2.5 Reformed Orthodoxy and the Idea of “Central Dogmas”
A. The Problem of Presuppositions: Prolegomena and Principia vs. Central Dogmas
1. Rationalism, predestinarianism, and determinism in the seventeenth century—a distinction of issues. In this and the following section we address the two basic questions raised by scholars and theologians about the character and intention of Reformed orthodoxy: is it a predestinarian system, and is it a form of rationalism? If Reformed orthodoxy is a predestinarian system and if it is a form of rationalism, it certainly stands in discontinuity with the Reformation—or at least in discontinuity with the Reformation as typically understood in the second half of the twentieth century. This would also mean that the hope of some theologians to leap over the orthodox and to reappropriate the genuine Protestantism of the Reformers, although probably incapable of fruition, would have some theological and historical justification. The identification of Reformed orthodoxy and a movement in continuity with the Reformation and, therefore, as the historical link between the Reformation and modern forms of confessionally identifiable Reformed thought depends, therefore, in no small measure, on our ability to answer both of these questions in the negative.
Before we address either of these questions, it is of paramount importance to recognize that they are separate questions—separate from each other and from the underlying methodological question of historical continuity and discontinuity. Predestinarianism and rationalism are hardly identical. On the one hand, Reformed predestinarianism rests on an exegetical, not on a philosophical basis and has little in common either with the deterministic occasionalism generated by Cartesian metaphysics, the materialistic determinism of Hobbes, or with the development of a monistic or panentheistic rationalism such as can be found in the seventeenth-century rationalist system of Spinoza. On the other hand, rationalism itself, depending on its anthropological presuppositions, could and did, in the seventeenth century, emphasize freedom rather than determinism. Emphasis on freedom is particularly evident in the inductive rationalism of the seventeenth-century English philosophers standing in the line of Bacon and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. In addition, the underlying issue of continuity and discontinuity is considerably larger than either the issue of predestinarianism or rationalism and it remains an issue after these other two have been set aside.
The analysis of prolegomena and principia in post-Reformation Reformed dogmatics provides a partial answer to the claim of earlier scholarship that the Reformed, following the death of Calvin, ignored the essentially Christologically, soteriologically and epistemologically controlled doctrinal perspective of the Institutes and, in its place, introduced a predestinarian metaphysic as the controlling element of Reformed system, in effect, the “central dogma” and fundamental principle of Christian doctrine, even to the point of arguing that the a priori or “synthetic” structure of the theological system and the placement of the doctrine of predestination in relation to the doctrine of God was indicative, if not determinative, of the implications of the theology as a “predestinarian metaphysic.”
With respect to Alexander Schweizer’s massive and often learned analyses of Reformed theology, it must be said that Schweizer’s theory was not as blatant and un-nuanced as those just noted—nor did it drive a wedge between Calvin and later Reformed theology. Schweizer argued a series of “central dogmas” in Protestantism, namely, the “material principle” of the Reformation, justification by grace alone, and the doctrines of grace, faith, the divine will, providence, and predestination were all to be considered “central dogmas”—which were developed and focused differently by the Lutherans and the Reformed, the Lutherans finding their central focus in justification, the Reformed finding theirs in predestination as a clearer and more profound “material principle.”
Schweizer also, quite clearly, identified predestination as the focal point of the Reformed systems around which all other doctrines coalesced, thus providing basis for the later somewhat reductionistic versions of the central dogma theory in which predestination alone is called the central dogma of the Reformed. Like later advocates of the theory of a predestinarian central dogma, moreover, he also argued that the older Reformed dogmatics offered a”speculative” and “deductive” model resting on the doctrine of God—both in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, albeit far more clearly and sharply formulated in the seventeenth. Where Schweizer differed, is that he did not assume that the placement of the doctrine in the order of topics was of absolute importance to this conclusion. He is certainly the ancestor of the modern “central dogma” theory in which the Lutherans are said to have developed a “system of justification” and the Reformed a “system of predestination,” ultimately with predestination being identified as the principium of later Reformed theology.
2. Central dogmas and the methods of seventeenth-century theology. This central dogma model, however, bears little resemblance to the methods and models enunciated in the theological prolegomena of the Reformed orthodox—or, indeed, to the methods employed by late sixteenth and seventeenth-century theologians in propounding their theology. The prolegomena of the scholastic Protestant systems were designed specifically for the purpose of presenting and defining the presuppositions and principles controlling the system of theology as a whole. Close analysis of the prolegomena, therefore, and their identification of the presuppositional structure of dogmatics and of the principia or foundations of theological endeavor is one way of assessing both the older dogmatics and the scholarship on it. These prolegomena evidence two principia of theology, Scripture and God, and, moreover, a highly exegetical and traditionary theological method of identifying, ordering, and expositing those and the subsequent topics of theology. What is absent is the claim that the topics and arguments of a theological system can be logically deduced from any single principle—as is the practice of doing so. Whereas many of the theologies of the seventeenth century follow an a priori or “synthetic” model of exposition, this pattern of discourse does not represent a series of logical deductions of doctrinal topics or arguments one from the other: neither predestination nor any other doctrine serves as a central pivot of system or overarching motif controlling other doctrines. Both in the descriptions of method found in the Reformed orthodox prolegomena and in the subsequent presentation of the topics of theology, what is evident is not a model of deduction from controlling principles but a model in which the topics traditionally elicited in the course of exegesis are lined out in a suitable order or teaching and the doctrine developed by means of the application of a large-scale hermeneutic involving, for the most part the collation and comparison of biblical texts in the light of theological concerns and the use of ancillary tools, including logic and philosophy.
B. The “Principles of Reformed Orthodoxy”
1. Predestination and the principia. The attempt to describe Protestant scholasticism as the systematic development of central dogmas or controlling principles—predestination in the case of the Reformed, justification in the case of the Lutherans—was, at best, a theological reinterpretation of the Protestant scholastic systems based on the efforts of constructive theologians of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to rebuild theological system in the wake of the Kantian critique of rational metaphysics. Hermann Bauke neatly distinguished between this post-Enlightenment “monistic” systematizing tendency and the earlier discursive and scholastic approaches of Protestant theology. Arguably, the monistic systematizers of the nineteenth century—such as Alexander Schweizer, Gottfried Thomasius, and Albrecht Ritschl—simply read their own method and their own dogmatic proclivities back into the Protestant tradition. At worst, the central dogma theories are an abuse of history that cannot stand in the light of a careful reading of the sources. Our discussion of the prolegomena (and in subsequent volumes, of the principia, Scripture and God) of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Reformed will demonstrate another model for theological system, one lacking methodological proximity to the methods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Reformed orthodox writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not identify the divine decrees or the doctrine of predestination as a theological principium. How could several generations of seventeenth-century theologians, all of them quite pointed and persistent in their declaration of presuppositions, definitions, foundations, and principles, fail to recognize or to consider the systematic underpinning of their theology? Yet such would be the case if predestination or the eternal decree were in fact the central dogma of Reformed scholastic theology, for the doctrine of the decrees is not so much as mentioned in the locus de theologia of any of the orthodox systems examined in this essay, not even in the supposedly speculative and reputedly “decretal” systems of Gomarus and Maccovius. The decree is identified neither as a principium theologiae nor as an articulus fundamentalis. Indeed, the discussion of principia and of articuli fundamentales points toward a series of scripturally based doctrinal loci which together determine the character of theological system rather than to a single central dogma. This datum stands specifically against Kickel’s rather bizarre claim that in orthodoxy predestination replaced Christology as the Erkenntnissgrund of Reformed theology—as if Christology ever was or predestination ever became the principium cognoscendi of Reformed theology!
The actual enunciation and discussion of principia by the Reformed orthodox, moreover, manifest both the reason for their treatment of the doctrine of predestination and the reason for its use as one focus, among others, of the theological system. Briefly, the Protestant scholastics declare two principia theologiae, a principle or foundation of knowing (principium cognoscendi) and a principle or foundation of being (principium essendi). The former is Scripture, the self-revelation of God, and the latter is God himself, the self-existent ground of all finite existence. The first and foremost reason for the inclusion of any doctrine in such a system is the fact of its presence as a place or topic—a locus or topos—in the biblical revelation. Predestination receives considerable attention in the Pauline letters and, consequently, receives considerable attention in the Reformed system. Its presence in the system, moreover, rests on the foundation of the Augustinian tradition antecedent to the Reformation.
More to the point, however, is the fact of the relationship of the doctrine of predestination to the doctrine of God. Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas, who have never been accused of creating a predestinarian system, noted the logically necessary relationship of the two doctrines by arguing whether predestination ought to be predicated of God. It is, after all, the eternal God who in eternity, promulgates his decree concerning the shape and destiny of creation. This question of proper predication, incidentally, accounts for the occasional practice of Reformed scholastics of including the decree among the divine attributes. They were not attempting to create or to justify a deterministic system by the placement of a particular doctrine: they were simply reflecting a traditional question of predication.
Nor, indeed, does the placement of a topic in a seventeenth-century theological system determine the definition of the doctrine found in the locus or the relationship of that particular doctrine to other doctrinal topics. By way of example, the doctrine of predestination found in Book III of Calvin’s 1559 Institutes arguably defines predestination as a double decree, consisting in election and reprobation, the precise object of which is difficult to determine: Calvin sometimes speaks as if the object of predestination is fallen humanity in need of redemption, sometimes as if the decree is radically prior, given God’s predestining of the fall itself. Calvin thus, has both infra and supralapsarian accents. The doctrine of predestination placed immediately after the doctrine of God in Turretin’s Institutio, quite emphatically defines predestination as a double decree, consisting in election and reprobation, the object of which is fallen humanity in need of redemption, the classic infralapsarian definition. The contrast is compelling—Calvin, despite his treatment of the doctrine long after he has discussed the fall and redemption in Christ is not clearly infralapsarian, whereas Turretin, who discusses the decree prior to the fall is unmistakably infralapsarian. These differing placements of the doctrine, moreover, do not alter in any way either the eternality of the decree or the relation of the doctrine of predestination to the doctrine of God—no more than the placement of Christology consistently after the fall and the problem of sin removes it from close topical relationship to the doctrine of God. And, of course, neither placement constitutes the decree as one of the principia of theology.
In addition, the arguments of Bizer, Hall, and others that the little Tabula praedestinationis published by Beza in 1555 (nine years before the death of Calvin) was a substantive alteration of the systematic perspective of Genevan theology and the basis of a predestinarian restructuring of Reformed system simply does not bear historical scrutiny: the writers who argue the point simply state it as self-evident without duly considering the context and genre of the document, the documentable impact of it on later thought, or even Beza’s own stated qualifications in the discussion accompanying the famous chart. Beza’s Tabula is nothing more than a presentation of the doctrine of predestination in its relation to the ordo salutis, based on the standard scholastic distinction between the decree and its execution in time. It is hardly a prospectus for a system—instead of being read as emblematic for later development, it ought not be read in its historical context, as a defense of Calvin’s teaching against Bolsec and Castellio and, moreover, as an attempt to show the pastoral implications of the doctrine. Similarly, Perkins’ A Golden Chaine, which appears to be based on Beza’s Tabula, is an exposition of the decree and its execution—and not at all a theological system. There is not only no evidence that Beza’s Tabula was a predestinarian systematization of theology, there is also no evidence that any of Beza’s contemporaries or successors viewed it as the basis for a predestinarian system. Neither in the Tabula nor in A Golden Chaine is there any identification of predestination as a principium of theology, nor is there any attempt to deduce doctrine from the idea of a decree. Both Beza and Perkins assume, moreover, a category of divine permission and the existence, as well, of contingent events and free will in the world. There is not even a tendency toward metaphysical determinism: when we enter the world of seventeenth-century theological debate, it is the purportedly predestinarian Reformed who take up the defense of human free choice and secondary causality against the more deterministic tendencies of Cartesian metaphysics, specifically the occasionalist conclusion, resting on a conception of necessary divine concursus, that God is the sole cause of all motion in the universe.
Since predestination can be predicated of God—in other words, since God can be said to decree or predestine, the decretive or predestining will of God becomes an important category of theology. It is not, however, an all-embracing category. On the basis of the logic of predication and the prior enunciation of God as the principium essendi theologiae, the doctrine of predestination must be a category subordinate to the principium of which it is predicated, the triune God, and subordinate also to the will of God, of which it is the representation. Nor, given the orthodox understanding of the attributes, does the decree of God overrule or take logical precedence over the other attributes—it is not even central in a logical sense to the locus de Deo. Significantly, the early orthodox press home the point that the decree must be understood in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity as well as in terms of the doctrine of the divine essence, and that predestination, defined strictly as the decree to elect some and to reprobate others, is only one category of the divine willing. Particularly in the infralapsarian systems of Reformed theology, the doctrines of creation and providence stand apart from and, in some sense, prior to election and reprobation. In all Reformed systems, the divinity of Christ assures Christology a greater importance in the soteriological portion of system than the doctrine of predestination. In addition, there is no reason that a given system cannot be both predestinarian and soteriologically christocentric, contrary to the claims of some recent essays. Indeed, without the decree manifesting the solely gracious character of salvation, the system could easily cease to be soteriologically christocentric. Such systematic balance can occur, moreover, only when predestination is significant but not principial.
2. Althaus, Heppe, and Schweizer on prolegomena: specific critiques. There is, then, sufficient reason to accept the assumption of the Reformed systems that their declared principia are their actual principia and that no doctrines other than the doctrines of Scripture and God have an absolutely determinative effect upon the structure and contents of theological system. This conclusion highlights the methodological problem inherent in one of the more eminent earlier treatises on the basic principles of Reformed theology, Althaus’ Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik. Althaus tries to elicit from select doctrinal loci, typically the loci de praedestinatione, de Deo, de providentia, and de foedere what he believes to be underlying principles and tendencies, without paying particular attention to what the Protestant scholastics themselves say about principia. In addition, although Althaus analyzes the presence of philosophical and logical structures within the systems, his sense of the use of philosophy and logic for Reformed theology bears little resemblance to the arguments made by the seventeenth-century dogmaticians themselves. Specifically, his lack of attention to presuppositions enunciated in their prolegomena, such as the object of theology, the relation of theology to reason and philosophy, and the legitimate grounds of theological knowing, leads to a failure to evaluate accurately the general character of Reformed dogmatics and the implications of arguments and structures within individual Reformed systems. In these arguments Althaus was largely following out the earlier lines of argument found in the works of Heppe and Schweizer. A similar problematic understanding of principia obtains in the studies by Hastie and Meeter.
Heppe’s presentation of principia is also marred by a series of profound problems. He reduces the complex prolegomena of the orthodox systems to a discussion of natural and revealed theology and virtually excludes their extensive inquiry into the nature and forms of theology, the object and genus of theology, the use of philosophy in theological systems, and the problem of “fundamental doctrines.” Heppe also arranges his dogmatics in such a way as to place the doctrine of predestination prior to creation, in relation to the doctrine of God. This was a pattern followed by a large number of seventeenth-century systems, but not by all of the Protestant scholastics—certainly not by all of those cited by Heppe. In this and other discussions throughout his dogmatics, Heppe’s arrangement of doctrine does not reflect the arrangement of doctrine in the systems he is citing. Nor does he attempt to alleviate the problem by describing the order, arrangement and interrelationship of individual doctrines in these systems. What is more, Heppe obscures the breadth of Reformed orthodoxy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the interest of his hypothesis of a distinct Melanchthonian German Reformed dogmatics standing halfway between the Lutherans and the Calvinists: his Reformed Dogmatics depicts his version of “Calvinism” and excludes materials from the Heidelberg theologians that Heppe himself cites in his other compend, Die Dogmatik des Protestantismus im sechzehnten Jahrhundert. The following essay attempts to set forth all the elements of the orthodox prolegomena and principia, with attention to the several historical forms of argument and to the development of orthodox system.
A selection of citations from the Reformed orthodox prolegomena somewhat more representative of their contents than Heppe’s presentation is available in Schweizer’s Glaubenslehre. Here at least we have discussion of theology as a mixed discipline, both practical and speculative; of God, the highest good, as the end or goal of theology; and of the relationship of philosophy and theology. Nevertheless, the survey of topics is incomplete: there is no discussion of the object and genus of theology, fundamental articles, or the distinction between the divine archetype and the derived or ectypal forms of theology. Furthermore, Schweizer’s discussion is organized not according to the logic of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century systems, but according to the requirements of his own Schleiermacherian theological system. In Schweizer’s hands, even the topics of the prolegomena must bear witness to “das Bewusstsein schlechthiniger Abhängigkeit”—the consciousness of absolute or utter dependence.
It is also worth observing that the fact of the absolute dependence of the entire created, contingent order upon God does not necessarily provide a foundation either for a philosophical determinism or for a theological predestinarianism that understands the divine decree as the principle from which an entire system can be deduced. Without a doubt, the assumption of the absolute dependence of all things upon God will be bound, doctrinally, to a strong concept of the divine decree in providence and predestination. But it is equally clear that such an assumption, when bound to concepts of providential concurrence, the ordained freedom of secondary causes, and the moral freedom and responsibility of human beings, does not lead in the direction of a thoroughgoing determinism and does not lead to the discussion of divine determination as an underlying factor in all topics of theological discussion. Since, moreover, the actual topics of theological system are understood as arising from revelation and not from reason, the synthetic arrangement of those topics does not and cannot indicate their logical deduction from a single central doctrine. The contrary opinion, that dependence indicates both determinism and the deductive character of theological system, is the fundamental error in Schweizer’s conception of Reformed theology.
None of these older essays, therefore, provide an adequate analysis of the actual principia of orthodox Reformed theology. Not only do all in some way or other assume that predestination is the real principium theologiae but they also fail to do justice to the actual contents and implications of the Reformed prolegomena. In the present essay, both the topics and their organization follow the Reformed prolegomena closely, with the intention of presenting all of the issues addressed by the orthodox and the implications of those issues for the orthodox theological system.
Muller, R. A. (2003). Post-Reformation reformed dogmatics: The rise and development of reformed orthodoxy; volume 1: Prolegomena to theology (2nd ed.) (123–132). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
