One of the major goals of the early Christian apologists was to demonstrate the cultural acceptability of Christianity. In order to achieve this goal, a number of them (notably Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, and Theophilus of Antioch) drew comparisons between doctrines of the Greek philosophical tradition and those of Christianity, usually demonstrating the uniqueness and superiority of the latter. They thus unwittingly preserved for us doxographical data concerning Greek philosophers, some of which is to be found nowhere else. When we meet with such a doxographical hapax legomenon, we are faced with the problem of its reliability, since we lack comparative data. Does the author in question give a reliable version of the tradition, or does he misrepresent it because of his own inadequate understanding of the material?

In the prologue to his commentary on Leviticus composed in the mid- twelfth century, the reformist abbot Ralph of Flaix noted with anxiety the effect on his monks of Jewish argumentation against Christian exegesis of the Old Testament:

Medieval exegetes contributed distinguished commentaries on the Book of Job that had far-reaching influence. When, in 1554, Calvin ascended the pulpit in Geneva to deliver a series of sermons on Job, his listeners heard not only the Genevan Reformer but echoes of that medieval tradition. In Job's story Calvin saw a God whose providence held sovereign sway over nature, history, and Satan. Having undertaken these sermons, however, Calvin soon confronted Job's question: Why do the righteous suffer? Calvin did not answer Job alone. He turned to both medieval Joban commentaries and Scotist-nominalist categories to resolve this book's central issue of divine justice. But we will see that despite all these resources the exegetical difficulties posed by the text itself forced Calvin to realize that his central hermeneutical device brought with it implications with which he was ultimately uncomfortable. That device was double justice.

On 27 April 1560 the Protestant Lords of the Great Council of the Realm of Scotland covenanted to procure by all means possible that “the true preaching of God's Word may have free passage within this realm, with due administration of the sacraments and all things depending upon the said Word.”1 Two days later they charged a group of ministers “to commit to writing and in a book deliver … judgments touching the reformation of Religion.”2 Three weeks later, on 20 May, the ministers, whose names “have not been recorded in any part of the surviving documents,” delivered to the Lords their recommendations for the organization of a reformed Christian church for Scotland.3

Susanna Wesley (1669–1742) was raised a Dissenter, converted to Anglicanism as an adolescent, and arguably spent the last three years of her life as a Methodist. Moreover, these three modes of English Protestantism were neatly embodied respectively in three generations of clergymen to whom she was closely related: her father, the Presbyterian divine Samuel Annesley; her husband, Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth; and her sons John and Charles, leaders of the Methodist revival. Yet she was not dominated either by the men closest to her or the patriarchically inclined religious traditions they served.