In Understanding the Divine, Richard A. Muller clarifies concepts and distinctions used by Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to discuss the essence, attributes, and Trinitarian nature of God. He wipes away caricatures of Calvin and succeeding generations of Reformed theologians as revolutionary thinkers by showing where they retrieved their concepts, the contexts that demanded them to employ those ideas, and what they actually meant. Reading these essays, one comes to see the Reformed tradition as a conservative movement that developed patristic and medieval understandings of God in ways to address emerging problems and concerns of their day.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Calvin on Divine Attributes: A Question of Terminology and Method
2. Calvin and the Problem of Divine Will, Permission, and Contingency
3. Trinity and the Son’s Aseity: Formulation and Debate in Calvin and Reformed Orthodoxy
4. Unity and Distinction: The Nature of God in the Theology of Lucas Trelcatius Jr.
5. Calvinist Thomism Revisited: William Ames (1576–1633) and the Divine Ideas
6. God as Absolute and Relative, Necessary, Free, and Contingent: The Ad Intra/Ad Extra Movement of Seventeenth-Century Reformed Language about God

Index