🧵 To close out the year, my top 10 most popular memes for 2022:

10. Melanchthon and Luther 9. A neo-Calvinist argument

🧵 1/ “Grace perfects nature” & variants in 17th c. literature

“Gratia non extinguit sed ordinat affectiones, saith Aquinas, Non tollit sed attollit naturam, Grace doth not destroy, but elevate nature.”

– Edmund Calamy (Westminster divine, d. 1666)

quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A32041.… 2/ Edmund Calamy here attributes a variant of “grace perfects nature” to Aquinas. His use of “elevates” (attollit) is an important antecedent to Charnock’s later employment of the same term, but in Calamy’s case, he connects the term directly to Aquinas.

https://twitter.com/scottrswain/status/1589960996575379456

🧵 1/15 What are the origins of historical criticism? Spinoza, R. Simon, & J. Le Clerc are often mentioned. But what others?

Kęstutis Daugirdas has published various essays arguing that 17th c. Socinians altered the relation of faith & reason, & anticipated later criticism: Daugirdas: “Traditionally, a distinction had been made between the cognitive fields of the natural and the supernatural, but [Socinian Joachim] Stegmann equated them before the forum of human reason.

🧵 1/5 While there is little evidence for a direct positive relation between Luther or Calvin and Aquinas’s biblical interpretation, the same is not true for other Reformers. Despite Melanchthon’s dismissive attitude toward the scholastics, in his exegesis of the Gospel of John “parallels to Thomas Aquinas’s Expositio in Johannem are abundant and striking” (Wengert 1987, 95).

When John Calvin criticized the theology of the “scholastics” what did he have in mind?

One of the most thorough treatments of this question comes from A. A. LaVallee, “Calvin’s Criticism of Scholastic Theology” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1967). 🧵 /1 LaVallee examined both the terminology and ideas associated with Calvin’s usage of “scholastics” and observed that:

1) terms like “scholastics” were often used interchangeably with “Sorbonists” and “adversaries,” suggesting a focus on opposing theologians at Paris. /2

There are now a number of scholars saying that Luther & Calvin:

1) misunderstood Aquinas on key points
2) derived their knowledge of him from secondary sources

On Luther: Stefan Gradl, Theodor Dieter, David Luy
On Calvin: ANS Lane, Arvin Vos, RA Muller, Charles Raith II

🧵 1/6 “...the fact that Luther’s interpretation of Aquinas is often erroneous at critical junctures,suggests at best a peripheral & mediated acquaintance with Aquinas’ corpus. His knowledge of Aquinas was almost certainly derived from other sources.” @davidjluy oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/o…

🧵 Protestant Scholasticism on Medieval Scholasticism

Protestant scholastics shared similar method with medieval scholastic theologians, but they also distinguished their own method from the latter. Here are 6 points of criticism made by Protestant scholastics: /1 1. Ignorance of languages

The Protestant scholastics (and early modern scholastics generally) integrated humanist linguistic advances. They found medieval scholastics wanting in their knowledge of languages. William Whitaker observes that Aquinas relies on the Latin... /2

“Friendship, therefore, is the marrow and nucleus of ethics—its center and goal. Where friendship is banished, in that place there is no virtue, no order, no duty, and no happiness.”

— Georg Pasor, Christian Ethics (1610) 🧵 1/4 academia.edu/58511019/Georg… In this work, Georg Pasor (1570-1637), prof of Hebrew at Herborn (1607-1626) and Greek at Franeker (1626-1637), provides a sketch of Christian virtues & duties. The work is characterized both by voluminous biblical references & integration of philosophical virtues. 2/4

🧵 Protestant teaching on #NaturalLaw appears already in Philip Melanchthon’s Loci communes (1521), & his treatment had a much larger impact.

We can illustrate this impact by recurring use of Greek terms from Stoic philosophy: “common notions” & “preconceptions” (προλήψεις). /1 The 1521 Loci communes marginalia highlights 1) the existence and 2) essence of NL (esse legem naturae / quid lex naturae).

1) “Paul teaches in the second chapter to the Romans, in a remarkably fine and clear enthymeme (enthymemate), that there is in us a law of nature.” /2

I just noticed that I own THL Parker’s review copy of L. Smits' Saint Augustin dans l'œuvre de Jean Calvin (1958). The invitation reads “For review in S.J.T. / T.F.T.” TF Torrance invited Parker to write the review for Scottish Journal of Theology, which appeared in 1961. 🧵 1/4 It looks like Parker underlined Calvin’s claim “Augustine is entirely ours” & noted Calvin’s mentions of Augustine in his Romans Commentary. This is interesting for 2 reasons:

1) Parker produced a critical edition of Calvin’s Commentary on Romans for @Brill_History in 1981. 2/4

🧵 Some treat Aquinas as if he’s the only important scholastic theologian for Protestants, or think of Protestant scholasticism as a kind of neo-Thomism. But historically Protestants read, and even adopted doctrines from, a variety of medieval and early modern scholastics. /1 After Luis de Molina SJ introduced the concept of God’s “middle knowledge” (scientia media), Protestants took various positions for and against. 17th c. Arminians, following the early appropriation by Arminius, adopted this Molinist doctrine. /2
doi.org/10.1163/978900…

🧵 The historical Calvin vs. the Calvin of faith

One way to think about diverse reactions to Aquinas and medieval scholasticism in Reformed circles – both past and present – is to recognize at least two main approaches to the authority and interpretation of Calvin. /1 I’ll call these approaches the “historical Calvin” & the “Calvin of faith”.

1) The Calvin of faith: This perspective views Calvin as normative for whatever is identified as the Reformed faith, while interpreting him for the most part in isolation from his 16th c. co-laborers. /2

“The story of Thomas Aquinas and Protestantism has yet to be written, and it is not identical with the story of Thomas and Luther.” – David Steinmetz, Luther in Context (2002)

Since then we’ve learned a bit more of this story. 🧵 w/ examples from 16th c. Reformed tradition: /1 I pass over for the most part the fine studies of John Patrick Donnelly, S.J.: Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace (Brill, 1976) and “Calvinist Thomism” (1976). Read them if you haven’t. The following is by way of addition to Donnelly. /2