The Present State, Progress And Prospects Of The Reformed Theology -- By: Lawrence B. Gilmore

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 01:2 (May 1939)
Article: The Present State, Progress And Prospects Of The Reformed Theology
Author: Lawrence B. Gilmore


The Present State, Progress And Prospects
Of The Reformed Theology

Lawrence B. Gilmore

THE Reformed Churches constitute that widely distributed branch of Protestantism, distinct from the Lutheran Churches, which originated in the Reformation that was begun, independently of Luther’s work, in Switzerland by Zwingli and carried on by Calvin and other Reformers there; which also took shape in France, in certain parts of Germany, in Hungary, in Holland, in England and Scotland, in America, in the British colonies, in South Africa, and elsewhere.

The theology of the Reformed Churches presents a distinct type of doctrine, clearly distinguished in all its modifications and forms from the special doctrines of the Roman, the Lutheran, and other Churches. It is a system of Christian belief authoritatively set forth in more than thirty public creeds and confessions, and it has been expounded in a vast theological literature, the work of its leading theologians during more than three and a half centuries. It has been made most familiar to English-speaking people in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was adopted by the Scottish Chruch in 1647. It is commonly known as “Calvinism from the greatest scientific exposition of it in the age of the Reformation, although this name is too individual to indicate its universal historical character”.1

The doctrinal character of the Reformed Theology can be conveniently set forth with the help of an article by the late Professor Caspar Wistar Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary in The Evangelical Quarterly, London, Volume I,

1929, pages 3–24, entitled “The Reformed Faith.” Dr. Hodge writes: “The Reformed Faith. .. conceives itself as the most pure Biblicalism, theism, religion, and evangelicalism. Whoever believes in God fully, and in our absolute dependence upon Him, for knowledge, life and salvation, is implicitly an adherent of the Reformed Faith” (p. 8). These are great claims. Let us observe Dr. Hodge’s manner of justifying them.

1) As to the Biblicalism of the Reformed Theology, revelation is its principium, that is, its source and norm of truth. “Whether in general or special revelation the action goes out from God who is the principium essendi and whose self-revelation is the principium cognoscendi of theology. But since man’s mind is darkened by sin, the Holy Scriptures, as Calvin showed (Institutes, I, 1, 6), are the source and norm of our knowledge of God, or, in later language, the principium of knowledge in theology, and with Calvin all the following Reformed theologians agreed. The testimony of God is t...

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