Carl R. Trueman’s research while affiliated with Westminster Theological Seminary and other places

This collection offers a fresh assessment of John Calvin and the tradition of Calvinism as it evolved from the sixteenth century to today. The essays are written by scholars who present the latest research on a pluriform religious movement that became a global faith. The volume focuses on key aspects of Calvin’s thought and its diverse reception in Europe, the transatlantic world, Africa, South America, and Asia. Calvin’s theology was from the beginning open to a wide range of interpretations and was never a static body of ideas and practices. Over the course of his life his thought evolved and deepened while retaining unresolved tensions and questions that created a legacy that was constantly evolving in different cultural contexts. Calvinism itself is an elusive term, bringing together Christian communities that claim a shared heritage but often possess radically distinct characters. The handbook reveals fascinating patterns of continuity and change to demonstrate how the movement claimed the name of the Genevan Reformer but was moulded by an extraordinary range of religious, intellectual, and historical influences, from the Enlightenment and Darwinism to indigenous African beliefs and postmodernism. In its global contexts, Calvinism has been continuously reimagined and reinterpreted. This collection throws new light on the highly dynamic and fluid nature of a deeply influential form of Christianity.

This collection offers a fresh assessment of John Calvin and the tradition of Calvinism as it evolved from the sixteenth century to today. The essays are written by scholars who present the latest research on a pluriform religious movement that became a global faith. The volume focuses on key aspects of Calvin’s thought and its diverse reception in Europe, the transatlantic world, Africa, South America, and Asia. Calvin’s theology was from the beginning open to a wide range of interpretations and was never a static body of ideas and practices. Over the course of his life his thought evolved and deepened while retaining unresolved tensions and questions that created a legacy that was constantly evolving in different cultural contexts. Calvinism itself is an elusive term, bringing together Christian communities that claim a shared heritage but often possess radically distinct characters. The handbook reveals fascinating patterns of continuity and change to demonstrate how the movement claimed the name of the Genevan Reformer but was moulded by an extraordinary range of religious, intellectual, and historical influences, from the Enlightenment and Darwinism to indigenous African beliefs and postmodernism. In its global contexts, Calvinism has been continuously reimagined and reinterpreted. This collection throws new light on the highly dynamic and fluid nature of a deeply influential form of Christianity.

The purpose of this Handbook is to provide the first one-volume survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years. In addition to chapters surveying the key figures and time periods in the reception of Aquinas across confessional divides, the Handbook also includes chapters on central philosophical and theological themes that exhibit the main lines of what any adequate reception of Aquinas would need to communicate. Figures and major schools studied for their reception (whether critical or appreciative) of Aquinas’ theology include Scotus and Ockham, the Byzantine scholastics, Meister Eckhart, Durandus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Cardinal Cajetan, the Council of Trent, the leading theologians of the Spanish ‘Golden Age’, the Reformed and Lutheran scholastics, the combatants in the de auxiliis controversy, the Catholic Thomistic commentatorial tradition, early modern and modern Orthodox readers of Aquinas, Joseph Kleutgen and the First Vatican Council, the Catholic neo-scholastics, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Josef Pieper, the transcendental Thomists, the main figures of the nouvelle théologie, Karl Barth, Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach, analytic Thomism, and postliberal Thomism. Specialized areas of reception treated by the Handbook include philosophy of nature, metaphysics, ethics, the human person, the natural knowledge of God, politics and law, the Trinity, creation and fall, providence, nature and grace, Jesus Christ, sacraments, and eschatology. The Handbook opens with an introductory study by the eminent Thomist Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, which sets the stage for the remaining chapters.