iustitia aliena

This audio is gold, here.

via here.

(This blog above gives you some helpful and brief notes on both books by the author of the blog who read them both; I think he might be apart of the Muller Mafia, good stuff).

1. Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification

2. The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation.

Taken from Carl Trueman’s Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History in chapter 1 titled “The Denial of History” under the chapter heading, The Use of Positive Evidence.

Turning to Schweizer he said (in a moment of true methodological greatness) “Protestantism is the truth in all circumstances.” (64)

This quote is in context of an example that Trueman was using to teach a point from a narrative surrounding the Reformer Zwingli.

“It is, of course, always very tempting when writing about theologians to narrow the focus to specific theological influences at a very early stage.  Indeed, one of the problems of the older literature on Reformed Orthodoxy was its tendency to search for the solution to doctrinal problems and issues raised in the texts exclusively in terms of doctrinal or, at best philosophical, issues.  Literary productions such as theological texts are, of course, highly complex actions, with their content being shaped by historical context, synchronic and diachronic, by literary genre, by linguistic conventions, and by general cultural background of the author and the issues at hand.  To adopt narrowly doctrinal methodological criteria in the study of historical theological texts is thus profoundly wrong-headed, ignoring the basic fact that theologians never think or act in a vaccum or approach issues simply in terms of one category of discourse.  A simple example of the need for this will suffice.  If we take John Calvin Institutio (1559) and Francis Turretin’s Instiutio (1679-85) and compare them, we see obvious differences.  The ordering and division of topics is different; the form of argument is different; much of the language used is different.  Does this allow us to see the two works as representing two entirely different theologies?  Does such a blunt comparison allow us to judge the development of Reformed Theology tout court between 1559 and 1679?  Of course not.  For a start, why should we expect theologies written 120 years apart to be the same in form and content?  In addition, we clearly have two different genres of work: Calvin is explicitly writing book of doctrinal common places to aid exegesis; Turretin is producing a book of theology which deals with particular controversial topics as a means to aiding students in combating theological opponents.  The purpose and function of the two books are significantly different in terms of their authors’ original intentions.  Two different genres; two different purposes; two different books – for the same reason, Wordsworth’s poetic reflections on daffodils and the entry on the same flower in the average gardening manual looking entirely different.  Not that the gardening manual represents an ossification of the vitality of the daffodil under the rationalizing tendencies of contemporary scholastic or Aristotelian gardening theory.  No.  What we are face with in these two different writings on daffodils is not intellectual hardening but two different genres, two different intentions, two different, but in their own context valid, approaches to daffodils.  Given this basic point, to unlock the mind of a man like Owen, or to read the texts he wrote with any degree of competence, we need to estalbish  as a foundation the kind of intellectual culture from which he emerged; and this culture is, of course, highly diverse.”

-Carl Trueman John Owen: Reformed Catholic, Renaissance Man, pages 12-13.

Richard Muller quote here.

 Informative and thorough review here.

A quote from the review:

For those of us who belong to a confessional church, we should work hard to understand how and why the particular doctrines we confess were formulated in a particular way. While a greater awareness of Protestant orthodoxy will not solve our doctrinal disputes or prevent our theological differences, we should at least know the theological convictions and expressions entrusted to us. We will always have dissenters – whether it is open theism, the new perspectives on Paul, or rejection of penal substitution. But perhaps if we knew the reasons for the truths we confess we would not be so easily wooed by attempts to redefine classical Protestant orthodox thought, even when done in the name of evangelical and reformed. For those interested, PRRD is a great place to start.

This book sounds good.

Here are the contributors:

Richard D. Phillips (Author, Preface, Contributor), Joel R. Beeke (Contributor), W. Robert Godfrey (Contributor), Philip Graham Ryken (Contributor), R. C. Sproul (Contributor), Derek Thomas (Contributor), Carl R. Trueman (Contributor)

Carl Trueman in his lecture titled ‘Reckoning with the Past in an Anti-Historical Age’ here.

A snippet from lecture number one:

Church history is crucially important, and I  don’t  just say that because I need to make a  living and that it’s the only skill I have, though that is undoubtly true.  I say it also because we’re all heirs of history.  If you’re not Roman Catholic here tonight than you are to some extent the heir of  Martin Luther.  The reason why your not a Roman Catholic, but you’re a United Methodist or a Pentacostal or a Baptist or a Presbyterian; if  you  trace back  your  theological, intellectual, ecclesciastical genealogy far enough you’ll come to the figure of Martin Luther.  So love him or hate him, it’s helpful to know something about him in order to understand why you’re the person you are.

-Carl Trueman on the first lecture titled The Road to Reformation  

Carl Trueman’s  lectures on Martin Luther available for free here.

Download the Martin Luther lectures for  free here.

Also available are Trueman’s Owen lectures here.

About Trueman here.