With kind regards I would like to thank Jessica Prudhomme from Oxford University Press for sending me a review copy of Richard A. Muller’s book: “After Calvin” — price: $125.00 ISBN13: 9780195157017 & ISBN10: 019515701X Hardback (288 pages) Published: 2003

In “After Calvin,” Richard A. Muller ( who is P. J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, and the gold-standard voice in this area of research) seeks to problematize what he calls the “older scholarship,” and their reading and construction of John Calvin’s theology. For Muller their reading is too facile and over-simplified, to the point that they have offered a revisionist caricature of the actual history relative to the development of what, heretofore, has become “Calvinism.” In a nutshell, the “older scholarship” built on the thesis that John Calvin was a ‘Christ-centred’ theologian who was confessional (so Charles Partee’s point in his “Theology of John Calvin”) in orientation; while his immediate successors (namely: Theodore Beza) introduced a rigidity and cold, sterile “scholastic” and “Aristotelian” approach into the theology set by John Calvin, that in fact was materially foreign to, and thus different from the intentions of Calvin. The older scholarship thus argues that they in fact are those who truly develop the ‘Reformed’ heritage that Calvin left; and that what became known as Calvinism was a hybridization of Calvinian thought, to the point that the Reformed era, and so-called ‘orthodoxy’ gave the reformation a ‘still birth’ (to borrow from Ron Frost), so to speak. Muller is out to correct this oversimplified caricature (according to him) of the history;  he says:

Scholarly perspectives on the phenomenon of post-Reformation Protestantism have altered dramatically in the last three decades. Studies of the Reformed or Calvinistic theology of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries written before 1970 or even 1975 tended to pose the Reformation against Protestant orthodoxy or, in the phraseology then common to the discussion, “Calvin against the Calvinists.” This rather radical dichotomy between the thought of the great Reformer and even his most immediate successors — notably, Theodore Beza — was constructed around a particular set of highly theologized assumptions, concerning the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy, humanism and scholasticism, piety and dogma. At the heart of the dichotomizing argument was a contrast between the “biblical humanism” and christological piety of John Calvin and the Aristotelian scholasticism and predestinarian dogmatizing of nearly all of the later Reformed theologians, the sole exceptions being those who followed out the humanisitic patterns of Calvin’s thought into fundamentally antischolastic modes of thought. (p. 3)

Muller attempts to provide historical context to this situation, and to answer those, who in the past pitted John Calvin against those who purportedly took up Calvin’s mantle and developed his theological trajectory to their logical conclusions.

“After Calvin” is a compilation of various essays that Muller had written over the past 23 years, at its publishing. His method of “attack” (in correcting the scholarship that pitted Calvin against the “Calvinists”) is to describe the various approaches to interpreting this era of history, and supply his reframing of the historical questions; which he does in chapter 1. Then the next four chapters becomes his “Part I” to the book wherein he is “Reframing the Phenomenon — Definition, Method, and Assessment.” The first chapter in this section, chapter 2, he defines the terms “scholasticism” and “orthodoxy” (p. 25,26); wherein he identifies ‘scholasticism’ as method (vs. concept) and ‘orthodoxy’ simply as “right teaching.” In chapter 3 he provides the sources of “Reformed theology” with the seventeenth century; this becomes a substantial piece to his argument against the ‘older scholarship’ (noted above), he argues for a continuity of method from the late medieval period sweeping through into the Reformed era, and on through the post-Reformed period (p. 47) — if this is the case then Calvin was just one of many who were part of this great ground-swell which became known as the “Reformed tradition” (or ‘Calvinism’). Chapters 4-5 close section I, and serves as the watershed of his whole argument; these chapters are entitled: “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part 1 (chapter 4) & Part 2 (chapter 5),” respectively. Herein he lays out, most extensively, his thesis of continuity (vs. discontinuity) between the early Reformers (like John Calvin represents) and the post-Reformed (those who developed the “Reformed themes”). Since this is crux to Muller’s overall schema and purpose for the book, I will list his eleven points which he asserts and develops relative to the issue at hand:

1. The question of continuity and discontinuity between Reformation and orthodoxy must set against the background of an examination [sic] continuities and discontinuities running through the history of thought from the Middle Ages into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
2. “Scholasticism” and “Aristotelianism” must not be understood as static or as purely medieval phenomena, as if neither underwent a historical development that extended through the sixteenth into the seventeenth century.
3. Descriptions of “scholasticism” must consider the meaning of the term as found both in scholarly studies of the Christian tradition prior to the Reformation and in the writings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant theologians.
4. Scholasticism and rationalism also must be clearly distinguished — on historical, philosophical, and theological grounds.
5. Method and content need to be distinguished, albeit not utterly separated.
6. Continuities and discontinuities in the interpretive or exegetical tradition must be given at least equal weight with developments in scholastic method and philosophical usage.
7. Individual Reformation thinkers or treatises ought not be made a measure either of the whole Reformation era or of the Reformed character of individual orthodox era thinkers or treatises.
8. The diversity of post-Reformation theology must be examined with a view toward relativizing standard generalizations about the relationships between the Reformation and post-Reformation orhtodoxy, scholasticism and humanism, pietism and rationalism.
9. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century theological assumptions must not be allowed to impinge on or become the basis of an assessment of the thought of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly inasmuch as such assumptions have frequently become imbedded in older theological examinations of the Reformation and orthodoxy and have often transformed nominally historical studies into justifications of modern theological views.
10. The various forms of the “central dogma” theory, both those that indicate a continuity between Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy and those that indicate a disjunction, must be set aside.
11. Issues of form, structure, and content of sets of loci communes, disputationes, institutiones, “bodies of doctrine,” or what may loosely be called “theological systems” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ought not invariably to be explained dogmatically as the results of use of doctrinal motifs or as responsesto purported “tensions” in theology. (pps.71-2)

He then develops each of these points to close out chapters 4 and 5, and his “Part I.” This leads to Part II entitled “Scholastic Protestantism — Foundational Perspectives”. This is made up of 6 chapters (6–11), and is really illustrative and serves to substantiate what Muller has already said in Part I. In this section he either looks at particular issues: like theological education in the era of Protestant orthodoxy, chptr. 6; the debate over vowel points and the crisis in Orthodox heremeneutics, chptr. 9. Or, he’ll look at particular people and theologians of this era, like: Keckermann on Philosophy, Theology, and the Problem of Double Truth, chptr. 7; Francis Turretin on the object and principles of theology, chptr. 8; Henry Ainsworth and the development of Protestant exegesis in the early seventeenth century, chptr. 10; Herman Witsius’ and Wilhelmus a’ Brakel’s covenant of works and divine law; chptr. 11.

He closes the book with an Afterword and synthesis of his previous study and arguments. He feels that “A legitimate and productive intellectual history of post-Reformation Protestantism must step past the self-indulgent theologism of the older historiography and cease to read the materials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the lenses of macrotheological questions arising out of nineteenth, twentieth, and (now) twenty-first century dogmatic concerns. . . .”(p. 191) His reference of the ‘older historiography’ is made to such theologians and historians as Ernst Bizer, Brian Armstrong, Thomas Torrance, James Torrance, Karl Barth, and many more. In his ‘Afterword’ he makes it clear that he believes that he has totally undercut the ‘older scholarship’s’ thesis (of discontinuity between Calvin and the Calvinists); and that he has laid the groundwork for the “real” historical work to be done on this era of ‘Reformed history’. For Muller, the older scholarship was just trying to use this history for their own purposes; in order to forward their own theological programs and agendas, Muller believes that he has shown “this school’s” true colors. And anyone who wants to do serious historical and then theological work oriented to this era will need to work through his reconstruction, jettisoning the “older scholarship’s.”

Strengths

I believe Muller has provided a service in highlighting this era of theological development in ways that prior to his research were left under-developed and thus silent for the most part. Muller, I think, hits his mark in regards to establishing aspects of his thesis; he demonstrates that, indeed, this era is much more complex than the “older scholarship” presumed (e.g. that they could simply use Calvin as the singular benchmark for proscribing the whole of the ‘Reformed tradition’). Further, that by-in-large ‘scholasticism’ should be understood as a method versus the ‘older scholarship’s’ understanding of it as a metaphysic. Overall, his work provides an apparatus and questions that should be broached for anyone interested in understanding this period of church and ‘Reformed’ history.

Weaknesses

The formatting of the book was clear, relative to the breakdown of the two “Parts” of the book — laying out method, questions, and historiography; and then illustrating this via chapters that help to substantiate Muller’s theoretical section. Nevertheless, the book has end-notes versus footnotes; which for this reader becomes quite the chore in chasing down Muller’s extraneous thoughts. The most glaring weakness is the triumphalist tone Muller takes, almost straightaway, throughout the book; contra what he calls the “older scholarship.” Muller’s whole goal, which becomes clear, quickly, is to demonstrate how unable (in re. to historiography) the ‘older scholarship’ was versus  how able he is. In this process what Muller ends up doing, while evidencing a depth of knowledge and historiorgraphical acuety, is that he transitions from a ‘historian’ to ‘theologian’; Rinse H. Reeling Brouwer says of Muller’s approach (in an essay unrelated to “After Calvin”): “. . . Muller is in danger of walking away from the theological duty of ‘historical theology’ to challenge ‘systematic theology’ in its constructive task.”(cf. Maarten Wisse, ed. Reeling Brouwer, “Scholasticism Reformed,” 243, fn. 8 ) This is the primary weakness of this book. Muller makes theological judgements and critiques of dogmatic theologians (like Barth and Torrance), when in fact he is wearing the historians hat. Indeed, the whole book is not an attack upon the theological aspect — there is a lot of history — but the whole premise of the book is to correct the “older scholarship,” which by-in-large is made up of dogmatic and constructive theologians, and he seeks to correct the ‘old school’ in the name of history; but he too easily slips into another discipline. He clearly is in ‘danger of walking away’ from simply doing “Church history,” and instead, engaging in “constructive theology.” The book and its premise presuppose this.

Recommendations

I would recommend this book if your interested in studying the era of post-Reformed orthodoxy; and how that relates to John Calvin (or not). Richard A. Muller is THE scholar of scholars in this area of research, and even if you end up disagreeing with him; you have to go through him nonetheless. Out of a “5 star system,” I would give this book 3.5 stars. It is clearly a rich resource, packed with insightful and critical gems for thinking historically; but then it falters, a bit, as it seems that Muller over-steps his reach (i.e. at points it is hard to tell if he is trying to speak as an historian or a systematic theologian).