BOOK REVIEW:
Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725. Four volumes. By Richard A. Muller. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003. 463 + 537 + 606 + 557 pp. ISBN 0801026172, 0801026164, 0801022940, 0801022959. 

Prolegomena to Theology, Vol. 1
Holy Scripture the Cognitive Foundation of Theology, Vol. 2
The Divine Essence and Attributes, Vol. 3
The Triunity of God, Vol. 4

Most readers will be familiar with the first edition of this series, of which there were just two volumes (1987 & 1993). These two volumes have been revised and expanded. The 365 pages of the first have become 463, with significantly more material on each page, though this does make the second edition harder to read. The quality of production is higher than the “camera-ready” copy of the first edition and the volumes have been well edited—though surely the “not” should not be there in line 17 of 1:128 (Beza’s tabula “ought not be read in its historical context”)? Two new volumes have been added. The whole work is improved in a number of ways. The infuriating endnotes have become footnotes and each volume has a considerably more detailed list of contents, as well as an index. The revised edition reflects the years of further study since the first, some of the fruits of which are found in the author’s After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). The fourth volume ends with a concluding chapter on “The Character of Reformed Orthodoxy” and 125 pages of bibliography, 58 of these being devoted to primary sources. 

The first two volumes covered the themes of “Prolegomena to Theology” and “Holy Scripture.” The two new volumes cover “The Divine Essence and Attributes” and “The Triunity of God,” thus bringing to completion the originally intended scope of the series. Another addition in the second edition is the subtitle, which was added to clarify both the historical nature of the study and the fact that the development traced starts not with the rise of Reformed Orthodoxy but with the beginning of the Reformation. In fact it starts yet earlier and volumes 2 to 4 each devote a chapter to medieval scholasticism. 

There is a substantial shift from the first to the second editions. Throughout there has remained a concern to explore the issue of continuity and discontinuity between the Reformers and Reformed orthodoxy. In the first edition the author’s concern was to respond to the “Calvin against the Calvinists” approach that placed all the emphasis on the supposed betrayal of Calvin and also accused Orthodoxy of being driven by a “central dogma” such as predestination. In the second edition there is a little less emphasis on refuting false ideas of Reformed orthodoxy and more on analyzing carefully what it actually was and spelling out the complexities of the movement—“too complex . . . for a simple claim of either continuity or discontinuity” (4:419). This shift is to be welcomed. Without being a Hegelian, one might say that the “Calvin against the Calvinists” was a crudely exaggerated thesis, to which Muller responded with an opposing antithesis and that now he has moved closer to a synthesis, with greater recognition of elements of discontinuity as well as continuity. “Reformed orthodoxy was, in many ways, different from the Reformation. But . . . that difference does not necessarily indicate discontinuity” (4:386). But nor is it a matter of simple continuity. “The movement of Protestant theology from the Reformation into the era of orthodoxy cannot be described either as a radical alteration of perspective and a distortion of theology or as a purely continuous development of doctrine. Both of these models are simplistic and erroneous” (2:24). So the extent of continuity and discontinuity is a complex question—which is presumably why it takes 2163 pages to answer it. As well as warning against simplistic accounts of the relation between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Muller also warns against those who have produced such accounts in order to discredit or legitimize Reformed Orthodoxy, abusing history for theological ends. 

These massive volumes are an impressively comprehensive study of the topic. No one could question David Steinmetz’s statement on the back cover that ‘all future work on the history of Protestant theology from 1550 to 1800 will have to take Muller’s studies into account.” In particular, those who in the future wish to highlight the discontinuities between the Reformers and their successors will need to do so with considerably more care than have most in the recent past.

Anthony N. S. Lane
Director of Research and Professor of Historical Theology
London School of Theology, London, UK

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, FALL 2006, VOL. 6, #2.