Yet more on patristics

Still the emails come in on patristics.  Look, I'm temporarily a pen-pushing bureaucrat, more interested in balance sheets and wielding power over subordinates like some petty Napoleon on speed than in doing something constructive and theological.  But, for those interested in exploring the link between the seventeenth century Reformed and the Fathers, I have the following thoughts:

1. This is an area crying out for further exploration.  Let's declare a moratorium on PhDs on Luther and Calvin and get some postgrads working in this field. 

2. Much of the recent work on seventeenth century Reformed Orthodoxy deals with use of patristic writers as part of wider discussion of pedagogy and theological method at this time.  I would suggest that interested students look at the work of Richard Muller, Willem Van Asselt and Sebastian Rehnman.  For a classic seventeenth century statement of basic theological curriculum, the reading list developed by Owen's Oxford tutor, Thomas Barlow, entitled Autoschediasmata (not available in a modern edition) gives fascinating insight into the prominence given to historic Christian texts by the Reformed Orthodox in their pedagogy. For medieval connections, the work of Heiko Oberman and David Steinmetz is basic; to which one should also add that of scholars such as John L Thompson at Fuller; Susan Schreiner at Chicago (thesetwo esp. for exegetical trajectories stemming from the early church to the Reformation) and also that of Antonie Vos Jaczn. of the University of Utrecht (some available in English; his Dutch is difficult).

3. Specifically on patristics, the work of A N S Lane on Calvin and the church fathers offers a very detailed examination of Calvin's interaction with the patristic writers; when connected to Muller's work on the methodological continuities between 16th and 17th century writers, this would be a very fruitful place to start thinking about the issues.  And the massive two-volume collection of essays on the use of the Fathers in the West, edited by Irena Backus, is a must.

On the general question of Reformed Orthodoxy and tradition, this is how I put it in my forthcoming book on John Owen: 

As to church tradition, the Reformed Orthodox in general, and Owen in particular, were well schooled in the history of theology, reading and citing a large number of patristic and medieval texts with approval, and engaging in dialogue with the same, in order to produce a thoughtful and articulate theology which was marked by historical integrity and, on the whole, respect, albeit critical respect, for the church’s theological tradition. This is an important point to grasp, as the Reformation emphasis upon scripture as the sole authoritative source for theological truth never precluded a careful sifting of the great texts of the past for help in expressing this truth, and these texts were not restricted to any single artificially constructed period of church history but were drawn from the wider Christian tradition as it developed throughout the ages. Respect for the past was something which pre-modern Christianity assumed from the outset, and this was reinforced by the impact of humanism, with its cultural project of recovering and repristinating the world of classical antiquity. Indeed, to borrow a term from William Perkins, one might say that Owen and those like him were Reformed Catholics, given their concern to interact with the ongoing catholic traditions of theology, albeit from a distinctively Reformed perspective.