This chapter discusses the polemical works that Pufendorf wrote in response to the violent criticisms directed against his main natural law work, the Law of Nature and Nations. Pufendorf collected these controversial writings under the title Eris Scandica (Scandinavian dispute) in 1686. Despite being indispensable for the reconstruction of Pufendorf’s thought, and notwithstanding its great success among his contemporaries, this work is one of the least known and used works by scholars of natural law. In beginning to make good this deficit the present chapter offers insights not only into the philosophical arguments of our author, but also into his formidable satirical style, at once strongly contentious and imaginative. Much of the ferocity of the disputes is explained by the fact that Pufendorf’s enemies were actually accusing him of heresy, which helps to clarify the centrality of the work’s philosophical-theological themes and the violence of Pufendorf’s reaction. In presenting the variety of philosophical issues covered in Eris Scandica, the chapter covers not only the classic themes of natural law—state of nature, moral entities, obligation—but also elucidates Pufendorf’s views of the relation between philosophical reason and Christian philosophy, thence philosophy and theology, and his stance towards Cartesianism.

To describe the Bible as “Holy Scripture” is to identify it as set apart by a holy God for the purpose of generating and governing a “holy nation,” a description applied first to Israel (Exod. 19:6) and later to the church (1 Pet. 2:9). The word of God and the people of God exist in a symbiotic relationship, though there is some dispute over which has priority: Does the word of God proceed from the people of God or vice versa? Either way, a doctrine of Scripture must have recourse to more than history or sociology, for its main task is to say how both the word of God (the Bible) and the people of God (the Church) are of God. The present essay reflects theologically on the nature, attributes, purpose, and interpretation of the Christian Bible, examining each of these aspects in relation to God and God’s acts. Viewed theologically, Scripture is a human constituent in the communicative activity of the triune God: the voice, word, and breath that speaks forth the light, life, and love of God himself.

In its most basic sense, “Reformed catholicity” involves approaching Reformed theology, in its historic and contemporary forms, as one who belongs to the larger Christian tradition, the “holy, catholic church” confessed by the Apostles’ Creed. While this approach operates from within the Reformed theological tradition, it does so with an attentive ear to the catholic Christian voices from all eras; for those who embrace Reformed catholicity do not approach the Reformed tradition as an end in itself but rather as a way to fruitfully inhabit the larger catholic tradition. In its recent instantiation as a contemporary “sensibility,” “Reformed catholicity” generally means combining a theocentric focus upon theology as knowledge of the Triune God and creation in relation to God. It also involves a commitment to recovering the core catholic trinitarian and christological convictions that provide a framework for a theological journey of faith seeking understanding. Within this context, the task of biblical exegesis is embraced as fundamental to the renewal of a modern theological imagination. These catholic and Reformed convictions can help frame a way for the reception of the Word by the Spirit that moves God’s people away from self-serving and truncated ends and toward the fullness of maturity in Christ in life, worship, and witness.

Pufendorf’s reception and impact are not without paradox. Together with Grotius his name became a byword for natural law in his lifetime and has remained so. He was the key figure in the institutionalisation of natural law as an academic subject with wide-ranging extra-academic effect. Yet, his views were so widely and deeply contested from their publication that their original meaning and function mostly were lost sight of. Consequently, he has been subjected to a range of teleological interpretations that have persisted into contemporary scholarship, the most prominent being to see him as a proto-Enlightenment theorist of sociability and stadial history. His broad basis in erudite humanist scholarship was lost sight of, his ideas on constitutional law, ecclesiology and theology, and historiography being parcelled up along disciplinary lines. The effect was a narrowing of his legacy and with it the discipline of natural law in both moral philosophy and jurisprudence. This was despite his main commentator, Barbeyrac, himself being one of the last humanist scholars in natural law. The chapter discusses a range of the contestations about Pufendorf, including the remarkable contribution of Samuel Cocceji.

‘What is the human being’, the Psalmist asks God, ‘that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you attend to him’? (Ps. 8:5, LXX) How, indeed, can we define what it is to be human? Reviewing the diverse ways in which human beings have thought of themselves across the centuries, Charles Taylor concludes: ‘I suspect that no satisfactory general formula can be found to characterize the ubiquitous underlying nature of a self-interpreting animal.’1 Given that we exist in time and, individually and collectively, grow in time, to find a universal definition would perhaps be as impossible as trying to step twice into Heraclitus’s river. And yet, that the human being is indeed something particular, worthy of God’s mindfulness and attention is presupposed by the Psalmist.

Pufendorf’s method comprised three distinguishable strains: a humanistic deployment of diverse sources, especially from classical antiquity; an eclectic demand to choose and fashion such materials anew; and a scientific insistence on observational evidence, systemic coherence, and procedural rigor. Each of these resisted disciplinary capture, authoritarian control, and subservience to extraneous, extra-philosophical interests – appealing instead to a rational and thus potentially universal audience. In Pufendorf the third strain became dominant and involved the others as auxiliary procedures. Like other early modern instances of “mathematical” or scientific method, it aspired – in principle, and within its characteristic domain of free, human action – to probative certitude and intellectual authority while remaining exposed to challenges and demands for articulation, thereby claiming the participatory assent of other, unbiased reasoners. Despite eschewing metaphysical foundations in favor of merely empirical supports, it claimed the peculiar force or authority animating explanatory and normative legality alike. It was, in short, rational and empirical at the same time, attempting to control the pull of these counter-tendencies toward more abstract, vacuous, and irreconcilable extremes. This aim was achieved by combining broadly prudential analyses of both human and divine intent, nourished by a realistic or pragmatic assessment of historical (actual and recorded) experience.

This chapter shows that early modern metaphysics was far more important for Pufendorf’s moral philosophy than has often been thought. In particular, it is essential to understanding Pufendorf’s theory of moral entities. This theory is often regarded as voluntarist and anti-metaphysical. Opposed to this, it has been argued, was a rationalist belief in objective and eternal moral values that was exemplified by philosophers like Leibniz. However, the main distinction for Pufendorf was not between voluntarism and rationalism, but between moral rules that were specific to a certain society because they were merely conventional, and others that were universal because they were natural, in the sense of being grounded in the physical characteristics of human nature as it had been created by God. The latter, according to Pufendorf, were necessarily true, though their necessity was hypothetical rather than absolute. Pufendorf’s intention was to turn moral philosophy into a science, which would supersede traditional Aristotelian-scholastic views that morality was concerned with the contingent circumstances of actions, and therefore incapable of ‘scientific’, that is syllogistic proof. Pufendorf’s theory of moral entities was central to this project of a moral science, which required him to provide a metaphysical foundation for these entities.

The theological movement known as Radical Orthodoxy arose in the late 1990s as a small group of University lecturers and research students who met for seminars, to discuss papers responding to various cultural and philosophico-theological circumstances. What began as a small discussion group gradually expanded into a variegated network of scholars whose views were not always aligned with one another but who shared a commitment to exploring the value of pre-modern metaphysics in problematising contemporary philosophical and theological questions. The movement is not a singular edifice comprising individuals of the same opinion in all matters but has been described as a theological idiolect or style of approach, constructive and critical at once. In what follows, I will outline the cultural and theological context in which the movement arose and then enumerate the central characteristics of a ‘radically orthodox’ approach, insofar as that may be singularly identified, before suggesting areas for future development.

This chapter explores the subject of Pentecostal theology. It makes a quick cursory look at the story of the development of Pentecostal theology in the past 120 years since the birth of the Pentecostal movement in the early years of the twentieth century. The purpose of the endeavour is to try to understand the emergence of a distinct Pentecostal theology that today caters to the theological needs of more than a quarter of the world’s Christians. It will attempt to map the evolution of Pentecostal theological discourse over the closing decades of the twentieth century when the Pentecostal movement has spread to all parts of the world and has, in the process, developed its identity and claimed its place in the global Christian landscape. Before exploring some of the key contemporary themes in Pentecostal theology, the chapter offers a short discussion of what Pentecostal theology is and what it is not. To do this well, it is necessary to also discuss, even in cursory manner, the history of Pentecostal Christianity. The essay intentionally takes a world Christianity perspective in telling both the history of the movement and the narrative of its theological development. This is to situate this discussion of Pentecostal theology in the wider and growing discourse of global theologies, which then will allow us to see the growing influence of Pentecostal thought on world Christianity and vice versa. The global nature of Pentecostal theology itself informs the second half of the chapter in which it engages some of the key Pentecostal voices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, in addition to those in Europe and North America, to help us understand the current theological concerns of Pentecostal Christians in the world. In the end, I explore some pressing themes in Pentecostal theology, hoping to build bridges between Pentecostal theologians and those of mainline traditions.

Ressourcement Thomism refers to an emergent trend of theologians who seek to reassess the contribution of Thomas Aquinas both within his historical context and in a contemporary context. It is best explained genealogically in relation to other recent theological movements and has distinctive characteristics. In this chapter, I seek first to identify this historical context and characteristics of Ressourcement Thomism and then to illustrate its relevance by examining two typical theological claims found among those associated with the movement. The first of these is the claim that the modern focus on the “immanent and economic trinity” after Karl Rahner is conceptually problematic and that the Thomistic distinction between Trinitarian processions and Trinitarian missions serves as the more feasible one for a reasonable analysis of the way that the mystery of the Trinity is revealed in the economy of salvation. The latter model allows one to acknowledge more perfectly the New Testament revelation of the transcendence and unity of the Trinity and to avoid problematic historicizations of the divine life of God. The second claim is that key figures in modern kenotic theology such as Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, despite their theological creativity, have failed to preserve a sufficient sense of the distinction of the divine and human natures in Christ. Aquinas’s Chalcedonian and dyotheletist Christology provides one with ways of thinking about how the crucifixion of God reveals the mystery of the Trinity in and through the sufferings of Christ without the problematic projection of human characteristics of the Lord onto the inner life of the Trinity, as constitutive of the inner life of the Trinity. In both these respects, Ressourcement Thomism as a theological movement suggests ways that historical theology that is concerned with the contribution of patristic and medieval sources can lead to a renewal of and creative engagement in modern theology.

This chapter gives an account of Pufendorf’s discussion and use of the law of nations. It first outlines his distinctive contribution to contemporary discussions of the topic, namely his rejection rejection, against Grotius, of a specific “positive” law of nations distinct from the law of nature. Secondly it explains how this position relied on Pufendorf’s voluntarist conception of law as the command of a superior and on his conception of the state of nature as devoid of such superiors. The law of nations was simply the law of nature applied to states as composite persons in the state of nature, and the treaties and alliances concluded between them could not amount to a separate and obligatory law of nations. Thirdly, against this background, the chapter shows how Pufendorf discussed the law of war, disentangling the perfect and imperfect obligations of the law of nations from custom, civil laws, and pacts and agreements. Finally, the chapter analyses Pufendorf’s own casuistic use of the law of nations in the various polemical works he published in the service of his sovereigns, especially the King of Sweden, often in line with the theoretical position he developed but also departing from it when opportune.

The church is in one sense unique among the loci of Christian doctrine: the church is both the subject of believing but also an object of belief; the church formulates and articulates doctrine while at the same time itself being an object of doctrinal reflection. It is the church universal that formulates the creeds (‘We believe’); yet part of what is believed involves certain dogmas about the church (that it is ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ and that it acknowledges ‘one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’). We call the discipline of reflecting on what we believe about the church ‘ecclesiology’. That we have beliefs about the church indicates, moreover, that while in certain ways the church shares the same forms and conditions of its empirical existence as other societies and organisations in the world (for example, it is observable and spatio-temporal), the church is also unique as an organisation by virtue of its oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. Indeed, the church is (with Israel) a community that is different from all others in that it is a community directly created by God: the church (as with Israel) is that body of people about whom we believe God speaks the words, ‘I shall be your God and you shall be My people’ (Jer. 30:22). We have faith that the church is God’s people – faith in the invisible activity of God within the visible, empirical society of people called ‘church’.