Valiant for Truth - Reformed Scholasticism

We do not simply want to admire Reformed Scholasticism and then return it to the dusty library shelf. On the contrary, Reformed Scholastic works can be quite helpful to the church for several reasons. First, the church can benefit from the precision of Reformed scholasticism and use the scholastic method in new theological works. 

Francis Turretin, born 17 October 1623, studied at Geneva, Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Samur, Montauban, and Nimes. After his studies he was called to be the pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1648 and later followed in the footsteps of John Calvin (1509-64), Theodore Beza (1519-1605), and his father, Benedict Turretin (1588-1631) and was appointed a professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva in 1653. 

From where did the notion of covenantal solidarity in Adam arise? More specifically, how did this idea make its way into later Reformed covenant theology? The answers proposed by Aaron Denlinger in his recently published PhD dissertation might surprise some scholars. Denlinger argues that the idea of covenantal solidarity has its origin in the theology of Ambrogio Catarino, a sixteenth-century Roman Catholic theologian. 

Scholasticism is typically associated with philosophical and speculative theology. Note, for example, how one theologian describes it: “By scholastic I mean that kind of theology that emphasizes the accessibility of the infinite to the finite and the possibility and indeed the desirability of systematizing the body of revealed knowledge given in Scripture.”

When we see the words Reformed and Scholasticism next to one another we might scratch our heads and think we are reading an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp. The two terms do not seem to belong together. Just as Tertullian (160-220) once asked what Jerusalem had to do with Athens when wondering what Greek philosophy had to do with Christianity, we might wonder what Reformed theology has to do with scholasticism?