G'day Polemicus,
I will try to outline what we are doing. It is a massive project some of us have set ourselves to do. If any of what I write here is confusing or unclear, please feel free to write and ask.
Polemicus schreef:
David, I read the whole topic about the conditional convenant and Gods general love to all men and am very interested if you have published some lengthy articles about these subjects somewhere.
Nothing yet. I have a few papers on related issues. I am not sure if they are something you would be interested in.
I am working on examining Calvinist soteriology and looking at the evolution of the Calvinian doctrine of salvation.
My overall thesis is that there is a lot of diversity, differing trajectories within Reformation thought. But yet, there was a lot of unity on key issues between the early Reformers, even the Lutherans, but that all broke apart, and then different areas developed, until the movements to uniformity in the 17thC.
I am rather acquainted with Calvin and the theology of Ursinus, but the sources you mentioned are very incentive for me. It seems to me that the Americans have brought the discussion on the well meant offer of grace and common grace etc. to a much higher level than here in Holland.
1) Well some of us are working on the specifics of the atonement as held by the Medieval Scholastics, which was picked up by Calvin, Bullinger, Musculus, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Farel, Haller, et al, within the Reformed camp. At this point there is a lot of common ground with Luther and Manlancthon. Then when lapsarianism and Federalism began to spread and become developed independent and centra dogmatic points, that early unity broke up.
So some of us believe that the sort of synthesis first developed by Prosper, and by author of "calling of the Gentiles," was passed on and developed by Anselm, Lombard, and Aquinas, and this was picked by by Calvin, Bullinger and the ones I have mentioned.
Did you read the material from Kimedoncius and Paraeus?
Please provide me with some hints if you are able. I can give you my e-mail by private message.
Sure, again my email is flynn000 [@] bellsouth.net
Remove the square brackets of course.
2)
In terms of the free offer, what I have tried to do is locate
1) original latin lexicons from the 16th and 17thCs. They define offero and its cognate expressions as not just "present", but overture and offer. The PRC claims on this do not stand lexical examination.
2) Word pairing. Word pairing is a key tool in historiography, for the idea is how does a given author connect and pair ideas. Thus I have been looking at how men like Calvin pairs words, offer with invitation, for example. Word pairing analysis further refutes the sort of PRC claim that offero (and its cognate forms) meant
"present" or something like that.
Word pairing is also good in terms of Calvin's connection between God's love and goodness to all mankind with the idea of that being a fatherly love and fatherly goodness. Because he pairs fatherly with the attribute of love, it is clear that he means a disposition of love, as a father loves a child. He could not have meant simply doing good to someone, a bare doing good. See what I mean? Calvin is invoking a metaphor which means something.
3) In terms of common grace, the goal has been document from
primary sources statements from the classic Calvinists on the issues of divine love, grace, mercy, goodness, longsuffering, and the free offer.
4) The thought has been to engage in 1) a systematic reading of Calvin, for example, and then 2) test the Calvin reading by a hypercalvinist grid (eg a PRC or Gillite grid) to see if the hypercalvinist claims can be sustained.
This "testing" is fascinating. For example, not only have I tried to catalogue all the statements I can find from classic Calvinists on General Love, Common Grace, etc, showing that they did hold properly to both, and more, but also I have set about cataloguing how the classic Reformed exegeted critical verses.
Those verses could be stuff like Ps 81:13, Eze 18:23, Matt 23:37, John 3:16, 12:47, 2 Peter 3:9, and on and on. The idea is: if Calvin, for example, adopted the very position denounced as heretical or Arminian by a anyone claiming to the
True Reformed, it becomes unlikely that they are indeed true Reformed. Make sense?
For example, I have been reading Calvin's works systematically, and listing all the times he cites John 3:16 and then comments on it. Then combine all those instances into a file. By putting all these together, we can then get an accurate picture of how Calvin interpreted John 3:16.
http://calvinandcalvinism.wordpress.com ... -john-316/
Then, from that, what is happening in Calvin's thinking that enables him to adopt these specific exegetical constructs. How is it that Calvin could see the world of 3:16 as all mankind and what actually was operating in his thinking.
I dont know if that is helpful or answers your questions.
Take care,
David