Justification Vindicated Justification: Volume One,Michael Horton,Zondervan, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐310‐49160‐6), 400 pp., pb £39.99 Justification: Volume Two,Michael Horton,Zondervan, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐310‐57838‐3), 528 pp., pb £39.99

Writing from a classical Reformed perspective, Horton reviews the entire history of ‘Justification’ and then sharply criticizes many fashionable movements in theology that he sees as a betrayal of the doctrine. These include ‘the new perspective on Paul’, the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa, Radical Orthodoxy, and even the Lutheran–Roman Catholic Joint Declaration of 1999. Writing with theological and pastoral passion, Horton is a formidable polemicist who never loses sight of his central concern, so that his book is both an exciting debate and a moving witness to the Pauline, Lutheran, and Calvinist Gospel.     

Philosophy and Its Pitfalls

Philosophy is an ambitious, speculative practice, aimed at finding out what wisdom is and how to attain it, in so far as that can be done by explicit discussion and argument. A likely pitfall of any such enterprise is that it loses touch with concerns in human life outside itself and becomes scholastic, in the pejorative sense. Academic institutions which encourage wide and outward‐looking intellectual sympathies, and which do not reward narrow point‐scoring specialism, are helpful in resisting the tendency to scholasticism. The Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge might have provided some of the elements of such a setting, by framing an academic structure in which philosophy was studied in conjunction with other subjects in the humanities and social sciences. As things actually developed, that possibility was not realised. Nevertheless, philosophy at Cambridge maintained vigour and significance, through the intellectual freedom and encouragement it provided to some notable individual philosophers.     

Calvin and the Ecclesiastical Power of Jurisdiction

Abstract

This study offers a hypothesis that the two marks of the Church in the Calvinist Reformed tradition, together with its disciplinary power, restate the twin classical powers granted to the Church in Catholic tradition, namely the powers of order and jurisdiction. Unlike Luther, for whom the chief ecclesiastical power was the authority to preach and teach, Calvin not only acknowledges the teaching and sacramental functions of the Church, but also stressed a jurisdictional power (jurisdictio fori) with autonomous legislative and judicial competence. This jurisdictional dimension is the key to explaining the role played by Geneva-inspired Reformed churches vis-à-vis the State and differences from other other Protestant traditions.     

Dealing with Diversity: On the Uses of Common Sense in Descartes and Montaigne

This essay attempts to retrieve the notion of ‘common sense’ within the writings of Descartes and Montaigne. I suggest that both writers represent distinct traditions in which the notion is employed. Descartes represents a modernist tradition in which common sense is understood to be a cognitive faculty, while Montaigne represents a humanist tradition in which common sense is understood as a political virtue. I also suggest that both writers work with the notion as a way of responding to diversity in the world. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the notion of common sense employed by Descartes and Montaigne emerges out of the scholastic tradition and the assertion that both writers are responding to the educational consequences of scholasticism. I also discuss how the reconstruction of Descartes in this paper can provide some ground for raising new questions about the Cartesian project and educational philosophy. Finally, I gesture toward the idea that the humanist tradition with its understanding of common sense as political virtue can provide benefit for contemporary responses to diversity.     

SELF-ABANDONMENT AND SELF-DENIAL Quietism, Calvinism, and the Prospect of Hell

Self‐abandonment and self‐denial are, respectively, Catholic and hyper‐Calvinist analogues of each other. Roughly, each requires the surrendering of a person to God's will and providence through faith, hope, and love. Should the self‐abandoning/self‐denying individual accept his or her own damnation if that be God's will? This article, which is virtually alone in discussing the Catholic and Reformed Protestant traditions together, answers “No.” The unqualified self‐abandonment present in quietism and the radical self‐denial of Samuel Hopkins are perverse and irrational responses to the prospect of hell because they run counter to the Christian's deepest need to spend eternity with God. However, a qualified self‐abandonment is intellectually defensible and offers a viable Christian piety.     

The Eucharistic Theology of Richard Field (1561-1616): Confusion,Contradiction, or Creative Synthesis?

Abstract

This examines the eucharistic thought of Richard Field, a Church of England clergyman scholar, as found in his major work, Of the Church (1610). This provided thorough treatment of a number of other topics. He argued that many of the differences apparently dividing Protestants were illusory. Field tends to be portrayed in the secondary literature as having obscured his own eucharistic views in his efforts to reconcile Lutheran and Reformed eucharistic doctrine. In addition, his eucharistic theology tends to be viewed in the literature as conforming to the English Reformed tradition. This paper argues that Field actually clarified his beliefs through his attempts to reconcile differing Protestant camps, and that he espoused not so much a wholly Reformed eucharistic doctrine as a creative synthesis of Lutheran and English Reformed elements, somewhat in tension but not necessarily in contradiction.     

Retrieving a Mature Reformed Doctrine of Original Sin: A Conversation with Some Recent Proposals

A ‘broadly Augustinian’ doctrine of original sin continues to receive support in contemporary Catholic and Protestant theological discourse as the best account of human experience and biblical teaching. Notwithstanding this, substantial challenges arise in connection with this doctrine which Catholics and Protestants have classically sought to address in their own ways. With a contemporary Protestant audience in mind, I attempt to rehabilitate the theological viability of the oft‐criticized mature Reformed doctrine of original sin which entails the immediate imputation of Adamic guilt. In dialogue with some recent dogmatic contributions, I draw upon eloquent advocates of the Reformed doctrine, such as Petrus van Mastricht and Francis Turretin, to argue that the notion of immediate imputation continues to provide a coherent and biblically defensible explanation for the just imposition of inherited corruption. Faring somewhat better than other proposals, it deserves reconsideration in contemporary reconstructions of the doctrine, especially in those which might self‐consciously seek to identify with the Protestant confessional tradition.     

Reformed and Radically Orthodox?: Participatory Metaphysics,Reformed Scholasticism and Radical Orthodoxy's Critique of Modernity

Radical Orthodoxy locates the intellectual roots of secular modernity in the attenuation of Thomistic participatory metaphysics in the late medieval period. John Milbank implicates Reformational theologies in this unintentionally secularizing movement. I examine seventeenth‐century Reformed scholastic Stephen Charnock, contending that he articulates an account of participatory metaphysics similar to Thomas Aquinas, and even further, fails to exhibit the negative trends which Milbank and Catherine Pickstock associate with Scotus and the via moderna. This analysis of Charnock calls into question the location of Reformed theology in Radical Orthodoxy's genealogy of secular modernity, and opens up possibilities for rapprochement between Reformed theology and Radical Orthodoxy.     

From Latimer's Fellow-martyr to the ‘English Calvin': Nicholas Ridley's Reputation and the Circulation of A brief declaracion of the Lordes Supper, 1555-1570

Abstract

Nicholas Ridley, the Edwardian Bishop of London, was executed in 1555 during Mary Tudor's reign. An active publicist, he composed in prison a didactic treatise that promoted the Reformed view of the Eucharist and was published in Emden (1555) and in Strasbourg (1556). In 1556, A brief declaracion found its way to Geneva where a community of English exiles had it translated into Latin (Conrad Badius then issued a version in French). Not only did the translation acquire a polemical edge, but certain allusions, scattered in the preface and in the margins of the text, turned Ridley's treatise into a ‘Calvinist’ manifesto at a time when Calvin was ardently defending his views against the Lutheran polemicist, Westphal. Meanwhile, Jean Crespin made use of Badius's version in his martyrologies and reprinted Ridley's treatise in his 1570 edition. Whereas in England, Ridley's works began to be perceived as controversial after Mary's death, Crespin and Beza (Icones, 1580) kept his treatise alive and heralded him as the ‘English Calvin’ in French Reformed circles.     

The lutheran influence on Kant’s depraved will

Contemporary Kant-scholarship has a tendency to allign Kant’s understanding of depravity closer to Erasmus than Luther in their famous debate on the freedom of the will (1520–1527). While, at face value, some paragraphs do warrant such a claim, I will argue that Kant’s understanding of the radical evil will draws closer to Luther than Erasmus in a number of elements. These elements are (1) the intervention of the Wille for progress towards the good, (2) a positive choice for evil, (3) the inscrutability of moral progress, (4) the rejection of prudence as a means for salvation and (5) the rejection of moral sentimentalism. I believe that Kant-scholarship mistakenly pegs Kant’s rational Enlightenment optimism for an existential optimism while Kant’s view of fallen nature draws closer to Lutheran than Erasmusian depravity. A tacit Lutheran influence pervades Kant’s moral philosophy which could explain the influence Kant’s has had on some more pessimistic 19th century philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.     

The Twofold Life of the Word: Karl Barth's Critical Reception of the Extra Calvinisticum

Though the extra Calvinisticum has played an historically important role for Christology, the doctrine has been criticized not only by Lutherans and modern Christologies ‘from below’ but by some Reformed thinkers as well. This article examines the place of the extra in dogmatic thinking about the incarnation: specifically, Karl Barth's critical response to his own tradition. After examining the differences between Lutheran and Reformed construals of the relationship of the Logos asarkos to the Logos ensarkos I take up Barth's views on the extra, which over the course of his career moved from enthusiastic affirmation to a sharp critique. Finally, I suggest that Barth's mature Christology retains the best of both Protestant positions by correcting a critical inconsistency in Reformed thought. He does not reject the doctrine of the Logos asarkos, but he does suggest a way in which this is related to the life of the Logos ensarkos that marginalizes the former. Barth is right not to discard the extra, but also that it has been misused in how it is deployed in dogmatic theology.     

Schleiermacher's Repudiation of Dordrecht in his Essay ‘On the Doctrine of Election’

Friedrich Schleiermacher intended his essay ‘On the Doctrine of Election’ to defend the Augustinian/Calvinian logic of the Reformed doctrine of unconditional election. Counterintuitively he repudiated the Synod of Dordrecht which similarly defended unconditional election for reasons both political/ecclesiastical and theological. Politically he wanted to protect the newly united Reformed‐Lutheran Church in Prussia and the Synod had ended up dividing the Reformed churches over the doctrine of election. Theologically Schleiermacher sought a revised doctrine of election to eliminate any bifurcation between the blessed and the damned in God's decree and to elide completely the notion of eternal punishment in hell.     

Why ‘Appeals to Intuitions’ might not be so bad

Abstract

There has been lively recent debate over the value of appeals to intuitions in philosophy. Some, especially ‘experimental philosophers’, have argued that such appeals can carry little or no evidential weight, and that standard analytic philosophy is consequently methodologically bankrupt. Various defences of intuitions, and analytic philosophy, have also been offered. In this paper I review the case against intuitions, in particular the claims that intuitions vary with culture, and are built by natural selection, and argue that much of their force depends on assuming that the required sense of intuition is of a kind of human universal. In opposition to this view I argue that there is reason to regard intuitions of professional philosophers as parochial developmental achievements (so that cultural variation among non-professionals is irrelevant) and also the product of a training process that warrants ascribing some evidential weight to them. The argument made here is not anti-naturalistic, nor does it grant intuitions any special or trumping evidential status. Unlike some defences of analytic philosophy it does not depend on denying that philosophers appeal to intuitions at all.     

Philosophy and the Search for Truth

Philosophy, as it is understood and practiced in the West, is and has been generally considered to be the search for truth. But even if philosophy is the search for truth, it does not automatically follow that those who are identified as ‘philosophers’ are themselves actually engaged in that search. And indeed, in this paper I argue that many philosophers have in fact not been genuinely engaged in the search for truth (in other words, many philosophers have not been doing philosophy) and as such much of what passes for philosophy is in fact not really philosophy at all.     

Philosophy,Early Modern Intellectual History,and the History of Philosophy

Historians of philosophy are increasingly likely to emphasize the extent to which their work offers a pay‐off for philosophers of un‐historical or anti‐historical inclinations; but this defence is less familiar, and often seems less than self‐evident, to intellectual historians. This article examines this tendency, arguing that such arguments for the instrumental value of historical scholarship in philosophy are often more problematic than they at first appear. Using the relatively familiar case study of René Descartes' reading of his scholastic and Aristotelian contemporaries, the article attempts to problematize this notion of pay‐off from an historian's perspective.     

Thomas Aquinas and the Potential Catholic Integration of a Dynamic Occasionalist Understanding of Grace

Starting out from John Barclay's Lutheran‐inclined, actualist reading of the in‐breaking quality of grace and the Spirit in Paul, this article asks how a Catholic theology of grace – typically more focused on identifying the relatively stable structures and effects of grace – might with integrity learn from the Barclayan‐Lutheran‐Pauline difference. By pursuing a close, four‐step reading of Thomas Aquinas' theology of grace, as that appears in the Summa Theologiæ and his lectures on the Pauline epistles, the article demonstrates that just such a Catholic appropriation of a more dynamic graced actualism is indeed possible; one which leads, with dynamic integrity, to a deepened understanding, articulation and practice of core Catholic instincts rather than to their reduction or distortion.     

Women,philosophy and the history of philosophy*

ABSTRACT

It is only in the last 30 years that any appreciable work has been done on women philosophers of the past. This paper reflects on the progress that has been made in recovering early-modern women philosophers in that time and the role of the history of philosophy in that process. I argue that as women are integrated into the broader picture of philosophy, there is a danger of overlooking the different conditions under which they originally philosophized and which shaped their philosophies. Having retrieved them from oblivion, we now face the challenge of avoiding a ‘new amnesia’ by developing historical narratives and modes of analysis which acknowledge the different conditions within which they worked, without diminishing their contribution to philosophy. I offer these remarks as a contribution to current debates about the forms that historical narrative should take, and the best way to promote women in philosophy today, in the belief that we can learn from our own more recent history.     

'Making Exceptions': A Response to Shue

abstract   In what follows I respond to Henry Shue's paper by focusing on three principal themes. The first is the relation of philosophical theory to practice, in which I agree that philosophers have to run the risks attendant upon applying reason to concrete cases. The second is the use of examples in moral philosophy, in particular the example used in the justification of torture as an exception; here I draw distinctions between different types of examples in philosophy and the uses to which they are put. Thirdly, in a brief consideration of our responses to climate change I suggest that, contra Shue, we are not being asked to go beyond a normal requirement so much as to re-establish the boundaries of what counts as normal .     

The reality of the intuitive

According to current methodological orthodoxy philosophers rely on intuitions about thought experiments to refute general claims about the nature of knowledge, freedom, thought, reference, justice, beauty, etc. Philosophers working under the banner of ‘negative experimental philosophy’ have criticized more traditional philosophers for relying on this method. They argue that intuitions about thought experiments are influenced by factors that are irrelevant to the truth of their contents. Cappelen and Deutsch defend traditional philosophy against this critique by rejecting the picture of philosophical methodology it presupposes: philosophers do not really rely on intuitions. In this paper, I defend methodological orthodoxy by arguing that philosophers must rely on intuitions somewhere and that they do in fact often rely on intuitions about thought experiments. I also argue in favor of a reply to the negative experimental critique that is similar to at least part of Deutsch’s own.     

EAT MY FLESH AND DRINK MY BLOOD

Disgust or horror is our natural attitude to eating human flesh and drinking human blood. How can this attitude not transfer itself to the Christian Eucharist, in which the bread is said to be Christ's body and the wine his blood? And if the aversion must transfer itself, then how can God have been, as Christians have to think, the founder of the rite? I discuss these questions with reference to several different theories of the Eucharist, one Calvinist, the others of a would‐be Roman Catholic kind.