The Controversy Over The Theology Of Saumur 1635 1650

Doctrine in Development examines the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience with a focus on the thought of Johannes Piscator. Challenging earlier scholarship that regarded the doctrine as clearly present in the Reformers, Heber Campos shows how Piscator’s exegetical and theological arguments generated responses that brought together several other doctrines to support the imputation of Christ’s active obedience in a way that Reformed theologians had not previously done. Viewing Piscator’s objections to the imputation of Christ’s positive righteousness as a turning point in the Reformed understanding of active obedience, Campos highlights the process of doctrinal development regarding Christ’s satisfaction.

Given the conclusions of recent research, that predestination was no central dogma to, and did not affect the method of reformed theology, this study investigates the question of if and how the doctrine of predestination affected the ideas and practice of preaching. The relation of predestination and covenant, congregation, atonement, faith etc. are researched in the theology and sermons of John Calvin, Theodore Beza, John Diodati, and Theodore Tronchin, Francis Turretin, and Benedict Pictet. This study shows that in Genevan Reformed Theology from Calvin to Pictet, predestination and the external call were inseparably connected, but that the doctrine of predestination neither dominated the content nor restricted the address of the external call.

This is the first published monograph on the Saumur theologian Claude Pajon. Drawing on manuscript sources, it examines Pajon’s thought and its origins, and traces the nature and course of the first of two controversies over his theology (1665-1667).

In this study the content and background of La Milletière's irenism are analysed and compared to the irenism of Hugo Grotius, who strove for unity in this same period. The reactions which La Milletière's books and pamphlets provoked are related to the rival groups within each confession: Jansenists versus Jesuits, the scholars of Saumur versus orthodox theologians like Rivet and Du Moulin and the ministers of Charenton. Richelieu's conciliatory religious policy was experienced by the oppressed French Calvinists as a major threat to the integrity of their doctrine. When one of their co-religionists, La Milletière, began to propagate a reunification of Protestants and Roman-Catholics, they did not fail to recognize these irenic proposals as Richelieu's. On the other hand, the Roman Catholics mistrusted this peacemaker as well. This book therefore offers a contribution to the history of irenism, as well as an analysis of the religious situation in France in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Nathaniel Taylor was arguably the most influential and the most frequently misrepresented American theologian of his generation. While he claimed to be an Edwardsian Calvinist, very few people believed him. This book attempts to understand how Taylor and his associates could have counted themselves Edwardsians. In the process, it explores what it meant to be an Edwardsian minister and intellectual in the 19th century.

Traditionally, Protestant theology between Luther's early reforming career and the dawn of the Enlightenment has been seen in terms of decline and fall into the wastelands of rationalism and scholastic speculation. In this volume a number of scholars question such an interpretation. The editors argue that the development of Post-Reformation Protestantism can only be understood when a proper historical model of doctrinal change is adopted. This historical concern underlies the subsequent studies of theologians such as Calvin, Beza, Olevian, Baxter and the two Turrentini. The result is a significantly different reading of the development of Protestant Orthodoxy, one which both challenges the older scholarly interpretations and clichŽs about the relationship of Protestantism to, among other things, scholasticism and rationalism, and which demonstrates the fruitfulness of the new, historical approach. Contributors: D. V. N. Bagchi, David C. Steinmetz, Richard A. Muller, Frank A. James III, John L. Farthing, Lyle D. Bierma, R. Scott Clark, Donald Sinnema, Paul R. Schaefer, W. Robert Godfrey, Carl R. Trueman, Philip G. Ryken, John E. Platt, Joel R. Beeke, James T. Dennison Jr., Martin I. Klauber, Lowell C. Green, and David P. Scaer.