BOOK REVIEW:
Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise. Edited by Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker. Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001. 311 pp. ISBN 0801022428. 

This volume is a collection of essays that elucidate and attempt to apply the revised picture of Post-Reformation theology that has been emerging in recent decades. Since scholars from the Reformed and Presbyterian confessional tradition have done most of this work of reassessment, the majority of essays pertain to Reformed as opposed to Lutheran orthodoxy. The essays themselves reflect the various ways in which this revisionist scholarship has been received and applied.

Some of the best essays are those that provide an overview of the recent scholarship that has challenged the age-old stereotype of late sixteenth and seventeenth century theology as a dry, rationalistic, rigid system of thought detached from piety and practice. The introduction, by editors van Asselt and Dekker, provides a very useful review of the history of scholarship, along with suggestions for future research and ten theses regarding the scholastic method and protestant orthodox systems of theology. The authors focus on getting at questions of continuity and discontinuity between various eras, thinkers, methods, and theological traditions, as well as seeking greater accuracy in the application and definition of terms such as “scholasticism.”

Particularly important is the first essay by Richard A. Muller, a pioneer in the reassessment of Post-Reformation Reformed theology. His essay seeks a more accurate definition of what scholasticism really was (namely, a theological method), based on how later protestant theologians themselves defined that method, in contrast to the pejorative caricatures of protestant orthodoxy that originated in the nineteenth century and were perpetuated by (primarily Barthian) theologians in the twentieth.

Most of the essays examine particular thinkers to reinforce and illustrate the newer understanding of protestant scholasticism, which perceives much more continuity between the original reformers and the later systematizers, and which defines scholasticism as a method rather than a specific doctrinal perspective. While not denying that method can and does influence content, it is a fact that James Arminius and William Perkins, diametrically opposed in theological content, were both scholastics when it came to method.

Some of the best essays are those that look at particular thinkers and issues. Carl Trueman applies Quentin Skinner’s linguistic approach to Puritan texts with fruitful results. Harm Goris examines the Thomistic elements in Zanchi’s doctrine of God. Eef Dekker crosses the confessional divide in an essay on the debate between Bellarmine and Ames on free will. Other fine essays include Willem van Asselt on Johannes Cocceius, Sebastian Rehnman on John Owen, Frits G. M. Broeyer on William Whitaker, and Andreas J. Beck on Gisbertus Voetius.

Two of the essays, however, demonstrate how some scholars have either been slow to see the implications of the newer research, or have rejected it altogether in dogmatic defense of the old Barthian view. Willem van’t Spijker’s essay on “Reformation and Scholasticism” is still dominated by the older stereotypes and unconscious Kantian presuppositions: the problem with protestant scholasticism was that it portrayed truth (i.e. noumena) in terms of that which could be “seen with the eyes and touched the hands” (i.e. phenomena, see p. 93); thus he portrays Zanchi and Beza as epistemological bad guys for producing diagrams of the divine decrees. Cornelis Augustijn’s essay demonstrates total immunity to the newer research, and continues the anti-scholastic battle cry of an earlier generation.

Two essays attempt, with little success, to apply the findings of the recent scholarship to modern systematic theology. In his essay, Luco J. van den Brom cannot break free from the intellectual boundaries set by Karl Barth, and he appears to be bent on refuting the Scripture principle of the protestant orthodox (and contemporary confessional Reformed and Presbyterian Christianity).

Bert Loonstra’s essay critiques protestant orthodox hermeneutics according to the criteria of post-Kantian epistemology, and particularly Gadamer. He still views the protestant scholastics through the lens of the Dutch neo-orthodox theologian G. C. Berkouwer; he is excessively concerned with the “logical framework” purportedly assumed by the Reformed orthodox. Loonstra concludes that both Reformed scholasticism and modern hermeneutics confuse ontology with epistemology. In the case of the Reformed orthodox, this claim is highly dubious. Their epistemology certainly differed from modern theories, but confused they were not. Antonie Vos, in his essay, rightly suggests that modern systematic theologians have never really understood the theology of reformed orthodoxy; many of them still do not.

These essays mostly originated at a conference in Utrecht in 1997; many of the authors are Dutch speakers writing in English. As a result, such a collection requires a great deal of careful and judicious copyediting, which, unfortunately, this important volume did not receive. Nonetheless, this volume is an important contribution to the ongoing reassessment of the neglected and maligned generations of theologians who carried on and advanced the Reformed tradition after Calvin.

Raymond Blacketer
Pastor, Neerlandia Christian Reformed Church
Neerlandia, Canada 

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, SPRING/SUMMER 2003, VOL. 3, #2.