Vol. 2, 2nd ed., Baker Books, 2006, 537 pgs.
Summary: A carefully researched overview of the development of the doctrine of Scripture within the Reformation and through the Orthodox era.
The Reformers by grounding their theological system within Scripture alone were completing and formalizing the exegetical insights of men like Andrew of St. Victor (d. 1175) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The insistence on Scripture alone also created a more precise definition of inspiration and more carefully fencing of the canon. The men who completed the codification of inspiration within Protestant doctrinal statements were the Reformed Orthodox.
The Orthodox’s task was polemical—against the Socinians, Catholics, and Anabaptist—and churchly within their own communions. This led to the careful development of the following hermeneutic in general agreement with the Reformers:
[A] fundamental emphasis on the unitary character of the literal sense, the recognition of allegorical or tropological meanings only when they belong to literal intention of the passage itself, and the control of typology by means of the hermeneutic of promise and fulfillment . . .(521).
Having carefully exegeted the entirety of Scripture, the Orthodox then organized the texts into doctrinal categories and then defended the doctrinal categories with proof texts:
The methodological link between text and system, both in the initial formulation of the locus out of the exegesis of the text and in the gathering of [proof texts] for the sake of pointing the theological system toward the text and grounding it on the authority of Scripture, was the technique. . .of drawing logical conclusions from the text after the basic exegetical work had been completed. The assumption of the Protestant exegete was that properly drawn conclusions carried with it the same authority as the text itself. While, in the general sense, Scripture was the [the principle cognitive foundation of theology], in the more specific and proximate sense, the individual [texts, topics, or seats of doctrine] provided the first principles of theology in the oldest sense of the identification of theology as a [form of knowledge] (520).
The collapse of Orthodoxy as an academic and state church movement occurred under the development of a materialistic hermeneutic as introduced by the modern Epicureans and individual writers like Descartes (1596-1650) and Spinoza (1632-1677).
Benefits/Detriments: Massively erudite.
Exemplar Quotes:
An inspired text can—more easily and predictably than an uninspired one—point beyond itself and its original situation. When the human author of the text is an instrumental cause and God is identified as the [primary author], the historical situation of the human author cannot ultimately limit the doctrinal reference of the text (254).
[T]he ultimate and therefore perfect archetype theology is identical to the divine mind—all other theology is, at best, a reflection of this archetype, a form of ectypal theology. Ectypal theology in the human subject (in all systems of theology!) is not only finite and reflective but also limited by human sinfulness and by the mental capacities of the theologian. The human author of theology, thus, has little intrinsic authority. If theology is to be authoritative, its source (other than the mind of the theologian) must carry authority with it. That source cannot be the divine archetype, but it must stand in a more direct relation to that archetype than any utterly human effort: the doctrine of the inspiration leads, therefore in many of the orthodox systems, directly to the doctrine of the Scripture (261).