It comes down to lecture 20, may orthodoxy prevail, may piety, flourish, we're going to be talking about what is called Protestant orthodoxy, or sometimes Protestant scholasticism. And for the prayer, I will turn to a Dutch Calvinist theologian pastor, by the name of Herman Vitzius. This is the prayer that he used following an address on the character of a true theologian, which I will mention later in the lecture. When Vitzius prays in this prayer for God's blessing upon our beloved country, he means of course the Netherlands. We can pray for the Netherlands today, and we can pray for our own countries as well, Switzerland and the United States. We have other countries represented here, Germany, Germany, where else? As we come to that portion of the prayer, you might pray for all of those countries, and those of you from those lands would pray especially for those different countries. This is a longer prayer than I usually use to begin the class with, but it is a very wonderful prayer that we can join together in praying, so follow as I read these words and as we pray them together in our hearts. O God, who art the teacher, and giver of all wisdom, be thou present by thy spirit with us as we engage, ye that we may engage together in these seminary studies. Open thou our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of thy law. May thy holy scriptures be our pure delight. May we neither be deceived in reading them, nor handle them deceitfully. Sanctify us through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Preserve, defend and large this seminary consecrated to thy glory. Let in be strife's divisions, heresies be forever at a distance. May orthodoxy prevail. May piety flourish. Let mercy and truth meet together. Let righteousness and peace kiss each other. Our beloved country rescued by thy underworking right hand from so many evils. Do thou preserve in safety and peace? And after our days in this life had been spent in prolonged felicity, do thou at last transfer us with all of intellect to heaven itself. This is the sum of our prayers. This is the sum of our hope here and accept us, O triune Jehovah. Amen. I'm going to read the first paragraph of a very famous book and you listen to these words and tell me what book this is. Nearly all the wisdom we possess that is to say true and sound wisdom consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds which one proceeds and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God in whom he lives and moves. So quite clearly the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves. Indeed our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God who wrote those words. John Calvin, that's the famous first paragraph of the institutes of the Christian religion written by John Calvin of Geneva. Actually some of those words were written as early as 1536 but as you know he kept revising his institutes until 1559. Now the first paragraph of another very famous book, first topic, theology, first question. Should the word theology be used in the Christian schools and in how many ways can it be understood? Since according to the laws of accurate methods the use and true sense of terms are first to be explained as the philosopher Aristotle has it, for words are the types of things. Some things must be premise concerning the word theology before we come to the thing itself. Although the proposed question they seem hardly necessary in the common sense and in that received by almost all who should think it retain as a technical term and word properly and emphatically declaring its subject, yet we must meet the opinion of those who dislike it because it does not occur in Scripture. And it's used to denote the false system of the heathen who judged that it would be more suitable to use other words drawn from Scripture who wrote those words. Famous book, well it sounds very much like the suma of Thomas Aquinas and that is a good answer because the style of this book is very much in the scholastic academic style of Thomas's suma. Taroton, Francis Taroton's another famous book called the Institutes by another famous Genevain theologian named Francis Taroton but quite a difference between those two books. Taroton wrote his book over a hundred years after Calvin wrote his Institutes something is happened in the way theology is being done between Calvin and Tarot. And today my purpose in this lecture is very simple although it might not be easy to do it. My purpose is to explain what Protestant scholasticism is all about. What is Protestant orthodoxy or Protestant scholasticism and those expressions are used as synonymous. I think the best way to try to understand what we already have since in comparing Calvin and Taroton is to use four words to describe Protestant orthodoxy. The word orthodox, the word scholastic, the word polemic and finally the word practical and we can add the word pastoral. The Protestant orthodox were the theologians that came after the reformers, after Luther and the other reformers on the Lutheran side and after Calvin and his associates on the reform side. And the concern of these theologians for the next century or so was to preserve as carefully and as accurately as they possibly could what the reformers had taught. The later theologians sought to preserve unimpaired what they received from the reformers on the reform side from Calvin, on the Lutheran side from Luther and to transmit it to their successors. Francis Taroton in his own great work wrote let other books then be commended by their novelty. I do not want the statement to justify mine. He was not tempting to come up with anything new or different but to preserve and pass on to other generations the teaching of his predecessors. There is a very popular misunderstanding I think at this point that I want to address some of that is reflected in our textbook and it is reflected everywhere. And that is there is a huge gap between Calvin and the Calvinist. There are many books that have that is their theme. The worst of those is a book called John Calvin versus the Westminster Confession of Faith. I don't recommend that you read that. I just mention it because it's such a bad book. Richard Muller who teaches at Calvin seminary in Grand Rapids has done more than anybody I think to rescue the reputation of the Calvinist. And to show that they were not deliberately or even without deliberation distorting or changing the theology of the reformers in a dramatic and major way calls this thesis of Calvin versus the Calvinist a caricature of orthodoxy. There certainly is development and we can make a mistake on the other side if we think that everybody acted Calvin agreed exactly with Calvin and said it exactly the same way there is development there always isn't theology nothing really stands still. And so there is development from Calvin to Westminster and on down to the present. But not a recasting of Calvin's teaching during this period. Later there would be a kind of wholesale abandonment of Calvin's teaching but the orthodox people like Francis Turret and are not recasting Calvin's teaching. They are simply passing it on and they do in passing it on make some changes but not major changes in Calvinism. That particular thesis that there is a huge gap, great chasm between Calvin and Calvinist usually sees Theodore Beza Calvin's successor at Geneva as the culprit. Beza moved from the more biblical and devotional theological emphasis of Calvin to something very rigid predestinarian and scholastic. Recent years Beza's reputation has undergone the recovery in the work of Mueller and others who have now shown that Beza was not dramatically altering Calvin's teaching. In fact rather than hardening Calvin's doctrine of predestination which is the usual view, Beza actually softened it somewhat by stressing far more than Calvin did the concept of divine permission and the role of secondary causality. And so orthodox is our first word and by orthodox I mean they believed accepted and taught and passed on the theology of the reformers. But there is certainly a difference and you sense that immediately when I began to read the turrets and beginning just after Calvin's beginning. The atmosphere is different if the content is not different the atmosphere or the method perhaps is a better way to say it is different. The content is orthodox but the method now is not that more informal approach to theology that we have in Calvin but the method now goes back more to the scholastic approach of the Middle Ages. That we saw in Thomas Aquinas, scholasticism has to do with the method not with content. People can teach anything with scholasticism, Augustinianism, Semi-Colagianism. It is simply the academic method of the schools from the Middle Ages and that method is used again by the followers of the reformers. The method usually went this way. There would always be a question. It is a very formal academic method. If you are in school, seminary, somebody is going to ask you a question. I do own exams. That is my method. I ask you a question, you do have an answer. And that is how schools work most of the time. Certainly the way schools work back in the Middle Ages. So start with a question. And the first question in Taratan's Institutes is should the word theology be used and in how many ways can it be understood? Calvin does seem to get right into things much sooner. All knowledge is composed of two parts. Knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of God. Which one comes first and which one follows is not easy to say. That is not a scholastic method. It is a very informal method. People would have looked upon Calvin's Institutes as more devotional literature, not real scientific theology. Because it does not follow the scholastic approach. The question is asked and then the state of the controversy is delineated. After the question is asked, then in the scholastic method the writer, the theologian, would review what everybody had said on those sides of the question. And then finally a kind of resolution is made. This is how to reconcile these different views or this group is right and this group is wrong. And this is the right answer. Sounds like Thomas Aquinas and it is very much the same in Francis Taratan. What I would like to say however is that the scholastics in using that method don't subvert scripture to reason or to Aristotelian philosophy as it sometimes claim that the scholastics elevate human rationality and the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and this is what controls what they're saying. This is not what controls what they're saying. It simply gives shape to the way they say what they're saying. Certainly they do refer to Aristotle quite a bit. You have to read a long way in Calvin's institutes to find Aristotle and when you found it or him, it would not be a compliment. Certainly not in Luther. That damn pagan he called it. But first sentence of Taratan, we've got a quote from Aristotle but you see what Taratan is doing is not saying Aristotle is up there with scripture but this is the philosophy that people are using in the schools and to communicate what I have to say. I will use the definitions and terminology of Aristotle. So Aristotelian philosophy I think was certainly not in itself but was a means to communicate clearly in understandable philosophical language, the content of the reform faith. Let's come to a third word, polemic. And certainly the Protestant orthodox or polemical, the reformers were too. Luther was very polemical. Calvin was very polemical. But in the institutes you'll see Calvin teaching something, a doctrine, some doctrine of the Bible. And then he will say and unfortunately now we have to answer some people who don't agree with this. So the polemics tend to follow the initial emphasis that Calvin brings forth in his theology but in the Protestants orthodox you sometimes have the impression that polemics come upfront. This is an age of theological battles and everybody was engaged in it. Catholics, Protestants, the reform with high scholars and high scholarship, buying for supremacy. There was a man named Johannes McCovius. He was originally from Poland, strict reform theologian. He moved to the Netherlands and interestingly married the sister of Saskia who was Rembrandt's wife. He was a specialist in theological polemics. All the scholastics were, but Koch Sayers who was another Dutch scholastic said of McCovius that he was like a dog who dutifully barked at the enemies but then went on barking at friends. So with the scholastics you can get a very definite refine but of theological positions and people taking sides on smaller and smaller issues. There was another theologian this time on the Lutheran side, Abraham Kallav, Gonzales calls him a computer program for controversy. He entered into a practically every controversy of the period and he not only condemned Calvinist and Catholics as being lost but he also condemned Lutherans who dain't believe that Calvin and Calvinist and Catholics might be saved. So you see how polemical the theology has become. Francis Terraton wrote that the purpose of his writing was not to produce a full and accurate system of theology but only to explain the importance of the principal controversies which lie between us and our adversaries both ancient and modern. And as you go through the three volumes of Terraton you will enter into the theological polemics of that period much attack on ancient heresies and contemporary heresies as well. There were two people whose names I've included in the syllabus here who tried to develop a different outlook. You see the opposition was not now just Catholic and Protestant but it was often Lutheran and Reform and the tension between those two major Protestant bodies was every bit as determined and bitter as the tension between Protestants and Catholics. But the Lutheran George Calictus and the reformed Benedict picked it both tried to say to the other side we have so much more in common than we have that divides us that we should be united and not divided but they were voices crying in the wilderness and not too many people in that period were willing and ready and able to hear this is the ecumenical peacemaking nature it was still a very polemical period. Now not all of that is bad because it does show that these people believe that truth was truth and you could not compromise with it. It couldn't say it doesn't matter. For too long we're going to come to theologians who will say it doesn't matter. You believe that I believe this and we'll go along just fine but that's not the attitude of the 17th century Orthodox nor should it be our attitude either although we don't want to repeat and continue the bitterness of the polemics that marked this pose. Now the last of the four words in defining Protestant orthodoxy is practical. I think most people would say you made a mistake there that certainly doesn't describe the orthodox practical pastoral the stereotype of Protestant orthodoxy is an academic scientific dry as dust sort of theology. And I believe that for a long time I was so enamored with Calvin I didn't care to dip into the orthodox. I would just skip from Calvin to the Princetonians and pass over this old period but pretty soon in studying Princeton I realized that Princeton was studying the scholastics. The text book at Princeton Seminary for many years was Francis Taranton in Latin by the way so the students said to no Latin in order to read their 30 pages of Taranton every day and be able to recite it almost from memory until they were rescued finally by Charles Hodges three volumes in English. But let me refer to several of these dry as dust scholastics, Gisbertus, Phoetius another one of the Dutch theologians and among the Protestant scholastics they're almost always Dutch. Phoetius says this he's talking about practical theology. What does practical theology mean? It may mean in a broad sense all theology that follows Scripture or is based upon it whether expressed in commentaries, low-side community commonplaces or catechisms because all theology among pilgrims on earth is in its nature practical. And no portion of it can be correctly or completely discussed unless it is developed practically that is applied to the practice of repentance, faith, hope and love or to consolation or exhortation. That doesn't really sound dry as dust, it sounds like he's beginning to preach there in his theology and indeed he does. I read the first paragraph of Francis Taranton's three volume theology, the Institute of the Lengthical Theology, a linked text by the way means something like polemics, maybe a little softer but it has that same meaning. I read the first paragraph, I've listened to the last paragraph, since by the supreme kindness of God it has now happened that having entered upon the most extended sea of theology I now joyfully reach the harbor under his guidance. And what is more just than that an altar being erected, I pay my vows on the shore and he enters the theology then with this prayer to thee therefore thou tri-unegar. The best and the greatest, most merciful father in Christ I give thanks but because to no purpose does anyone plant in water unless thou give us the increase, grant thou best father. That these endeavors of mine whatsoever they may be may contribute to the glory of thy most holy name and the benefit of thy church, amen. Wonderful way to end the theology and it gives us a glimpse into the heart and concern of this man, Francis Taranton. When Herman Vitzius, whose prayer I used at the beginning of the lecture Dutch pastor and theologian was inaugurated at the University of Froniker in 1675 he gave an address called the character of the true theologian which is a wonderful treatise. I have noted that in the syllabus and given some comments on it that you can read. Vitzius says this in that inaugural address. The theologian is one imbued with the knowledge of God and divine things under the teaching of God himself who celebrates his adorable perfections not by words alone but by the ordering of his life and is thus entirely devoted to his Lord. And then his outline in that address to the symbol dignitaries of the University and the church he talks about the theologians learning first secondly about his teaching and thirdly about his life. You cannot be a truth theologian unless you're able to communicate God's truth and exhibit something of the reality of it in your own life. You cannot help thinking of the purpose statement of covenant seminary purpose of this seminary as to train servants of the triune God and walking with God in interpreting and communicating God's word and in leading God's people very much in the spirit of Vitzius. Well, that's a definition. Let me just give you a few names. The list could go on and on because there are many important theologians but it's good to be able to recognise a few of them. On the Lutheran side three Johan Gehrhard, Abraham Kallav, and the greatest Johan Andreas Quinnstead, Robert Proyse who has done most to teach us about the Lutheran Orthodox book is mentioned in the syllabus says that although Quinnstead's system of theology would have cost a pastor many weeks salary. It went through five editions between 1685 and 1715 Quinnstead's life work his system of theology is so big, so complete, so concise and systematic and so excellent that no later Lutheran ever came close to equaling yet. So that's the book to read if you want to read for a long time in Lutheran scholasticism. On the reform side, many names but let me go back to Francis Tarleton think the most important name in that list the others though are very significant as well and some of them I've referred to in different parts of this lecture. Tarleton was the most systematic and thorough theologian on doctrinal issues in the reform camp after Calvin is institutes should be ranked next to Calvin's institutes. Francis Tarleton by the way interestingly was an Italian by descent he was the third generation Italian theologian by the name of Tarleton. His grandfather and his father were both theologians in Geneva they fled from Italy came to Geneva in Francis Tarleton was the third generation of Italian reform theologians in Geneva. I mentioned that his institutes of a lengthy theology published in Latin until 1847 and formed the text at Old Princeton Seminary J. W. Alexander one of the teachers there wrote that Tarleton's adherence to the received body of the reform church is so uniform and strict that there is no writer who has higher claims as an authority as to what that doctrine was. So if you want to know reform orthodoxy read Tarleton and now you can do it in English the first time just in recent years Tarleton has been published in English the translation was from the 19th century from a professor of Latin at Princeton college Princeton University it became but it was not published until recently and the three volumes of Tarleton are now available in English James Montgomery voice Philadelphia in his recommendation for these books wrote let's all knock off for a month from our regular work and study Tarleton well that would be very valuable I'm sure but we can hardly afford to do that because we only have about a month left and we have to keep going in this survey class my motto in this class is always keep going don't stop don't even slow down. Now what is the value of Protestant orthodoxy for us is this something we can simply know about and forget about or would it be good for us to go back and read these books. Let me make two points here certainly in these big old books originally written in Latin any of them still only in Latin we have a careful and precise theology. I've included in the syllabus tributes from three very different theologians the conservative Presbyterian Charles Hodge said whatever the faults of the scholastics they have one great merit they always let us know what they mean their atmosphere if wintry and biting is clear certainly you can haunt a theological mind by reading the scholastics you can learn terminology you can learn clarity of definition and there is great value in all of that the new orthodox Carl Bart said that in reading the old orthodox you realize that at one time Protestant dogmatics was a careful orderly business not that way altogether today and Bart was right and saying would be good to go back to the older tradition so that modern theology might become once again a careful orderly business. And then the liberal Paul Tilley says the same thing modern theology is so vague because of a lack of knowledge of Protestant orthodoxy liberal neo orthodox conservative are all saying to do theology in the modern world we should give attention to how it was done in the 17th century. So that's one point careful precise theology but a second point spiritual nourishment either professor Princeton seminary if he heard me say that would have thrown up his hands in hara and would have said did I not teach you anything. And so I'm going to dedicate the rest of this lecture to him he would refer whenever he talked about the orthodox to this is deadly stuff but it's not and even though it's going to take discipline and diligence and hard work to get to it. There is spiritual nourishment there because truth theology does edify. Carl Bart recognized in the quotation that I gave in Bart's forward to have his reform dogmatics Bart recognized that for the sake of life it's necessary to be quite serious about the question of truth. We're not dealing with two ideas here in opposition if we're serious about the question of truth is going to lead us to life and if we're serious about practical living for God is going to lead us to a search for truth. If we say that the Protestant orthodox did not fully succeed on either front and they did not because they were fallible human beings and sometimes failed in what they attempted to do if they did not fully succeed on either front life or truth we still honor them as theologians who aimed for both. Let me end the lecture with the concluding words of Francis Tarotans preface to the reader as he introduces his institutes of the lengthy theology may the God of truth and of peace cause us to walk always in truth and charity. May we grow every day and hear who is the hear until we all arrive at the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the son of God perfected in power and to the measure of the maturity of Christ. Amen. Okay, it's a minute, a few minutes, questions. How did Tarotans differ from Calvin? Well, the obvious answer is in method, scholastic method. In content, my answer would be not very much, although there is a kind of gloomy eschatology in Tarotans that you don't find in Calvin and certainly don't find in Charles Hodge. Tarotans felt that a few would be saved. Calvin doesn't really speculate on how many will be saved. And Charles Hodge thinks a lot of people will be saved. There will be a major triumph of the gospel in Hodge. Almost you get the impression that almost everybody will be saved. Calvin perhaps has the best view there. Don't try to determine that. But you do get in Tarotans a kind of gloomy eschatology. Partly I think because at this time the reform were struggling for their very existence, particularly in Geneva and Catholicism and also at this time new rationalism was beginning to emerge. So just about the time the scholastics are doing their work, we've got people like Descartes and others who are casting great doubt on all of this. Not the issue is not Catholic versus Protestant and Lutheran versus reform, but Cartesianism versus Christianity will come to pretty soon. There is a great deal of confidence there and I would say perhaps there are places where Tarotans at all the scholastics should leave room for more mystery and uncertainty as Calvin does. Yes, I would agree there. But at the same time they are attempting to base what they say on Scripture and we can be either overly certain or we can be overly uncertain. And if the scholastics were overly certain it's not going to be long before too many theologians are going to say we just don't know when we do know. I mean we know that he then are lost later people will not know that. But there is a certain confidence and certainty I don't see it as pride or triumphalism. But I think if Calvin could have read through all of this he would occasionally say well you know I don't think we can know that. And learned ignorance was Calvin's aim and the scholastics go beyond that. Calvin was not saying that he knew everything of course and at certain points he might say well I didn't think of this and I'm glad you did other places he might wonder if we could know as much as we think we can during this period. But it is a period of theological confidence. Catholics think they are right, Lutherans think they are right, Reform think they are right. And that's why it's such a political period because nobody is willing to recognize the greater limits of our knowledge in theology. The question is did Calvin actively reject scholasticism? Did he know anything about it? Calvin was trained more the humanist tradition at the Sorbonne and then trained in law which had its own scholasticism but also its own humanism. So I would say Calvin's major education was not in the scholastic mode, Luther's was and that's why he does say a lot about it but very negatively. Calvin is more like the humanist and rhetoric is more important for Calvin than tight rigid organization. So you get in Calvin this wonderful flow of language that seems so moving and then you go into the scholastics and it's rather dry and crabbed in its style. And Calvin was not using rhetoric as an in and itself, just beautiful language but he realized that rhetoric was a very effective tool. This was too, scholasticism was too but in the context of university and Calvin did not operate in that context. You know he was writing his systematic theology as I think I said in the mance against the background of teething trouble. And he was in the midst of a kind of active life as a pastor and people all around and baby's crying whereas Tarot and rights is in the university. So it has a different setting and it serves a different function. Why is the scholastic method continued in a sense recovered? That's a good question and I think for several ways to see this. One thing the Catholics continued to do it and to engage in an anti Catholic polemic the Protestants felt it was necessary to do it the same way. Otherwise they would not be respected or even listened to. So it was an attempt to find a means into the culture. This was the way it was done. I would say a parallel today would be how do we speak to postmodernist? Is there a certain language we can use, a certain approach, apologetic approach? Is there some way we can accommodate ourselves to the way they do things so that we can speak to them and they can understand us? So it was not a bad motive, it was certainly a good motive and the final product even though it's not something we would want to reproduce today. I think we're much more comfortable going back to Calvin's style. For its time it served its purpose and it certainly enriched theology down to the present. Question has to do with how these scholastic writings were received by the pastors and the people. The interesting thing about it is that the people who wrote these great tombs were pastors. They tended to be pastors and professors but they were always active pastors. Territan served the Italian congregation in Geneva, all the Dutch Orthodox were pastors. So it was not viewed as just for the university, it was for the school and for the church. The average person I doubt read much of this. The pastors would, after all it was in Latin and they were trained in Latin. So they had to read it, assimilate it and pass on the significance of it to the people in their congregations which was their task. So it was not irrelevant theology, it was certainly reaching a very broad spectrum of learned clergy and clergy were learned in those days. They knew the language, they knew theology, they were well trained in all of this so that they could handle it. It was valuable to them. Okay, can we stop? Enough of this? Okay, thank you.