Redeeming Natural Theology
A Study in Critical Appropriation of Scholastic Metaphysics in Junius, Turretin, and Mastricht
For the Academic Paper form with full citations, see here.
This essay will argue that the soteriological critique of natural theology, under the influence of the via moderna, undermined an otherwise healthy appropriation of Scholastic metaphysics in the maintaining of Reformed Orthodoxy. This is the movement that spanned the entire seventeenth century, that is the century following the more famous Reformation events. In “laymen’s terms” Reformed theologians started writing bigger books and making finer distinctions, not because of some radical doctrinal advance upon the magisterial reformers, but rather because they had the running start that Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox and others had afforded to them.
At the risk of oversimplification, it will be useful to frame this intellectual phenomenon, as I said, in a trajectory spanning the whole course of the seventeenth century: its central arena being that part of theological works that goes by the name prolegomena. This thesis has several moving pieces. Bringing them all into a single, clear portrait will require some definition, historical background, insights from secondary literature, but mostly, as excellent case studies, an analysis of the relevant prolegomena sections of Franciscus Junius (1545-1602), Francis Turretin (1623-1687), and Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706).1
A word about recent scholarship is necessary at this point. There is indeed a gap here. While the secondary literature gives some valuable angles of the Reformed Scholastic approach in general,2 and Turretin in particular,3 there is a record of near silence about Junius and Mastricht, the treatment of the archetypal-ectypal division by Asselt being a notable exception.4 The lack of secondary literature is glaring in light of three functions that this historical trajectory could play: (1) as a source for the debate between Classicalists and Presuppositionalists concerning natural theology in the tradition; (2) as a source for the broader discussion on how Reformed theological method might bear fruit on the later, more developed field of religious epistemology; and (3) as a study in how to maintain orthodoxy in a tradition via a proper diagnosis of the essence of false theology.
Having noted the relative silence in the scholarly record, one early clue comes to us in a statement by Asselt:
“It may well be that Reformed thought holding up the salvation of mankind as the end of theology went too far. Theology ought, after all, to be concerned with God.”5
In this one excerpt, we discern a connection between the Reformed soteriological axe wielded against a kind of “natural theology” and the exposed roots of orthodox theology as such. What I want to suggest, moving beyond Asselt’s observations, is that those roots of theological method are planted within the rich philosophical soil of realism. Junius, Turretin, Mastricht wind up taking up this soil and holding it up by other names. That metaphysical framework will be our link between natural theology as the essence of orthodoxy.
However, there is still some truth to the observations that the Reformed Scholastics displayed ambiguity on natural theology. It is unnecessary to swing the pendulum against the “anti-natural-theology” thesis to the other extreme that the Reformed Orthodox “took the same view” of natural theology as did medieval Thomists, for example. The record is one of unfinished production. By inheriting an essentially Scotist take on realism, as well as elements of voluntarism when it comes to the definition of theology, the Reformed prolegomena suffered various weak points against the onslaught of early modern thought.
All of that to say that support for the thesis will move from medieval sources, to an analysis of the relevance of realism and natural theology to theological method, to finally the primary texts themselves. The standard Reformed Scholastic method was to address questions of natural theology within the larger genus-differentia divisions of archetypal-ectypal theologies and true-false theologies.6 These will take up our third and fourth sections. It is in this process that we will start to see the link between relativizing natural theology and lack of clarity on the objective character of theology. The final section examines how our three cases studies attempted to diagnose the essence of theology turning false.
MEDIEVAL SOURCES
Some qualifications about continuities and discontinuities should be made. The Muller thesis is firmly fixed in several respects: scholasticism and humanism are not to be viewed as enemies; Aristotle was not dispensed with by the Reformed; Calvin was not at odds with later Calvinists; and those later systematizers had not settled into a rationalist-deterministic system revolving around predestination. Likewise, the characterization by Plantinga and Wolterstorff that the Reformed tradition has been overwhelmingly negative toward natural theology is entirely misleading.7 On the other hand, there were genuine discontinuities. To the extent that we fail to recognize these for what they were, we are bound to stagnate in our further studies of Post-Reformation dogmatics.
For example, there were real criticisms and qualifications of the medieval synthesis. While that word “scholasticism” is not used in any pejorative fashion, Mastricht’s reading of Thomas Aquinas on scientia as “perfect contemplation of God”8 seems at least vulnerable to being a misreading. Asselt adds that Mastricht “followed Calvin” in being critical of Scholastic theology, but observes that the “criticism was on the content of the theology, not on its method.”9 Failure to account for these discontinuities can lead to a distorted recovery of classical modes of thought in the early Reformed tradition. We can begin to see this in the matter of defining theology.
While Aquinas famously argued in the Summa Theologica that “Sacred doctrine is a science,”10 in his Commentary on Sentences I, there is some relevant nuance. Theology is theoretical first, and thus scientia. This is seen in that “the noblest of sciences is sought for its own sake. Practical sciences are not sought for their own sake, but for the sake of a work.”11 However, Thomas also says this is a wisdom, and that because it addresses every human perfection.12 At least at this point he is at one with Mastricht.
A few things are important to note about the Thomistic breakdown. First, both theory and practice had their “science,” in that there was a theoretical science and a practical science. In other words, it is too simple to pit “practice” and “wisdom” against “theory” and “science.” There is more overlap in Thomas’s conception. This at least suggests a great deal more nuance than the idea that Thomistic theological method issues forth into mere intellectual apprehension of objective essence. He seems only to have been saying that while wisdom is more that science, it is never less. But theology itself is “speculative rather than practical, because it is more concerned with divine things than with human acts, though it does treat even of these latter.”13
Two ideas associated with John Scotus Duns were influential, though in a somewhat indirect way. Those two ideas are univocity and voluntarism. I say that this influence is “indirect” because the Reformed Scholastics generally agreed with Thomas on the doctrine of analogical predication. They also tended to see the problem with a voluntarist doctrine of God, that of privileging the divine will over against the divine intellect (or divine nature as a whole).
However, due to the fixation on restraining the claims of natural theology, the primacy of will over intellect came in through the side door, so to speak.
Tracing this out in great detail would be a separate project. For our purposes, it is enough to note Asselt’s rooting of the archetypal / ectypal structure back to Scotus.14 Likewise with the distinction between that perfect theology in itself and “our theology” which is finite and imperfect15: a Scotist influence which Muller also detects.16 Polanus even made this connection in Junius’s own day, citing in particular the commentary of Lombard’s Sentences by Scotus.17 The relevance is that as divine and human knowledge became an increasingly “unbridgeable gulf” so too would the corresponding pairs of theology and philosophy, revelation and reason, wisdom and knowledge, and the practical and the speculative.
Now we move into First Philosophy. Scotus defended a brand of realism, but not the same as the Thomist sort. Realism is the metaphysical doctrine maintaining that universals—e.g. oneness, justice, truth, beauty, goodness—are not merely names that we invent (Nominalism) but that these must be eternal, immaterial, and immutable realities.18 Now without getting into the details of Thomas’s exact brand of realism, what matters is that it was wholly consistent with his doctrine of analogy.
For example, when we say that “God is good” and that “Man is good,” the predicate term good possesses neither exactly identical meaning (univocal) between the subjects, nor is it without any common meaning (equivocal) between the two. Rather, the two uses of the predicate term are sufficiently like each other for the common field between Creator and creature to be intelligible. That sufficient likeness is analogy. Now Scotus defended realism on a different ground. He held that we cannot predicate a subject of the same genus except univocally. He defined univocal predicates between two things “so that to affirm and deny it of one and the same thing would be a contradiction.”19
At this point, we ought to rule out a thesis that could be confused with my own. Roman Catholic authors will often charge the Reformed tradition with embracing nominalism and thus compromising the Western philosophical commitment to objective truth. While there are some parallel threads to this notion in what I am saying, it is also misleading. Copleston is among those who point out that William of Occam may not have actually held to the crass nominalism that is often attributed to him.20 For another, Luther was really the only Reformer of note in whom one can discern significant nominalist threads. More crucially, however, there is nothing at the core of Reformed theology that requires any metaphysical view other than the most robust form of realism.
At any rate, it was nominalists who would more obviously separate philosophy and theology.21 The rejection of universals is simultaneously a denial that there is a common field of metaphysical essence and thus a real unity of truth.
Now voluntarism made inroads not in theology proper but in theological method. Simply put, Thomists stress the intellect over the will. Scotists stress the will over the intellect. Why would any of the Reformed have sided with Scotism on this point? If one was emphasizing the practical dimension of theology as wisdom, then the sphere where the will participates in theology is broader than the sphere of mere insight with the mind. Asselt observed a general trend in the course of seventeenth-century prolegomena.
With practical sciences there is a method both analytical and inductive, which, “does not begin with knowledge of the subject that is to be studied, but rather with the end (finis) at which the particular practical science is aimed, after which the means (media) to that end are treated.”22 This “analytical” method came out of Padua and was advocated by Vermigli, Zanchi, Zabarella, and Keckermann.23 To set the course of theological method according to the ends of the whole soul can eschew many questions concerning the objectivity of theological truths in themselves. Such truths are true in their own right, quite apart from our practical response to them.
We will see how analytical-voluntarist method was appropriated with the definition of theology given by Junius. He says that theology is “wisdom concerning divine matters.”24 Note his reason. It encompasses “intellect, knowledge, and saving experience.”25 Although more holistic, this represents a preference against Thomas’s notion of theology as a science. With Mastricht, theology is “the doctrine of living for God through Christ.”26 Such has precursors in Ramus, Perkins, and Ames.27 But this will loom large in the TPT, because if the “object” of theology is not merely God, as to a science, but to one’s whole life to God in Christ,28 then the seeds of what is false will be more holistic as well.
Although this could be fruitful in giving insight into a fuller “psychology” of embracing error, it may be asked whether this is properly theological in the same sense. Interestingly, Bavinck would take issue with both Ames and Mastricht over this.29
As one last footnote to Junius’s appropriation, it was observed by Asselt that he saw in Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine a preference of practical wisdom over theoretical science.30 But both the context and Thomas’s reliance on Augustine (On the Trinity, 14)31 suggest that Augustine’s eternal things and Thomas’s theoretical things were one and the same.
REALISM, NATURAL THEOLOGY, AND AN OBJECTIVE SYSTEM
Now the connection between realism and natural theology can be most clearly perceived in the words of Paul in Romans 1:20. Those “invisible things” of God are both the fulfillment of what was meant by universals as well as the substance of the principium essendi in dogmatic theology. This is a critical point.
Whether we are speaking of a (1) divine attribute or (2) divine idea,1 that universal is itself a genus for both natural theology and dogmatic theology. If not, then we have relativism.
Divine goodness for example must be what it is (A = A) and not something else, whether it is contemplated in the moral argument for God’s existence or in one’s theology proper. How the finite sinner performs at this is quite another matter than the objective truth of the propositions in question.
If one were to claim that two identical propositions about such can be true natural theology for the believer but false natural theology for the pagan, then it is not simply natural theology that falls, but the whole house of theology. This would be to affirm the double truth theory of Averroes. The words of Paul is Romans 1 may be the simplest way of access into this subject. However, Rehnman alludes to an “anachronistic interpretation of natural theology as a theological and not a philosophical discipline,”2 and he has in mind the present scholarship relying too much on the concerns of the theological prolegomena.3
It is not that the theological backdrop is a dead end. However, it is easy to forget that seventeenth century theologians were expertly trained in philosophy as well. It may be that those more philosophical works are better sources for how natural theology functioned, even in relation to dogmatics at points. Rehnman references Vermigli, Keckerman, and Alsted in particular, as sharing the classical view of metaphysics being “after physics” and speaking of the same subject matter as theology.4
In the majority of the works being considered today, those Reformed Scholastics erred on the side of reminding their readers at every turn that while there is a natural theology and that it has profit, it has no advantage for salvation and cannot be foundational for the Reformed system of dogmatics. The first of those points is somewhat uncontroversial, as it was chiefly aimed at the Socinians, who held only to a natural theology that could ascend to saving grace. However it is that second point that will be relevant to the essence of the difference between the true and the false.
If nothing else, it is exceedingly ambiguous to speak of natural theology as a “foundation” to dogmatics, whether for good or for ill. This could mean several different things. Turretin, it should be noted, was more careful to say, “The question is not whether this knowledge is perfect or saving … but only whether any knowledge of God remains in man sufficient to lead him to believe that God exists and must be religiously worshipped.”5
The concept of “foundational natural theology” became more articulate in Kuyper and Bavinck. Natural theology could not simultaneously carve out “a separate theology alongside of special theology”6 and at the same time define articles of faith. If what we mean is that natural theology may not prove anything about the specific God of the Bible from the principles of philosophy, because (1) that would make it foundational to faith, or (2) that would make natural theology its own principium at the beginning of dogmatic theology, then the complaint suffers from basic incoherence. As Rehnman concisely put it: “This notion is confused, since if the principles of natural theology are supernatural, then either it is not natural theology or it is circular.”7
As more evidence of Rehnman’s point about the Reformed reduction of natural theology to covenantal and soteriological categories, John Owen and Thomas Goodwin spent much of their reflection on the nature of Adam’s use of natural theology.8 Junius, Turretin, and Mastricht had treated the same question, but in less detail. The dichotomy between the covenant of works and covenant of grace raised the question of the gifts both lost in man’s original constitution in Adam and regained in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Aside from all else that was at stake in such discussions, this left natural theology after the fall yet before regeneration in a kind of no man’s land. That it continued was denied by no one among the Reformed. Disagreement emerged over the extent of its usefulness. But here again, the soteriological consideration almost always overshadowed the epistemological questions.
J. V. Fesko and Guy Richard give the most helpful concise summary of a threefold positive employment of natural theology among the early Reformed: “to render man inexcusable, to provide man with general principles of conduct, and to serve an instrumental role in apologetics.”9 Such clarity more sharply focuses the advance that my thesis proposes. Natural theology does more than this because natural theology is more than this. Accordingly, one more seemingly obscure angle on the reduction of natural theology needs to be explored.
Muller (and Fesko following his lead10) understands the significance of the flow of the Summa Theologica, from sacred doctrine (Q.1) to natural theology (Q.2) to represent the subordination of natural theology to dogmatic theology, lest articles of faith have a “rational foundation.”11
One must not lightly take swipes at giants, but this whole language seems very forced. On the one hand, Muller well recognizes, in his words, “the soteriologically reinterpreted discussion of reason and revelation”12 among the Reformed. He is aware that Thomas has been misread in the past generations for reasons that roughly correspond to this recasting of natural theology. But the present scholarship seems only to see that soteriological critique of natural theology to pertain to the question of whether it saves. Typically they do not see how it relates to the “rational foundations” question.
Returning to the beginning of the Summa, there are two basic reasons to consider the Muller-Fesko approach to be a misreading: first, Thomas explicitly bases subsequent truths in his theology proper upon premises from the natural theology section—a case in point being divine simplicity on pure actuality (Q. 3), which Thomas refers back to the impossibility of potentiality in the First Cause already established from Q. 2; second, when Thomas does rest his natural theology upon what Scripture says (e. g. Psa. 14:1; Rom. 1:19-20) the whole point is to maintain what those texts are saying.
And what these biblical texts are saying is, quite simply, that the human mind can infer the existence of God from this or that objective reality in creation. Consequently, those truths in and about nature form perfectly “rational” first premises of such deductions.
It violates no part of the sola Scriptura principle to draw conclusions (even dogmatic conclusions) from extra-biblically formed premises. To suggest otherwise is a product of Van Tillianism and not traditional Reformed theology. Even Rehnman uses this language that has preoccupied the Reformed since at least the turn of the twentieth century. In commenting on how the medievalists and the Reformed all inherited Aristotle’s natural theological categories, he adds: “Aquinas and philosophers within reformed orthodoxy, obviously did not suppose that it served as a rational foundation for revealed theology.”13 Again, this “rational foundation” is a nebulous concept which needs much academic definition. For my own part, I am persuaded that it is an altogether indefensible notion.
Exactly what part of theology’s foundation are these scholars proposing be non-rational, or a-rational, much less anti-rational? Supposing it is replied: No, it is not about the content being anything other than logically coherent or corresponding to the objective reality of God’s revelation. It is a matter of source. It must be faith and not reason when it comes to one’s ultimate response to God; it must be the Spirit and not reason when it comes to the initiation of belief; and it must be Scripture and not reason when it comes to the foundational principles of theological reflection.
Indeed. But this “source” — would we not all agree that it is either revealed by God or else false? In other words, it cannot be a matter of “rational truths” that are not “revealed truths,” since all propositions and inferences will be from either general revelation or special revelation. None of these truths will finally succeed at being both rational and non-revelational. Recognize the Spirit’s initiative. Start with faith. Submit to Scripture. Do all of that, and there is not a smoke-signal’s worth of communication one can do about it that will not be rational. So it must be asked again: What on earth is meant by “foundations in reason” as opposed to revelation?
Let us return to the Reformed Scholastics for more of their breakdown.
DIFFERENTIA I: ARCHETYPAL AND ECTYPAL
One of the first problems Junius attempts to resolve is how different things can be called “theology” when one is infinite and another finite, or one is true and the other is false. He lands on what he calls an “analogical equivocation.” It is not a pure equivocation, as they are all “theologies” in a sense: but all in significantly different senses.14 Does this concept of “analogical equivocation” work? Asselt remarks that Junius’s use of the word “theology,” for both God’s knowledge and human knowledge, is used “univocally.”15
This distinction may draw back on elements of Scotism, but in explicit words it is the unique contribution of Junius. He begins with archetypal theology. This is “the wisdom of God Himself … essential and uncreated,”16 or “the divine wisdom of divine matters.”17 Here again Scotus is seen to loom large: “God is the only true theologian because only theologia in se is theology in the true sense of the word.”18 He moves on to ectypal theology. This is “nonessential and created … as a certain copy and, rather, shadowy image of the formal, divine, and essential theological image.”19 This distinction is absolutely necessary to Junius. It follows from the truth that “God … is above every genus, essence beyond essence.”20 And this is so because of God’s simplicity and infinity: his reason and knowledge of himself being the same as the divine essence.
Interestingly, Turretin and Trelcatius rejected calling God’s knowledge of himself “theology.” Only human knowledge of God should properly be called by that term.21 An implication follows. Junius denies that ectypal is “contained in” the former.22 Rather, using the imagery of a fountain flowing into lakes, the key is in an entirely one-way communication. This he calls a “twofold reason of this wisdom.”23
He next divides ectypal theology into two kinds: absolute and relative. The absolute kind is best understood as in the object itself (in se), whereas the relative kind is best understood as in the subject (in subjecto). The former is still God’s knowledge of himself, but now as it may be communicated, whereas the latter is God’s communication of that.
Here we can see how Junius is applying his concept of “analogical equivocation.” He is comparing the absolute and relative under the genus “theology” knowing that they are not univocal.
Asselt claims that in this division Junius “countered Aquinas’s suggestion of an analogy of being (analogia entis) between God and creature.”24
While the threefold ectypal kinds (union, vision, revelation25) are interesting and profound, a treatment of them exceeds the boundaries of our study. But that last one, that which is revealed to us in this life, brings us to the final division Junius makes within true theology: that between the natural and the supernatural.
There are two elements of natural theology: 1. principles (common notions), whether implanted or acquired;26 and then 2. conclusions. Common notions are defended by Junius.27 This will be important because at no point are we to think that Junius has reservations about natural revelation as such. There is even greater clarity on this point with Mastricht. He lists a fourfold use and threefold abuse of natural theology that are both instructive.28 Further guidelines are given as to when natural theology should be used, and that in his treatment of Scripture.29 As if all of this was not enough, he offers four defenses of natural theology from: (i) Scripture; (ii) conscience; (iii) the consent of nations; (iv) experience.30 So there is no doubt that the two had a positive view toward natural theology in its pure form.
One key difference between the two forms here for Junius is modal: by nature and by grace. Another question of mode regards those two stages of natural theology: principles and inferences.31 Reformed Epistemology’s “objection to natural theology” has to do with theistic belief being properly basic.32 In other words, since it is rational to believe in God apart from any acts of discursive reasoning, natural theology is superfluous and the sensus divinitatis33 at the “principles” level is enough to account for Paul’s language in Romans 1:20. However, this was not the consensus of the Reformed Scholastics.
While the concept was already latent in the duplex cognitio Dei discussed by Calvin and his contemporaries, by the seventeenth century, the distinction between natural and supernatural theology was commonplace.34 This was also the case among the English Puritans.35
Bavinck took issue with the Reformed Scholastics who did this.36 In his mind, both forms were (a) supernatural and (b) of grace, in that God was the author of that revelation in nature as much as that in Scripture. Junius and Mastricht would both agree with that, but it was a matter of emphasis. Mastricht calls these two either “natural or revealed.”37
Why should one’s emphasis matter here? There are at least two potential equivocations that may occur. One is the notion that the natural is not by any kind of grace; and the other is that the latter has no natural connection to objects of the mind as a continuity of reality—e.g. Junius’s lack of clarity on whether natural theology can have any share in the genus of wisdom.38
DIFFERENTIA II: TRUE VERSUS FALSE
We begin with the essence of true theology. This is really another way of speaking of the whole of doctrine being in harmony with the “essential doctrines” of the faith. Here Junius does approach a kind of realism. There are those concepts that (1) are by nature and others (2) not by nature. Those objects of the mind which subsist by nature form a genus, and those not by nature are species. His example of the former is Justice, and of the latter, the just man.1 The universal is seen to be “more remarkable” than that which is concrete.2 Objects are then considered under two heads in re and in intellectu.3 Consequently nominalism is rejected since it sees abstract mental objects as purely and simply in the mind.
Keeping in view that his aforementioned concepts “by nature” are universals, he adds that the theology that is by nature (universal truths) can become corrupted “by admixing anything concrete.”4 So a theological system that has at its foundation truths that are about things more immaterial, eternal, immutable, and necessary is a system most true. It is quite unfortunate that he was lean on examples of such essential doctrines, or examples of “concrete” deviations from them.
Then he comes as close as he can to speaking as if realism is essential to the integrity to the theological system: “And so this theology is one, eternal, and immutable. For that which is necessarily true, the same is necessarily one.”5 And elsewhere, “this theology has one essential form, wholly perfect, set forth perfectly as a whole, and the whole in itself and in all its parts constant and immutable.”6
Almost parenthetically Turretin uses the term archetypes in a way similar to the classical philosophers had spoken of “forms” or “essences,” or in other words, universals.7 It is true that his primary meaning is the same as in Junius. The archetypon is that “idea of all things out of himself” (formal cause of all things) and yet the divine decree (efficient cause of all things) issues forth into all other relationships comprising the ectypa in time. One implication of this is that any truth about lower things operating by proximate cause, is necessarily subordinate to that truth about ultimate things. The ultimate things of God have a priority as an essential.
When Turretin applies this to the whole system of theological truth, by “fundamental” he will mean essential; and by “essential” he will consequently mean something that is more theologically universal. This is how we must understand statements like this: that the “criteria for distinguishing fundamental and non-fundamental articles can be derived from the nature and condition of the doctrines themselves.”8
This may still seem like circular reasoning at first glance. However, he further distinguishes between two kinds of truths, both important, yet not equally central: “that they be primary and principal truths upon which all others are built as upon a foundation—and being removed, faith itself is overthrown; not secondarily and less principal, by the removal of which faith is only shaken.”9 Turretin says that a false theology is one in which “the greater part is false and the errors fundamental.”10
For Mastricht, it is implicitly Christ at the center. We discern this from his definition of theology that is living for God in Christ. But we also gather this when he discusses a false theology as any that has not Christ at its center. This falsity in essentials can happen in various ways. A false theology is so because it is “either ignorant of Christ or speaks falsely about him.”11 This forms a division of three kinds. In the first category are (1) barbarians, (2) modern Jews, and (3) Muslims. In the second category, in order of nearness to those unbelievers, there are (1) Socinians, (2) Anabaptists, and (3) Papists. Then finally there are “the schismatics, who usually end up in heresy,”12 among whom are the Lutherans and Arminians. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on this “usually end up in heresy” tendency in any scientific way.
The two basic divisions of Junius overlap here at a crucial point. He contrasts true theology with pagan theology. At the place he does this, natural theology is the assumed larger genus. The attentive reader who is charitably reading Junius will reason that by “pagan theology” he does not mean all of natural theology, since he had already designated a true natural theology. Mastricht draws a sharper line here: natural theology must be carefully distinguished from pagan theology as such, “because the latter is false and the former is true.”13 The difference is not mere semantics, but Mastricht’s attention to this particular detail is a genuine advance. When he asks whether the pagan theology is “true,” he has in his mind its truth as a system. Thus one can accept Plato’s reasoning about the soul being immortal without embracing Platonism as an “ism.”
By the twentieth century, Reformed arguments against natural theology as a system did not simply mean “pagan natural theology, but even ostensibly Christian dogmatic theology that is erected on purely rational foundations.”14
Now if pagan theology begins in common notions, from general revelation, what constitutes the difference? In other words, when precisely do things start to go wrong in natural theology? Junius locates the differentia in three misuses of those common principles: 1. though shared in common, as erroneous inference from them; 2. they can be veiled, so they are unclear; or 3. we may see them only partly, and so imperfectly.15 Up until this point there is not much here that would have been radically different from the Thomists on natural theology. This is where the soteriological critique comes into play.
Junius’s theses 16 to 19 show what natural theology ought to do by way of perfection, yet in the fall can do no such thing. Hence the need for supernatural theology.16 This is worth much reflection. Here again not many would disagree that natural theology cannot achieve that which supernatural theology is meant to do. Since other theologies from Romanism to Arminianism to Socinianism, each in their own way, do privilege aspects of fallen nature in a way that is capable of saving grace, one can see the concern. However we may often neglect other truths and leave them open to rear attack by so pressing our energies upon the vulnerability of one truth.
The impression may be easily received that when a pagan and a Christian both utter an identical proposition—e. g. “The First Cause cannot have any potentiality”—that the pagan proposition is false and the Christian proposition is true. Muller recognizes that this “double truth” tension was addressed by Keckermann and Alsted especially.17 Junius’s conception of “nature” in this context is at the very least unclear.18 By limiting his breakdown to “true” versus “pagan” natural theology, that which is not explicitly verified by “supernatural” (or later, “revealed”) theology is thus subjectivized.
When the issue turns to kinds of false theology, Junius is much clearer. He says that there are two kinds: the first common, and the second philosophical. The former is compared to roots, the latter to the trunk of a tree. That trunk then issues forth into three branches: (1) superstitious; (2) natural; and (3) civil.19 Although the branches of the metaphor are his, those three categories are derived from Augustine, which he in turn drew from Varro.20 To speak of the essence of a false theology of course assumes an essence of true theology.
DIAGNOSIS: WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE FALSE?
Junius gives mixed signals on a science of polemics. Such a study is in one place called “pointless”21; or perhaps only that it has been sufficiently done before. Nonetheless his metaphor of the tree is his science. So returning to that metaphor, with its roots in common principles, its trunk is made of the inferences we draw, and branching out to the various parts of life to which theology applies. False theology is philosophical when it takes those same common principles, adding “the development of reason and other helps,” a key phrase being “through a mistake in reasoning.”22 So it is not any philosophy that automatically makes for false theology, but one that is erroneous by normal rules of reasoning. He lays the blame for error at the inferential level: at “the trunk,” in the metaphor. Note also that the philosophical kind “is immediately spread into those three branches.”23
False theology is called “theology” improperly and arises in one of four ways: by opinion, equivocation, perversion of judgment, or else “resting” on nothing.24 In most cases here, Junius identifies a kind of indeterminacy of method. In the ectypal theology that is in the subject (Thesis 35), he says that method cannot be delimited, mainly because it is very different among all men.”25 Although this might dissuade us from thinking we can discern when theology turns false, does this not imply that some come nearer to perfection (or the archetypal form) of method than others?
Speaking of metaphors, Turretin’s own metaphor of the house with its foundations is equally helpful here. There are three kinds of errors: those (1) against the foundation, (2) about the foundation, and (3) beside the foundation. The first directly contradicts the essential doctrine; the second overthrows it by implication, whether intentional or not; and the third is about a genuine non-essential.26 So a “fundamental” is one of the pieces of the foundation. We can go wrong with our number of fundamentals, he infers, either by defect or excess. “The Socinians err in defect who admit very few fundamentals,” so that they could begin to rearrange everything. The Papists “err in excess,” seeing all things as dogmatically settled, so that they could rule the whole Christian conscience. “The orthodox hold the mean between both. As they necessarily build upon some fundamentals, so they neither restrict them too closely, nor extend them too far.”27
But here is the point of departure for Turretin: “They who quietly rest in the terms of an implied contradiction where there is opposition [to an essential] … are to be regarded as overthrowing the foundation no less than those who directly attack it.”28 Why is that?
It is because the essence of the system is objective. To cite a basic example, if the full humanity of Jesus is undermined, then so is his redemption of humanity. That someone may not intend such a consequence is simply irrelevant to the logic of the system. This logical relationship is itself an object of the mind, and its essence is independent of any finite mind.
Both Turretin’s constructive dogmatic theology and his polemical form assume a certain metaphysical outlook.
Whether one views that outlook from the philosophical language of realism or else natural theology, the basic object that both are dealing with is God. Whether one is speaking of universals (divine attributes or ideas) as a realist, or of natural theological arguments, the subject matter is that same principium essendi of dogmatic theology. To recognize all else being integrated by theology proper is not to employ a crass central dogma method. Even the loci method does not demand that all doctrinal heads are equal. What is said about God is supreme, as all else derives its being and explanation from God.
For Mastricht, one thing that causes false theology is dispensing with method to begin with. He cites 1 Timothy 4:16 and 2 Timothy 2:13 as imperatives for avoiding and refuting the false,29 so that distinguishing the true from the false is our duty.30 He points to “Anabaptists, enthusiasts, and fanatics,” as those who “reckon that all method should be eliminated from theological matters.”31 Even odder to our modern ears, he includes the magistrates as those who have a duty to remove heresy.
Where specifically does false doctrine begin according to Mastricht? It fails to rest in, by adding to or subtracting from, that scriptural body of doctrine. As previously mentioned it has not Christ at its center. Such doctrine is “either ignorant of Christ or speaks falsely about him.”32 At best, Christology is subjugated to other doctrines that should instead be informed by the person or work of Christ. At worst, it is not the biblical Christ at all in one’s system. Following Mastricht’s definition of theology, the real heart of false theology is that it has not godliness as its end.33 Conformity to Christ is that end, and thus our failure to properly relate every other piece of theology to Christ is the undoing of wisdom.
CONCLUSION
Asselt’s observations are closest to my own. Essentially, the Reformed Orthodox quickly found themselves playing defense, instead of offense, as the early modern pressure for “scientific status” in all disciplines forced a Reformed prolegomena that was merely “holding its own.”34 Moving beyond Asselt, while rationalism fit more naturally in “the Arminian rejection of the scholastic distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology,”35
I suggest that the Reformed fear of the several false natural theologies (whether Romanist, Socinian, Remonstrant, or Cartesian) paralyzed their positive reflection on the relationship between reasoning at the foundations and how that might be reconciled with a fuller doctrine of revelation.
Turretin’s place is particularly symbolic because of how his son, Jean-Alphonse Turretin, represented his own appropriation of rationalist categories to articulate the Reformed system in the wider intellectual landscape. Thus it has been surmised that a rationalist germ latent in that Reformed system was its ultimate demise. A far better explanation is a lingering anti-objective seed of Scotism as the culprit. The campaign of the Samur school, and especially of Louis Tronchin in Geneva, outliving Turretin by two decades and tutoring the younger Turretin,36 was able to sell a rationalist brand of natural theology to an intellectually hungry generation who sensed natural theology had been unduly repressed.
Bavinck also saw the connection between the prior treatment of natural theology among the Reformed and the rationalism that eclipsed it. However, he blames not the repression of natural theology in the former, but the autonomy of it in the latter.37 The Reformed architects of prolegomena were very keen on clearly stating to pastors and seminarians that while grace perfects nature, saving grace cannot depend upon any principle of fallen nature. This goal was certainly achieved, but at what cost?
We might say that the soteriological critique of natural theology was an axe that cut too far into the root of true theology. The point is not that the Reformed Orthodox “failed” in their basic project of developing prolegomena, but neither should we pretend that in just a brief century they had achieved all of the same heights as those of the Middle Ages had.
No doubt the various Reformed emphases on Scripture and on grace would have eventually caused the Reformed theological method as a whole to excel those of the rest of Christendom. But then came the Enlightenment and a dominant failure of intellectual nerve among the Reformed. Where Junius, Turretin, and Mastricht were profound, they hand down to us a starting point to prolegomena and not a finished product. They stood on the shoulders of giants. We might follow their example by doing the same.
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1. Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014); Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1992); Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, Volume 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018)
2. Martin I. Klauber, “Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism: Louis Tronchin and Enlightenment Orthodoxy in Seventeenth-Century Geneva,” Church History, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Sep., 1990), 326-339.
3. Sebastian Rehnman, “Theistic Metaphysics and Biblical Exegesis: Francis Turretin on the Concept of God,” Religious Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 167-186.
4. Willem van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology: Archetypal and Ectypal Theology in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought,” WTJ 64 (2002) 319-35.
5. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 98.
6. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 320.
7. Michael Sudduth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (2009), 39.
8. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 106.
9. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 67.
10. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.1, Art. 2
11. Aquinas, Selected Writings, 59.
12. Aquinas, Selected Writings, 51-53, cf. 60.
13. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. Q.1, Art. 4
14. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 119.
15. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 124.
16. Muller, PRRD, I:227, 387.
17. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 322.
18. F. C. Copleston, Medieval Philosophy (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1961), 34-41.
19. Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings, 20.
20. Copleston, Medieval Philosophy, 126-30.
21. Copleston, Medieval Philosophy, 15, 121.
22. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 96.
23. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 95-97.
24. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 99.
25. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 100.
26. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 64, cf. 98.
27. Muller, PRRD, I.155, 333, 344-45.
28. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 101, 105.
29. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.35
30. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 327.
31. Aquinas, Selected Writings, 60.
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1. Copleston, Medieval Philosophy, 20.
2. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 4 no 1 (Spr 2012), 155.
3. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 155.
4. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 154.
5. Turretin, Institutes, I.1.iii.3
6. Kuyper, quoted in Sudduth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 50.
7. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 151.
8. Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology (Grand Rapids, Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 13-16.
9. J. V. Fesko and Guy M. Richard, “Natural Theology and the Westminster Confession of Faith,” in Ligon Duncan, ed., The Westminster Confession into the 21st Century: Volume Three (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 225.
10. cf. Fesko’s Reforming Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 74-81.
11. Muller, “The Dogmatic Function of St. Thomas’ ‘proofs’: A Protestant Appreciation,” Fides et Historia 24 (1992), 18.
12. Muller, PRRD, I:289.
13. Rehnman, “A Reformed Natural Theology,” 156.
14. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 103.
15. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 328.
16. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 104.
17. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 107.
18. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 124.
19. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 104.
20. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 105.
21. Muller, PRRD, I:232, 233.
22. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 106.
23. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 116.
24. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 124.
25. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 121-136; cf. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 76-77.
26. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 142, 146.
27. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 94.
28. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 78.
29. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 133.
30. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 83.
31. cf. Turretin, Institutes, I.2.vii; I.3.i-vi.'
32. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 41.
33. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 42.
34. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 323; cf. Muller, PRRD, I:293-310.'35.
35. cf. Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 11-26.'
36. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I.301-312.
37. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 77.'
38. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 145.
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1. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 163.
2. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 163, cf. 166, 185.
3. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 189.
4. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 164.
5. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 191.
6. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 231.
7. Turretin, Institutes, I.iv.1.6-7.
8. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.14.20.
9. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.14.19.
10. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.2.5.
11. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 79.
12. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 80.
13. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 78.
14. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 54.
15. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 148.
16. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 160, 161.
17. Muller, PRRD, I:279.
18. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 220.
19. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 96.
20. cf. Augustine, City of God, VI.5
21. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 95.
22. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 97.
23. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 96.
24. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 96.
25. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 95.
26. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 217.
27. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.14.9.
28. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.14.1,2,3.
29. Turretin, Institutes, I.i.14.10.
30. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 64.
31. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 86.
32. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 70.
33. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 88, 90.
34. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 79.
35. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I, 65-66.
36. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, 87.
37. van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 334.
38. Klauber, “Reason, Revelation, and Cartesianism,” 328-29.
39. Suddoth, “Revisiting the ‘Reformed Objection’ to Natural Theology,” 52.
