique, vol. 14/2, cols. 1691–1728.
Frost, Ronald N. “Aristotle’s Ethics: The Real Reason for Luther’s
Reformation,” in Trinity Journal, NS 18 (1997), pp. 223–41.
Fuerst, Adrian. An Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Omnipresence of
God in Selected Writings between 1220–1270. Washington, D.C.: Catholic
Univ. of America Press, 1951.
Fullerton, Kemper. Prophecy and Authority: A Study in the History of the
Doctrine and Interpretation of Scripture. New York: Macmillan, 1919.
Funkenstein, Amos. “The Body of God in 17th Century Theology and
Science,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and
Thought, 1650–1800, edited by R. Popkin (Leiden: Brill, 1988), pp. 149–
175.
________. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to
the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Gabbey, Alan. “ ‘A disease incurable’: scepticism and the Cambridge
Platonists,” in Scepticism and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin and A.
Vanderjagt, pp. 71–91.
Gaberel, J. Histoire de l’Église de Génève depuis le commencement de la
Reformation jusqu’a nos jours. 3 vols. Geneva, 1858–1862.
Gamble, Richard. “Brevitas et facilitas: Toward and Understanding of
Calvin’s Hermeneutic,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 47 (1985), pp.
1–17.
________. “Calvin as Theologian and Exegete: Is there Anything New?” in
Calvin Theological Journal, 23 (1988), pp. 178–194.
________. “Exposition and Method in Calvin,” in Westminster Theological
Journal, 49 (1987), pp. 153–165.
Gane, Erwin R. “The Exegetical Methods of Some Sixteenth-Century
Anglican Preachers: Latimer, Jewel, Hooker, and Andrews,” in Andrews
University Seminary Studies, 17 (1979), pp. 23–38, 169–188.
________. “The Exegetical Methods of Some Sixteenth-Century Puritan
Preachers: Hooper, Cartwright, and Perkins,” in Andrews University
Seminary Studies 19 (1981), pp. 21–36, 99–114.
________. “The Exegetical Methods of Some Sixteenth-Century Roman
Catholic Preachers: Fisher, Peryn, Bonner, and Watson,” in Andrews
University Seminary Studies, 23 (1985), pp. 161–180, 259–275.
Ganoczy, Alexandre. Calvin, théologien de l’église et du ministére. Paris:
Editions du Cerf, 1964.
________. The Young Calvin. Translated by David Foxgrover and Wade
Provo. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987.
Ganoczy, Alexandre, and Stefan Scheld. Die Hermeneutik Calvins:
Geistesgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen und Grundzüge. Wiesbaden: F.
Steiner, 1983.
Garber, Daniel. “How God Causes Motion: Descartes, Divine Sustenance,
and Occasionalism,” in The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987), pp. 567–
580.
Garber, Daniel, and Michael Ayers, eds. The Cambridge History of
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Gardeil, A. “Lieux théologiques,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,
9/1, cols. 712–747.
________. “La notion du lieu théologique,’ in Revue des Sciences
Philosophiques et Théologiques (1908), pp. 51–73, 246–276, 484–505.
________. “La topicité,” in Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et
Théologiques (1911), pp. 750–757.
Garrett, Don, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald. God: His Existence and His Nature: A
Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies. Translated by Dom
Bede Rose. 2 vols. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946.
________. Predestination. Translated by Dom Bede Rose. St. Louis: B.
Herder, 1939.
________. “Thomisme,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 15/1,
cols. 823–1023.
Gass, Wilhelm. Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik in ihrem
Zusammenhange mit der Theologie. 4 vols. Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1854–
67.
________. “Recension von Schneckenburger, Darstellung des lutherischen
und reformirten Lehrbegriffs,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1857,
pp. 115–149.
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: an Interpretation. 2 vols.: I. The Rise of
Modern Paganism; II. The Science of Freedom. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1966–1969. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1977.
Geiger, L.-B. “Abstraction et séparation d’après S. Thomas in de Trinitate, q.
5, a. 3,” in Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, 31 (1947),
pp. 3–40.
________. “Les idées divines dans l’oeuvre de S. Thomas,” in St. Thomas
Aquinas, 1274–1974; Commemorative Studies. Foreword by Etienne
Gilson, 2 vols. (Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974),
vol. I, pp. 175–209.
Geisler, Norman L., ed. Inerrancy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979.
Gelber, Hester Goodenough. “Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in
Scholastic Thought, 1300–1335.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin,
1974.
Gelder, H. A. Enno van. The Two Reformations of the Sixteenth Century. Den
Haag: De Graaf, 1961.
Genderen, J. van. Herman Witsius: Bijdrage tot de Kennis der Gereformeerde
Theologie. Den Haag: Guido de Bres, 1953.
Genest, Jean-François. Prédétermination et liberté creé à Oxford au XIVe
siècle: Buckingham contre Bradwardine. Paris: J. Vrin, 1992.
George, Timothy. “ ‘A Right Strawy Epistle’: Reformation Perspectives on
James,” in Review and Expositor, 83 (1986), pp. 369–382.
Gerrish, Brian A. “Biblical Authority and the Continental Reformation,”
Scottish Journal of Theology, 10 (1957), pp. 337–360.
________. “ ‘To the Unknown God’: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of
God,” in The Journal of Religion, 53 (1973), pp. 263–292.
Gerstner, John H. “The Church’s Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration,” in The
Foundation of Biblical Authority, edited by J. M. Boice, pp. 23–58.
________. “The View of the Bible held by the Church: Calvin and the
Westminster Divines,” in Inerrancy, edited by N. Geisler, pp. 385–410.
Geymonat, Jean. Michel Servet et ses idées religieuses. Geneva: Carey, 1892.
Gibbs, Lee W. “Puritan Natural Law Theory in William Ames,” in Harvard
Theological Review, 64 (1971), pp. 37–57.
________. “William Ames’s Technometry,” in Journal of the History of
Ideas, 30 (1972), pp. 615–624.
________. William Ames’s Technometry. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1979.
Gilbert, Neal W. Renaissance Concepts of Method. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1960.
Gill, J. The Council of Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1959.
Gillett, E. H. God in Human Thought; or, Natural Theology Traced in
Literature, Ancient and Modern, to the Time of Bishop Butler. 2 vols. New
York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1874.
Gilson, Etienne. “Boéce de Dacie et la double vérité,” in Archives d’histoire
doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age, 30 (1955), pp. 81–99.
________. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine. Translated by L. E.
M. Lynch. New York: Vintage, 1960.
________. The Christian Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Trans L. K.
Shook. New York: Random House, 1956.
________. “La doctrine de la double vérité,” in Etudes de philosophie
médiévale (Strasbourg: Commission des publications de la Faculté des
lettres, 1921), pp. 50–69.
________. Etudes sur le r ole de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du
système cartésien. Paris, J. Vrin, 1930.
________. “Humanisme médiévale et Renaissance,” in Les idées et les lettres.
2nd ed. Paris: J. Vrin, 1955.
________. Jean Duns Scot: Introduction à ses positions fondamentales. Paris:
J. Vrin, 1952.
________. The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure. Translated by Dom Illtyd
Trethowan and Frank J. Sheed. Paterson: St. Anthony Guild, 1965.
________. Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages. New York: Scribner,
1938.
________. The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. Translated by A. H. C.
Downes. New York: Scribner, 1936.
Girardin, Benoit. Rhetorique et théologie. Calvin: L’Epître au Romains. Paris:
Beauchesne, 1979.
Glunz, H. The Vulgate in England from Alcuin to Roger Bacon. Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1933.
Godet, P. “Durand de Saint-Pourçain,” in Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique, IV, col. 1964–1966.
Godfrey, W. Robert. “Biblical Authority in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries: A Question of Transition,” in Scripture and Truth, edited by D.
A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), pp.
225–243.
Gomes, Alan, “De Jesu Christo Servatore: Faustus Socinus on the Satisfaction
 of Christ,” Westminster Theological Journal, 55 (1993), pp. 209–231.
Goris, Harm J. M. J. Free Creatures of an Eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on
God’s Infallible Foreknowledge and Irresistible Will. Leuven: Peeters,
1996.
________. “Thomism and Zanchi’s Doctrine of God,” in Reformation and
Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 125–126.
Gorkom, Gerardus van. Specimen theologicum inaugurale de Joanne
Cocceijo, s. codicis interprete. Utrecht: Kemink en Zoon, 1856.
Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe. “Foundations of Biblical Philology in the
Seventeenth Century: Christian and Jewish Dimensions,” in Jewish
Thought in the Sevententh Century, edited by Isadore Tweersky and
Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987),
pp. 77–94.
________. “The Textual Criticism of the Old Testament: Rise, Decline,
Rebirth,” in Journal of Biblical Literature, 102 (1983), pp. 365–399.
Gostwick, Joseph. German Culture and Christianity: their Controversy in the
Time 1770–1880. London: Frederic Norgate, 1882.
Goudriaan, Aza. Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis dei Suárez und Descartes
in Zusammenhang mit die niederländischen reformierten Theologie und
Philosophie des 17, Jahrhunderts. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999.
________. “Die Rezeption des cartesianischen Gottesdankens bei Abraham
Heidanus,” in Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und
Religionsphilosophie, 38/2 (1996), pp. 166–197.
Gouhier, Henri. La pensée religieuse de Descartes. Paris, 1924.
Graafland, C. “De Gereformeerde Orthodoxie en het Piëtisme in Nederland,”
in Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 19 (1964–65), pp. 466–479.
________. “Gereformeerde Scholastiek V: De Invloed van de Scholastiek op
de Gereformeerde Orthodoxie,” in Theologia Reformata, 30 (1987), pp. 4–
25.
________. “Gereformeerde Scholastiek VI: De Invloed van de Scholastiek op
de Nadere Reformatie,” in Theologia Reformata, 30 (1987), pp. 109–131;
313–340.
________. Het vaste verbond: Israel en het Oude Testament bij Calvijn en het
gereformeerd protestantisme. Amsterdam: Bolland, 1978.
________. Van Calvijn tot Barth: oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leer der
verkiezing in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme. ‘s-Gravenhage:
 Boekencentrum, 1987.
________. De zekerheid van het geloof: een onderzoek naar de
geloofsbeschouwing van enige vertegenwoordigers van reformatie en
nadere reformatie. Wageningen: Veenman, 1961.
________. Van Calvijn tot Comrie: oorsprong en ontwikkeling van de leer
van het verbond in het Gereformeerd Protestantisme. 3 vols. Zoetermeer:
Boekencentrum, 1992–1994.
Graham, W. Fred, ed. Later Calvinism: International Perspectives. Sixteenth
Century Essays & Studies, vol. 22. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century
Journal Publishers, 1994.
Grant, Edward. “The Condemnation of 1277, God’s Absolute Power and
Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,” in Viator, 10 (1979), pp. 211–
244.
Grant, Robert M. “History of the Interpretation of the Bible: I. Ancient
Period,” in The Interpreters Bible, 12 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1951–
57), vol. 1, pp. 106–114. [See also: McNeill, John T. and Terrien, Samuel]
Grant, Robert M., and David Tracy. A Short History of the Interpretation of
the Bible. 2nd ed., revised and enlarged. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.
Graves, F. P. Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth
Century. New York: Macmillan, 1912.
Gray, Edward McQueen. Old Testament Criticism, Its Rise and Progress from
the 2nd Century to the end of the 18th Century: A Historical Sketch. New
York and London: Harper, 1923.
Greene, Donald. “Latitudinarianism and Sensibility: The Genealogy of the
‘Man of Feeling’ Reconsidered,” in Modern Philology, 75 (1977), pp. 159–
183.
Greig, Martin. “The Reasonableness of Christianity? Gilbert Burnet and the
Trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History
44 (1993), pp. 631–651.
________. “The Thought and Polemic of Gilbert Burnet, c. 1673–1704. Ph.D.
diss., Cambridge University, 1991.
Greijdanus, S. Schriftbeginselen ter Schriftverklaring en historisch Overzicht
over Theorien en Wijzen van Schriftuitlegging. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1946.
Grene, Marjorie Glicksman. Descartes Among the Scholastics. Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1991.
Grene, Marjorie Glicksman, and Roger Ariew, eds. Descartes and his
 Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections, and Replies. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Grenier, Henri. Thomistic Philosophy. Translated by J. P. E. O’Hanley. 3 vols.
Charlottestown: St. Dunstan’s University, 1948.
Grierson, Herbert. Cross-Currents in 17th Century English Literature: The
World, the Flesh, and the Spirit, Their Actions and Reactions. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1958.
Groot, Aart de. “L’antitrinitarisme socinien,” in Études theologiques et
religieuses, 61 (1986), pp. 51–61.
Grossmann, Maria. Humanism in Wittenberg, 1485–1517. Nieuwkoop: De
Graaf, 1975.
Gründler, Otto. Die Gotteslehre Girolami Zanchis und ihre Bedeutung für
seine Lehre von der Prädestination. Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag,
1965.
________. “Thomism and Calvinism in the Theology of Girolamo Zanchi
(1516–1590).” Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1961.
Guelluy, Robert. Philosophie et théologie chez Guillaume d’Ockham.
Louvain: University of Louvain, 1947.
Gueroult, Martial. Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order
of Reasons. Translated by Roger Ariew. 2 vols. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984.
Gundry, Stanley N. “John Owen on Authority and Scripture,” in Inerrancy
and the Church, edited by John D. Hannah, pp. 189–221.
Gurr, John. The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Some Scholastic Systems,
1750–1900. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959.
Guttmann, Julius. Philosophies of Judaism: A History of Jewish Philosophy
from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig. Translated by David Silverman.
New York: Schocken Books, 1973.
Gwatkin, Henry Melvill. The Knowledge of God in its Historical
Development. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1907.
Gysi, Lydia. Platonism and Cartesianism in the Philosophy of Ralph
Cudworth. Bern: Herbert Lang, 1962.
Haar, J. van der. Schatkamer van de Gereformeerde Theologie in Nederland
(c. 1600–c. 1800). Veenendaal: Antiquariat Kool, 1987.
Haentjens, Antonie Hendrik. Hugo de Groot als godsdienstig denker.
 Amsterdam: Ploegsma, 1946.
________. Remonstrantsche en calvinistische dogmatiek: in verband met
elkaar en met de ontwikkeling van het dogma. Leiden: A.H. Adriani,
1913.
________. Simon Episcopius als apologeet van het Remonstrantisme in zijn
leven en werken geschetst. Leiden: A.H. Adriani, 1899.
Hagen, Kenneth. A Theology of Testament in the Young Luther: the Lectures
on Hebrews. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974.
________. “What did the term Commentarius mean to sixteenth century
theologians?” in Théorie et practique de l’exégèse, edited by I. Backus and
F. Higman, pp. 13–38.
Hagenbach, Karl R. German Rationalism, in its Rise, Progress, and Decline,
in Relation to Theologians, Scholars, Poets, Philosophers, and the People:
A Contribution to the Church History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries. Edited and translated by William Leonard Gage and J. H.
Stuckenberg. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1865.
________. A History of Christian Doctrines. Translated by Plumptre. 3 vols.
Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1880–81.
________. “Zur Beantwortung der Frage über das Princip des
Protestantismus. Sendschreiben an Herrn D. und Professor Schenkel in
Heidelberg,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1854, pp. 7–49.
Hägglund, Bengt. History of Theology. Translated by Gene Lund. St. Louis:
Concordia, 1968.
Hailperin, Herman. Rashi and the Christian Scholars. Pittsburg: University of
Pittsburg Press, 1963.
Hall, Basil. “Biblical Scholarship: Editions and Commentaries,” in
Cambridge History of the Bible, III, pp. 38–93.
________. “Calvin Against the Calvinists,” in John Calvin, edited by Gervase
Duffield (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), pp. 19–37.
________. “Calvin and Biblical Humanism,” in Huguenot Society
Proceedings, 20 (1959–64), pp. 195–209.
Hallam, Henry. Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and
17th Centuries. 3 vols. 1873. Reprint, New York: Ungar, 1970.
Haller, William. Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution. New
York and London: Columbia University Press, 1955.
________. The Rise of Puritanism: or, the Way to the New Jerusalem as set
forth in Pulpit and Press from Thomas Cartwright to John Lilburne and
John Milton, 1570–1643 (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).
Halleux, André de, “Dieu le Père tout-puissant,” in Revue Théologique de
Louvain, 8 (1977), pp. 401–22.
Hankey, W. J. God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the
Summa theologiae. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hannah, John D., ed. Inerrancy and the Church. Chicago: Moody Press,
1984.
Haring, N. M. “The Case of Gilbert de la Porreé,” in Medieval Studies, 13
(1951), pp. 1–40.
________. “A Commentary on the Pseudo-Athanasian Creed by Gilbert of
Poitiers,” in Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), pp. 23–53.
________. “Notes on the Council and Consistory of Rheims (1148),” in
Medieval Studies, 28 (1966), pp. 39–59.
________. “Simon of Tournai and Gilbert of Poitiers,” in Mediaeval Studies,
27 (1965), pp. 325–330.
Harman, Allan. “Speech About the Trinity: With Special Reference to
Novatian, Hilary, and Calvin,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 26 (1973),
pp. 385–400.
Harris, C. R. S. Duns Scotus. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1927.
Harris, Victor. “Allegory to Analogy in the Interpretation of Scripture,” in
Philological Quarterly, 45 (1966), pp. 1–23.
Hartvelt, G. P. “Petrus Boquinus: Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de
gereformeerde dogmatiek,” in Gereformeerde Theologisch Tijdschrift, 62
(1962), pp. 49–77.
________. “Over de methode der dogmatiek in de eeuw der Reformatie.
Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de gereformeerde dogmatiek,” in
Gereformeerde Theologisch Tijdschrift, 62 (1962), pp. 97–149.
Hastie, William. The Theology of the Reformed Church in its Fundamental
Principles. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1904.
Hausammann, Susi. Römerbriefauslegung zwischen Humanismus und
Reformation: Eine Studie zu Heinrich Bullingers Römerbriefvorlesung von
1525. Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970.
Hayen, A. “Le Concile de Reims et l’erreur théologique de Gilbert de la
 Porreé,” in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire de moyen-âge
(1936), pp. 24–37.
Hayes, Zachary. The Hidden Center: Spirituality and Speculative Christology
in St. Bonaventure. New York: Paulist Press, 1981.
Haykin, Michael A. G., ed. The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771):
A Tercentennial Appreciation. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Hays, John H., and Frederick Prussner. Old Testament Theology: Its History
and Development. Atlanta: John Knox, 1985.
Hazard, Paul. The European Mind: The Critical Years (1680–1715). New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.
________. European Thought in the Eighteenth Century: From Montesquieu
to Lessing. Cleveland: World, 1963. Reprint, Gloucester, Mass.: Peter
Smith, 1973.
Headley, J. M. “Tomasso Campanella and the End of the Renaissance,” in
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 20 (1990), pp. 157–74.
________. “Tomasso Campanella and Jean de Launoy: The Controversy over
Aristotle and his Reception in the West,” in Renaissance Quarterly 43
(1990), pp. 529–50.
Hefelbower, Samuel G. The Relation of John Locke to English Deism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1918.
Heilemann, P. A. Die Gotteslehre des Ch. Wolff. Leipzig, 1907.
Heim, Karl. “Zur Geschichte des Satzes von der doppelten Wahrheit,” in
Studien zur systematischen Theologie: Theodor von Haering zum 70.
Geburtstag (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1918), pp. 1–16.
Heim, S. Mark. “The Powers of God: Calvin and Late Medieval Thought,” in
Andover Newton Quarterly, n.s. 19 (1978/79), pp. 156–166.
Helm, Paul. Calvin and the Calvinists. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982.
________. “Calvin, English Calvinism and the Logic of Doctrinal
Development,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 34 (1981), pp. 179–185.
Helmer, Christine. The Trinity and Martin Luther: a Study on the Relationship
between Genre, Language and the Trinity in Luther’s Works, 1523–1546.
Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, Bd.
174. Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1999.
Hendrix, Scott H. Tradition and Authority in the Reformation. Brookfield:
Ashgate, 1996.
Henry, Paul. “On Some Implications of the ‘Ex Patre Filioque tamquam ab
uno Principio,’ ” in The Eastern Churches Quarterly (1948), Supplement
19, pp. 16–31.
Heppe, Heinrich. Die Bekenntnisschriften der altprotestantischen kirche
Deutschlands. Cassel: T. Fisher, 1855.
________. Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformirten Kirche Deutschlands.
[Schriften zur reformirten Theologie, Band I] Elberfeld: R. L. Friederichs,
1860.
________. “Der Charakter der deutsch-reformirten Kirche und das Verhältniss
derselben zum Luthertum und zum Calvinismus,” in Theologische Studien
und Kritiken, 1850 (Heft 3), pp. 669–706.
________. Die confessionelle Entwicklung der altprotestantischen Kirche
Deutschlands, die altprotestantische Union und die gegenwärtige
confessionelle Lage und Aufgabe des deutschen Protestantismus. Marburg:
Elwert, 1854.
________. Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche. Neu
durchgesehen und herausgegeben von Ernst Bizer. Neukirchen: Moers,
1935. [Originally published as Schriften zur reformirten Theologie, Band
II.]
________. Die Dogmatik des Protestantismus im sechzehnten Jahrhundert. 3
vols. Gotha: Perthes, 1857.
________. Geschichte des deutschen Protestantismus. 4 vols. Marburg:
Elwert, 1852–1859.
________. Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der reformierten
Kirche namentlich in der Niederlande. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879.
________. Reformed Dogmatics Set Out and Illustrated from the Sources.
Revised and edited by Ernst Bizer. Translated by G. T. Thomson. London,
1950. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978.
________. Das Schulwesen des Mittelalters und dessen Reform im
sechszehnten Jahrhundert. Marburg: Elwert, 1860.
________. Theodor Beza: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Elberfeld: R. L.
Friedrichs, 1861.
Heyd, Michael. Between Orthodoxy and the Enlightenment: Jean-Robert
Chouet and the Introduction of Cartesian Science in the Academy of
Geneva. Den Haag: De Graff, 1982.
________. “Cartesianism, Secularism, and Academic Reform: Jean-Robert
 Chouet and the Academy of Geneva, 1669–1704.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton
University, 1974.
________. “From a Rationalist Theology to a Cartesian Voluntarism: David
Derodon and Jean-Robert Chouet,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 40
(1979), pp. 527–542.
Hill, Eugene D. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Hobbs, Gerald. “Exegetical Projects and Problems: A New Look at an
Undated Letter from Bucer to Zwingli,” in Prophet, Pastor, Protestant:
The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years, edited by E. J.
Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984), pp. 89–
107.
________. “How Firm a Foundation: Martin Bucer’s Historical Exegesis of
the Psalms,” in Church History, 53 (1984), pp. 477–491
________. “Zwingli and the Old Testament,” in Huldrych Zwingli, 1483–
1531: A Legacy of Radical Reform, edited by E. J. Furcha (Montreal:
McGill University Press, 1985), pp. 144–178.
Hodge, Archibald A. The Confession of Faith: A Handbook of Christian
Doctrine Expounding the Westminster Confession. 1869. Reprint, London:
Banner of Truth, 1978.
________. Outlines of Theology. 1860. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1976.
Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. 3 vols. 1871–73. Reprint, Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975.
Hodl, L. “Die philosophische Gotteslehre des Thomas von Aquin, O.P. in der
Diskussion der Schulen um die Wende des 13. zum 14. Jahrhundert,” in
Rivista di Filosofia Neo-scholastica, 70 (1978), pp. 113–134.
Hoenen, M. J. F. M. Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval
Thought. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Hof, W. J. Op’t. “Gisbertus Voetius’ Evaluatie van de Reformatie: Een
voorlopig Onderzoek,” in Theologia Reformata, 32 (1989), 211–249.
Höffding, Harald. A History of Modern Philosophy: A Sketch of the History of
Philosophy from the Close of the Renaissance to our own Day. Translated
by B. E. Meyer. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1935.
Hoffmann, Manfred. “Rhetoric and Dialectic in Erasmus’ and Melanchthon’s
Interpretation of John’s Gospel,” in Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and
the Commentary, edited by Timothy J. Wengert and M. Patrick Graham
 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), pp. 65–72.
Hohlwein, H. “Rationalismus. II. Rationalismus und Supranaturalismus,
kirchengeschichtlich,” s.v. in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, dritte
Auflage.
Holeczek, Heinz. Humanistische Bibelphilologie als Reformproblem bei
Erasmus von Rotterdam, Thomas More, und William Tyndale. Leiden:
Brill, 1975.
Holl, Karl. Gesammelte Aufsätze. 3 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1928.
Holopainen, Toivo J. Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century. Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1996.
Holzhey, Karl. Die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift in der Anschauung des
Mittelalters: von Karl der Grosser bis zum Konzil von Trient. Munich: J. J.
Lentner, 1895.
Honders, H. J. Andreas Rivetus: als Invloedrijk Gereformeerd Theoloog in
Holland’s Bloeitijd. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1930.
Hoopes, Robert. Right Reason in the English Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1962.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1972.
Hotson, Howard. Johann Heinrich Alsted, 1588–1638: Between Renaissance,
Reformation, and Universal Reform. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000.
Howell, Wilbur Samuel. Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
________. Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700. Princeton, Princeton
University Press, l956.
Hudson, A., and M. Wilks, eds. From Ockham to Wyclif. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987.
Hughes, Gerard, ed. The Philosophical Assessment of Theology: Essays in
Honour of Frederick C. Copleston. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 1987.
Hughes, Philip E. The Theology of the English Reformers. New edition.
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980.
Hulme, Edward M. “Lelio Sozzini’s Confession of Faith,” in Persecution and
Liberty: Essays in Honor of George Lincoln Burr (New York: Century,
1931), pp. 211–225.
Hunt, John. Religious Thought in England, from the Reformation to the End
of Last Century, a Contribution to the History of Theology. 3 vols. London:
Strahan & Co., 1870–73.
Hunter, A. Mitchell. The Teaching of Calvin: a Modern Interpretation.
London: James Clarke, 1950.
Hunter, W. B., Jr. “Milton’s Arianism Reconsidered,” in Harvard Theological
Review, 52 (1959), pp. 9–35.
________. “Some Problems in John Milton’s Theological Vocabulary,” in
Harvard Theological Review, 57 (1964), pp. 353–365.
Hunter, W. B., Jr., C. A. Patrides, and J. H. Adamson. Bright Essence. Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971.
Hurst, John Fletcher. History of Rationalism. New York: Eaton & Mains,
1901.
Huth, Harry. Gospel and Scripture: the Interrelationship of the Material and
Formal Principles in Lutheran Theology. St. Louis: Concordia, 1972.
Hutton, Sarah. “Edward Stillingfleet and Spinoza,” in Disguised and Overt
Spinozism, edited by W. van Bunge, pp. 261–274.
________. “The Neoplatonic Roots of Arianism: Ralph Cudworth and
Theophilus Gale,” in Socinianism and its Role in the culture of the XVIth
to XVIIth Centuries, edited by Lech Szczucki, Zbigniew Ogonowski, and
Janusz Tazbir (Warsaw: PWN, Polish Scientific Publisher, 1983), pp. 139–
145.
________. “Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse,
Aristotelian,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978), pp. 635–52.
Immink, Frederik Gerrit. Divine Simplicity. Kampen: Kok, 1987.
________. “The One and Only: The Simplicity of God,” in Understanding the
Attributes of God, edited by Brink and Sarot, pp. 115–127.
Inge, William Ralph. The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought.
The Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge, 1925–1926. London & New York:
Longmans, Green, 1926.
Inspiration and Interpretation. Edited by John Walvoord. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1957.
Israel, Jonathan I. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of
Modernity, 1650–1750 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Itterzon, G. P. van. Francis Gomarus. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1930.
________. “De ‘Synopsis purioris theologiae’: Gereformeerd Leerboek der
17de Eeuw,” in Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 23 (1930), pp.
161–213, 225–259.
Ives, Robert B. “The Theology of Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1562).” Ph.D.
diss., University of Manchester, 1965.
Jacob, Edmond. “L’Oeuvre exégétique d’un théologien strasbourgeois du 17e
siècle: Sébastien Schmid,” in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie
religieuses, 66 (1986), pp. 71–78.
Jacobs, Henry E. “Scholasticism in the Lutheran Church,” in The Lutheran
Cyclopedia, pp. 434–435.
Jalabert, Jacques. Le Dieu de Leibniz. Publications de la Faculté des lettres et
sciences humaines, Université de Grenoble, vol. 23. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1960. Reprint, New York: Garland, 1985.
James, Frank A., III. “Peter Martyr Vermigli: At the Crossroads of Late
Medieval Scholasticism, Christian Humanism and Resurgent
Augustinianism,” in Protestant Scholasticism, edited by C. Trueman and
R. Clark, pp. 62–78.
James, Susan. “Spinoza the Stoic,” in The Rise of Modern Philosophy, edited
by Tom Sorrel, pp. 289–316.
Jansen, Reiner. Studien zu Luther’s Trinitätslehre. Bern and Frankfurt: Lang,
1976.
Janz, Denis R. Luther and Late Medieval Thomism: A Study in Theological
Anthropology. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983.
Jardine, Lisa. “Inventing Rudolf Agricola: Cultural Transmission,
Renaissance Dialectic, and the Emerging Humanities,” in The
Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, edited by A. Grafton
and A. Blair (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp.
39–86.
________. “Ghosting the Reform of Rhetoric: Erasmus and Agricola Again,”
in Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by Peter Mack (London: St. Martin’s
Press, 1994), pp. 27–45.
Jellema, Dirk W. “God’s ‘Baby Talk’: Calvin and the ‘Errors’ of the Bible,” in
Reformed Journal, 30 (1970), pp. 25–47.
Jocher, Chr. G. Allgemeines Gelehrten Lexikon. 11 vols. Leipzig: J. F.
Gleditsch, 1750–1897. Reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1960.
John Calvin’s Institutes: His Opus Magnum. Proceedings of the Second South
 African Congress for Calvin Research, July 31–August 3, 1984.
Potchefstroom: Potchefstroom University, Institute for Reformational
Studies, 1986.
Johnson, John F. “Biblical Authority and Scholastic Theology” in Inerrancy
and the Church, edited by John D. Hannah, pp. 67–97.
Johnson, Robert Clyde. Authority in Protestant Theology. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1959.
Jolivet, Jean. “Trois variations médiévales sur l’universel et l’individu:
Roscellin, Abélard, Gilbert de la Porrée,” in Revue de métaphysique et de
morale, 97 (1992), pp. 97–155.
Jolley, Nicholas. The Light of the Soul: Theories of Ideas in Leibnitz,
Malebranche, and Descartes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
________. “The Reception of Descartes’ Philosophy,” in Cambridge
Companion to Descartes, edited by John Cottingham, pp. 393–423.
________. “The Relation Between Theology and Philosophy,” in Cambridge
History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Daniel Garber and
Michael Ayers, vol. I, pp. 363–392.
Jones, Howard. The Epicurean Tradition. London: Routledge, 1980.
Jones, Richard Foster. Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the
Scientific Movement in Seventeenth-Century England. 1961. Reprint, New
York: Dover, 1982.
Jonge, H. J. de. De Bestudering van het Nieuwe Testament aan de
Noordnederlandse Universiteiten en het Remonstrants Seminarie van 1575
tot 1700. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandse Uitg. Mij., 1980.
________. Daniel Heinsius and the Textus Receptus of the New Testament: A
Study of his Contributions to the Editions of the Greek Testament Printed
by the Elzeviers at Leiden in 1624–1633. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971.
________. “Hugo Grotius: exégète du Nouveau Testament,” in The World of
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) (Amsterdam: APA, Holland University Press,
1984), pp. 97–115.
________. “The Study of the New Testament,” in Leiden University in the
Seventeenth Century, edited by Scheurleer and Posthumus Meyjes, pp. 64–
109.
Jorissen, Hans. “Zur Struktur des Traktates De Deo in der Summa theologiae
des Thomas von Aquin,” in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott, edited by
M. Boehnke and H. Heinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985), pp. 231–
 257.
Jourdain, Charles. La philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin. 2 vols. Paris:
Hachette, 1858.
Kaiser, Christopher B. The Doctrine of God: an Historical Survey.
Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1982.
Kantzer, Kenneth. “Calvin and the Holy Scriptures,” in Inspiration and
Interpretation, pp. 115–155.
Karpp, Heinrich. “Zur Geschichte der Bibel in der Kirche des 16. und 17.
Jahrhunderts,” in Theologische Rundschau, N.F., 40 (1983), pp. 128–155.
Katchen, Aaron L. Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis: Seventeenth
Century Apologetics and the Study of Maimonides’ “Mishneh Torah”.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Katz, David S. “Isaac Vossius and the English Biblical Critics,” in Scepticism
and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin and A. Vanderjagt, pp. 142–184.
Kautsch, Emil. Johannes Buxtorf der Ältere. Basel: Detloff, 1879.
Keane, Kevin P. “Why Creation: Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas on God
as Creative Good,” in The Downside Review, 93 (1975), pp. 100–121.
Keller, Rudolf. Der Schlüssel zur Schrift, Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes bei
Matthias Flacius Illyricus. Hannover: Luther Verlagshaus, 1984.
Kelley, Maurice, “Milton and the Trinity,” in Huntington Library Quarterly,
33 (1970), pp. 317–318.
________. “Milton’s Arianism Again Considered,” in Harvard Theological
Review, 54 (1961), pp. 195–205.
Kelly, Douglas F. “A Rehabilitation of Scholasticism? A Review Article on
Richard A. Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. I,
Prolegomena to Theology,” in Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology,
6/2 (1988), pp. 112–122.
Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.
Kelly, Matthew J. “Power in Aquinas,” in The Thomist, 43 (1979), pp. 474–
479.
Kendall, R. T. Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979.
Kennedy, Leonard A. “Divine Omnipotence and the Contingency of
Creatures, Oxford, 1330–1350 A.D.,” in The Modern Schoolman, 61
(1983/84), pp. 249–258.
________. “Early Fourteenth-Century Franciscans and Divine Absolute
Power,” in Franciscan Studies, 50 (1990), pp. 197–233.
Kennedy, Leonard A. and Romano, Margaret E. “John Went, O.F.M. and
Divine Omnipotence,” in Franciscan Studies, 47 (1987), pp. 138–170.
Kennedy, Rick. “The Alliance Between Puritanism and Cartesian Logic at
Harvard, 1687–1735,” Journal fo the History of Ideas, 51 (1990), pp. 549–
572.
Kevan, Ernest F. The Grace of Law: A Study of Puritan Theology. London:
Carey Kingsgate Press, 1963.
Kickel, Walter. Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Theodore Beza. Neukirchen:
Neukirchner Verlag, 1967.
Kiecker, James George. “The Hermeneutical Principles and Exegetical
Methods of Nicholas of Lyra, O. F. M. (ca. 1270–1349). Ph.D. diss.,
Marquette University, 1978.
Kirby, Ethyn W. “ ‘The Naked Truth’: a Plan for Church Unity,” in Church
History, 7 (1935), pp. 45–61.
Kirste, Reinhard. Das Zeugnis des Geistes und das Zeugnis der Schrift: das
testimonium spiritus sancti als hermeneutisch-polemischer Zentralbegriff
bei Johann Gerhard in der Auseinandersetzung mit Robert Bellarmins
Schriftverständnis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1976.
Klauber, Martin I. “Between Protestant Orthodoxy and Rationalism:
Fundamental Articles in the Early Career of Jean LeClerc,” in Journal of
the History of Ideas, 54 (1993), pp. 611–36.
________. Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism: Jean-
Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the
Academy of Geneva. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1994.
________. “Calvin on Fundamental Articles and Ecclesiastical Union,” in
Westminster Theological Journal, 54 (1992), pp. 341–48.
________. “The Context and Development of the Views of Jean-Alphonse
Turrettini (1671–1737) on Religious Authority.” Ph.D. diss., University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1987.
________. “Continuity and Discontinuity in Post-Reformation Reformed
Theology: An Evaluation of the Muller Thesis,” in Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society, 33 (1990), pp. 467–475.
________. “The Drive Toward Protestant Union in Early Eighteenth-Century
Geneva: Jean-Alphonse Turretini on the ‘Fundamental Articles’ of Faith,”
 in Church History, 61 (1992), pp. 334–349.
________. “The Eclipse of Scholasticism in Eighteenth-Century Geneva:
Natural Theology from Jean-Alphonse Turretin to Jacob Vernet,” in The
Identity of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, edited by
John B. Roney and Martin I. Klauber, pp. 129–42.
________. “Family Loyalty and Theological Transition in Post-Reformation
Geneva: the Case of Bénédict Pictet (1655–1724),” in Fides et Historia,
24/1 (1992), pp. 54–67.
________. “Francis Turretin on Biblical Accommodation: Loyal Calvinist or
Reformed Scholastic?” in Westminster Theological Journal, 55 (1993), pp.
73–86.
________. “The Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675): An Introduction and
Translation,” in Trinity Journal, 11 (Spring 1990), pp. 103–123.
________. “Jean-Alphonse Turrettini and the Abrogation of the Formula
Consensus in Geneva,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 53 (1991), pp.
325–338.
________. Jean-Alphonse Turrettini (1671–1737) on Natural Theology: The
Triumph of Reason over Revelation at the Academy of Geneva,” Scottish
Journal of Theology, 47/3 (1994) pp. 301–325.
________. “Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism: Louis Tronchin and
Enlightened Orthodoxy in Late Seventeenth-Century Geneva,” in Church
History, 59 (1990), pp. 326–339.
________. “Reformed Orthodoxy in Transition: Bénédict Pictet (1655–1724)
and Enlightened Orthodoxy in Post-Reformation Geneva,” in Later
Calvinism, edited by W. Fred Graham, pp. 93–113.
________. “Theological Transition in Geneva from Jean-Alphonse Turretin to
Jacob Vernet,” in Reformed Scholasticism, edited by C. Trueman and R.
Clark, pp. 256–70.
________. “The Use of Philosophy in the Theology of Johannes Maccovius
(1578–1644),” in Calvin Theological Journal, 30 (1995) pp. 376–391.
Klauber, Martin I., and Glenn S. Sunshine. “Jean-Alphonse Turrettini on
Biblical Accommodation: Calvinist or Socinian?” in Calvin Theological
Journal, 25 (1990), pp. 7–27.
Klein, Joseph. Der Gottesbegriff des Johannes Duns Scotus. Paderborn:
Schöningh, 1913.
Klinck, Dennis R. “Vestigia Trinitatis in Man and His Works in the English
 Renaissance,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (1981), pp. 13–27.
Klug, Eugene F. From Luther to Chemnitz; on Scripture and the Word. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.
Kluge, Eike-Henner. “Roscellin and the Medieval Problem of Universals,” in
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 16 (1976), pp. 404–414.
Knapp, Henry M. “Understanding the Mind of God: John Owen and
Seventeenth-century Exegetical Methodology.” Ph. D. diss., Calvin
Theological Seminary, 2002.
Knappen, Marshall. Tudor Puritanism: A Chapter in the History of Idealism.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1939.
Knebel, Sven K. “Leibniz, Middle Knowledge and the Intricacies of World
Design,” in Studia Leibnitiana, 28 (1996), pp. 199–200.
________. “Scientia Media. Ein diskursarchäologisher Leitfaden durch das
17. Jahrhundert,” in Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 34 (1991), pp. 262–94.
Knott, John Ray. The Sword of the Spirit: Puritan Responses to the Bible.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought. New York: Vintage
Books, 1962.
Koepf, Ulrich. Die Anfänge der theologischen Wissenschaftstheorie im 13.
Jahrhundert. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1974.
Kolb, Robert A. Luther’s Heirs Define His Legacy: Studies in Lutheran
Confessionalism. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate / Variorum, 1996.
________. Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero: Images of the
Reformer, 1520–1620. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1999.
________. “The Ordering of the Loci Communes Theologici: The Structuring
of the Melanchthonian Dogmatic Tradition,” in Concordia Journal, 23/4
(1997), pp. 317–37.
_____. “Teaching the Text: The Commonplace Method in Sixteenth Century
Lutheran Biblical Commentary,” in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et
Renaissance, 49 (1987), pp. 571–585.
Köhler, Walther. Ulrich Zwingli und die Reformation in der Schweiz.
Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1919.
________. “Zwingli als Theologe,” in Ulrich Zwingli: Zum Gedächtnis der
Zürcher Reformation, 1519–1919 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1919),
pp. 9–74.
Kooiman, Willem Jan. Luther and the Bible. Translated by John Schmidt.
Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961.
Kors, Alan Charles, “Scepticism and the Problem of Atheism in Early-
Modern France,” in Scepticism and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin and A.
Vanderjagt, pp. 185–215.
Köstlin, Julius. “Calvin’s Institutio nach Form und Inhalt, in ihrer
geschlichtlichen Entwicklung” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 41
(1868), pp. 7–62, 410–486.
________. The Theology of Luther in its Historical Development and Inner
Harmony. 2 vols. Translated by Charles E. Hay. Philadelphia: Lutheran
Publication Society, 1897. Reprint, St. Louis: Concordia, 1986.
Kot, Stanislaw. Socinianism in Poland; the social and political ideas of the
Polish Antitrinitarians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Translated by Earl Morse Wilbur. Boston, Starr King Press, 1957.
Kraus, Hans Joachim. “Calvin’s Exegetical Principles,” in Interpretation 31
(1977), pp. 329–341.
Krempel, A. La doctrine de la Trinité chez Saint Thomas: Exposé historique
et systematique. Paris: J. Vrin, 1952.
Krentz, Edgar. The Historical-Critical Method. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975.
Kretzmann, Norman, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleanore Stump, eds.
The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: Form the
Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100–1600.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “Augustine and the Early Renaissance,” in Studies in
Renaissance Thought and Letters, 2 vols. Rome, 1956–85), vol. 1, pp.
355–372.
________. “Humanism,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance
Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and E. Kessler, pp. 113–
137.
________. Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning. Edited by E. P.
Mahoney. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1974.
________. “Renaissance Humanism and Classical Antiquity,” in Renaissance
Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, edited by A. Rabil, vol. I,
pp. 5–16.
________. Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist
Strains. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
________. “Thomism and the Italian Thought of the Renaissance,” in
Medieval Aspects of Renaisssance Learning, pp. 29–91.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar and P. P. Wiener, eds. Renaissance Essays from the
Journal of the History of Ideas. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
Krivocheine, Basil. “Simplicité de la nature divine et les distinctions en Dieu
selon S. Grégoire de Nysse,” in Studia Patristica 16/2 (1985), pp. 389–
411.
________. “Simplicity of the Divine Nature and Distinctions in God,
according to St. Gregory of Nyssa,” in St. Vladimir’s Quarterly, 21 (1977),
pp. 76–104.
Kroner, Richard. Speculation and Revelation in the Age of Christian
Philosophy. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969.
Krook, Dorothea. John Sergeant and his Circle: A Study of Three
Seventeenth-Century English Aristotelians. Edited with an introduction by
Beverley C. Southgate. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Kropatscheck, Friedrich. Das Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche.
Geschichte und dogmatische Untersuchungen. I. Die vorgeschichte. Das
Erbe des Mittelalters. Leipzig: Deichert, 1904.
Krusche, Werner. Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957.
Kuizenga, Henry. “The Relation of God’s Grace to His Glory in John Calvin,”
in Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton, edited by
Franklin H. Littell (Richmond: John Knox, 1962), pp. 95–105.
Kümmel, Werner Georg. The New Testament: The History of the Investigation
of Its Problems. Translated by S. McLean Gilmour and Howard C. Kee.
Nashville: Abingdon, 1972.
Künzli, Edwin. “Quellenproblem und mystischer Schriftsinn in Zwinglis
Genesis- und Exoduskommentar,” Zwingliana 9 (1950–51): 185–207,
253–307.
________. “Zwingli als Ausleger des Alten Testament,” in Huldreich
Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, edited by Emil Egli, Georg Finsler, et al., 14
vols. (Zürich: Berichthaus, 1959), XIV, pp. 871–99.
Kurtz, J. H. Church History. Translated by John Macpherson. 3 vols. New
York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890.
Kürzinger, Josef. Alfonsus Vargas Tolentanus und seine theologishe
Einleitungslehre. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Scholastik in 14.
 Jahrhundert. Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des
Mittelalters, XXII/5, 6. Munich: Aschendorff, 1930.
Kusukawa, Sachiko. The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: the Case of
Philip Melanchthon. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1995.
Kuyper, Abraham. Johannes Maccovius. Leiden: D. Donner, 1899.
Kyle, Richard. “The Divine Attributes in John Knox’s Concept of God,” in
Westminster Theological Journal, 48/1 (1986), pp. 161–172.
________. “John Knox: The Main Themes of his Thought,” in The Princeton
Seminary Bulletin, 4/2 (1983), pp. 101–112.
Lagree, Jacqueline. “Leibnitz et Spinoza,” in Disguised and Overt Spinozism,
edited by W. Van Bunge, pp. 137–155.
Laistner, M. L. W. “Antiochene Exegesis in Western Europe During the
Middle Ages,” in Harvard Theological Review, 40 (1947), pp. 19–31.
Lampros, Dean George. “A New Set of Spectacles: The Assembly’s
Annotations, 1645–1657,” in Renaissance and Reformation, 19/4 (1995),
pp. 33–46.
Lane, A. N. S. Calvin and Bernard of Clairvaux. Princeton: Princeton
Theological Seminary, 1996.
________. “Calvin’s Use of the Fathers and the Medievals,” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 16 (1981), pp. 149–205.
________. “Did Calvin Use Lippoman’s Catena in Genesim?” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 31/2 (1996), pp. 404–19.
________. John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers. Grand Rapids: Baker
Books, 1999.
________. “Scripture, Tradition and Church: An Historical Survey,” in Vox
Evangelica, 9 (1975), pp. 37–55.
________. “The Sources of Calvin’s Citations in his Genesis Commentary,”
in Interpreting the Bible: Historical and Theological Studies in Honour of
David F. Wright, edited by A. N. S. Lane (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), pp.
47–97.
Lang, Albert. Heinrich Totting von Oyta: Ein Beitrag zur
Entstehungsgeschichte der ersten deutschen Universitäten und zur
Problemgeschichte der Spätscholastik. Münster: Aschendorff, 1937.
________. Die Loci theologici des Melchior Cano und die Methode des
 dogmatischen Beweises: Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Methodologie und
ihrer Geschichte. Münchener Studien zur historischen Theologie, 6.
Munich: Kösel & Pustet, 1925.
________. Die theologische Prinzipienlehre der mittelalterlichen Scholastik
Freiburg: Herder, 1964.
________. Die Wege der Glaubensbegründung bei den Scholastikern des 14.
Jahrhunderts. Münster: Aschendorff, 1930.
Lang, August. Puritanismus und Pietismus. Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag,
1941.
Langston, Douglas C. God’s Willing Knowledge: the Influence of Scotus’
Analysis of Omniscience. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State U.P.,
1986.
Laplanche, François. “Débats et combats autour de la Bible dans l’orthodoxie
réformée,” in Le Grand Siècle de la Bible, edited by Armogathe, pp. 117–
140.
________. L’Écriture, le sacré et l’historie: Érudits politiques protestants
devant la bible en France au XVIIe siècle. Amsterdam and Maarssen:
APA-Holland University Press / Lille: Presses Universitaires, 1986.
________. L’Évidence du dieu chrétien. Religion, culture et société dans
l’apologétique protestante de la France classique (1576–1670).
Strasbourg: Association des Publications de la Faculté de Théologie
Protestante, 1983.
La Serviére, Joseph de. La théologie de Bellarmin. Paris: Beauchesne, 1909.
Lau, F. “Orthodoxie, altprotestantische,” s.v. in Religion in Geschichte und
Gegenwart, dritte Auflage.
Laurent, François. La philosophie du XVIIIe siècle et le Christianisme. Paris,
1866. Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1972.
Lea, Thomas D. “The Hermeneutics of the Puritans,” in Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society, 39 (1996), pp. 271–284.
Le Bachelet, X. “Dieu. Sa nature d’après les pères,” in Dictionnaire de
théologie catholique, vol. 4/1, cols. 1023–1152.
________. “Baius, Michel,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 2/1,
col. 37–111.
Lebram, J. H. C. “Hebräische Studien zwischen Ideal and Wirklichkeit an der
Universität Leiden in den Jahren 1575–1619,” in Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 56 (1975), pp. 317–357.
Lebreton, Jules. History of the Dogma of the Trinity. Translated by A.
Thorold. New York and Chicago: Benziger: 1939.
Le Brun, Jacques. “Meaning and Scope of the Return to Origins in Richard
Simon’s Work,” in Trinity Journal, n.s. 3 (1982), pp. 57–70.
Lechner, Joan Marie. Renaissance Concepts of the Commonplace. New York:
Pageant Press, 1962.
Lecky, William Edward Hartpole. History of the Rise and Influence of the
Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. 2 vols. Rev. ed. London: Longmans,
Green, 1910.
Lecler, Joseph. “Littéralisme bibligue et typologie au XVIe siècle,” in
Recherches de Science Religieuse, 51 (1953), pp. 76–95.
________. “Protestantisme et ‘libre examen’: Les étapes et le vocabulaire
d’une controverse,” in Recherches de science religieuse, 57 (1969), pp.
321–374.
Leeuwen, A. van. “L’Église, règle de foi, dans les écrits de Guillaume
d’Occam,” in Ephemerides theologicae lovaniensis, 11 (1934), pp. 249–
288.
Leeuwen, Henry G. van. The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630–
1690. Pref. by Richard H. Popkin. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1963.
Leff, Gordon. Bradwardine and the Pelagians: A Study of His “De causa
Dei” and its Opponents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
________. The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on the
Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century. New York:
New York University Press, 1976.
________. Gregory of Rimini: Tradition and Innovation in Fourteenth
Century Thought. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1961.
________. Medieval Thought: St. Augustine to Ockham. Baltimore: Penguin,
1958.
________. William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975.
Le Guillou, Marie J. “Le Dieu de Saint Thomas,” in Il pensiero di Tommaso
d’Aquino, edited by A. Lobato (Rome: Herder, 1974), pp. 161–171.
Lehmann, Paul L. “The Reformers’ Use of the Bible,” in Theology Today, vol.
3 (October, 1946), pp. 328–344.
Leijenhorst, Cees. “Hobbes’s Theory of Causality and its Aristotelian
 Background,” in The Monist, 79 (July, 1996), pp. 426–447.
Leijssen, L. “Martin Bucer und Thomas von Aquin,” in Ephemerides
Theologiae Lovaniensis, 55 (1979), pp. 266–296.
Leinsle, Ulrich G. Das Ding und die Methode. Methodische Konstitution und
Gegenstand der frühen protestantischen Metaphysik. 2 vols. Augsburg:
Maro Verlag, 1985.
________. Einführung in die scholastische Theologie. Paderborn: Schöningh,
1995.
Leith. John. Assembly at Westminster: Reformed Theology in the Making.
Richmond: John Knox, 1973.
Leithart, Peter J. “Stoic Elements in Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life,”
in Westminster Theological Journal, 55/1 (1993), pp. 31–54; 55/ 2 (1993),
pp. 191–208; 56/1 (1994), pp. 59–85.
Lemaigre, B. M. “Perfection de Dieu et multiplicité des attributs divins.
Pourquoi S. Thomas a-t-il inséré la dispute des attributs divins (I Sent., d.
2, q. 1, a. 3) dans son commentaire des Sentences,” in Revue des sciences
philosophiques et théologiques, 50 (1966), pp. 198–277.
Lennon, Thomas M., John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis. Problems of
Cartesianism. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
1982.
Letham, Robert W. A. “Amandus Polanus: A Neglected Theologian?” in
Sixteenth Century Journal, 21/3 (1990), pp. 463–476.
________. “The Foedus Operum: Some Factors Accounting for its
Development,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 14 (1983), pp. 457–467.
________. “Saving Faith and Assurance in Reformed Theology: Zwingli to
the Synod of Dort.” 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., University of Aberdeen, 1979.
________. “Theodore Beza: A Reassessment,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 40 (1987), pp. 25–40.
Levi, A. H. T. “The Breakdown of Scholasticism and the Significance of
Evangelical Humanism,” in Philosophical Assessment of Theology, edited
by Gerard Hughes, pp. 101–128.
________, ed. Humanism in France. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1970.
Lewalski, Barbara K. Protestant Poetics and Seventeenth-Century Religious
Lyric. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Lewalter, Ernst. Spanisch-jesuitisch und deutsch-lutherische Metaphysik des
17. Jahrhunderts. Hamburg, 1935. Reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1968.
Leyden, W. von. Seventeenth Century Metaphysics: An Examination of Some
Main Concepts and Theories. London: Duckworth, 1968.
Lienhard, Marc. “Les Controverses entre Luthériens et Catholiques à
Strasbourg entre 1682 et 1688,” in Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du
Protestantisme français, 132 (1986), pp. 132–237.
Lim, Won Taek. The Covenant Theology of Francis Roberts. Ph. D. diss.,
Calvin Theological Seminary, 1999.
Lindbeck, George. “Nominalism and the Problem of Meaning as Illustrated
by Pierre D’Ailly on Predestination and Justification,” in Harvard
Theological Review, 52 (1959), pp. 43–60.
Linde, S. van der. “Gereformeerde Scholastiek IV: Calvijn,” in Theologia
Reformata, 29 (1986), pp. 244–266.
________. “Het ‘Griekse’ Denken in Kerk, Theologie en Geloofspraktijk: Een
eerste Inleiding,” in Theologia Reformata, 28 (1985), pp. 248–268. [The
first article in a series on Reformed theology and scholasticism,
“Gereformeerde Scholastiek,” by van der Linde, van ’t Spijker, and
Graafland, all cited here by author.]
Liston, R. T. L. “John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God.” Ph.D.
diss., University of Edinburgh, 1930.
Lloyd, G. E. R. Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Locher, Gottfried W. Die Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis im Lichte seiner
Christologie, I, Die Gotteslehre. Zürich: EVZ Verlag, 1952.
Lods, Adolphe. “Astruc et la critique biblique de son temps,” in Revue
d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 4 (1924), pp. 109–139, 201–227.
Loemker, Leroy E. “Leibniz and the Herborn Encyclopedists,” in Journal of
the History of Ideas, 22 (1961), pp. 323–338.
________. Struggle for Synthesis: The Seventeenth Century Background of
Leibniz’s Synthesis of Order and Freedom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1972.
Loewe, Raphael J. “The Medieval Christian Hebraists of England: The
Superscriptio Lincolniensis,” in Hebrew Union College Annual, 28 (1957),
pp. 205–252.
________. “The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,” in Cambridge
History of the Bible, II, pp. 102–154.
Loewenich, Walter von. Luther’s Theology of the Cross. Translated by W.
Bouman. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976.
Lohr, Charles H. “Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-Century Metaphysics,”
in Paradosis: Studies in Memory of Edwin A. Quain, edited by G. Fletcher
and M. B. Schuete (New York: Fordham University press, 1976), pp. 203–
220.
________. “Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries,” in Traditio, 23 (1967),
pp. 313–413; 24 (1968), pp. 149–245; 26 (1970), pp. 135–216; 27 (1971),
pp. 251–351; 28 (1972), pp. 281–396; 29 (1973), pp. 93–197.
________. “Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance
Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and E. Kessler, pp. 537–
638.
________. “Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries,” in Studies in the
Renaissance, 21 (1974), pp. 228–289; Renaissance Quarterly, 28 (1975),
pp. 689–741; 29 (1976), pp. 714–745; 30 (1977), pp. 532–603; 31 (1978),
pp. 532–603; 32 (1979), pp. 529–580; 33 (1980), pp. 623–734; 35 (1982),
pp. 164–256.
Loonstra, Bert. “De leer van God en Christus in de Nadere Reformatie,” in
Th. Brienen, et al. Theologische Aspecten van de Nadere Reformatie
(Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1993), pp. 99–150.
Lortz, Josef. The Reformation in Germany. 2 vols. Translated by Ronald
Walls. London and New York: Herder & Herder, 1968.
Lotz, David W. “Sola Scriptura: Luther on Authority,” in Interpretation, 35
(1981), pp. 258–273.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1936.
Lund, Roger D., ed. The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and
Cultural Response, 1660–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995.
The Lutheran Cyclopedia. Rev. ed. Edited by Erwin L. Lucker. St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1975.
Lütgert, Wilhelm. “Calvins Lehre vom Schöpfer,” in Zeitschrift für
systematische Theologie, 1931, pp. 421–440.
MacClintock, Stuart. Perversity and Error, Studies on the “Averroist” John of
 Jandun. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1956.
Mack, Peter. Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of
Rhetoric and Dialectic Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Mahieu, Léon. “L’eclectisme Suarézien,” in Revue Thomiste, VIII (1925), pp.
250–285.
________. François Suárez: sa philosophie et les rapports qu’elle a avec sa
théologie. Paris: Desclée, de Brouwer, 1921.
Mahoney, Edward P. “Albert the Great and the Studio patavino in the late
Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” in Albertus Magnus and the
Sciences: Commemorative Essays, 1980, edited by J. A. Weisheipl
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1979), pp. 537–563.
________. “Aristotle as ‘The Worst Philosopher’ (pessimus naturalis) and
‘The Worst Metaphysician’ (pessimus metaphysicus): His Reputation
among Some Franciscan Philosophers (Bonaventure, Francis of
Meyronnes, Antonius Andreas, and Joannes Canonicus) and Later
Reactions,” in Die Philosophie im 14. Und 15. Jahrhundert: In Memoriam
Konstanty Michalski (1879–1947), edited by Olaf Pluta (Amsterdam:
Grüner, 1988), pp. 261–273.
________. “Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According
to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers,” in Philosophies of
Existence, Ancient and Modern, edited by Parviz Morewedge (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1982), pp. 165–257.
________. “St. Thomas and the School of Padua at the End of the Fifteenth
Century,” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association, 48 (1974), pp. 277–285.
Maieru, Alfonso. “À propos de la doctrine de la supposition en théologie
trinitaire au XIVe siècle,” in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics, edited
by E. Bos (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985), pp. 221–238.
________. “Logique et théologie trinitaire: Pierre D’Ailly,” in Preuve et
raisons, edited by Z. Kaluza and P. Vignaux (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984), pp.
253–268.
Malet, Nicole. Dieu selon Calvin: des mots à la doctrine. Lausanne: Editions
L’Age d’homme, 1977.
Mallard, William. “John Wyclif and the Tradition of Biblical Authority,” in
Church History, 30/1 (March, 1961), pp. 50–60.
Mandonnet, Pierre. “Bañez, Dominique,” in Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique, vol. 2/1, col. 140–145.
________. “Chronologie des écrits scriptuaires de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in
Revue Thomiste. 33 (1928), pp. 25–45, 116–166, 211–245; 34 (1929), pp.
53–66, 132–145, 489–519.
________. “Dominicains (Travaux des) sur les Saintes Écritures,” in
Dictionnaire de la Bible, 2/2, cols. 1463–1482.
________. “L’Enseignement de la Bible selon l’usage de Paris,” in Revue
Thomiste, NS 12 (1929), pp. 489–519.
Mangenot, Eugène. “Allégoires bibliques,” in Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique, 1/1, cols. 833–836.
________. “Concordances,” in Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 2/1, cols. 892–
905.
________. “Correctoires de La Bible,” in Dictionnaire de la Bible, vol. 2/1,
cols. 1022–1026.
________. “Hugues de St Cher,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol.
7/1, cols. 221–239
________. “Inspiration de l’Écriture,” in Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique, vol. 7/2, cols. 2068–2266.
________, and Rivière, J. “Interprétation de l’Écriture,” in Dictionnaire de
théologie catholique, vol. 7/2, cols. 2290–2343.
Mann, William. “Divine Simplicity,” in Religious Studies, 21 (1982), pp.
451–471.
________. “Simplicity and Immutability in God,” in The Concept of God,
edited by Thomas V. Morris (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987), pp. 253–267.
Manschreck, Clyde. Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer. New York and
Nashville: Abingdon, 1958.
________. “Reason and Conversion in the Thought of Melanchthon,” in
Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of R. H. Bainton, edited by Franklin
H. Littell (Richmond: John Knox, 1962), pp. 168–180.
Margerie, Bertrand de. The Christian Trinity in History. Translated by
Edmund J. Fortman. Still River, Mass.: St. Bede’s, 1975.
Margival, Henri. Essai sur Richard Simon et la critique biblique en 17e siècle.
Paris, 1900. Reprint, Geneva: Slatkine, 1970.
Marion, Jean-Luc. “The Idea of God,” in Cambridge History of Seventeenth-
Century Philosophy, edited by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, vol. I,
 pp. 265–304.
Masai, François. “L’enseignement d’Aristote dans les collèges du XVIe
siècle,” in Platon et Aristote à la Renaissance, pp. 147–154.
Massaut, Jean-Pierre, “Lefèvre d’Etaples et l’exģèse au XVIe siècle,” in
Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 78 (1983), pp. 73–78.
Masson, David. The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. 7 vols. 1877–96.
Reprint, New York, Peter Smith,1946.
Masson, Françoise. “Scolastique,” in Encyclopédie philosophique universelle,
II/2, pp. 2328–9.
Maurer, Armand. “Boetius of Dacia and the Double Truth,” in Medieval
Studies, 17 (1955), pp. 233–239.
________. “John of Jandun and the Divine Causality,” in Medieval Studies,
17 (1955), pp. 185–207.
________. Medieval Philosophy. New York: Random House, 1962.
________. The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of its
Principles. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999.
Maurer, Armand, ed. St. Thomas Aquinas “On Being Essence.” Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968.
McComish, William A. The Epigones: A Study of the Theology of the
Genevan Academy at the Time of the Synod of Dort, with special reference
to Giovanni Diodati. Allison Rark, Pa.: Pickwick Publications, 1989.
McCosh, James. “Introduction to Charnock’s Works,” in The Complete Works
of Stephen Charnock, B.D., 5 vols. (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864), I, pp.
vii–xlviii
McCoy, Charles S. “The Covenant Theology of Johannes Cocceius,” Ph.D.
diss., Yale University, 1956.
________. “Johannes Cocceius: Federal Theologian,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, XVI (1963), pp. 352–370.
McCoy, Charles S., and J. Wayne Baker. Fountainhead of Federalism:
Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition. Louisville, KY:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991.
McCulloh, Gerald O., ed. Man’s Faith and Freedom: The Theological
Influence of Jacobus Arminius. New York and Nashville: Abingdon, 1962.
McDonald, H. D. Theories of Revelation: An Historical Study, 1700–1860.
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979.
McGahagan, Thomas Arthur. “Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 1639–1676;
the New Science and the Calvinist Counter-Reformation.” Ph.D. diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1976.
McGiffert, A. C. Protestant Thought Before Kant. London, 1911. Reprint,
 New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
McGiffert, Michael. “Grace and Works: the Rise and Division of Covenant
Divinity in Elizabethan Puritanism,” in Harvard Theological Review, 75/4
(1982), pp. 463–502.
________. “From Moses to Adam: the Making of the Covenant of Works,” in
Sixteenth Century Journal, 19/2 (1988), pp. 131–155.
McGowan, Andrew T. B. “Federal Theology as a Theology of Grace,” in
Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology, 2 (1984), pp. 41–50.
McGrath, Alister E. “John Calvin and Late Medieval Thought. A Study in
Late Medieval influences upon Calvin’s Theological Development,” in
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 77 (1986), pp. 58–78.
________. The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1987.
________. A Life of John Calvin. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
________. Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological
Breakthrough. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985.
________. Reformation Thought: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.
________. “Reformation to Enlightenment,” in The Science of Theology,
edited by Paul Avis, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 158–160.
McKane, W. “Calvin as an Old Testament Commentator,” in Nederlands
Gereformeerde Teologiese Tydskrift, 25 (1984), pp. 250–259.
McKeon, Richard. The Philosophy of Spinoza: The Unity of His Thought.
Woodbridge, Conn.: Ox Bow Press, 1987.
McKim, Donald K. “The Functions of Ramism in William Perkins’
Theology,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 16 (1985), pp. 503–517.
________. “John Owen’s Doctrine of Scripture in Historical Perspective,” in
The Evangelical Quarterly, 45/4 (Oct.–Dec. 1973), pp. 195–207.
________. Ramism in William Perkins’ Theology. New York and Bern: Peter
Lang, 1987.
________. “William Perkins’ Use of Ramism as an Exegetical Tool,” in
William Perkins, A Cloud of Faithful Witnesses: Commentary on Hebrews
11, edited by Gerald T. Sheppard, Pilgrim Classic Commentaries, vol. 3
(New York: Pilgrim Press, 1990), pp. 32–45.
McLachlan, Herbert J. Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England. London:
Oxford University Press, 1951.
McLelland, Joseph C., ed. Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform.
Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980.
________. “Peter Martyr Vermigli: Scholastic or Humanist?” in Peter Martyr
Vermigli and Italian Reform, edited by J. McLelland, pp. 141–151.
McNally, Robert E. The Bible in the Early Middle Ages. Woodstock Papers, 4.
Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1959.
________. “Christian Tradition and the Early Middle Ages,” in Perspectives
on Scripture and Tradition, edited by Joseph F. Kelly, pp. 37–59.
________. “The Council of Trent and Vernacular Bibles,” in Theological
Studies, 27 (1966), pp. 204–207.
________. “Medieval Exegesis,” in Theological Studies, 22 (1961), pp. 445–
454.
________. “Tradition at the Beginning of the Reformation,” in Perspectives
on Scripture and Tradition, edited by Joseph F. Kelly, pp. 60–83.
McNeill, John T. The History and Character of Calvinism. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1954.
________. “History of the Interpretation of the Bible: II. Medieval and
Reformation Period,” in The Interpreters Bible, 12 vols. (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1951–1957), Vol. I, pp. 115–126. [See also Grant, Robert M.
and Terrien, Samuel.]
________. “The Significance of the Word of God for Calvin,” Church
History, 28/2 (June 1959), pp. 131–146.
Meeter, H. Henry. The Fundamental Principle of Calvinism. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1930.
Meijering, E. P. “The Fathers in Calvinist Orthodoxy: Systematic Theology,”
in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, edited by I. Backus, II,
pp. 867–88.
________. Reformierte Scholastik und patristische Theologie: die Bedeutung
des Vaterbeweises in der Institutio theologiae elencticae F. Turretins: unter
besonderer Berucksichtigung der Gotteslehre und Christologie.
Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1991.
Menges, Matthew C. The Concept of Univocity regarding the Predication of
God and Creature according to William Ockham. St. Bonaventure, New
York: Franciscan Institute, 1952.
Merrill, Eugene H. “Rashi, Nicholas de Lyra and Christian Exegesis,” in
Westminster Theological Journal, 38 (1975/76), pp. 66–79.
Mersch, E. “L’objet de la théologie et le ‘Christus totus’,” in Recherches de
science religieuse, 26 (1936), pp. 129–157.
Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission,
Corruption, and Restoration. 3rd ed., enlarged. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Mews, Constant J. “Nominalism and Theology before Abelard: New Light on
Roscellin of Compiègne,” in Vivarium, 30 (1992), pp. 4–33.
Meyer, Carl S. “Erasmus on the Study of the Scriptures,” in Concordia
Theological Monthly, 40 (1969), pp. 734–746.
Meylan, Edward F. “The Stoic Doctrine of Indifferent Things and the
Conception of Christian Liberty in Calvin’ s Institutio Religionis
Christianae,” in Romanic Review 28 (1937), pp. 135–145.
Michel, A. “Essence,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 5/1, cols.
831–850.
________. “Noms divins,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 11/1,
cols. 784–793.
________. “Processions divines,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,
vol. 13/1, cols. 645–662.
________. “Relations divines,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol.
13/2, cols. 2135–2156.
________. “Trinité. La théologie latine du VI au XX siècle,” in Dictionnaire
de théologie catholique, vol. 15/2, cols. 1702–1830.
Mildenberger, Friedrich. Theology of the Lutheran Confessions. Translated by
Erwin L. Lueker, edited by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress,
1986.
Minges, Parthenius. Der Gottesbegriff des Duns Scotus. Vienna, 1907.
________. Ioannis Duns Scoti Doctrina Philosophica et Theologica. 2 vols.
Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1930.
________. Das Verhältnis zwischen Glauben und Wissen, Theologie und
Philosophie nach D. Scotus. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1908.
Moldaenke, Günther. Schriftverständnis und Schriftdeutung im Zeitalter der
Reformation. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1936.
Moltmann, Jürgen. “Zur Bedeutung des Petrus Ramus für Philosophie und
Theologie in Calvinismus,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, LXVII
(1956–57), pp. 295–318.
Montgomery, John Warwick. “Sixtus of Siena and Roman Catholic Biblical
Scholarship in the Reformation Period,” in Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte, 55 (1964), pp. 214–233.
Moreall, John. “The Aseity of God in St. Anselm,” in Studia Theologica:
Scandinavian Journal of Theology, 36/1 (1982), pp. 37–46.
Moreau, Joseph. “De la concordance d’Aristote avec Platon,” in Platon et
Aristote à la Renaissance, pp. 45–58.
Moreau, Pierre-Francois “Le Stoicisme aux XVII et XVIII siecles: Calvin et
le Stoicisme,” in Cahiers de Philosophie Politique et Juridique (Caen:
Centre de publications de l’Universitae de Caen, 1994), pp. 11–23.
Muehlen, Karl Heinz. “Zur Gotteslehre M. Luthers auf dem Hintergrund der
mittelalterlichen Theologie,” in Zeitschrift der Luther-Gesellschaft, 59/2
(1988), pp. 53–68.
________. “Keckermann, Bartholomäus,” in RE, X, pp. 195–196.
Mueller, J. Theodore. “Luther and the Bible,” in Inspiration and
Interpretation, pp. 87–114.
Müller, E. F. Karl. Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche. In
authentischen Texten mit geschichtlicher Einleitung und Register. Leipzig:
Deichert, 1903.
Müller, Johannes. Martin Bucers Hermeneutik. Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1965.
Muller, Richard A. Ad fontes argumentorum: The Sources of Reformed
Theology in the 17th Century. Belle van Zuylenleerstoel Inaugural
Address, delivered 11 May, 1999, Universiteit Utrecht. Utrechtse
Theologische Reeks, deel 40. Utrecht: Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid, 1999.
________. After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological
Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
________. “Arminius and the Scholastic Tradition,” in Calvin Theological
Journal, vol. 24, no.2 (November 1989), pp. 263–277.
________. “The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A
Response to T. F. Torrance,” in The Thomist, 54/4 (October 1990), pp.
673–704.
________. “Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: The View
From the Middle Ages,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the
Reformation, edited by Muller and Thompson pp. 3–22.
________. Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in
Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins. Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth
 Press, 1986. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988.
________. “Christ in the Eschaton: Calvin and Moltmann on the Duration of
the Munus Regium,” in The Harvard Theological Review, 74/1 (1981), pp.
31–59.
________. “Christ—the Revelation or the Revealer? Brunner and Reformed
Orthodoxy on the Doctrine of the Word of God,” in Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society, vol. 26/3 (Sept. 1983), pp. 307–319.
________. “The Christological Problem in the Thought of Jacobus
Arminius,” in Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, vol. 68 (1988),
pp. 145–163.
________. Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn
Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1985.
________. “The Dogmatic Function of St. Thomas’ Proofs: a Protestant
Appreciation,” in Fides et Historia, XXIV (1992), pp. 15–29.
________. “Duplex cognitio Dei in the Theology of Early Reformed
Orthodoxy,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, X/2 (1979), pp. 51–61.
________. “The Federal Motif in Remonstrant Theology from Arminius to
Limborch,” in Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 62/1 (1982), pp.
102–122.
________. “Found (No Thanks to Theodore Beza): One ‘Decretal’ Theology,”
in Calvin Theological Journal, 32/1 (April, 1997), pp. 145–51.
________. “The Foundation of Calvin’s Theology: Scripture as Revealing
God’s Word,” in The Duke Divinity School Review, 44/1 (1979), pp. 14–
23.
________. God, Creation and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius:
Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early
Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991.
________. “God, Predestination, and the Integrity of the Created Order: A
Note on Patterns in Arminius’ Theology,” in Later Calvinism, edited by W.
Fred Graham, pp. 431–446.
________. “Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice: Arminius’s Gambit and
the Reformed Response,” in The Grace of God and the Bondage of the
Will, edited by Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware, vol. II, pp. 251–78.
________. “The Hermeneutic of Promise and Fulfillment in Calvin’s
Exegesis of the Old Testament Prophecies of the Kingdom,” in The Bible
 in the Sixteenth Century, edited, with an introduction by David C.
Steinmetz (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990). pp. 68–82.
________. “J. J. Rambach and the Dogmatics of Scholastic Pietism,” in
Consensus: A Canadian Lutheran Journal of Theology, 16/2 (1990), pp. 7–
27.
________. “John Gill and the Reformed Tradition: A Study in the Reception
of Protestant Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Life and
Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation, edited
by Michael A. G. Haykin (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 51–68.
________. “Joseph Hall—Rhetor, Theologian, and Exegete: His Contribution
to the History of Interpretation,” in Joseph Hall, Salomons Divine Arts,
edited by Gerald T. Sheppard, Pilgrim Classic Commentaries, vol. 4 (New
York: Pilgrim Press, 1992), pp. 11–37.
________. “‘The Only Way of Man’s Salvation’: Scripture in the Westminster
Confession,” in Calvin Studies VIII: The Westminster Confession in
Current Thought, papers presented at the Colloquium on Calvin Studies
(Davidson College, January 26–27, 1996), pp. 14–33.
________. “Ordo docendi: Melanchthon and the Organization of Calvin’s
Institutes, 1536–1543,” in Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence
beyond Wittenberg, edited by Karin Maag (Grand Rapids: Baker Book
House, 1999), pp. 123–140.
________. “Perkins’ A Golden Chaine: Predestinarian System or Schematized
Ordo Salutis?” in Sixteenth Century Journal, IX/1 (1978), pp. 69–81.
________. “The Problem of Protestant Scholasticism—A Review and
Definition,” in Reformation and Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt
and E. Dekker, pp. 45–64.
________. “Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the
Object and Principles of Theology,” in Church History, 55/2 (1986), pp.
193–205.
________. “The Spirit and the Covenant: John Gill’s Critique of the Pactum
Salutis,” in Foundations: A Baptist Journal of History and Theology, 24/1
(January–March, 1981), pp. 4–14.
________. “The Starting Point of Calvin’s Theology: An Essay-Review,” in
Calvin Theological Journal, 36/2 (2001), pp. 314–341.
________. “Theodore Beza: His Life, Work, and Contribution to the
Reformed Tradition,” in The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to
Theology in the Early Modern Period, edited by Carter Lindberg (Oxford:
 Blackwell, 2001), pp. 213–224.
________. The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Formation of a
Theological Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
________. “The Use and Abuse of a Document: Beza’s Tabula
praedestinationis, the Bolsec Controversy, and the Origins of Reformed
Orthodoxy,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reappraisal, edited by
Carl Trueman and Scott Clark (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999), pp. 33–
61.
________. “William Perkins and the Protestant Exegetical Tradition:
Interpretation, Style and Method in the Commentary on Hebrews 11,” in
William Perkins, A Cloud of Faithful Witnesses: Commentary on Hebrews
11, edited by Gerald T. Sheppard, Pilgrim Classic Commentaries, vol. 3
(New York: Pilgrim Press, 1990), pp. 71–94.
Muller, Richard A., and John L. Thompson. Biblical Interpretation in the Era
of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C. Steinmetz in Honor of
His Sixtieth Birthday. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
Muller, Richard A., and John L. Thompson, “The Significance of Precritical
Exegesis: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of
the Reformation, edited by Muller and Thompson, pp. 335–45.
Murphy, J. L. The Notion of Tradition in John Driedo. Milwaukee: Bruce,
1959.
Murray, Michael V. “The Theory of Distinctions in the Metaphysics of
Francis Suárez” Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1944.
Nachbar, Bernard A. “Ideality and Reality in the Proofs of God’s Existence,”
in San Bonaventura Maestro, edited by Alphonso Pompei, vol. II, pp. 41–
48.
Nadler, Steven, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Nash, Ronald H. The Concept of God: An Exploration of Contemporary
Difficulties with the Attributes of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983.
Nauert, Charles G., Jr. “The Clash of Humanists and Scholastics: An
Approach to Pre-Reformation Controversies,” in The Sixteenth Century
Journal, 4 (1973), pp. 1–18.
Nauta, D. et al. Biografisch Lexicon voor de gescheidenis van het
Nederlandse protestantisme. 5 vols. to date. Kampen: J. Kok, 1978-.
Neal, Daniel. The History of the Puritans, or Protestant Nonconformists; from
 the Reformation in 1517, to the Revolution in 1688. 2 vols. New York:
Harper, 1844.
Neander, Johann August Wilhelm. Lectures on the History of Christian
Dogmas. Translated by John Ryland. 2 vols. London: Bohn, 1858.
Neele, Adriaan Cornelis. A Study of Divine Spirituality, Simplicity, and
Immutability in Petrus van Mastricht’s Doctrine of God. Th.M. thesis:
Calvin Theological Seminary, 2002.
Nellen, H. J. M., and E. Rabbie, eds. Hugo Grotius Theologian: Essays in
Honour of G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994.
Neuner, J., and J. Dupuis, eds. The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal
Documents of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1976.
Neuser, W. H., ed. Calvinus Ecclesiae Doctor. Die Referate des
Internationalen Kongresses für Calvinforschung vom 25 bis 28 September
1978 in Amsterdam. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1978.
_________, ed. Calvinus Ecclesiae Genevensis Custos. Die Referate des
Internationalen Kongresses für Calvinforschung. Vom 6 bis 9 September
1982 in Genf. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984.
_________, ed. Calvinus Servus Christi. Die Referate des Internationalen
Kongresses für Calvinforschung vom 25 bis 28 August 1986 in Debrecen.
Budapest: Presseabteilung des Ráday Kollegiums, 1988.
_________, ed. Calvinus Theologus. Die Referate des Internationalen
Kongresses für Calvinforschung vom 16 bis 19 September 1974 in
Amsterdam. Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1976.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Edited by William J. McDonald, et al. 15
vols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Edited by
Samuel Macauley Jackson, et al. 12 vols. New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1908–14. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1952.
Niesel, Wilhelm. The Theology of Calvin. Translated by Harold Knight.
London: Lutterworth, 1956. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1980.
Niemeyer, H. A., ed. Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis
publicatarum. 2 parts. Leipzig: J. Klinkhardt, 1840.
Niewöhner, Friedrich and Olaf Pluta, eds. Atheismus im Mittelalter und in der
Renaissance. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999.
Nineham, Dennis E., ed. The Church’s Use of the Bible Past and Present.
 London: S. P. C. K., 1963.
Nobbs, Douglas. Theocracy and Toleration: a Study of the Disputes in Dutch
Calvinism from 1600 to 1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1938.
Noble, T. A. “Our Knowledge of God According to John Calvin,” in The
Evangelical Quarterly, 54 (1982), pp. 2–13.
Normore, Calvin G. “Scholasticism,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy, edited by R. Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), pp. 716–17
Nuovo, Victor Lawrence. “Calvin’s Theology: A Study of its Sources in
Classical Antiquity.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1964.
Nuttall, Geoffrey F. The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience. Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1946.
Oakley, Francis. “Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century Theology.” Journal of the History of Ideas, 59
(1998), pp. 437–461.
________. Omnipotence, Covenant, & Order: an Excursion in the History of
Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz. Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1984.
________. “Pierre D’Ailly and the Absolute Power of God: Another Note on
the Theology of Nominalism,” in Harvard Theological Review, 56 (1963),
pp. 59–73.
Oberman, Heiko A. Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine: A Fourteenth-century
Augustinian. A Study of his Theology in its Historical Context. Utrecht:
Kemink en Zoon, 1957.
________. The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early
Reformation Thought. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986.
________. “Facientibus Quod in se est Deus non Denegat Gratiam: Robert
Holcot O.P. and the Beginnings of Luther’s Theology,” in The Reformation
in Medieval Perspective, edited by Stephen Ozment, pp. 119–141.
________. Forerunners of the Reformation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1966.
________. “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” in
Speculum, 53 (1987), pp. 80–93; also in Dawn of the Reformation, pp. 1–
17.
________. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late
 Medieval Nominalism. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.
________. Masters of the Reformation: Emergence of a New Intellectual
Climate in Europe. Translated by Dennis Martin. Cambridge University
Press, 1981.
________. The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications. Translated by Andrew
C. Gow. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.
________. “The Shape of Late Medieval Thought: the Birthpangs of the
Modern Era,” in The Pursuit of Holiness, edited by Trinkaus and Oberman,
pp. 3–25; also in Dawn of the Reformation, pp. 18–38.
________. “Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism with Attention to Its
Relation to the Renaissance,” in Harvard Theological Review, 53 (1960),
pp. 47–76.
________. “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to
Early Reformation Thought,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, edited by Hudson
and Wilks, pp. 445–63.
Oberman, Heiko A., and Thomas Brady, eds. Itinerarium Italicum: The
Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of its European
Transformations. Leiden: Brill, 1975.
O’Connor, Edward D. “The Scientific Character of Theology According to
Scotus,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. III,
pp. 3–50.
Oehler, K. “Rationalismus. I. Philosophisch,” s.v. in Religion in Geschichte
und Gegenwart, dritte Auflage,
Olivier, Paul. “Études historiques sur le probléme de Dieu,” in Recherches de
Science Religieuses, 67 (1979), pp. 125–144.
O’Mahony, James E. The Desire for God in the Philosophy of St Thomas
Aquinas. Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1929.
O’Malley, John W. “Erasmus and Luther, Continuity and Discontinuity as
Key to their Conflict,” in The Sixteenth Century Journal, 5/2 (1974), pp.
47–65.
________. “A Note on Gregory of Rimini: Church, Scripture, Tradition,” in
Augustinianum, (1965), pp. 365–378.
Ong, Walter J. Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of
Discourse to the Art of Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1958.
Oort, Johannes van. “John Calvin and the Church Fathers,” in The Reception
 of the Church Fathers in the West, edited by Irena Backus, vol. II, pp. 661–
700.
Oosterom, C. “Johannes Hoornbeeck als Zendingstheoloog,” in Theologia
Reformata, 13 (1970), 80–98.
Orr, Robert R. Reason and Authority in the Thought of William Chillingworth.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
Osler, Margaret J. Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and
Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
________. “Eternal Truths and the Laws of Nature: the Theological
Foundations of Descartes’ Philosophy of Nature,” in Journal of the History
of Ideas, 46 (1985), pp. 349–362.
Ostdiek, Antonellus G. Scotus and Fundamental Theology. Teutopolis: St.
Joseph Seminary, 1967.
Osterhaven, M. Eugene. “The Experimental Theology of Early Dutch
Calvinism,” in Reformed Review, 27 (1974), pp. 180–189.
Overfield, James H. Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984.
________. “A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair,” in Studies in Medieval and
Renaissance History, 8 (1971), pp. 165–207.
________. “Scholastic Opposition to Humanism in Pre-Reformation
Germany,” in Viator, 7 (1976), pp. 391–420.
Owens, Joseph. St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected
Papers of Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R. Edited by John R. Catan. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1980.
Ozment, Stephen. The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and
Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1980.
________. “Luther and the Late Middle Ages: The Formation of Reformation
Thought,” in Transition and Revolution: Problems and Issues of European
Renaissance and Reformation History, edited by Robert M. Kingdon,
(Minneapolis: Burgess, 1974), pp. 109–129.
Ozment, Stephen, ed. The Reformation in Medieval Perspective. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Packer, James I. “John Calvin and the Inerrancy of Holy Scripture,” in
Inerrancy and the Church, edited by John D. Hannah, pp. 143–188.
Pailin, David A. “Herbert of Cherbury and the Deists,” in Expository Times,
94 (1983), pp. 33–42.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Theology and the Philosophy of Science. Translated by
R. McDonagh. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.
Parker, T. H. L. Calvin: An Introduction to His Thought. Louisville:
Westminster/John Knox, 1995.
________. Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1971.
________. Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1986.
________. “Calvin the Exegete: Change and Development,” in Calvinus
Ecclesiae Doctor, Die Referate des Internationalen Kongresses für
Calvinforschung vom 25 bis 28 September 1978 in Amsterdam, edited by
W. H. Neuser (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1978), pp. 33–46.
________. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God: A Study in Calvin’s
Theology. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959.
Partee, Charles. Calvin and Classical Philosophy. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977.
Pascoe, Louis B. “The Council of Trent and Bible Study: Humanism and
Scripture,” in Catholic Historical Review, 52 (1966–67), pp. 18–38.
Patterson, Robert L. The Conception of God in the Philosophy of Aquinas.
London: Allen & Unwin, 1933.
Paulus, J. Henri de Gand: Essai sur les tendances de sa métaphysique. Paris:
J. Vrin, 1938.
Payne, John B. “Erasmus and Lefèvre d’Étaples as Interpreters of Paul,” in
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 65 (1974), pp. 54–83.
________. “Erasmus: Interpreter of Romans,” in Sixteenth Century Studies
and Essays II, edited by Carl S. Meyer, (St Louis: Foundation for
Reformation Research, 1971), pp. 1–35.
________. “Toward the Hermeneutics of Erasmus,” in Scrinium
Erasminianum: Mélanges historiques, edited by Joseph Coppens, 2 vols.
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 13–49.
Pegis, Anton. “The Bonaventurean Way to God,” in Medieval Studies, 29
(1967), pp. 206–242.
________. “Four Medieval Ways to God,” in Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 317–
358.
________. “Molina and Human Liberty,” in Jesuit Thinkers of the
Renaissance, edited by Gerald Smith, pp. 75–131.
________. “Toward a New Way to God: Henry of Ghent,” in Medieval
Studies, 30 (1968), pp. 226–247; 31 (1969), pp. 93–116.
Pégues, T. M. “Theologie Thomiste d’après Capraeolus: De la voie rationelle
que nous conduite à Dieu,” in Revue Thomiste, vol. 8 (1900), pp. 288–
309.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of
Doctrine. 5 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971–1989.
________. Luther the Expositor: Luther’s Works Companion Volume. St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959.
Pernoud, M. A. “The Theory of the Potentia Dei according to Aquinas,
Scotus and Ockham,” in Antonianum, 47 (1972), pp. 69–95.
Perrottet, Luc. “Chapter 9 of the Epistle to the Hebrews as Presented in an
Unpublished Course of Lectures by Theodore Beza,” in Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14/1 (1984), pp. 89–96.
Persson, Per Erik. Sacra Doctrina: Reason and Revelation in Aquinas.
Translated by R. Mackenzie. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970.
Pesch, Otto Hermann. The God Question in Thomas Aquinas and Martin
Luther. Translated by Gottfried Kroedel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972.
Pestalozzi, Carl. Heinrich Bullinger: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften. Nach
handschriftlichen und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld: Friedrichs, 1858.
Peter, J. F. “The Place of Tradition in Reformed Theology,” in Scottish
Journal of Theology, 18 (1965), pp. 294–307.
Petersen, Peter. Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im
protestantischen Deutschland. Leipzig, 1921. Reprint, Stuttgart: F.
Frommann, 1964.
Peyer, Etienne de. “Calvin’s Doctrine of Divine Providence,” in Evangelical
Quarterly, 10 (1938), pp. 30–44.
Pfeiffer, R. History of Classical Scholarship from 1300 to 1850. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976.
Pfizenmaier, Thomas C. The Trinitarian Theology of Dr. Samuel Clarke
(1675–1729): Context, Sources, and Controversy. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1997.
________. “Was Isaac Newton an Arian?” in Journal of the History of Ideas,
 58 (1997), pp. 57–80.
Phillips, R. P. Modern Thomistic Philosophy: An Explanation for Students. 2
vols. New York: Newman Press, 1959.
Phillips, Timothy R. “The Dissolution of Francis Turretin’s Vision of
Theologia: Geneva at the End of the Seventeenth Century,” in The Identity
of Geneva: The Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864, edited by John B.
Roney and Martin I. Klauber, pp. 77–92.
________. “Francis Turretin’s Idea of Theology and Its Impact upon His
Doctrine of Scripture.” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1986.
Picavet, François. Roscelin, philosophie et théologien. Paris: Alcan, 1911.
Pinard, H. “Création,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 3/2, col.
2034–2201.
Pitassi, Maria-Cristina. “Un manuscrit genevois du XVIIIe siécle: la
‘Refutation du système de Spinosa par Mr. Turrettini,’ ” in Nederlands
Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 68 (1988), pp. 180–212.
Platon et Aristote à la Renaissance. XVIe Colloque International de Tours.
Paris: J. Vrin, 1976.
Platt, John. “The Denial of the Innate Idea of God in Dutch Remonstrant
Theology from Episcopius to Limborch,” in Protestant Scholasticism,
edited by C. Trueman and R. Clark, pp. 213–226.
________. Reformed Thought and Scholasticism: The Arguments for the
Existence of God in Dutch Theology, 1575–1650. Leiden: Brill, 1982.
Plantinga, Alvin. Does God Have a Nature? Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1980.
Plantinga, Cornelius, Jr. “Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the
Trinity,” in The Thomist, 50/3 (July 1986), pp. 325–352.
________. “The Threeness/Oneness Problem of the Trinity,” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 23/1 (April 1988), pp. 37–53.
Ploeg, J. van der. “The Place of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St.
Thomas,” in The Thomist, 10 (1947), pp. 398–422.
Poel, M. G. M. van der. Cornelius Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian and His
Declamations. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Pollet, J. V. “L’image de Zwingli dans l’historiographie contemporaine,” in
Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 130 (1984),
pp. 435–469.
Pompei, Alphonso. San Bonaventura Maestro di Vita Francescana e di
Sapienza Cristiana. 3 vols. Rome: Pontifica Facolta Teologica San
Bonaventura, 1976.
Poole, Reginald Lane. Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and
Learning. 2nd ed. London: S. P. C. K., 1920.
Pope, Hugh. “Article on the Scholastic View of Inspiration,” in Irish
Theological Quarterly (July, 1911).
________. “St. Thomas as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture,” in St. Thomas
Aquinas, edited by Aelred Whitacre (Oxford: Blackwell, 1925), pp. 111–
144.
________. St. Thomas as Interpreter of Scripture. Manchester: University of
Manchester Press, 1924.
Popkin, Richard H. “Cartesianism and Biblical Criticism,” in T. Lennon et al.,
Problems of Cartesianism, pp. 61–81.
________. “The Development of Religious Scepticism and the Influence of
Isaac La Peyrère’s Pre-Adamism and Bible Criticism,” in Classical
Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500–1700, edited by R. R. Bolgar
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 271–280.
________. The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. 2nd ed.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
________. “Introduction: Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries,” in Scepticism and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin
and A. Vanderjagt, pp. 1–11.
________. “The Religious Background of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy,”
in The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought, edited by Popkin, pp.
268–84.
________. “Theories of Knowledge,” in The Cambridge History of
Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and E. Kessler,
pp. 668–684.
Popkin, Richard H., ed. Millenarianism and Massianism in English Literature
and Thought, 1650–1800. Leiden: Brill, 1988.
________, ed. The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1992.
Popkin, Richard H., and Arjo Vanderjagt, eds. Scepticism and Irreligion in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
Posset, Franz. “John Bugenhagen and the Comma Johanneum,” in Concordia
 Theological Quarterly, 49 (1985), pp. 245–251.
Postema, Gerald J. “Calvin’s Alleged Rejection of Natural Theology,” in
Scottish Journal of Theology, (1971), pp. 423–434.
Prenter, Regin. Luther’s Theology of the Cross. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg,
1971.
Prentice, Robert. “The Evolution of Scotus’ Doctrine of the Unity and Unicity
of the Supreme Nature,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C.
Balic, vol. II, pp. 377–408.
Prestige, G. L. God in Patristic Thought. 2nd ed. London: S.P.C.K., 1952.
Preus, James S. From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from
Augustine to the Young Luther. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1969.
________. “Old Testament Promissio and Luther’s New Hermeneutic,” in
Harvard Theological Review, 60 (1967), pp. 145–161.
Preus, Robert D. “Biblical Authority in the Lutheran Confessions,” in
Concordia Journal, 4 (1978), pp. 16–24.
________. The Inspiration of Scripture: a Study of the Theology of the
Seventeenth Century Lutheran Dogmaticians. Edinburgh: Oliver and
Boyd, 1955.
________. “Luther and Biblical Infallibility,” in Inerrancy and the Church,
edited by John D. Hannah, pp. 99–142.
________. The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism. 2 vols. St. Louis:
Concordia, 1970–72.
________. “The View of the Bible held by the Church: the Early Church
through Luther,” in Inerrancy, edited by N. Geisler, pp. 357–382.
Puckett, David L. John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.
Pünjer, Bernhard. History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion from the
Reformation to Kant. Translated by W. Hastie. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1887.
Quinn, Dennis. “John Donne’s Principles of Exegesis,” in Journal of English
and Germanic Philology, 61 (1962), pp. 313–329.
________. “John Donne’s Sermons on the Psalms and the Traditions of
Biblical Exegesis,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1958.
Rabaud, Edouard. Histoire de la doctrine de l’inspiration des Saintes
 Écritures dans les pays de langue française. Paris: Fischbacher, 1883.
Rabil, Albert Jr. Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian
Humanist. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1972.
________, ed. Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy. 3
vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Raedy, Gerard. The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in late
Seventeenth Century England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1985.
Raitt, Jill. “Calvin’s Use of Persona,” in Calvinus Ecclesiae Genevensis
Custos, pp. 273–87.
________. The Eucharistic Theology of Theodore Beza: Development of the
Reformed Doctrine. Chambersburg, PA: American Academy of Religion,
1972.
________. “The Person of the Mediator: Calvin’s Christology and Beza’s
Fidelity,” Occasional Papers of the Society for Reformation Research, I
(Dec., 1977), pp. 53–80.
Randall, John Herman. “The Development of Scientific Method in the School
of Padua,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1940), pp. 177–206.
________. The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual
Background of the Present Age. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton
Mifflin, 1940.
Randi, E. “Ockham, John XII and the Absolute Power of God,” in Franciscan
Studies, 46 (1986), pp. 205–216.
________. “A Scotist Way of Distinguishing between God’s Absolute and
Ordained Powers,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, edited by Hudson and
Wilks, pp. 43–50.
Raymond, P. “Duns Scot,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 4/2, cols.
1865–1947.
Realencyclopaedie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. 3rd ed. 24 vols.
Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich, 1896–1913.
Reardon, P. H. “Calvin on Providence: the Development of an Insight,” in
Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975), pp. 517–533.
Régnon, Théodore de. Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité. 5
vols. Paris: Retaux, 1892ff.
Rehnman, Sebastian. Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of
 John Owen. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2002.
________. “John Owen: A Reformed Scholastic at Oxford,” in Reformation
and Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 181–203.
________. Theologia Tradita: A Study in the Prolegomenous Discourse of
John Owen (1616–1683). Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1997.
Reid, James. Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of those Eminent Divines,
who Convened the Famous Assembly at Westminster in the Seventeenth
Century. 2 vols. Paisley: Stephen and Andrew Young, 1811–15. Reprint,
Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982.
Reid, J. K. S. The Authority of Scripture: a Study of Reformation and Post-
Reformation Understanding of the Bible. London: Methuen, 1962.
Reitsma, J. Geschiedenis van de Hervorming en de Hervormde Kerk der
Nederlanden. 4th ed. Utrecht: Kemink & Zoon, n.d.
Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart; Handwörterbuch für Theologie
und Religionswissenschaft. 3rd ed. Edited by H. Campenhausen, et al. 7
vols. übingen: Mohr, 1957–65.
Reu, Johan Michael. The Augsburg Confession: A Collection of Sources with
an Historical Introduction. Chicago: Wartburg, 1930. Reprint, St. Louis:
Concordia, 1983.
________. Luther and the Scriptures. Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press,
1944.
________. Luther’s German Bible. Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern,
1934.
Reulos, Michel. L’Enseignement d’Aristote dans les collèges au XVIe siècle,”
in Platon et Aristote à la Renaissance (Paris: Vrin, 1976), pp. 147–154.
Reuss, Edward. History of the Canon of the Holy Scriptures in the Christian
Church. Translated by David Hunter. Edinburgh: R. W. Hunter, 1891.
________. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament. 5th ed.
Translated by E. L. Houghton. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1884.
Reuter, Karl. Das Grundverständnis der Theologie Calvins. Neukirchen:
Neukirchner Verlag, 1963.
Reventlow, Henning Graf. The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the
Modern World. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.
________. “L’exégèse de Hugo Grotius,” in Le Grand Siècle de la Bible,
edited by Armogathe, pp. 141–155.
Rex, Walter. “Pierre Bayle, Louis Tronchin et la Querelle des Donatistes:
Étude d’un document inédit du XVIIe siècle,” in Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 105 (1959), pp. 97–121.
Reynolds, Stephen. “Calvin’s View of the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds,” in
Westminster Theological Journal, 23 (1960/61), pp. 33–57.
Rice, Eugene F. “Humanist Aristotelianism in France. Jacques Lefèvre
d’Étaples and his Circle,” in, Humanism in France, edited by Levi, pp.
132–149.
________. “The Renaissance Idea of Christian Antiquity: Humanist Patristic
Scholarship,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and
Legacy, edited by A. Rabil, vol. I, pp. 17–28.
Richard, Robert L. The Problem of an Apologetical Perspective in the
Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Rome: Gregorian University,
1963.
Riché, Pierre and Guy Lobrichon, eds. Le Moyen Age et le Bible. Vol. 4 of
Bible de tous les temps. Paris: Beauchesne, 1984.
Rilliet, Jean. Zwingli: Third Man of the Reformation. Translated by H.
Knight. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964.
Ritschl, Albrecht. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Edited by Otto Ritschl. Freiburg: J.
C. B. Mohr, 1893.
________. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Neue Folge. Edited by Otto Ritschl.
Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1896.
________. “Geschichtliche Studien zur christlichen Lehre von Gott,” in
Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, 10 (1865), pp. 277–318; 13 (1868), pp.
67–133, 251–302 [also in Gesammelte Aufsätze, Neue Folge, pp. 25–64;
65–127; 128–176.]
________. “Über die beiden Principien des Protestantismus,” in Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, 1 (1876), pp. 397–413. [Also in Gesammelte Aufsätze
(1893), pp. 243–247.]
Ritschl, Otto. Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus: Grundlagen und
Grundzüge der theologischen Gedanken- und Lehrbildung in den
protestantischen Kirchen. 4 vols. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1908–12.
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1926–27.
Rivière, J. “Les ‘capitula’ d’Abélard condamnés au concile de Sens,” in
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 5 (1933), pp. 5–8.
Robertson, J. M. A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern to the Period
 of the French Revolution. 2 vols. 4th rev. ed., 1936. Reprint, London:
Dawsons, 1969.
________. A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern (New York:
Russell & Russell, 1957.
Robinson, John F. “The Doctrine of Holy Scripture in Seventeenth Century
Reformed Theology.” Ph.D. diss., Strasbourg, 1971.
Rogers, Jack B. “The Church Doctrine of Biblical Authority,” in Biblical
Authority, edited by J. Rogers, pp. 15–46.
________. Scripture in the Westminster Confession: A Problem of Historical
Interpretation for American Presbyterianism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1967.
Rogers, Jack B., ed. Biblical Authority. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1977.
Rogers, Jack B., and Donald K. McKim. The Authority and Interpretation of
the Bible: an Historical Approach. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979.
Rogers, Katherin. “The Traditional Doctrine of Divine Simplicity,” in
Religious Studies, 32 (1996), pp. 165–86.
Rogerson, John, Christopher Rowland, and Barnabas Lindars. The Study and
Use of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988.
Rohls, Jan. Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen.
Translated by John Hoffmeyer, intro. by Jack Stotts. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
Rohnert, Wilhelm. Die Inspiration der heiligen Schrift und ihre Bestreiter.
Eine biblisch-dogmengeschichtliche Studie. Leipzig: Georg Böhme
Nachfolger, 1889.
Rolston, Holmes, III. John Calvin versus the Westminster Confession.
Richmond: John Knox, 1972.
________. “Responsible Man in Reformed Theology: Calvin Versus the
Westminster Confession,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 23 (1970), pp.
129–156.
Rooden, Peter T. van. Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies
in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648),
Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden. Translated by J. C. Grayson.
Leiden: Brill, 1989.
Roney, John B., and Martin I. Klauber, eds. The Identity of Geneva: The
Christian Commonwealth, 1564–1864. Foreword by Robert M. Kingdon.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Rossouw, H. W. “Calvin’s Hermeneutics of Holy Scripture,” in Calvinus
Reformator, pp. 149–180.
Roth, Cecil. “Edward Pococke and the First Hebrew Printing at Oxford,” in
Bodleian Library Record, II/27 (1948), pp. 215–19.
Rotondo, Antonio. Calvin and the Italian Anti-Trinitarians. Translated by
John and Anne Tedeschi. Reformation Essays and Studies, 2. St. Louis:
Foundation for Reformation Research, 1968.
Roussel, Bernard. “Histoire de l’Eglise et histoire de l’exégèse en XVIe
siècle,” in Bibliotheque d’humanisme et renaissance, 37 (1975), pp. 181–
192.
________. “De Strasbourg à Bâle et Zurich: une ‘école rhénane’ d’exégèse
(ca. 1525–ca. 1540),” in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 68
(1988), pp. 19–39.
Rousselot, Pierre. The Intellectualism of St. Thomas. London: Sheed and
Ward, 1924.
Rudavsky, Tamar, ed. Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval
Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives. Dordrecht:
Riedel, 1985.
Ruler, J. A. van. The Crisis of Causality: Voetius and Descartes on God,
Nature, and Change. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.
________. “Franco Petri Burgersdijk and the Case of Calvinism Within the
Neo-Scholastic Tradition,” in Franco Burgersdijk, edited by Bos and Krop,
pp. 37–65.
________ “New Philosophy to Old Standards: Voetius’ Vindication of Divine
Concurrence and Secondary Causality,” in Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 71 (1991), pp. 58–91.
Rumrich, John Peter. “Milton’s Concept of Substance,” in English Language
Notes, 19 (1982), pp. 218–233.
Runia, Klaas. “The Hermeneutics of the Reformers,” in Calvin Theological
Journal, 19 (1984), pp. 121–152.
Rupp, E. Gordon. “The Bible in the Age of the Reformation,” in Church’s Use
of the Bible, edited by D. Nineham, pp. 73–87.
________. “Word and Spirit in the Early Years of the Reformation,” in Archiv
für Reformationsgeschichte, 49 (1958), pp. 13–26.
Saak, E. L. “Scholasticism, Late,” s.v. in Augustine Through the Ages, edited
by Allan D. Fitzgerald, pp. 754–759.
Sabean, David. “The Theological Rationalism of Moïse Amyraut,” in Archiv
für Reformationsgeschichte, 55 (1964), pp. 204–215.
Saintes, Amand. A Critical History of Rationalism in Germany from its Origin
to the Present Time. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1849.
Saisset, Émile. “Doctrine philosophique et religieuse de Michel Servet,” in
Revue des deux mondes, 21/4 (1848), pp. 586–618.
________. “Le procès et la mort de Michel Servet,” in Revue des deux
mondes, 21/5 (1848), pp. 818–848.
Sanchez-Blanco, Francisco. Michael Servets Kritik an der Trinitätslehre:
philos. Implicationen u. histor. Auswirkungen. Frankfurt: Lang, 1977.
Sandys-Wunsch, John. “Spinoza—The First Biblical Theologian,” in
Zeitschrift für dir alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 93 (1981), pp. 327–341.
Sandys-Wunsch, John, and Laurence Eldredge. “J. P. Gabler and the
Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology: Translation,
Commentary and Discussion of His Originality,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 33 (1980), pp. 133–158.
Sasse, Herman. “The Rise of the Dogma of Holy Scripture in the Middle
Ages,” in The Reformed Theological Review, 18/2 (June, 1959), pp. 45–
54.
Sassen, Ferdinand. Geschiedenis van de wijsbegeerte in Nederland tot het
einde der negentiende eeuw. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1959.
Saxolvá, Tereza, and Stanislav Sousedík, eds. Rodrigo de Arriaga (+1667):
Philosoph und Theolog. Prague: Univerzity Karlovy, 1998.
Schaaf, M. E. van der. “The Theology of Thomas Jackson (1579–1640): An
Anglican Alternative to Roman Catholicism, Puritanism and Calvinism.”
Ph.D. Diss., University of Iowa, 1979.
Scapin, Pietro. “Il significato fondamentale delle libertà divina secondo
Giovanni Duns Scoto,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C.
Balic, vol. II, pp. 519–566.
Schäfer, Rolf. “Melanchthons Hermeneutik im Römerbrief-Kommentar von
1532,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 60 (1963), pp. 216–235.
Schaff, Philip. The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes.
3 vols. 6th ed. New York: Scribner, 1931. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker
Book House, 1983.
________. History of the Christian Church. 8 vols. 3rd ed., revised. New
York: Scribners, 1907–1910. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.
________. “The Reformation and Rationalism,” in History of the Christian
Church, VII, pp. 26–42.
Scharlemann, Robert. Aquinas and Gerhard: Theological Controversy and
Construction in Medieval and Protestant Scholasticism. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964.
Scheel, Otto. Martin Luther: Vom Katholizismus zur Reformation. 2 vols.
Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921.
Schmaus, Michael. “Die Schrift und die Kirche nach Heinrich von Gent,” in
Kirche und Überlieferung, edited by J. Beta and H. Fries (Freiburg:
Herder, 1960), pp. 211–271
Schenkel, Daniel. “Ueber das Princip des Protestantismus. Ein
Antwortschreiben auf das Sendschreiben des Hrn. Prof. D. Hagenbach in
Basel,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1855, pp. 22–74.
Scheurleer, T. H. L., and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, ed., Leiden University
in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1975.
Schlingensiepen, H. “Erasmus als Exeget auf grund seiner Schriften zu
Matthäus,” in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 48 (1929), pp. 16–57.
Schmid, Heinrich. Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Translated by Charles E. Hay and Henry Jacobs. Minneapolis: Augsburg,
n.d.
Schmidt, Martin. “Zur Trinitätslehre der Frühscholastik: Versuch einer
problemgeschichtlichen Orientierung,” in Theologische Zeitschrift, 40
(1984), pp. 181–192.
Schmitt, Charles B. The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities.
London: Variorum Reprints, 1984.
________. Aristotle and the Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1983.
________. Cicero Scepticus: A Study of the Influence of the Academica in the
Renaissance. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1972.
________. A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Studies on Renaissance
Aristotelianism. Padua: Antenore, 1971.
________. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) and His
Critique of Aristotle. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1967.
________. “Introduction de la philosophie platonicienne dans l’enseignement
des universités à la renaissance,” in Platon et Aristote à la Renaissance
 (Paris: Vrin, 1976), pp. 93–104.
________. John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England. Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983.
________. “Perennial Philosophy: from Agostino Steuco to Leibniz,” in
Journal of the History of Ideas, 27 (1966), pp. 505–532.
________. “Reappraisals of Renaissance Science,” in History of Science, 16
(1978), pp. 200–214.
________. “The Rise of the Philosophical Textbook,” in The Cambridge
History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and
E. Kessler, pp. 792–804.
________. “Towards a Reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism,” in
History of Science, 11 (1973), pp. 159–173.
Schmitt, Charles B., and Brian Copenhaver. A History of Western Philosophy,
vol. 3: Renaissance Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Schmitt, Charles B., Quentin Skinner, and Eckhard Kessler, eds … The
Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Schneckenburger, Matthias. “Die reformirte Dogmatik mit Rückblick auf: Al.
Schweizer’s Glaubenslehre der evang.-reformirten Kirche,” in
Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1848, pp. 68–110, 600–631.
________. “Recension von Alexander Schweizer, Die Glaubenslehre der
evangelisch-reformirten Kirche …,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken,
1847, pp. 947–983.
________. Vergleichende Darstellung des lutherischen und reformirten
Lehrbegriffs. Edited by Edward Guder. 2 vols. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler,
1855.
Schnedermann, Georg. Die Contoverse des Ludovicus Cappellus mit den
Buxtorfen über das Alter der hebräishen Punctation: ein Beitrag zu der
Geschichte des Studiums der hebräishen Sprache. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs,
1879.
Schochet, Gordon. “Samuel Parker, religious diversity, and the ideology of
persecution,” in The Margins of Orthodoxy, edited by Roger D. Lund, pp.
119–148.
Scholder, Klaus. Ursprünge und Probleme der Bibelkritik im 17. Jahrhundert.
Forschungen zur Geschichte und Lehre des Protestantismus, X/33.
Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1966.
Schreiner, Susan E. “Exegesis and Double Justice in Calvin’s Sermons on
Job,” in Church History, 58 (1989), pp. 322–338.
________. The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the
Thought of John Calvin. Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1991.
________. “Through a Mirror Dimly: Calvin’s Sermons on Job,” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 21 (1986), pp. 175–193.
________. Where Shall Wisdom be Found? Calvin’s Exegesis of Job from
Medieval and Modern Perspectives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994.
Schreiner, Thomas R., and Bruce A. Ware. The Grace of God and the
Bondage of the Will. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995.
Schrenk, Gottlob. Gottesreich und bund im älteren Protestantismus
vornehmlich bei Johannes Coccejus: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte
des Pietismus und der heilsgeschichtlichen Theologie. Gütersloh:
Bertelsmann, 1923.
Schüssler, Hermann. Der Primat der heiligen Schrift als theologisches und
kanonistisches Problem in Spätmittelalter. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1977.
Schwane, Joseph. Histoire des Dogmes. Trs A. Degert. 5 vols. Paris:
Beauschesne, 1906.
Schwartz, K. A. von. “Die theologische Hermeneutik des M. Flacius
Illyricus,” in Lutherjahrbuch, 1933, pp. 143.
Schwarz, W. Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some
Reformation Controversies and their Background. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1955.
Schweibert, E. G. Luther and His Times: The Reformation from a New
Perspective. St. Louis: Concordia, 1950.
Schweizer, Alexander. “Die Entwickelung des Moralsystems in der
reformirten Kirche,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1850, pp. 5–78,
288–327, 554–580.
________. Die Glaubenslehre der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche dargestellt
und aus den Quellen belegt. 2 vols. Zurich: Orell, Füssli und Comp.,
1844–47.
________. Die protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung
innerhalb der reformierten Kirche. 2 vols. Zurich: Orell, Füssli und Comp.,
1854–56.
Scorraille, Raoul de. François Suárez de la Compagnie de Jésus, d’après ses
lettres, ses autres écrits inédits et un grand nombre des documents
nouveaux. 2 vols. Paris: Lethielleux, 1912.
Secretan, Philibert. “À propos de Dieu de Leibniz,” in Freiburger Zeitschrift
für Philosophie und Theologie,” 27 (1980), pp. 24–35.
Seeberg, Reinhold. Revelation and Inspiration. London and New York:
Harper, 1909.
________. Text-book of the History of Doctrines. Translated by Charles E.
Hay. 2 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977.
________. Die Theologie des Johannes Duns Scotus. Eine
dogmengeschichtliche untersuchung. Leipzig: Dieterich, 1900.
Seidl, Horst. “The Concept of Person in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in The
Thomist, 51 (1987), pp. 435–460.
Sepp, Christiaan. Het Godgeleerd onderwijs in Nederland gedurende de 16e
en 17e eeuw. 2 vols. Leiden: De Breuk en Smits, 1873–74.
Seybold, Michel, et al. Offenbarung von der Schrift bis zum Ausgang der
Scholastik. Freiburg: Herder, 1971.
Shepherd, Norman. “Zanchius on Saving Faith,” in Westminster Theological
Journal, 36 (1973), pp. 31–47.
Sheppard, Gerald T., “Between Reformation and Modern Commentary: The
Perception of the Scope of Biblical Books,” in William Perkins, A
Commentary on Galatians, edited by Sheppard, pp. 42–66.
________. “William Perkins’ Exposition Among Seventeenth-Century
Commentaries, 1600–1645,” in William Perkins, A Commentary on
Galatians, edited by Sheppard, pp. 1–7.
Shim, Jai Sung. Biblical Hermeneutics and Hebraism in the Early
Seventeenth-Century as Reflected in the Work of John Weemse (1579–
1636). Ph. D. diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 1998.
Shmueli, Efraim. “Thomas Aquinas’ Influence on Spinoza’s Concept of
Attributes,” in Journal of Religious Studies, 6–7 (1978/79), pp. 61–72.
Shuger, Debora K. Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English
Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Siebrand, Heine J. Spinoza and the Netherlanders: An Inquiry into the Early
Reception of His Philosophy of Religion. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988.
Sileo, Leonardo, ed. Via Scoti: Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns
 Scoti: atti del congresso Scotistico Internazionale, Roma, 9–11 marzo
1993. Rome: Antonianum, 1995.
Singer, Charles. A Short History of Scientific Ideas to 1900. London: Oxford
University Press, 1959.
Sinnema, Donald W. “Antoine De Chandieu’s Call for a Scholastic Reformed
Theology (1580),” in Later Calvinism, edited by W. Fred Graham, pp.
159–190.
________. “Aristotle and Early Reformed Orthodoxy: Moments of
Accommodation and Antithesis,” in Christianity and the Classics: The
Acceptance of a Heritage, edited by Wendy Helleman (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1990), pp. 119–148.
________. “The Distinction between Scholastic and Popular: Andreas
Hyperius and Reformed Scholasticism,” in Protestant Scholasticism:
Essays in Reassessment, edited by C. Trueman and R. Clark, pp. 125–143.
________. “The Issue of Reprobation at the Synod of Dort (1618–19) in the
Light of the History of this Doctrine,” Ph.D. diss., University of St.
Michael’s College, Toronto, 1985.
________. “Reformed Scholasticism and the Synod of Dort (1618–19),” in
John Calvin’s Institutes: His Opus Magnum, edited by B. J. van der Walt
(Potcheftstroom: Institute for Reformational Studies, 1986), pp. 467–506.
Sleigh, Robert, Vere Chappell, and Michael Della Rocca. “Determinism and
Human Freedom,” in Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century
Philosophy, edited by D. Garber and Ayers, vol. II, pp. 1195–1278.
Sliedregt, Cornelis van. Calvijns opvolger Theodorus Beza, zijn
verkiezingsleer en zijn belijdenis van de drieënige God. Leiden: Groen,
1996.
Smalley, Beryl. “The Bible in the Medieval Schools,” in Cambridge History
of the Bible, II, pp. 197–220.
________. “The Bible in the Middle Ages,” in Church’s Use of the Bible,
edited by D. Nineham, pp. 57–71.
________. English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1960.
________. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1964.
Smid, T. D. “Beza en Nederland,” in Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 46 (1963–65), pp. 169–191.
________. “Bibliographische Opmerkingen over de Explicationes
Catecheticae van Zacharias Ursinus,” in Gereformeerd Theologisch
Tijdschrift, 41 (1940), pp. 228–243.
Smith, Gerard, ed. Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance. Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1939.
Solé, Jacques. “Rationalisme chrétien et foi réformée à Genève autour de
1700: les derniers sermons de Louis Tronchin,” in Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 128 (1982), pp. 29–43.
Sorell, Tom, ed. The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tension between the
New and Traditional Philosophies from Machiavelli to Leibnitz. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993.
Sousedík, Stanislav, “Arriagas Universalienlehre,” in Rodrigo de Arriaga,
edited by Saxolvá and Sousedík, pp. 41–49.
Spence, Alan. “John Owen and Trinitarian Agency,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 43 (1990), pp. 157–73.
Spencer, Stephen. “Reformed Scholasticism in Medieval Perspective: Thomas
Aquinas and François Turrettini on Incarnation.” Ph.D. diss., Michigan
State University, 1988.
Spicq, Ceslaus. Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen âge.
Paris: J. Vrin, 1944.
________. “Pourquoi le Moyen Age n’a-t-il pas practiqué davantage
l’exégèse littérale,” in Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques,
30 (1941–42), pp. 169–179.
________. “Saint Thomas d’Aquin: VI. Saint Thomas d’Aquin exégète,” in
Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 15/1, cols. 694–738.
Spijker, Willem van ’t “Gereformeerde Scholastiek II: Scholastiek, Erasmus,
Luther, Melanchthon,” Theologia Reformata, 29 (1986), pp. 7–27.
________. “Gereformeerde Scholastiek III: Zwingli en Bucer,” Theologia
Reformata, 29 (1986), pp. 136–160.
________. Principe, methode en functie van de theologie bij Andreas
Hyperius. Apeldoornse Studies, 26. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1990.
________. “Reformatie tussen patristiek en scholastiek: Bucers theologische
positie,” in De kerkvaders in Reformatie en Nadere Reformatie, edited by
J. van Oort (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1997), pp. 45–66.
________. “Reformation and Scholasticism,” in Reformation and
Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 84–85.
Spitz, Lewis W. “Humanism and the Protestant Reformation,” in Renaissance
Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, edited by A. Rabil, vol. III,
pp. 380–411. [also in Luther and German Humanism]
________. Luther and German Humanism. Brookfield, Vt.:
Ashgate/Variorum, 1996.
________. The Reformation: Education and History. Brookfield, Vt.:
Ashgate/Variorum, 1997.
________. The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.
________. The Renaissance and Reformation Movements. Rev. ed. 2 vols. St.
Louis: Concordia, 1987.
Spitz, Lewis W., and Barbara Sher Tinsely. Johann Sturm on Education: The
Reformation and Humanist Learning. St. Louis: Concordia, 1995.
Sprunger, Keith L. “Ames, Ramus, and the Method of Puritan Theology,” in
Harvard Theological Review, 59 (1966), pp. 133–151.
________. The Learned Doctor William Ames. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1972.
________. “Technometria: A Prologue to Puritan Theology,” in Journal of the
History of Ideas, 29 (1968), pp. 115–122.
Staedke, Joachim. “Die Gotteslehre der Confessio Helvetica posterior,” in
Glauben und Bekennen: Vierhundert Jahre Confessio Helvetica Posterior,
Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte und Theologie, edited by J. Staedke (Zürich:
Zwingli Verlag, 1966), pp. 251–257.
Staehelin, Ernst. Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf. Basel: Helbing &
Lichtenhan, 1955.
Stalker, D. M. G. “John Weemse of Lathocker, One of Scotland’s Early
Hebraists,” in Scottish Church History Society Records, 5 (1944), pp. 151–
66.
Stange, Karl. “A. Ritschls Urteil über die beiden Principien des
Protestantismus,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken (1897), pp. 599–
621.
Stauffer, Richard. “Le calvinisme et les Universités,” in Bulletin de la Société
de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français, 126 (1980), pp. 27–51.
________. Dieu, la création et la Providence dans la prédication de Calvin.
Bern and Frankfurt: Lang, 1978.
________. Interprétes de la Bible: Études sur les réformateurs du XVIe
siécle. Paris: Beauchesne, 1980.
Stead, Christopher. “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy,” in The
Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick, edited by
Rowan D. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp.
255–269.
________. Divine Substance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Steenbakkers, Piet. “Johannes Braun (1628–1708), Cartesiaan in Groningen,”
in Nederlans Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 77/2 (1997), pp. 196–210.
Steenberghen, Fernand van. “Le problème de l’existence de Dieu dans la
‘Somme contre les gentils,’ ” in Mélanges á la memoire: C. de Konick,
edited by A. Gagne (Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1968), pp.
387–404.
________. “Le problème de l’existence de Dieu dans le commentaire de Saint
Thomas sur la ‘Physique’ d’Aristote,” in Sapientia, 21 (1971), pp. 163–
172.
________. “Le problème de l’existence de Dieu dans les questions disputées
‘De potentia Dei,’ ” in Pensiamento, 25 (1969), pp. 249–257.
________. Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1980.
Steinmetz, David C. “Calvin and the Absolute Power of God,” in Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, XVIII/1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 65–79.
________. Calvin in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
________. “John Calvin on Isaiah 6: A Problem in the History of Exegesis,”
in Interpretation, 36 (1982), pp. 156–170.
________. Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the
Protestant Reformation. Durham: Duke University Press, 1980.
________. Misericordia Dei: The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in its
Late Medieval Setting. Leiden: Brill, 1968.
________. “The Scholastic Calvin,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in
Reappraisal, edited by C. Trueman and R. Clark, pp. 16–30.
________. “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in Theology Today, 37
(1980), pp. 27–38.
________. “The Theology of Calvin and Calvinism,” in Reformation Europe:
A Guide to Research, edited by Steven Ozment (St. Louis: Center for
 Reformation Research, 1982.
Steinmetz, David C., ed. The Bible in the Sixteenth Century. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1990.
Steinmann, Jean. Richard Simon et les origines de l’exégèse biblique. Paris:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1960.
Stephen, Sir Leslie. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 2
vols. Preface by Crane Brinton. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1962.
Stephens, W. P. The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986.
Stoughton, John. History of Religion in England from the Opening of the
Long Parliament to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Rev. ed. 6 vols.
New York: Armstrong, 1882.
Strauss, Leo. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. New York: Schocken, 1982.
Strehle, Stephen. “Calvinism, Augustinianism, and the Will of God,” in
Theologische Zeitschrift, 48/2 (1992), pp. 221–237.
________. Calvinism, Federalism, and Scholasticism: A Study of the
Reformed Doctrine of Covenant. Bern: Peter Lang, 1988.
________. The Catholic Roots of the Protestant Gospel: Encounter Between
the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.
________. “The Extent of the Atonement and the Synod of Dort,” in
Westminster Theological Journal, 51 (1989), pp. 1–23.
________. “Fides aut Foedus: Wittenberg and Zurich in Conflict Over the
Gospel,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, 23/1 (1992), pp. 3–20.
________. “Universal Grace and Amyraldianism,” in Westminster
Theological Journal, 51 (1989), pp. 345–57.
Streveler, Paul A. “The Problem of Future Contingents,” in The New
Scholasticism, 47 (1973), pp. 233–247.
Strohl, Henri. “La méthode exégétique des Réformateurs,” in Le probléme
biblique dans le Protestantisme, edited by J. Boisset, (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1955), pp. 87–104.
Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzman. “Absolute Simplicity,” in Faith and
Philosophy, 2 (1985), pp. 353–82.
Sweeney, Leo. “Divine Infinity, 1150–1250,” in the The Modern Schoolman,
35 (1957–58), pp. 38–51.
________. Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought. New York: Peter
Lang, 1992.
________. “Divine Infinity in the Writings of Thomas Aquinas,” Ph.D. diss.,
University of Toronto, 1954.
________. “Lombard, Augustine and Infinity,” in Manuscripta, 9 (1958), pp.
24–40.
________. “Some Medieval Opponents of Divine Infinity,” in Medieval
Studies, 19 (1957), pp. 233–245.
Sweeney, Leo, and Charles Ermatinger. “Divine Infinity according to Robert
Fishacre,” in The Modern Schoolman, 35 (1957–58), pp. 191–235.
Sykes, Norman. “The Religion of Protestants,” in Cambridge History of the
Bible, III, pp. 175–198.
Synave, Paul. “Le canon scriptuaire de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in Revue
Biblique, 33 (1924), pp. 522–533.
________. “Les commentaires scriptuaires de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in La
Vie Spirituelle, 8 (1923), pp. 455–469.
________. “La doctrine de saint Thomas D’Aquin sur le sens littéral des
Ecritures,” in Revue biblique, 35 (1926), pp. 40–65.
Tavard. George H. Holy Writ or Holy Church: the Crisis of the Protestant
Reformation. London: Burns and Oates, 1959.
________. “Tradition in Early Post-Tridentine Theology,” in Theological
Studies, 23 (1962), pp. 377–405.
Terrien, Samuel. “History of the Interpretation of the Bible: III. Modern
Period,” in The Interpreters Bible, 12 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1951–
1957), Vol. I, pp. 127–141. [see also: Grant, Robert M. and McNeill, John
T.]
Thijssen-Schoute, Caroline Louise. “Le cartésianisme aux Pays-bas,” in E. J.
Dijksterhius, et al., Descartes eet le cartésianisme hollandais (Paris and
Amsterdam: Editions Françaises d’Amsterdam, 1950), pp. 239–59.
________. Nederlands cartesianisme (avec sommaire et tables des matières
en français). Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uit. Mij., 1954.
Thilly, Frank. A History of Philosophy. New York: Henry Holt, 1941.
Tholuck, Friedrich August. Vorgeschichte des Rationalismus. 4 vols. Halle: E.
Anton, 1853–62.
Thomas, Levian. “Ulrich of Strasburg: His Doctrine of Divine Ideas,” in The
 Modern Schoolman, 30 (1952), pp. 21–32.
Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture. New York: Vintage: 1942.
Todd, Henry John. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Brian
Walton, D.D., 2 vols. London: Rivington, 1821.
Tökés, István. “Bullingers hermeneutische Lehre,” in Heinrich Bullinger,
1504–1575: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum 400 Todestag, edited by Ulrich
Gäbler and Erland Herkenrath (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1975), pp.
161–189.
Tolley, William Pearson. The Idea of God in the Philosophy of St. Augustine.
New York: R. R. Smith, 1930.
Torrance, James B. “Strengths and Weaknesses of the Westminster
Theology,” in The Westminster Confession in the Church Today: Papers
Prepared for the Church of Scotland Panel on Doctrine, edited by Alasdair
Heron (Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1982), pp. 40–53.
Torrance, Thomas F. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Calvin Theological
Journal, 25/2 (November, 1990), pp. 165–193.
________. “The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition,” in
Reformed Review, 54/1 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 5–16.
________. “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Gregory of Nazianzen and John
Calvin,” in Calvin Studies V, edited by John H. Leith (Davidson, N.C.:
Davidson College, 1990), pp. 7–19; also printed in Sobornost, 12 (1990),
pp. 7–24.
________. The Hermeneutics of John Calvin. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic
Press, 1988.
________. “Intuitive and Abstractive Knowledge from Duns Scotus to
Calvin,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol.IV, pp.
291–305.
________. “Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy,” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 39 (1986), pp. 461–482.
________. “Knowledge of God and Speech about Him according to John
Calvin,” in Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids, Eerdamsn, 1966),
pp. 76–98.
________. “The Legacy of Karl Barth (1886–1986),” in Scottish Journal of
Theology, 39 (1986), pp. 289–308.
________. “La philosophie et la théologie de Jean Mair ou Maior (1469–
1550), in Archives Philosophiques, 33 (1970), pp. 261–294.
________. “Scientific Hermeneutics According to St. Thomas Aquinas,”
Journal of Theological Studies, 13 (1962), pp. 259–289.
Toussaint, C. “Aséité,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 1/2, cols.
2077–2080.
________. “Attributs divins,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 1/2,
col. 2223–2235.
Trapp, Damasus. “Augustinian Theology of the Fourteenth Century: Notes on
Editions, Marginalia, Opinions and Book-lore,” in Augustiniana, VI
(1956), 146–274.
Trechsel, Friedrich. Die protestantischen Antitrinitarier vor Faustus Socin:
Nach Quellen und Urkunden geschichtlich dargestellt. 2 vols. Heidelberg:
K. Winter, 1839–1844.
Trentman, John A. “Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century,” in The
Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by N.
Kretzmann, A. Kenny, and J. Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), pp. 818–837.
Trinkaus, Charles. “Erasmus, Augustine and the Nominalists,” in The Scope
of Renaissance Humanism, pp. 274–301.
________. In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian
Humanist Thought. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
________. “Italian Humanism and Scholastic Theology,” in Renaissance
Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, edited by A. Rabil, vol. III,
pp. 327–348.
________. “The Religious Thought of the Italian Humanists, and the
Reformers: Anticipation or Autonomy?” in The Pursuit of Holiness, edited
by Trinkaus and Oberman, pp. 339–366.
________. “Renaissance Problems in Calvin’s Theology,” in Studies in the
Renaissance, 1 (1954), pp. 59–80. [also in The Scope of Renaissance
Humanism, pp. 317–339]
________. Renaissance Transformations of Late Medieval Thought.
Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate/Variorum, 1999.
________. The Scope of Renaissance Humanism. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1983.
Trinkaus, Charles E., and Heiko A. Oberman, eds. The Pursuit of Holiness in
Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion. Leiden: Brill, 1974.
Troeltsch, Ernst. Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Johann Gerhard und
 Melanchthon. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1891.
Trueman, Carl R. The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology.
Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998.
________. “Faith Seeking Understanding: Some Neglected Aspects of John
Owen’s Understanding of Scriptural Interpretation,” in Interpreting the
Bible, edited by A. N. S. Lane (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), pp. 147–162.
________. “John Owen’s Dissertation on Divine Justice: An Exercise in
Christocentric Scholasticism,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 33 (1998),
pp. 87–103.
________. “Richard Baxter on Christian Unity: A Chapter in the Enlightening
of English Reformed Orthodoxy,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 61
(1999), pp. 53–71.
________. “A Small Step Toward Rationalism: The Impact of the
Metaphysics of Tommaso Campanella on the Theology of Richard
Baxter,” in Protestant Scholasticism, edited by C. Trueman and R. Clark,
pp. 147–164.
Trueman, Carl, and R. Scott Clark, eds. Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in
Reassessment. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999.
Tschackert, P. Die Entstehung der lutherischen und reformierten
Kirchenlehre. Göttingen, 1910.
________. Petrus von Ailli: Zur Geschichte des grossen abenländischen
schisma und der Reformconcilien von Pisa und Constanz. Gotha: Perthes,
1877.
Tukker, C. A. “Theologie en Scholastiek: De Synopsis Purioris Theologiae als
Theologisch Document (II),” in Theologia Reformata, 18 (1975), pp. 34–
49.
________. “Vier Leidse Hoogleraren in de Gouden Eeuw: De Synopsis
Purioris Theologiae als Theologisch Document (I),” in Theologia
Reformata, 17 (1974), pp. 236–250.
Tulloch, John. Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the
Seventeenth Century. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1872.
Tylenda, Joseph. “Calvin’s Understanding of the Communication of
Properties,” in Westminster Theological Journal, 38 (Fall 1975–Spring
1976).
________. “Christ the Mediator: Calvin versus Stancaro.” Calvin Theological
Journal, VII (1973), pp. 5–16, 131–57.
________. “Girolami Zanchi and John Calvin,” in Calvin Theological
Journal, X (1975), pp. 101–141.
________. “The Warning that Went Unheeded: John Calvin on Giorgio
Biandrata,” in Calvin Theological Journal, 12 (1977), pp. 24–62.
Urban, Percy Linwood. “The Will of God: A Study of the Origin and
Development of Nominalism and its Influence on the Reformation.” S.T.D.
diss., General Theological Seminary (NY), 1959.
Vansteenberghe, E. “Molina, Louis,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,
vol. 10/2, cols. 2090–2092.
________. “Molinisme,” s.v. in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol.
10/2, cols. 2094–2187.
Vasoli, Cesare. “Loci communes and the Rhetorical and Dialectical
Traditions,” in Peter Martyr Vermigli and Italian Reform, edited by Joseph
C. McLelland, pp. 17–28.
________. “The Renaissance Concept of Philosophy,” The Cambridge
History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and
E. Kessler, pp. 57–74.
Veldhuis, Henri. “Duns Scotus’ Theory of Synchronic Contingency in Lectura
I 39 and its Theological Implications,” in Via Scoti, edited by L. Sileo, pp.
571–76.
Venema, Cornelis P. “Heinrich Bullinger’s Correspondence on Calvin’s
Doctrine of Predestination, 1551–1553,” in Sixteenth Century Journal,
17/4 (1986), pp. 435–50.
________. “The ‘Twofold Knowledge of God’ and the Structure of Calvin’s
Theology,” in Mid-America Journal of Theology 4 (1988), pp. 156–82.
Verbeek, Theo. Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesianism
(1637–1650) Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series.
Carbondale Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992.
________. “Descartes and the Problem of Atheism: the Utrecht Crisis,” in
Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 71/2 (1991), pp. 211–223.
________. “From ‘Learned Ignorance’ to Scepticism: Descartes and Calvinist
Orthodoxy,” in Scepticism and Irreligion, edited by R. Popkin and A.
Vanderjagt, pp. 31–45.
________. La Querelle d’Utrecht. Texte établi et traduites avec une
introduction et notes par Theodorus Verbeek. Paris: Impressions
Nouvelles, 1988.
________. “Tradition and Novelty: Descartes and Some Cartesians,” in The
Rise of Modern Philosophy, edited by Tom Sorrel (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993), pp. 167–196.
Verhoef, Pieter A. “Luther and Calvin’s Exegetical Library,” in Calvin
Theological Journal, 3 (1968), pp. 5–20.
Vernet, F. “Lyon, Concile de,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, IX,
cols. 1379ff.
Vet, J. J. V. M. de. “Jean Leclerc, an Enlightened Propagandist of Grotius’ ‘De
Veritate Religionis Christianae,’ ” in Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 64 (1984), pp. 160–195.
Vignaux, Paul. “Etre et infini selon Duns Scot et Jean de Ripa,” in De
Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. IV, pp. 43–56.
________. Luther, Commentateur des Sentences. Paris: J. Vrin, 1935.
________. “Métaphysique de l’Exode, philosophie de la religion (à partir du
De Primo Principio selon Duns Scot),” in Rivista di Filosofia Neo-
scholastica, 70 (1978), pp. 135ff.
________. “Nominalisme,” s.v. in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol.
11/1, cols. 717–784.
________. Nominalisme au XIVe siècle. Montreal: Institute d’études
médiévales, 1948.
________. “Philosophie et théologie trinitaire chez Jean de Ripa,” in Archives
Philosophique, 41 (1978), pp. 221–236.
________. “Processus in infinitum et preuve de Dieu chez Jean de Ripa,” in
Mélanges offerts á M.-D. Chenu, edited by A. Duval (Paris: J. Vrin, 1967),
pp. 467–476.
Villanova, Evangelista. Histoire des théologies chréstiennes. 3 vols. Paris:
Éditions de Cerf, 1997.
Vischer, Wilhelm. “Calvin exégète de l’Ancien Testament,” in La Revue
Reformée, 18 (1967), pp. 1–20.
Visscher, Hugo. William Ames: His Life and Work. Translated by W. Horton.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Divinity School Library, 1965.
Visser, Derk, ed. Controversy and Conciliation: The Reformation and the
Palatinate, 1559–1583. Allison Park, Pa.: Pickwick, 1986.
Voeltzel, René. “La Méthode théologique de Hugo Grotius,” in Revue
d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 32 (1952), pp. 126–133.
Von Leyden, W. Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics: An Examination of Some
Main Concepts and Theories. London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 1968.
Von Rohr, John. The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought. Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1986.
Vooght, Paul de. “Le rapport écriture-tradition d’après saint Thomas d’Aquin
et les théologiens du XIII siècle,” in Istina, 8 (1962), pp. 499–510.
________. Les Sources de la doctrine Chrétienne d’après les théologiens du
XIVe siècle. Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1954.
________. “Wiclif et la Scriptura Sola,” in Ephemerides theologiae
lovanienses, 39 (1963), pp. 50–86.
Vos, Antonie. “Always on Time: The Immutability of God,” in Understanding
the Attributes of God, edited by G. van den Brink and M. Sarot, pp. 53–
73.
________. “Immutabilitas Dei,” in Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, 35
(1981), pp. 111–133.
________. “De kern van de klassieke gereformeerde Theologie,” in Kerk en
Theologie, 47 (1996), pp. 106–125.
________. Johannes Duns Scotus. Leiden: Groen en Zoon, 1994.
________. “The Philosophy of the Young Duns Scotus,” in Medieval
Semantics and Metaphysics: Studies Dedicated to J. M. L. de Rijk, edited
by E. P. Bos (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985), pp. 195–220.
________. “Reformatorische Theologie en Metaphysica,” in Theologia
Reformata, 26 (1983), pp. 266–289.
________. “Scholasticism and Reformation,” in Reformation and
Scholasticism, edited by W. van Asselt and E. Dekker, pp. 99–119.
________. “De theorie van de eigenschappen en de leer van de eigenschappen
van God,” in Bijdragen, 42 (1981), pp. 81–87.
Vos, Antonie, et al., eds. John Duns Scotus: Contingency and Freedom.
Lectura I/39. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1994.
Vosté, James M. “Medieval Exegesis,” in Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 51
(1948), pp. 229–246.
Vriend, David John. “Causality, Reliability and God’s Foreknowledge.” Ph.D.
diss., UCLA, 1987.
Vries de Heekelingen, H. de. Genève, Pepinière du Calvinisme hollandais.
Tome I. Les étudiants des Pays-Bas à Genève au temps de Théodore de
 Bèze. Tome II. Correspondence des élèves de Théodore de Bèze apres leur
départ de Genève. 2 vols. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1918–24.
Vuilleumier, Henri. Histoire de l’église réformée du pays de Vaud sous le
régime bernois. 4 vols. Lausanne: Concorde, 1928.
Waddington, Charles. Ramus, sa vie, ses écrits et ses opinions. Paris: Ch.
Meyrueis, 1855.
Walker, Daniel P. The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from
the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: Duckworth, 1972.
Walker, Williston. John Calvin: The Organizer of Reformed Protestantism,
1509–1564. With a bibliographical essay by John T, McNeill. 1906; rerp.
New York: Schocken, 1969.
Wall, Ernestine G. E. van der. “Cartesianism and Cocceianism: A Natural
Alliance?” in De l’humanisme aux lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme:
mélanges en l’honneur d’Elisabeth Labrousse, edited by M. Magdelaine,
et al. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1996), pp. 445–455.
________. “Orthodoxy and scepticism in the early Dutch Enlightenment,” in
Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
edited by R. Popkin and A. Vanderjagt, pp. 121–141.
Wallace, Dewey. “From Eschatology to Arian Heresy: the Case of Francis
Kett (d. 1589),” in Harvard Theological Review, 67 (1974), pp. 459–473.
________. “The Life and Thought of John Owen to 1660: A Study of the
Significance of Calvinist Theology in English Puritanism.” Ph.D. diss.,
Princeton University, 1965.
________. Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant
Theology, 1525–1695. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1982.
Wallace, Ronald S. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacrament. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957.
Wallace, William A. “Traditional Natural Philosophy,” in Cambridge History
of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by C. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, and E.
Kessler, pp. 201–235.
Wallman, Johannes. Der Theologiebegriff bei Johann Gerhard und Georg
Calixt. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1961.
Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge. Calvin and Augustine. Edited by Samuel
Craig. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company,
1956.
________. “Calvin’s Doctrine of God,” in Calvin and Augustine, pp. 133–
185.
________. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,” in Calvin and
Augustine, pp. 29–130.
________. “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” in Calvin and Augustine, pp.
189–284.
________. “On the Literary History of Calvin’s Institutes,” in Calvin and
Calvinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1931.
________. The Westminster Assembly and Its Work. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1931. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981.
Wass, Meldon C. The Infinite God and the Summa Fratris Alexandri.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1964.
Watson, Richard A. The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics. Atlantic
Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1987.
________. The Downfall of Cartesianism, 1673–1712: A Study of
Epistemological Issues in Late 17th Century Catresianism. International
Archives of the History of Ideas, vol. 2. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1966.
Watts, Michael R. The Dissenters, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
Weber, Claude, “Heerboord ou Heerboort, Adriaan,” in Encyclopédie
philosophique universelle, III/1, pp. 1191–92.
Wéber, Edouard. “Passio, Passivitas,” in Encyclopédie philosophique
universelle, II/2, p. 1871.
Weber, Hans Emil. Der Einfluss der protestantischen Schulphilosphie auf die
orthodox-lutherische Dogmatik. Leipzig: Deichert, 1908. [Pp. 19–74 of
this work were published separately as Die analytische Methode der
lutherische Orthodoxie (Naumburg, 1907).]
________. Die philosophische Scholastik des deutschen Protestantismus in
Zeitalter der Orthodoxie. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1907.
________. Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus. 2 vols. Gütersloh,
1937–51. Reprint, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966.
Weber, Otto. Grundlagen der Dogmatik. 2 vols. Neukirchen: Neukirchner
Verlag, 1955.
________. Foundations of Dogmatics. 2 vols. Translated by Darrell Guder.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–82.
Weiler, A. “The Christian Humanism of the Renaissance and Scholasticism,”
 in Concilium, 27 (1967), pp. 29–46.
Weir, David A. The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century
Reformation Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Weisheipl, J. A., “Scholastic Method,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.
12, pp. 1145–1146.
Wendel, François. Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious
Thought. Translated by Philip Mairét. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Wendel, François, and Pierre Scherding. “Un Traité d’exégèse pratique de
Bucer,” in Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 26 (1946), pp.
32–75.
Werner, Karl. Franz Suárez und die Scholastik der letzten Jahrhunderte. 2
vols. Regensburg: G. J. Man, 1861.
________. Die Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters. 4 vols. in 5. Vienna,
1881–87. Reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.
Wernle, Paul. Der evangelische Glaube nach den Hauptschriften der
Reformatoren. 3 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1919.
Werther, David. “Leibnitz on Cartesian Omnipotence and Contingency,” in
Religious Studies, 31 (1995), pp. 23–36.
West, Delno C., and Sandra Zindars-Swartz. Joachim of Fiore: A Study in
Spiritual Perception and History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1983.
Westcott, Brooke Foss. A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the
New Testament. 6th ed. 1889. Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1980.
Westfall, Richard. “The Rise of Science and Decline of Orthodox
Christianity: A Study of Kepler, Descartes, and Newton,” in D. Lindberg
and R. Numbers, God and Nature, pp. 218–237.
________. Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1958.
Wetter, Friedrich. “Die Erkenntnis der Freiheit Gottes nach Johannes Duns
Scotus,” in De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. II, pp.
477–517.
________. Die Trinitätslehre des Johannes Duns Scotus. Münster:
Aschendorff, 1967.
Whale, J. S. The Protestant Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
 Press, 1962.
White, Peter. Predestination, Policy and Polemic: Conflict and Consensus in
the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War. Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ Press, 1992.
Wilbur, Earl Morse. A History of Unitarianism. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1947–52.
Wilbur, James B., ed. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Essays in Critical Appreciation.
Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976.
Willey, Basil. The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies on the Idea of
Nature in the Thought of the Period. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.
________. The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of
the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion. Garden City: Doubleday
Anchor, 1953.
Williams, Bernard. “Rationalism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7,
pp. 69–75.
Williams, Michael E. The Teaching of Gilbert Porreta on the Trinity as Found
in His Commentaries on Boethius. Rome: Gregorian University, 1951.
Willis, E. David. “Calvin and the Anti-trinitarians,” in Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte, 62 (1971), pp. 279–282.
________. Calvin’s Catholic Christology: the Function of the so-called Extra
Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966.
________. “Calvin’s Use of Substantia,” in Calvinus Ecclesiae Genevensis
Custos, pp. 289–301.
________. “The Influence of Laelius Socinus on Calvin’s Doctrines of the
Merits of Christ and the Assurance of Faith,” in Italian Reformation
Studies in Honor of Laelius Socinus, edited by John Tedeschi (Florence: F.
Le Monnier, 1965), pp. 231–241.
Willis, R. Servetus and Calvin. London: Henry King, 1877.
Wilson, Catherine. Leibnitz’s Metaphysics: a Historical and Comparative
Study. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Wilterdink, Garret A. “The Fatherhood of God in Calvin’s Thought,” in
Reformed Review, 30/1 (Fall 1976), pp. 9–22.
________. “Irresistible Grace and the Fatherhood of God in Calvin’s
Theology.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974.
________. Tyrant or Father? A Study of Calvin’s Doctrine of God. 2 vols.
 Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall Press, 1985.
Wippel, John F. The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study
in Late Thirteenth-Century Philosophy. Washington: Catholic Univerisity
of America Press, 1981.
Wissink, Jozephus Bernardus Maria. The Eternity of the World, in the
Thought of Thomas Aquinas and his Contemporaries. Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1990.
Wolfson, Harry Austryn. The Philosophy of Spinoza. 2 vols. Cleveland and
New York: World, 1958.
________. The Philosophy of the Church Fathers: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation.
3rd ed., revised. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970.
________. Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays. New York: Atheneum,
1965.
________. “St. Thomas on Divine Attributes,” in Studies in the History and
Philosophy of Religion, II, pp. 1–28.
________. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Religion, 2 vols. edited
by Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1973–77.
Wollgast, Siegfried. Philosophie in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und
Aufklärung, 1550–1650. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1988.
Wolter, Allan B. “Duns Scotus on the Existence and Nature of God,” in
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, XXVIII
(1954), pp. 94–121.
________. “Duns Scotus on the Natural Desire for the Supernatural,” in The
New Scholasticism, XXIII (1949), pp. 281–317.
________. “Duns Scotus on the Nature of Man’s Knowledge of God,” in
Review of Metaphysics, 1/2 (Dec. 1947), pp. 3–36.
________. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Selected and translated,
with an introduction by Allan B. Wolter. Washington, DC: Catholic
University Press, 1986.
________. “Ockham and the Textbooks: On the Origin of Possibility,” in
Franziskanische Studien, 32 (1950), pp. 70–96.
________. “The ‘Theologism’ of Duns Scotus,” in Fransiscan Studies, 7
(1947), pp. 257–273, 367–414.
________. The Transcendentals and their Function in the Metaphysics of
 Duns Scotus. St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1946.
Wolter, Allan B., and Marilyn McCord Adams. The Philosophical Theology
of John Duns Scotus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “Divine Simplicity,” in Philosophical Perspectives,
vol. 5, Philosophy of Religion, edited by James Tomberlin (Atascadero,
CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 1991), pp. 531–552.
Woodbridge, John D. Biblical Authority: a Critique of the Rogers/McKim
Proposal. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982.
________. “Richard Simon le ‘père de la critique biblique,’ ” in Le Grand
Siècle de la Bible, edited by Armogathe, pp. 193–206.
Woolhouse, R. S. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: the Concept of Substance in
Seventeenth Century Metaphysics. London and New York: Routledge,
1993.
Woolsey, Andrew Alexander. “Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought:
A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly. 2 vols.
Ph. D. diss., University of Glasgow, 1988.
Workman, Herbert B. The Dawn of the Reformation. 2 vols. London: Charles
Kelley, 1901–2.
Woudstra, Marten H. “Calvin Interprets ‘What Moses Reports’: Observations
on Calvin’s Commentary on Exodus 1–19,” in Calvin Theological Journal,
21 (1986), pp. 151–174.
________. “The Synod and Bible Translation,” in Crisis in the Reformed
Churches: Essays in commemoration of the Great Synod of Dort, 1618–
1619, edited by Peter Y. DeJong (Grand Rapids, 1968), pp. 95–114.
Wright, David F. “Calvin’s Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Heart,
and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony Commentary,” in
Calvin Theological Journal, 21 (1986), pp. 33–50.
Wright, David F., ed. Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Wundt, Max. Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen:
J. C. B. Mohr, 1939.
Zanta, Léonine. La Renaissance du Stöicisme au XVIe siècle. 1914; reprint,
Geneva: Slatkine, 1975.
Zavalloni, Roberto. “Personal Freedom and Scotus’ Voluntarism,” in De
Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti, edited by C. Balic, vol. II, pp. 613–627.
Zeller, Winfried. “Die Marburger Theologische Fakultät und ihre Theologie
im Jahrhundert der Reformation,” in Jahrbuch der Hessischen
Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung, 28 (1977), pp. 7–25.
Zuber, Roger. “De Scaliger à Saumaise: Leyde et les grands ‘Critiques’
français,” in Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme
français, 126 (1980), pp. 461–488.
Zuylen, W. H. Bartholomaus Keckermann: Sein Leben und Wirken. Leipzig:
Robert Noske, 1934.