Karl Barth's Theology of the Reformed Confessions characterised those catechetical texts as more ethical in orientation and more horizontal in focus than the corresponding Lutheran symbols. By examining both primary and secondary sources, this paper shows that while Barth legitimately illumines a key element of the Reformed witness regarding a connection between faith and life, his polemical eye may also distort his perspective on its distinctiveness, likely owing to contextual factors related to his self-fashioning a Reformed identity in his early academic service at the predominantly Lutheran University of Göttingen and alongside his colleague, Emanuel Hirsch.

Reformed accounts of infant baptism are usually covenantal and promissory in nature. They are about bringing the child into the ambit of the visible church in the hope the infant will own the faith upon reaching the age of reason. This paper sets out an alternative Reformed account of baptism, drawing on the Scottish confessional tradition. On this account, infants have a disposition to faith conveyed to them in baptism that will in due course become dispositional faith exercised in saving faith. Thus, baptism involves regeneration – or something close to it.

Herman Bavinck's reception of the organic motif has become in recent years the central locus for discussing the means by which the unity of his thought may be recognised. This article provides a critical reading of Bavinck on Hegel on the locus of providence for the purpose of contributing to the ongoing discussion that identifies the unity of Bavinck's thought not in his confessional self in simple opposition against the philosophies of his day, but rather in characterising Bavinck as an eclectic, orthodox and modern theologian. To this end this essay moves in three steps. First, we provide an analysis that showcases the nuanced points of contact between Bavinck and Hegel on providence. Second, the essay homes in on the specific ways in which the two thinkers diverge on the Creator–creature relationship. Finally, we close the essay by sketching the salient dogmatic and philosophical implications of the preceding analysis.

The burden of this essay is to show that Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology of the atonement and account of Christ's soteriological work as priest is marked by recognisably Reformed commitments and logics that both build from and critique John Calvin and later Reformed scholastics. The essay contends that it is when Schleiermacher departs strongly from orthodox conclusions regarding substitutionary atonement that he mostly clearly appeals to key aspects of Reformed theology. Put differently, when Schleiermacher critiques the material content of Reformed orthodoxy, he does so by drawing on other doctrinal claims that are fundamental in Reformed thought: the divine decree, union with Christ, the import of sanctification and the interconnection between dogmatic expression and Christian piety. Schleiermacher presents creative solutions to theological conundrums, particularly those that plague Calvin and the later Reformed tradition about the relationship between God's eternal decree of grace and the appeasement of divine wrath on the cross.

Today, Christianity is often described as a ‘worldview’, especially among Reformed evangelicals in the USA. In this article I return to the 1890 lectures where Scottish theologian James Orr adapted the concept of Weltanschauung for Christian purposes. Although it was coined by Immanuel Kant in 1790, and primarily used in subsequent decades to theorise cultural difference and evaluate aesthetic expression, Orr nevertheless claims that the idea of a worldview is ‘as old as the dawn of reflection’ and thus appropriate to articulating Christianity. I examine Orr's engagement with the Kantian and emerging historicist context, paying particular attention to his epistemological and aesthetic citations and showing how Orr both adopts and departs from the characteristic features of the Kantian subject. I conclude by assessing the philosophical and theological costs of this project that, among other things, positions Christianity for perpetual culture war within secular societies similarly shaped by the post-Kantian subject.

To combat the charges raised by Radical Orthodoxy and others, which allege that Protestant soteriologies amount to a legal fiction, Bruce McCormack and Michael Horton suggest that Reformed theology embrace a covenantal ontology, which aims to overcome legal fiction objections without sacrificing Reformational insights or making recourse to medieval participatory metaphysics. For both theologians, covenantal history and participatory metaphysics are treated as rival paradigms. I suggest that their proposals display serious weaknesses and propose an alternative approach, inspired by the retrieval of Reformed scholastic insights, which treats covenant and participatory metaphysics as complementary motifs rather than rival paradigms, and is thereby able to overcome the legal fiction objection while maintaining Protestant distinctives.

The renaissance of virtue ethics in Christian moral discourse has led a handful of Reformed theologians to consider whether or not the Reformed tradition is compatible with classical and medieval concepts of virtue. Barthians, in particular, express doubt regarding the prospect of such a retrieval, arguing that classical notions of virtue compromise the Reformed hallmark of divine sovereignty and Luther's dictum simul justus et peccator. This essay counters that the Reformed tradition is broad enough to find more productive ways to engage virtue ethics. In particular, the Westminster Standards provide both the formal space for a significant theological exploration of human agency and the material content for the development of something like a classical virtue ethic. Barthian concerns regarding divine sovereignty and moral progress are satisfied by a demonstration that Westminster's attention to human agency is always within the context of a greater emphasis on divine agency.

This article compares the doctrine of scripture in Richard Hooker’s Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie with that of John Calvin’s Christianae religionis institutio (Institutes of the Christian Religion) to assess Hooker’s Reformed credentials in this domain. Hooker departs from Reformed orthodoxy in two ways: first, as is generally recognized, in denying the autopisticity of Scripture; second, though less widely recognized, in decoupling autopistis from the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. These departures must be weighed against countervailing considerations: the unanimity between Hooker and Calvin on the substance of autopistis and the need for Church testimony in attesting to Scripture; their disparate audiences and exigencies, including, in Hooker’s case, possible Puritan association of autopistis with scriptural omnicompetence; Hooker’s reliance on Article 6 of the Articles of Religion in its entirety in defending scriptural sufficiency; and the silence of Hooker’s contemporary critics regarding his denial of autopistis.

The many conflicts around the reformation of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drew the problem of political resistance to the forefront of European political thought. Thinkers in all of the various religious camps considered scripture to be politically normative. Consequently, both pro- and anti-resistance thinkers from a variety of traditions had to engage with Romans 13:1–7, Paul's apparently definitive pronouncement in favour of obedience and, therefore, against resistance. The opponents of resistance could cite Romans 13 with fairly little explanation, but the resisters and revolutionaries faced the challenge of working with the text to draw different political conclusions from it without violating the ‘literal’ sense that they almost universally held to be authoritative. Some even aimed to bring Paul forward as a staunch supporter of the sort of violent political resistance they advocated.

Lex, Rex, the political tract of seventeenth-century Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661), represents a particularly comprehensive early modern justification for violent resistance against a political sovereign. Rutherford was a member of the party of the radical covenanters, who vehemently opposed the church reforms of Charles I and, when hostilities began, fervently supported the war against the king. This article explores the series of arguments, distinctions and theological moves that Rutherford employs to incorporate Romans 13 as a central supporting text for his pro-resistance argument. Among these are: the distinction between God's immediate institution of governmental power and the constitution of particular governments mediately through the people, the positing of a conditional covenant agreed upon at the constitution of any government, the scholastic distinction between voluntas beneplaciti and voluntas signi in the divine will, and the distinction between the royal office in abstracto and its concrete occupant. Using these and other arguments and distinctions, Rutherford constructs a conceptual apparatus that is able, to a great extent, to appropriate Paul's exhortation to obedience in the service of a justification of resistance. In so doing, Rutherford illustrates some of the array of theological and philosophical resources that early modern resistance theorists could marshal in support of their cause, while still maintaining their fundamental theological commitments.